This is the 4th in a series of posts discussing my worldview theology approach to Christianity.\u00a0 This post addresses one of the primary tools of Christian worldview construction, the consensus model of the church.<\/p>\n
The first, on general definitions, is here<\/a><\/p>\n The second, on faith as worldview, is here<\/a><\/p>\n The third, on the kingdom of God, is here<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In previous posts, I have written about the importance of the Christian worldview in faith and Christian life, and that one of the primary jobs of a Christian is to strengthen faith though completing the work of building a coherent Christian worldview.\u00a0 I have given a couple of examples of how failure to build an appropriate worldview can lead to problems such as burnout in a new Christian and apostasy in an older one.<\/p>\n Now I’m going to talk about one of the primary tools that Jesus left us to help us construct a robust worldview — the church and its pastor and elders.<\/p>\n 1) There are many challenges to building and maintaining the Christian worldview, and we need tools for it.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Building a viable Christian worldview is a difficult task, particularly in a society that is becoming increasingly antagonistic to it.\u00a0 Some of the challenges are serious – social derogation, loss of jobs, friends, and family, and persecution including fines, lawsuits, imprisonment, and even death.\u00a0 Those of us in America have largely been spared much of this in recent times, but it is becoming increasingly politically acceptable to engage in outright persecution and attack on Christians in the public sphere.\u00a0 Politicians state that religious belief is a reasonable criterion for denying someone a government position, activists burn churches and attack churchgoers, activist groups sue Christians who own businesses for living their faith, governments fine them for doing so, states preferentially use emergency powers to close churches and make worship illegal, politicians praise the governments of places like China, who imprison and torture Christians and bulldoze churches.<\/p>\n Worse, even in times that were more Christian-friendly in America, the “cultural” Christian tradition has been generally unfriendly to “fundamentalist” Christianity and to Christians who are more structured and demanding in their faith.\u00a0 The cultural “mainline” Christianity of the 1950s was tolerant of more rigorous faith, but nonetheless sniffed at it and looked down on it. Mainline Christianity today embraces secular culture and is overtly antagonistic to “real” Christianity (again in the Wilberforce definition of “real”).<\/p>\n Because of these challenges, the “easy” road is to engage in accommodation of the rigorous Christian worldview by incorporating increasingly secular ideas — leading to the cultural Christian worldview in the best case, and apostasy in the worst (discussed in the second part of this series).\u00a0 But these wordviews are fundamentally unstable, and are successful only when challenges are weak.<\/p>\n 2) We are given a number of tools<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0and resources, of which one is the church.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Nobody’s individual worldview is perfect.\u00a0 That won’t come until its instantiation by Jesus.\u00a0 Every worldview incorporates at least some accommodation to secular ideas, due to propaganda from the media, to cultural norms, to individual failings, prejudices, desires, limitations in our intellect and knowledge, our personal experience, the influence of our parents and others, and many other things.\u00a0 Because of these many forces pulling and pushing on our worldview, it is a wonder that a fully Christian worldview is approachable at all.<\/p>\n So, then, how can we build a robust Christian worldview?\u00a0 How can we instantiate the kingdom of God in our lives and communities as much as is feasible given the limitations of the real world?\u00a0 We have to build it so that it is internally consistent, robust to attack, personally satisfying, and demonstrably profitable in some real terms.\u00a0 God has given us a number of tools.\u00a0 These include the scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and the church and community of believers.\u00a0 This post discusses the last of these — the church.<\/p>\n 3. The church provides sanctuary from antichristian culture.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The church is a community that has its own culture that can oppose the secular culture.\u00a0 It provides a “safe space” where Christians can be Christians without fear, challenge, or ridicule.\u00a0 It is a place where art, music, and literature that values Christian traditions can survive.\u00a0 \u00a0In modern terms, the church is the ultimate “safe space” for Christians.\u00a0 Sometimes you need a place where you don’t have to constantly fight attacks on your worldview.<\/p>\n As Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians,<\/p>\n “Brothers and sisters, what should we say then? When you come together, each of you brings something. You bring a hymn or a teaching or a message from God. You bring a message in another language or explain what was said in that language. Everything must be done to build up the church. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>No more than two or three people should speak in another language. And they should speak one at a time. Then someone must explain what was said. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>If there is no one to explain, the person speaking should keep quiet in the church. They can speak to themselves and to God.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Only two or three prophets are supposed to speak. Others should decide if what is being said is true.\u00a0<\/span>What if a message from God comes to someone else who is sitting there? Then the one who is speaking should stop. <\/span>Those who prophesy can all take turns. In that way, everyone can be taught and be given hope.\u00a0<\/span>Those who prophesy should control their speaking.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>God is not a God of disorder. He is a God of peace, just as in all the churches of the Lord\u2019s people<\/em>.”<\/span><\/p>\n It should be remembered that in most interpretations, “prophecy” as used here means “teaching,” not predictions of the future.\u00a0 Thus, Paul is speaking about support and instruction in Christian world building.<\/p>\n This means, however, that the church really does need to be a place of safety.\u00a0 A church that is divided and is full of ill-feeling is just another place where your existence is being attacked.\u00a0 Churches like that do more damage than good — because they attack the worldview of fellow Christians just as vehemently as do militant atheists.<\/p>\n 4. The church provides a consensus model for the Christian worldview.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n More important, it is a community where people can meet the challenges to the Christian worldview together<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 As I mentioned in a previous post, people who are new to their Christian journey are particularly vulnerable to worldview attacks.\u00a0 First, the change from a secular or pagan worldview to a totally Christian worldview does not happen overnight.\u00a0 Conversion can be a radical and immediate change, but the strong underlying structure isn’t there. New converts need help and they need help soon to deal with challenges that Satan will put in the way.<\/p>\n But it’s not just the new convert who faces challenges.\u00a0 Many Christians do not deeply examine their Christian worldviews until later in life when some event happens that represents a serious attack.\u00a0 It may be some life tragedy — the loss of a loved one, for example.\u00a0 It may be some great disappointment. It may be the accretion of many small assaults that one does not deal with until the weight of all of them together becomes a problem.<\/p>\n A new convert and\u00a0 the Christian who has not focused on building a worldview need a fairly robust “ready made” model of the world available to accept that will automatically deal with most everyday issues.\u00a0 The church (whichever church one belongs to) does exactly that — it provides a pre-built construction that is ready to move into. Like moving into a new house, the basic structure may be OK, but it needs to be individualized.\u00a0 It may be that the kitchen needs some new counter tops.\u00a0 It may be that there needs to be a new room.\u00a0 It may be that the house needs to be redone more completely. But until that is done, at least you have a roof over your head, heat in the winter, and running water.<\/p>\n That is what the consensus worldview of the church provides right away.\u00a0 And it is absolutely necessary to have it.\u00a0 A new Christian who is on his or her own simply will not have the skills to do the basic maintenance and construction to face even the most basic winds and rains of life.\u00a0 And, worse, whatever he or she *does* build will likely be flawed — and will cause many problems later on unless it’s fixed ahead of time.\u00a0 Christians young in their faith, and Christians who have never done their basic homework simply don’t have the tools to build it on their own.<\/p>\n There are denominations that have fatally flawed consensus worldviews, such as the accomodationist denominations previously discussed, and those that are not really Christian at all.\u00a0 But most major Christian denominations provide a reasonable basic design.\u00a0 It’s pre-built, and it’s free.\u00a0 The Catholic consensus is not the Protestant consensus,\u00a0 The Charismatic consensus is not the mainline consensus.\u00a0 But they are all relatively coherent.\u00a0 And they are all flawed.\u00a0 I am not an ecumenicist — I believe that some of these worldviews are much more flawed than others — but they are all places to start as long as one recognizes them as starting places and not the end of the Christian journey.<\/p>\n 4.1 This is one reason why division in the church must be minimized<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n If every Christian worldview is different, and every worldview is somewhat flawed, then it is also necessarily true that there will be disagreements about those worldviews.\u00a0 How, then, can the church provide a consensus worldview if there is, in fact, no complete consensus?\u00a0 The answer is of course that in any congregation some things will be at the core, and some things will not.\u00a0 The basic structure of the worldview is what the consensus establishes, not the details.\u00a0 If there are divisions in the church about these basic things, then that consensus will collapse, and the church cannot provide this basic consensus template.<\/p>\n As Paul wrote to the church at Rome:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>I am warning you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who try to keep you from staying together. They want to trip you up. They teach you things opposite to what you have learned. Stay away from them.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>People like that are not serving Christ our Lord. They are serving only themselves. With smooth talk and with words they don\u2019t mean they fool people who don\u2019t know any better.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n and to the church at Corinth:<\/p>\n Brothers and sisters, I make my appeal to you. I do this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I ask that all of you agree with one another in what you say. I ask that you don\u2019t take sides. I ask that you are in complete agreement in all that you think.<\/em><\/p>\n and to the church at Ephesus:<\/p>\n “So Christ himself gave the gift of the apostles to the church. He gave the prophets and those who preach the good news. And he also gave the pastors and teachers as a gift to the church. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>He gave all these people so that they might prepare God\u2019s people to serve. Then the body of Christ will be built up.\u00a0<\/span>That will continue until we all become one in the faith. We will also become one in the knowledge of God\u2019s Son. Then we will be grown up in the faith. We will receive everything that Christ has for us.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n We are building this consensus worldview, and part and parcel of it is unity.\u00a0 If we don’t have that, then we cannot achieve a basic function of the church.<\/p>\n But what, then, when that consensus *is* wrong?\u00a0 After all we all know congregations who believe things that we think are just wacky, if not outright evil. The answer is that we find a congregation that we are compatible with, and help that congregation as it refines its consensus worldview.\u00a0 And we test it as our individual worldviews mature.<\/p>\n This leads to two important corollaries.\u00a0 First, since the consensus worldview is both imperfect and represents a consensus, it will not be ‘right’ with respect to any individual worldview in all aspects.\u00a0 But no consensus worldview will be.\u00a0 When working within a church, we have to recognize the value of the consensus worldview — and support it — even if we don’t agree in all particulars.\u00a0 This is because the need for some consensus structure is more important than trying to impose one’s idiosyncratic view on everyone else (and you won’t be able to do that, anyway).<\/p>\n The second is that, it will be necessary to test it and make sure the consensus of a given congregation is correct in everything basic to “real” Christianity.\u00a0 Whether a church is ruled by a Pope, a Pastor, or a Presbytery is not in and of itself necessarily a deal breaker.\u00a0 Whether or not a church preaches the Resurrection is.\u00a0 That’s why we have the other tools — the Holy Spirit and scripture.\u00a0 If the consensus worldview of the congregation ignores or contradicts scripture, then it may not be providing a healthy consensus worldview, and it may be necessary to find a congregation with a more correct one. If a congregation does not recognize or experience the Holy Spirit, at least in some manifestation, then it has lost its way.\u00a0 That doesn’t mean that the church has to be charismatic or support a mystical perspective, but it has to recognize and support the voice of the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n 5. It provides individual instruction and correction on building the Christian worldview.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n But there’s more.\u00a0 Your individual Christian worldview is not exactly that of the consensus of the congregation, but neither is anybody else’s.\u00a0 What you have in a congregation is a large number of people who have dealt with both challenges to their Christian worldviews from the secular world, and with the (minor) disagreements their individual worldview has with the consensus worldview promoted by their congregation. Thus, when challenges come to your worldview,\u00a0 they are resources.\u00a0 Sometimes you need a repairman.<\/p>\n The church provides exactly that. As the author of Hebrews instructs us: Let us be concerned for one another, to help one another to show love and to do good. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer. (Hebrews 10)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n And in the early church shortly after the visitation of the Holy Spirit at the Pentecost, many people joined the faith:<\/p>\n They spent their time in learning from the apostles, taking part in the fellowship, and sharing in the fellowship meals and the prayers. (Acts 2)<\/em><\/p>\n We need that encouragement. We need that training. In almost every congregation, there will be a group of people, often Deacons or Elders or equivalent, who are known for having successfully dealt with many of the issues that most Christians face.\u00a0 These elders and these more seasoned Christians, whether they are ordained or not, are almost universally happy to provide support and teaching to congregants who need it.\u00a0 That means that the church is the<\/strong> <\/em>place where members can teach each other how they strengthen and modify their worldview.\u00a0 They can discuss things that work and don’t work in creating the connections and structure that underlies it.\u00a0 They can discuss strategies they have used to overcome challenges to the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n More important, it provides *multiple* strategies on how to do this.\u00a0 Because every model is individual and idiosyncratic at the edges, no solution will work for everybody.\u00a0 For some people, changing one particular thing is no big deal.\u00a0 For others, it may cause a collapse or significant weakening of the worldview — in that case, either the person must find a different change to make, or engage in a more complete restructuring (which can be very threatening).<\/p>\n Consider again my example of evolution.\u00a0 For my Christian worldview, evolution is irrelevant — I simply do not care how close or how far evolutionary theory happens to be from physical truth in its ideas about the origin of man.\u00a0 Since, to me, faith is simply a choice, then it doesn’t matter whether or not any particular theory plays out.\u00a0 It is irrelevant to the fundamental building blocks of my faith (which are essentially untestable and unfalsifiable).\u00a0 The pertinent connections that dictate my spiritual life do not depend on any scientific or physical conclusions.\u00a0 Thus, if evolution turns out to be a ground truth, I will figure out a way to work it in my Christian worldview.\u00a0 If it turns out not to be a ground truth, then I won’t bother.\u00a0 I don’t care.\u00a0 For me the claim that “evolution is correct” has the same impact as “the Oxford comma is correct.”\u00a0 Yeah, whatever.<\/p>\n However, for others, it is profoundly important.\u00a0 It is necessary for them to either firm up criticism of evolution (and deal with the associated intellectual and cultural attacks) or find a different accommodation or worldview defense, else their Christian worldview will be very threatened.\u00a0 Because my worldview is evolution-neutral, my solution would be to instruct the young person to restructure his or her worldview so that it does not require that evolution be dealt with at all.\u00a0 However, there are some Christian worldviews that would not survive this, since their view is very different than mine.\u00a0 It is a little like the difference between the “natural theology” of the 18th century Scots and their rejection of miracles compared to the Catholic theology of the time, which embraced miracles. “God as clock maker” doesn’t do the miracle thing, and if He does, then the entire “God as clock maker” theology falls apart.<\/p>\n So, imagine a young Christian in high school or college getting his or her first introduction to evolutionary theory in a rigorous sense.\u00a0 Suddenly it seems that the comfortable Christian worldview he or she grew up with is under attack, and it seems almost defenseless.\u00a0 It is not certain that this young person will come up with a reasonable response on his or her own. But, if there is a robust community of believers around, then he or she can see multiple ways that people have dealt with the issue.\u00a0 He or she can see how those defenses worked with variations of the Christian worldview, different degrees of success, and how it has affected the faith of those who used those defenses.<\/p>\n The key here is that churches have people with large variations of experience, knowledge, and depth and strength of faith — all working within a consensus framework.\u00a0 That is an important resource, though many churches do not mobilize it as well as they should.\u00a0 In a previous post I discussed a young Christian musician who left the faith because some basic questions went unanswered and could not be addressed by people he talked to. It seemed from his discussion that he mostly talked to other young Christians who had the same questions.\u00a0 A well-organized congregation should have been able to encourage this young man to seek answers from the congregation.\u00a0 They would have had congregants who have dealt with these basic questions who could have taught the young man how to deal with them.<\/p>\n This teaching is a fundamental responsibility of the church.\u00a0 As Paul wrote to the church at Colossi:<\/p>\n Let the message about Christ live among you like a rich treasure. Teach and correct one another wisely. Teach one another by singing psalms and hymns and songs from the Spirit. Sing to God with thanks in your hearts. (Col 3)<\/em><\/p>\n It won’t necessarily be easy, because the message of the church may not be what some people want to hear. Incorrect worldviews are resistant to change.\u00a0 As Paul wrote in his second letter to Timothy:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/sup>Preach the word. Be ready to serve God in good times and bad. Correct people\u2019s mistakes. Warn them. Encourage them with words of hope. Be very patient as you do these things. Teach them carefully. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>The time will come when people won\u2019t put up with true teaching. Instead, they will try to satisfy their own desires. They will gather a large number of teachers around them. The teachers will say what the people want to hear.\u00a0<\/span>The people will turn their ears away from the truth. They will turn to stories that aren\u2019t true.\u00a0<\/span>But I want you to keep your head no matter what happens. Don\u2019t give up when times are hard. Work to spread the good news. Do everything God has given you to do.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Or in his first letter:<\/p>\n Correct an older man in a way that shows respect. Make an appeal to him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as if they were your brothers. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>Treat older women as if they were your mothers. Treat younger women as if they were your sisters. Be completely pure in the way you treat them. (1 Tim 5)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Even older Christians need correction, and the church provides it.<\/p>\n Note here that I did not say that it was the *pastor’s’* responsibility to do this. It is the *congregation’s’* responsibility.\u00a0 I will discuss this more below.<\/p>\n 6. It provides physical support from a Christian viewpoint.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n One of the jobs of the church talked about explicitly in the scriptures is the physical support of its congregants.\u00a0 We call it “charity” but unfortunately that word has taken on too many implications, some of which are not useful.\u00a0 But it’s profoundly important for the Christian worldview. Again, as Paul writes:<\/p>\n But whoever has the world\u2019s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?<\/em><\/p>\n And to the church at Corinth:<\/p>\n Brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given to the churches in Macedonia.\u00a0 They have suffered a great deal. But in their suffering, their joy was more than full. Even though they were very poor, they gave very freely.\u00a0 I tell you that they gave as much as they could. In fact, they gave even more than they could. Completely on their own, 4 they begged us for the chance to share in serving the Lord\u2019s people in that way. They did more than we expected. First they gave themselves to the Lord. Then they gave themselves to us because that was what God wanted.\u00a0 Titus had already started collecting money from you. So we asked him to help you finish making your kind gift. You do well in everything else. You do well in faith and in speaking. You do well in knowledge and in complete commitment. And you do well in the love we have helped to start in you. So make sure that you also do well in the grace of giving to others. (2 Cor 8)<\/em><\/p>\n 6.1 It is part of the instantiation and is a test of the Christian worldview.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n As I’ve mentioned, part of the development of the kingdom of God in our lives is to try to instantiate as much of it as possible in our own lives. While the Christian worldview is a cognitive construct, it works by physical manifestation in our lives — it dictates how we think and act.\u00a0 \u00a0The worldview is dead without its physical manifestation.\u00a0 Moreover, acting on that worldview serves an important purpose of testing that worldview in “real world” conditions.\u00a0 It’s much better to do that now than to wait until the Judgment of Saints and see whether or not our construction burns away.\u00a0 Thus, just as our worldview reflects our knowledge of the real world, our actions in the real world are a reflection of our worldview.\u00a0 If our actions do not reflect a worldview we are trying to build, then we need to see what is wrong with the worldview we have and how it is driving our behavior.<\/p>\n Kindness as a reflection of Christian love (including the not-so-nice kindness of so-called “tough love”) and charity are fundamental products of the Christian worldview — and the resulting Christian life.\u00a0 If you don’t get that part right, then you need to really look at that worldview you have.\u00a0 None of us get it right completely, particularly introverts like me who mostly don’t want to deal with people at all, but we can work on it.<\/p>\n But we have to.\u00a0 Because if we don’t, then our worldviews will not be useful in the real world.<\/p>\n 6.2\u00a0 It is a tool to allow less fortunate Christians to pursue their worldview building.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n God has blessed me throughout all my life by meeting all of my physical needs.\u00a0 I have never gone hungry in the poverty sense, I have never lacked for a roof over my head.\u00a0 There have been times when I was fairly poor, particularly in graduate school, but never destitute.\u00a0 One of the things about building the Christian worldview in an intentional sense is that you have to have the time and liberty to do it.\u00a0 If you are too busy trying to find a scrap of food or are freezing in the winter, you will focus on meeting those basic needs first.\u00a0 If one of the jobs of the Church is to help immature Christians mature, it would be nonsensical for it to stand by while congregants are so in need that they must focus more on mere survival than maturing as Christians. The congregation is a way for those of us with physical resources to help those without them — to give them the breathing space to mature as Christians.<\/p>\n 6.3 it is a force multiplier for our efforts<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Part of our Great Commission is to spread our view of the Christ.\u00a0 As He ordered: And he said to them, \u201cGo into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. (Mark 16),\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n and, of course, John 3:<\/p>\n For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.<\/em><\/p>\n The saving of the world is done one soul at a time, but it is our duty to try to change the entire world.\u00a0 We can only do that by working together, and the church is the mechanism God gave us for this.\u00a0 As Jesus said in Matthew 5:<\/p>\n \u201cYou are the salt of the earth. But suppose the salt loses its saltiness. How can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything. It will be thrown out. People will walk all over it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/sup>\u201cYou are the light of the world. A town built on a hill can\u2019t be hidden.\u00a0<\/span>Also, people do not light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand. Then it gives light to everyone in the house. <\/span>\u00a0<\/sup>In the same way, let your light shine so others can see it. Then they will see the good things you do. And they will bring glory to your Father who is in heaven.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n One of the great mistakes of so-called “liberation theology” and similar theologies that focus on social activism is that they mistake the byproduct for the core of faith.\u00a0 Christianity is a profoundly individual-based discipline — to the point of extremes.\u00a0 One of the hallmarks of Jesus and the Apostles is that they specifically did *not* try to change society.\u00a0 They believed that the Christian world and the secular world were distinct.\u00a0 Thus, when the Pharisees challenged Jesus about taxes, He famously said “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”<\/p>\n Paul made this even more explicit in his letter to Philemon.\u00a0 In that letter, he is returning a slave (Onesimus) to his master a Christian named Philemon.\u00a0 If you read that letter, note that Paul does not say that slavery is a social evil.\u00a0 He does not say that Philemon should not own slaves.\u00a0 He does not say that Christians should rise up against slavery.\u00a0 He does not encourage organized social action.\u00a0 What Paul states is that the fact that both Onesimus and Philemon are Christians makes social convention irrelevant.\u00a0 Paul points out to Philemon that Onesimus is no longer really a slave to Philemon, but a brother in Christ, and that it is Philemon’s personal responsibility to treat Onesimus as a brother first and anything else a distant second.<\/p>\n In other words, Paul is changing society one conversion at a time.\u00a0 \u00a0Jesus’ and Paul’s social theory is that you change society by changing individuals, culture will naturally change as enough individuals change, and that political structures will change as culture changes.\u00a0 This is the exact *opposite* of liberation theology, which posits that we should seek political change first, which will change culture, which (finally) will force individual change.\u00a0 It is why, ultimately, “liberation” theologies ultimately and necessarily reject the Jesus of the Bible.<\/p>\n Most Christians cannot afford to fund large efforts like missions, but we can pool our resources to do so.\u00a0 \u00a0The Church was the first “GoFundMe” effort, and like those efforts can accomplish things that we cannot do as individuals.\u00a0 In the letter to the Corinthians noted above, Paul indicates that churches collected money to support other churches.\u00a0 It is through this that we can all survive.<\/p>\n Individuals can act together to compound their strengths and abilities.\u00a0 The church is that mechanism.\u00a0 It can make individual efforts much more effective.\u00a0 Many years ago, I was a Deacon in a small rural church.\u00a0 Most of us channeled our charitable giving through our benevolent fund.\u00a0 It allowed better outreach to find those truly in need, and better control of spending to make sure that the money really went to food and electric bills instead fo buying methamphetamine.<\/p>\n This is particularly true for missions.\u00a0 The Great Commission is called Great for a reason.\u00a0 There are others.\u00a0 I don’t want to give the impression that I am minimizing these other tasks.\u00a0 I’m simply focusing on worldview issues here.\u00a0 Great mission work relies on great and devoted individuals to go, preach and build.\u00a0 But it takes a church to support them.<\/p>\n 7. It is a resource for personal relationships<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The church is a resource for personal relationships that support a Christian viewpoint, and families that are safe for Christian views.\u00a0 Paul tells us that we should associate primarily with believers in friendship, and that we should seek believing spouses.\u00a0 He writes to the Corinthians:<\/p>\n Do not be joined to unbelievers. What do right and wrong have in common? Can light and darkness be friends? How can Christ and Satan agree? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?\u00a0 How can the temple of the true God and the statues of other gods agree? We are the temple of the living God.<\/em><\/p>\n He points out elsewhere that we must honor commitments already made, even if it is to an unbeliever, if nothing else than for the sake of the children, but it is clearly better to marry within the church.<\/p>\n And the same relates for friendship:<\/p>\n Don\u2019t let anyone fool you. \u201cBad companions make a good person bad.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>You should come back to your senses and stop sinning. Some of you don\u2019t know anything about God. I say this to make you ashamed.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Or, as the author of James says:<\/p>\n …Don\u2019t you know that to be a friend of the world is to hate God? So anyone who chooses to be the world\u2019s friend becomes God\u2019s enemy.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n We need friends, we need love, we need companionship.\u00a0 It is achieved best when our friends and loved ones share our worldview.\u00a0 It is almost impossible to share deep friendship or love with someone whose worldview is very different from yours.\u00a0 The church provides a resource for finding these people, and building these communal lives.<\/p>\n 8. A note about pastors<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n One of the things that I found interesting when looking into the subject of churches is that most of the admonitions regarding teaching and leadership were not<\/strong> <\/em>directed at pastors.\u00a0 They were directed at elders.\u00a0 For instance, it is not the Pastor who sees to the sick, it is the elders.\u00a0 As the book of James notes:<\/p>\n Is anyone among you in trouble? Then that person should pray. Is anyone among you happy? Then that person should sing songs of praise.\u00a0<\/span>Is anyone among you sick? Then that person should send for the elders of the church to pray over them. They should ask the elders to anoint them with olive oil in the name of the Lord.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Similarly, in Paul’s first letter to Timothy:<\/p>\n The elders who do the church\u2019s work well are worth twice as much honor. That is true in a special way of elders who preach and teach.m (1 Tim 5)\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In 1 Peter, young Christians are told to be respectful of the elders:<\/p>\n Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for \u201cGod opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Paul and Barnabas left the care of churches in the hands of elders:<\/p>\n And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.\u00a0 (Acts 14)<\/em><\/p>\n The Pastor, on the other hand was considered the “overseer” who instructed the church as a whole and set direction.\u00a0 Most important, he is the one who designs the consensus worldview of the church.\u00a0 He was not the person who dealt with the day to day needs of each individual member.\u00a0 As Paul notes in his letter to Titus:<\/p>\n Since an overseer manages God\u2019s household, he must be blameless\u2014not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.<\/em><\/p>\n This is a very different mandate than that of the elders.\u00a0 The Pastor’s job is to train the church with respect to the worldview.\u00a0 He should be the scholar of scripture and doctrine.\u00a0 He should manage the work of the Elders and Deacons.\u00a0 For a large church, it is simply not reasonable to expect that the pastor deal with each member’s individual issues as part of his daily work.<\/p>\n Certainly some pastors relish this kind of personal ministry, and there is nothing wrong with this.\u00a0 But if the congregation is of any size at all, it will eat him up and spit him out. The Pastor should be the Captain of the ship, pointing out where the ship should go and managing the team that gets it there.\u00a0 He is not simultaneously the purser, the chef, the HR manager, the steward, the mechanic, and the housekeeping service.\u00a0 There is nothing wrong with a member of the congregation talking about problems with the Pastor when there is a major issue, and the Pastor should be open to it.\u00a0 But for the basic stuff, the first stop should be the Deacons and Elders; this not only takes pressure off the Pastor, but it also means that members have access to multiple opinions and solutions.\u00a0 There is a very good article published a couple of years ago in Appalachian magazine<\/a> ( here’s a related article<\/a>) that talks about how the 24\/7 demands for personal attention are contributing to the increase in suicide rates of full time pastors. Do not expect your Pastor to also do the jobs of the Deacons and Elders.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is the 4th in a series of posts discussing my worldview theology approach to Christianity.\u00a0 This post addresses one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,54],"tags":[11,9,6,10],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-worldview-and-faith","tag-church","tag-faith","tag-religion","tag-worldview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2614,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/2614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.forensicpath.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}