Breaking Tradition By Trusting the Holy Spirit
(Continuing reflections on Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision by Paul R. Gupta and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter.)
As I have been thinking about empowering God’s people for ministry I have become more convinced that the clergy\laity divide has been a great detriment to the growth and development of the church.
Paul “Bobby” Gupta writes of his experience of church planters in India which illustrates what is so common in the church here in Africa as well.
“Often missionaries successfully evangelize people in an unreached group, but fail to train and empower indigenous leadership or to contextualize the church. Fearing the immaturity of new believers or the dangers of syncretism, they retain leadership and control of the process and inhibit the birth of an indigenous movement.”[i]
Why is it, that the missionary, or in a local church context, the pastor fails to train and empower God’s people? Why is the pastor reluctant to allow church members to use their gifts and exercise leadership? There may be a number of reasons but may I suggest that a fundamental and underlying reason is that we don’t trust the Holy Spirit?
Do we trust Jesus through His Spirit to guide the church and its members? Or do we only think He gifts and empowers the “clergy”? Do we allow Him to be the head of the Church or do we usurp that role by our insistence on controlling access to ministry by reserving it for the clergy alone? How does our practice answer those questions? ”What? Trust the Holy Spirit? We can’t do that…!” (Of course we would never verbalize that!)
Perhaps we should examine the relationship of the Holy Spirit and leadership selection in the early church which is highlighted by some fascinating and instructive examples.
In Acts 6 a crisis over the feeding of the Hellenistic widows arose, the church gathered together to deal with the issue and the body was told to select leaders. The qualifications for leadership were that they were to be men of good reputation, full of the Spirit (emphasis mine) and of wisdom. When we think of the chronology it seems by our standards today they would have been relatively new believers. And yet, the apostles had no problem having them assume positions of leadership. Why? Isn’t it reasonable that they trusted the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the lives and leadership of these men?
Paul’s strategy seems to follow this pattern as we see him appointing men to be elders in a short time after their conversion. Let’s put this example in context. In Acts 13:52 (NASB) we read, “And the disciples were continually filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” We need to emphasize that these were new believers who had come to know the Lord under Paul’s ministry in Pisidian Antioch (vs. 14).
And yet on the return leg of his first missionary journey to visit the churches he had planted, Luke records in Acts 14:23 that he appointed elders in every city. Who were in this pool of potential leaders Paul could draw from? He only had these new Holy Spirit-filled believers. How could Paul do that? He had to trust the leading of the Holy Spirit in his choice and the work of the Holy Spirit in those elders who had no training at all and very little discipleship. I find it incredible, that Paul did that. Wouldn’t we say that a church planter was being very irresponsible if he did the same today?
Paul’s trust in the Holy Spirit in relation to church leadership is underscored in Acts 20:28 (NIV) where he addresses the Ephesian elders and says, “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.” Clearly it is the Holy Spirit who was at work in a plurality of church leaders to provide pastoral care for the Ephesian church. It was not left to a clerical elite.
It is naïve to think that the way to avoid problems in the church is to keep the control of ministry and leadership in the hands of the clergy. Formalized training and installation into a pastoral position does not guarantee spiritual maturity. There are enough cases of serious moral and spiritual failure by those in that class to disabuse ourselves of that notion!
Did Paul fear immaturity in the leaders or syncretism or other such dangers in the early church? I don’t believe so. In Acts 20:29-30 he acknowledges that there will be external and internal attacks upon the Ephesian church. And yet Paul was comfortable and confident to leave the leadership and future ministry of the flock in their Spirit-guided hands. And so he could “commit [them] to God and to the word of his grace, which [could] build them up…”[ii]
To allow our fears be the reason we don’t empower our church members for leadership and ministry is not consistent with the Pauline pattern which was to trust the Holy Spirit to oversee and guide the church.
If we are going to break the clergy\laity tradition we must learn to trust Jesus as the Head of the Church to lead all of his spirit-filled members to use their gifts to build the kingdom. Anything less is not biblical.
“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.“[iii]
[i] Paul R. Gupta and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter, Breaking Tradition to Accomplish Vision (Winona Lake, Indiana: BMH Books, 2006), p. 69.
[ii] Acts 20:32.
[iii] Ephesians 4:16.
