Hi brothers and sisters,
As I promised, I'll take this chance to explain some things about the leadership structure of the Church (the church as a whole), and in so doing, explain how The Outreach functions. As usual, there are always a few key preliminaries to be said:
1. There is no absolute biblical model. In The Outreach, we try to be as biblical as possible, but what you will notice is that i) almost all church models point to the same Scripture passages for their authentication and ii) even your New Testament churches followed a variety of models. So what we can try to do is to identify certain models that fit the biblical pattern, weigh pros and cons, and decide on the one that is the most relevant for our people in Singapore.
2. Church structures are usually cultural rather than set in stone. Many church practices are that way--the early church used to use the format of the synagogue as a pattern for worship. But some churches use church organs to sing, some believe music should be forbidden altogether, and some use state-of-the-art equipment as part of honouring God. Honestly, the Bible has nothing against all of these methods. So what we can see is that the Bible allows us to innovate with some of these things, expressing what we feel by the symbols and practices of our day. In other words, the principle we should take from this is that our God is forever relevant to society--he is able to accept our changing practices and means of honouring him. What matters is what is inside, the reasons and thoughts behind each practise/innovation. So our church structure is not perfect too. (I'll dare to say that) it is highly innovative, considering the standards of our day, but it's not set in stone, and when it outruns its effectiveness (perhaps in a century or two), then it might be time to change it.
3. Any church structure change should be gradual rather than a overhaul. Overhauls are painful. And usually, they are only needed when the church becomes so outdated that it had better re-start a new way of doing things. My sincere hope for us as one of the churches of God is that we won't wait for crises to happen before we start innovating with structure. Innovate gradually, changing as we develop, so that we can be more and more effective and faithful to God's call for the church.
Now having said that, the Bible states 5 key leadership positions: the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher (Eph 4:11-14). This list is non-exhaustive, but it states some of the most important leaders within any church. These leaders are also called "elders" (Acts 14:23, 1 Tim 3, 1 Pet 5:1-- "I too am an elder"). In general, this word elder connotes 2 things:
i) The word itself connotes that the person is a 'senior' in the faith, someone relatively more spiritually mature than others in the church. But how long is long enough? Acts 14:23 seems to connote that these elders were appointed 1-2 years after becoming Christians--which is pretty short for us today! What we can take from this is that A) it's relative: an elder can be someone slightly more mature than the rest, and appointed an elder by virtue of the fact that there's no one more 'elder' than him; B) in the Outreach, elders are usually appointed, with the first and binding guideline that they are quite mature in the faith (between 8-15 years as a Christian, but as from the Scripture above, exceptions are also possible), rather than because "there's a job that needs to be done". So anyone who is an elder needs to demonstrate that in terms of the faith, he/she is not a novice. And it is possible for elders to be appointed without portfolio, since the need to get work done is not the top priority in choosing an elder.
ii) Given that the term seems to overlap with the 5-fold ministry in Ephesians, we can conclude that as a second priority, most of the elders would end up taking up leadership positions one way or the other, where they will use their 5-fold gifts God has given them to get their jobs done. (More on that later.)
iii) Given the fact that the elders we hear about can be part-time (like those in Acts 14) or full-time (1 Peter), we conclude that part-time or full-time is not what defines an elder. An elder should be part-time or full-time according to what God has called him towards.
(A note: Here we are crossing some traditional lines. People have usually assumed elders to be part-timers, and "Pastors" to be full-timers. But the Bible gives very little evidence to support this view. In fact, the Bible seems to indicate that Pastors are just one (although an important one, at that) of the 5 leadership positions that are meant to help the church develop towards maturity (Eph 4). So IMHO, it would be better to call elders according to their proper giftings, rather than to lump them all together and call them "Pastors", when they really might not be very pastoral at all. --> more details on this later.)
Leadership Gift #1: Pastors!
To be continued. Quite tired liao. :P
