Church Government: The Negative Space in God’s Word

12 04 2011

Tuesday Re-mix -

In the world of visual art, the use of “negative space” is important.  In any sculpture or painting, the artwork sometimes says as much by areas is doesn’t cover as it does by actually covering.

You and I would call it the “blank space” on the canvass, i.e., the area where the artist chose not to paint.  That space becomes an integral part of the art itself.  In fact, some might claim that the negative space the artist creates in a particular work is what makes the work perfect.

I have come to believe that part of the perfection of scripture, i.e., the Word of God, is the “negative space” it creates within its pages…parts of the story intentionally not told or clarified, left out for reasons only God knows.

For example, wouldn’t you like more details from Jonah about exactly what happened inside that fish for three days?  If you were telling that story, wouldn’t you include that?  Or what about Paul’s fight with Barnabas, or his confrontation of Peter?  Don’t you think the details of those conflicts would be worth knowing?  Or what about a single instance of Matthew 18:15 (Jesus’ model for how to conduct church discipline) actually modeled for us somewhere?  Wouldn’t that be helpful?

For reasons only God understands, these and countless other “details” were omitted from the telling of His story.  But rest assured, He does have his reasons.  This “negative space” in scripture is a part of its perfection, it is critical in creating exactly the Word which God has preserved so perfectly throughout the centuries.  In any of these instances, a little more detail might seem harmless enough at first blush, but would ultimately take away from the Word God intended.

A perfect example is the New Testament’s lack of any definitive form of church government.  Jesus started a revolution in the form of the church, one which would change the world forever (indeed, one which would last forever).  But when the opportunity came, perhaps in Paul’s writings or from pastor James, scripture is remarkably vague on any particular governmental infrastructure.  It talks about elders and shepherds and deacons, it talks about Spiritual gifts such as evangelist, teacher, or preacher, but it never comes right out and says exactly how a church government should look.  Doesn’t that seem odd to you?  If you were going to start a revolution, wouldn’t you put some time and thought into how to structure your cells?  But again, for reasons only God knows, the minimal directions scripture gives us in this area are perfect.  They give plenty of room for a people’s culture to “breathe” into their church’s process for discerning the mind of God.

I suppose this is why I do not get too caught up in the debates over church governing structures.  Elder systems, deacon bodies, committee structures, pastor-led governments, presbyteries, Papal systems, synods…there seems to be plenty of room in scripture for a variety of different “structures” for a people to (together) discern the will of God.  And that’s what church governance is for…to discern the will of God, together.

So if there is a spiritual problem in your local church and you are having a hard time rightly discerning the will of God as a church body, don’t start addressing that spiritual problem with a man-made solution, like institutional governing structure.  Believe me, that is not likely to be the solution.  Rather, spiritual problems need spiritual solutions.  I would check your church’s corporate prayer life, or your church’s appreciation for God’s Word, or your people’s willingness to seek and to find Christ in one another.  Don’t pull out your constitution and by-laws for solutions.  Pull out your Bible.  You’ll find the answers there…both in the words and in the negative space.

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Acts 15, Church Law, Church Unity, conflict, Discerning God's Will Together, leadership, strategic planning

Conflict Resolution 101: Starting with What We Know

29 03 2011

Tuesday Re-mix –

On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews. For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. Galatians 2:7-8

Most of us approach a jigsaw puzzle (or any other problem) the same way, whether we know it or not.  We start with what we absolutely know to be true.  When chaos and confusion abound and there is so much we do NOT know, we all have an intuitive notion to go back to what we know and then slowly work forward from there.  In the case of the traditional jigsaw puzzle, it is the corner pieces.  They are what we know, they define the parameters of the puzzle.  Whatever else comes along, we know that the answer lies within the four corners of the puzzle.

Finding solutions to conflict within the church, even interpersonal conflict, works the same way.  We always start with what we know: what we know about God, what we know about God’s Word, and what we know about what God is doing.

I don’t think the conflict in the early church was any small thing.  I think the prejudices and potential doctrinal conflict between Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles and Peter’s ministry to the Jews was every bit as dangerous and troubling as our conflicts today.  It had a cultural (racial) element, a doctrinal element (e.g., circumcision) and even a leadership style element (Peter was not the only leader with whom Paul’s temperament clashed).  Reading Acts 15 and Galatians 2 and other similar accounts, you see that the potential for devastating conflict was there.

And so, they went back to what they knew.  Clearly, Peter’s ministry to the Jews was filled with the Spirit.  You just don’t find Spirit-filled power and authority any clearer than in the accounts in Acts 3 and 4.  But the power and authority of Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles (especially in Antioch) was equally clear.  The “freedom in Christ” which he preached, while flying in the face of his Hebrew brothers, brought God-sized results in terms of transformed lives.  And so, both Peter’s ministry and Paul’s ministry were obviously Spirit-led…they were “corner pieces”, so to speak, in this doctrinal and cultural puzzle in the early church.

Once we establish what we KNOW God is doing, we can then begin to work toward understanding what is next in light of what we know. In Paul’s case, it was clear that God was leading both Peter and Paul.  The Jerusalem Counsel, then, needed only to figure out how to move forward together in light of that truth.

That’s what we must figure out in the church today.  Take, for example, the two different ministers on a staff who have radically different approaches to ministry–different personalities, different ministry visions, different ministry styles, etc.  Once we agree that God called them both to this church, knowing full well their personalities and propensities, we need only figure out the rest of the puzzle of how they can move forward together.  Unless we are questioning God’s call on one of them or the other, it really isn’t a question of which one should be leaving and which one should be staying.  Those are not options within the parameters of our corner pieces.  So, God must be up to something altogether different from that.  And so on…

I believe it is NOT God’s desire that His will be so difficult for us to discern.  I believe He is spelling it out for us in no uncertain terms through His Word, through His people, through our prayer and through circumstances.  We need only to start with what we know…what is clear and absolute.  Then move forward from there.  What are the “corner pieces” in your conflict?  What do they tell you about what God is doing?

© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.  Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com

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Categories : Acts 15, Church Unity, conflict, Discerning God's Will Together, leadership, Peacemakers, Reconciliation

Making Our Words Count

1 09 2009

Tuesday Re-mix – This is a popular post from last year, updated and resubmitted for your consideration and comments.

“After much discussion…” Those are the words we use when we’re writing minutes of a business meeting and there was a lot of discussion but not much said.  When we write, “after much discussion…” it means there were plenty of folks who had something to say on the subject, but it wasn’t important enough to quote any of it here in these minutes.  All that matters for posterity’s sake is…and then we put the results of the vote.  From time to time, a comment is made that is important enough to put in the minutes, and we do so.  But otherwise, we just write, “after much discussion…”.

The kinds of comments which end up being represented by “after much discussion…” are many.  Some of them are way off the subject, irrelevant remarks which do not further the decision-making process at all.  Some of them are personal in nature…too personal to memorialize forever in the meeting minutes.  Some of them are nothing more than emotional venting…perhaps important for a particular person’s process but not at all helpful for the entire group.  But all of them have one thing in common: From a long-term perspective of knowing how we came to this decision, they were not important.

In my experience dealing with conflicted congregations, We are not doing a very good job of teaching our churches a decision-making process which honors the Lord.  Specifically, when it comes to discerning together what the Head of the church (Jesus) is calling us to do, we do not get very high scores in terms of the processes we use.  Most often, the vast majority of the words we use in staff meetings, committee meetings and business meetings fall into the “after much discussion…” category.

I’m proposing a new mandate to the church in America: fix our decision-making process so that the words we use actually count for something eternal.

Want to know something funny?  When documenting church business meetings, we’ve been using the term “after much discussion…” for 2000 years, since the very beginning of the New Testament church.  Acts 15 is about as close to “meeting minutes” from the New Testament church as you will ever find.  For our purposes here, the issue is irrelevant (o.k., for the pharisees among you, the issue was circumcision…but I’m not using that as a tag in this post).  It is the process demonstrated in the Jerusalem Council which is so enlightening.

It all started with a missions report from Paul and Barnabas to the whole church.  A troublesome issue was raised in that report and the church leaders had a special called meeting to deal with it.  In the report (the minutes) from that meeting, guess what the first three words are (Acts 15:7)?  You got it: “After much discussion…”.  We don’t know what all was included in that discussion, but we know it wasn’t deemed worthy of scripture.  But what happened next WAS…

Peter stood and reminded the leaders how God had spoken to him through his personal prayer time (see Acts 10).  Paul & Barnabas stood and gave testimony about how God had worked through the circumstances of their ministry.  Pastor James (the brother of Jesus) stood and shared scripture which seemed to bear upon the subject.  All of these remarks made it into the minutes for posterity’s sake.  And all of them had one thing in common: they all dealt with what God was doing or saying, as opposed to what people were doing or saying.  They all touched directly on the question of what God was about.

I think that is what is often missing in our decision-making process in the church.  We talk a lot about what we want and what we prefer and what young families want and what lost people need and what the teenagers are doing, etc.  But if we want to know what God desires, we should be focused on what He is doing and saying.  That should be what we’re talking about.

So, what about it?  Are you in on the new mandate?  Will you commit to making your words at your next church meeting worthy of putting in the minutes, or will your words fall under the dreaded “After much discussion, blah, blah, blah…”?

© Blake Coffee

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.

Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: © Blake Coffee. Website: churchwhisperer.com


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Categories : Acts 15, Church Unity, Discerning God's Will Together


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