Practical Organizational Equality

Question: How is practical organizational equality (not spiritual equality) achieved in the physical Body of Christ when healthy congregations will always contain distinct groups of "teachers" and "learners" which in other terms are "leaders" and "followers", or more commonly, "clergy" and "laity"?

Answer:

You ask an excellent question.

To fully understand the answer, we will need to disassociate our thinking from the present form of government seen throughout most every Christian church/denomination, including Catholicism and Protestantism. This is not an easy thing to do, nor was it for us in the beginning of our transition. We must think beyond what we see and may have experienced.

Rather than structured and occupied positions within the local body, we must think in terms of spiritual gifting. When we think in terms of positions, we are naturally forced to rank them in order of status or importance, which leads to both a hierarchy structure and a class distinction.

However, when we think in terms of spiritual gifting, we soon come to realize that not only is there spiritual equality among members, there is organizational equality as no one gifting is elevated above the other (i.e., apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher). All are necessary for a body to properly function. No gift has positional merit in-and-of itself.

For instance, organizationally, one may be teaching in one assembly meeting, but will inevitably be a student/learner in another. In some instances, one may be a leader in some capacity or for some effort, but in other instances he will be a follower of another’s leading. He does not switch from one “class or group” to another “class or group” within the body depending on his present functional responsibility, but rather his gifting is simply operating in one instance, while is it not operating in the other. Further, if we think of gifts as being verbs (functions and actions) rather than nouns (people, places & things), we see why organization structure is unnecessary.

Why are the gifts given?

1.) For the perfecting of the saints,

2.) For the work of the ministry (the saints individual ministries), and

3.) For the edifying of the body of Christ.

With this in mind, if we think in terms of classes or groups, we must then conclude that there is a distance set of people within the body of Christ (i.e., made up exclusively of all apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers – the modern day clergy?) that:

1.) are absolutely perfect with no need of personal growth (a contradiction of Philippians 3:12),

2.) whose ministry is complete (both personal and contributional), and

3.) who have no need of further edification from other individuals’ gifting within the body.

It is difficult to imagine anyone who would fit in this class or group of people.

However when we see these as ministering gifts within the body, we realize that while there are times when these gifts are operating through an individual, and there are other times when this same individual will have need to be ministered to through someone else’s gift. This makes him/her no different on a practical or organizational level then anyone else in the body. In this environment, the only distinction between saints becomes those who have reached maturity and those who are yet in their infancy, with those who are mature using their ministering gifts and experiences to bring those less mature into a fuller state of maturity.

We have been operating in this manner for nearly 4 years. If you were to spend time with us, it would be difficult for you to even determine who the leaders are as everyone becomes a leader in some capacity. You would find that there are those whose life experience, wisdom and scriptural understanding may be at a greater level than others, however, they would very much oppose and resist being categorized and placed into a separate group or class within the local assembly.