Here is an old outline of mine; from the same files I made into my pages. I never made this into a page; because right now it is not really that important with all the other problems in the Church today. But it is something to think on. Especially in light od DHK's emphasis that the Church originally was not a building.
CHURCH ORGANIZATION
--patterned after secular business, complete with "executive 'boards'"
--make it sound like a moral obligation-- "financial responsibility", or "stewardship"
--Incorporate and get tax exempt status --503(c)(1) (so you won't "lose" to taxes money you could be using "for the flock" (church)
--But what is never questioned is why church fellowship should be in danger of taxation in the first place
NT Church was a series of informal fellowships in the home.
--basically like today's small group meetings. (Which organized Christianity sometimes criticizes)
--friends -or "brethren in Christ" (spiritual family members) gave each other money. It was off the books and non-taxable
Modern Church cites 1Cor.9:10,11,14 (also 1Tim.5:18/Matt.10:10, Lk.10:7 (Lev.19:13/Deut.24:15)) as basis for "professional clergy" (ministry 'positions' advertized as "employment opportunities" like secular jobs.)
--"Denominations" and independent churches alike are organized as corporations, like secular businesses and governments;
"employers", with local ministers, missionaries, musicians, "executive boards", etc. as "staff" on "payroll", making a fixed "salary", often including "retirement". (If church/ organization is big enough, additional "staff" has to be hired to manage all the paperwork, money, building maintenance, etc.)
To support this whole system, the money has to be "collected" from members-- the "laity", officially put on books, and this is taxable. So organizations have to become further organized (and controlled by civil government) in order to "steward" the money properly (It just makes "business" more and more complicated. Just like in the secular world. The more organized a church starts out, the further organized it has to become to survive financially.
1 Corinthians 9:16
First-- they leave out v.12&15-- Paul did not use this so-called 'right'. He was pointing out that ministry in a sense "deserves" support, but still, the inference is that this is in cases of "need". As in the cross reference to Rom.15:27 (see context --preceding 2 verses) --refers to churches helping out other churches.
"Those who preach (announce, proclaim, promulgate the Gospel..." We normally think of the local pastor preaching from his pulpit, but it really means missionaries (apostles, evangelists)-- people who announce or promulgate (make known--see Strong)those who have never heard. These people, who like Jesus, have "no place to lay their heads"(Matt.8:20), having to go to all sorts of places in the world, obviously cannot be tied down with a job, so it's these people, such as Paul and Barnabas (v.6), who should be supported. Not local teachers, pastors (shepherds), bishops (overseers), etc. There is no hint in the New Testament that they should be regularly 'paid'. This passage draws analogy from the OT priests in the temple, but the church is not under that old covenant system.
So this scripture is not even referring to any "salaried" "ministries", and definitely not any corporate denominational boards, who go home every night to nice homes, fly around the world, often first class, and stay at plush hotels and cozy "conference" retreats, where they discuss what else, but running a business. Basically, living the jet set high life. We've used this passage to justify giving all the money to these leaders, and then the ministries which this verse was actually talking about-- the mission field and struggling saints, get whatever is left over, or next to nothing!
NT leaders saw their ministries as joyful service to the Lord, not as an "occupation" to gain "wages"(income). When they stopped by and stayed at local congregations, they were taken care of by local members. And it was all tax free. But today, we use these scriptures to justify what we consider is only "adaptation" to modern culture and law. "Nobody does anything for free; everybody has to 'make a living'"; "Everybody has to have a 'salary' for ministry work". And they usually then are sheltered from the trials of going everyday to a secular job, working for a secular employer, and with non-Christians. This is justified because they are burdened with all the tasks of 'running' the church, but that too is unbiblical, because people met in homes, and there was no 'business' to run; either you were a pastor (shepherd), or a teacher, or an evangelist spreading the Gospel. No one man did everything in a group. It was this that paved the way for the celebrity based churches we see often. And also the supply-side mentality where we figure he "did all this" for us, so we must "give all this" to him.
Perhaps it's more convenient to run everything the way they do. Why shouldn't people want to make money and their whole living from their ministry work, and not have to deal with an unstable and hectic secular work force. But if ministry simply becomes a job, a means of making money, based on human needs and wants, then the whole Spirit is gone out of it. It becomes just another secular profession, where the common ('lay') people become pawns, who are pressured financially to support people more prosperous than they, and who are out of touch with the mundane realities of their lives being sheltered by the church organization. The focus of the organized system becomes growth-- numbers and dollars-- just like in business, of an institution (denomination or local church), [and all of this occurs in fundamentalist churches too. It is NOT just the Church Growth Movement!]and the simple spreading of the Gospel is buried below layers of 'administration'. And it causes schism, strife over power, etc.
Church Offices
Apostles [Bishops], Pastors & Teachers a permanent control hierarchy? A money making career occupation?
What were these offices for?
Eph.4:12 "To prepare God's people for works of service so that the Body of Christ may be built up"
Was a "laity" to be permanently in the domain of leaders or "shepherds"? Or for how long?
v.13 "UNTIL we all (Paul and people he was teaching) reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ"
See also Heb. 5:12 "For when for the time all of you ought to be teachers, all of you have need that one teach you again
which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong food."
So people were never supposed to remain under the Apostles, pastors and teachers forever. The purposes of those offices was to train newcomers in the basics of the faith, and then those people would themselves be apart of the ministry of spreading the Gospel, building up other members of the body of Christ, etc. The Apostles, pastors, teachers, etc. would move on to bring new people into the faith and teach and train them, not rule over a "parish" of the same "lay" members.
And remember, the Church was just starting out then. The leaders of Paul's era had a special mission, because the Church and its Gospel message were only first being established then. It was a brand new thing, and all the new converts to this new faith now had to be brought into "unity in the faith", and in the "knowledge of the Son of God" --the risen Savior that was undoubtedly new to many. And remember, there was no written New Testament scriptures at this time. The Acts and epistles were written when they were being written. When Paul was writing this letter to the Ephesians, it obviously was not being circulated all across the Church at that time. It would take decades for it to be copied enough to be widely circulated. So the teachings of this new Gospel message were vulnerable at that time. Because it was all spread by word of mouth before it was written. So things could very easily be twisted-- even if unintentional, and especially intentionally, where there would be no authoritative source by which a group leader could be measured. So in this early vulnerable period, you needed a tighter authority structure of specially taught and ordained (by the apostles) leaders, to "shepherd" the flocks and insure that the message was preserved, taught and passed on faithfully, while it could have time to be written down and circulated. You would only need them then, basically to continue training new converts and standing them on their own feet. But when it was written and circulated, and a core of central teachings established, you would not need "shepherds" and "overseers" as much. But by that time (in the second century), the Church was already being influenced by false teachings and false leaders desiring control, so the leadership positions eventually became a permanent hierarchy of control.
This system actually began with the Christendom paradigm when Constantine legalized the Church. Then, about a century later, the bishop of Rome, Leo I, reorganized it, copying the Roman government, which he saw as the most fascinating thing on earth. So all the offices became highly paid professions. The Protestants continued the system down to the present. It wasn't designed to spread the Gospel, but rather to control the people in the Church-led kingdom of the Christendom paradigm.
This system is problematic, because the leaders complain of all the work they do, compared to the "served" laity. A recent Christianity Today feature discussed the problem of "pastor burnout". Yet, in the end, the church bought the pastor being interviewed a $900 gift. Pastors also run guilt games down on the Church, contantly complainingg and threatening to leave. The church then tries to squeeze to get him more money, (on top of retierment, hosuning, travel, and health percs), but he is unsatisfied and leaves anyway, and then eveyoine in the Church is blaming themmselves or each other for not giving enough. I'm not saying they shouldn't have anything, but it just seems kind of unfair because our employers would never do those things for us. Making a little more money in my job (state courts, or now, NYC Transit) meant taking a test and waiting years, with almost no spending money, and utilities near being turned off. [It is a bit better now in Transit; but we still have to figt to get fair contracts in a land of rising costs, and we have been losing ground. that is what the last few subway strikes and/or threats have been about] There is no one to help us like that. The very scripture that directed the church to help us is used to justify giving it all to the pastor.
And then how do these leaders respond to the needs of people like this? Simplistic pat answers! When our pastor and the elder ask my wife how she's doing, and she tells them that the job and school really have her down, they say "oh, other people suffer too". In the past, when I was struggling with low-paying jobs, and an abusive alcoholic father, I was told by leaders "just trust God". All of their physical needs are being met here and now by some organization, that I'm helping fund, but I have to trust God in uncertainty. That, they are above. I feel that if the pastor had to work for a tyrant boss in a hectic setting, like my wife did, and had to struggle for survival, then maybe they wouldn't see our suffering from afar off as just something of no real significance. It often feels like being in the Army. I'm on the frontline bringing Christ with me to the battlefield of the daily train commute, the time-clock, the bosses and their moods, and all sorts of worldly co-workers with their frustrations they often take out on others. Then there's the commander back in the camp (the pastor), and the generals way back the Pentagon (ministry leaders) giving me the directions, and receiving all the material rewards and honor and glory for the war. If I need a leader, I'd like him to actually lead me out, in the world, not just see me once a week and give me simplistic advice when he doesn’t even share my circumstances. It's said that the entire burden of spreading the Gospel has been placed on the backs of pastors, but that's precisely how I feel when I find myself out there by myself in the world. I look around and think "where are all of those professional, seminary trained people who preach and write so much about how I should deal with this world, "trusting God"? They're all being paid, by me to stay out of these environments.
It is true that church leaders already have enough to do, but that is part of the problem too. It's this very salary system that is encouraging this. The balance of work falls on the leaders, because they are the ones getting paid for it. The people are coming to buy their services! When I buy a material item, I don't go to the factory and help the manufacturer build it. My 'job' is just to receive and pay. This is what is happening in the church.
Everyone looks to the pastor, and there is power in the position. But in the New Testament, "pastor" (mentioned only once!) is just a shepherd, someone more mature in the faith who leads others to maturity. They were not to 'follow' him forever. And he needed no money from them. This is what I feel we also have to get back to for the next century. It is no fair to try to distribute the workload more evenly to everyone, but leave all the money with one person. He is then just being paid to be a figurehead. It is still simply rehashing the present organizational system, not changing it, and People will still see the church as being preoccupied with money.
If we can do this, then we'll really be getting back to the apostolic paradigm. But I know that this is much, because who will want to give up the money, security and prestige of the present system, even if they do feel "burned out" by it. It is all copied off of the business model of the world. But I know it probably can't be changed now (barring some kind of disaster. No wonder so many opt for a pre-trib rapture!) But still, just so the truth be known.
