What significance does a right ecclesiology have for the church today? A right ecclesiology matters for the church's leadership, membership, structure, culture, and even character. Ultimately, a right ecclesiology touches on God's glory itself. The church is not only an institution founded by Christ; it is also his body. In it is reflected God's own glory. How will theology, the Bible, and even God himself be known apart from the church? What community will understand and explain God's creation and providence to the world? How will the ravages of sin be explained, the person and work of Christ extolled, the Spirit's saving work seen, and the return of Christ proclaimed to coming generations if not by the church? The theology expounded in every chapter of this book presses outward to be known, and it presses outward through the church. Therefore, getting the doctrine of the church right becomes a benefit to people, as the truth about God and his world is more correctly known, taught, and modeled.
Centrality of Preaching in Our Churches
Pastors in churches today must recover the understanding that their primary role is to preach the Word of God. This must happen both for the sake of the flock and for the sake of reaching those outside the flock.
The purpose of preaching God's Word to God's people is to build up, or edify, the church, which is God's will for the church. Whether or not numerical growth results from biblical preaching in any given congregation at any given time, Christ's church will experience true growth and edification through teaching and instruction. To this end pastors must also lead the church toward a recovery of corrective church discipline. This is accomplished only when the leadership itself understands the Bible's teaching about the church and then gives itself to patiently teaching the congregation in these matters.
Whenever pastors recover the centrality of preaching in their ministry, beneficial effects follow. Congregations are better fed and healthier, and then they become better witnesses in their communities. Too often leaders promote church growth exclusively through evangelism, but they fail to consider that an untaught and unhealthy church is a poor witness. And a poor church witness undermines the evangelistic ministries of the congregation. The pastor who recommits himself to feeding the congregation well best prepares his congregation for evangelism and growth. Healthy organisms naturally grow.
The Importance of Believer's Baptism and Believer's Communion
God's Spirit creates believers through the preaching and hearing of the Word, yet God also intends for those believers to be collected together in congregations that are pure and protected. To this end pastors must take greater care both in scrutinizing candidates for baptism and in encouraging the congregation to scrutinize themselves before partaking of the Lord's Supper. If baptism functions as the watery moat separating church and world, and if the Lord's Supper manifests the ongoing appearance of the church, then pastors today must recover the sense of gravity each ordinance requires.
Hebrews 13:17 promises that leaders will give an account for those under their charge. Will today's leaders give an account for carelessly admitting wolves into baptism or the Lord's Supper? Will the condemnations heaped on Israel's shepherds in Ezekiel 34 be repeated on undershepherds of the church today who have left Christ's sheep to wander scattered and unprotected? The leaders of our congregations must remember that the right preaching of God's Word and the right administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper form the basic calling of their lives.
A right ecclesiology also has implications for the church's membership.1 Therefore, the reasons and requirements for membership should be widely and clearly understood.
Why Join a Church?
Most evangelical Christians today seem to treat their church as one more thing to help out their Christian life, perhaps along with this Bible study, that music, those authors, this retreat, and keeping a journal. In other words the Christian conceives of his or her spiritual life as fundamentally one's own business, managed by selecting among various helps. This approach contrasts with an older and more biblical way of thinking about the Christian life that is congregationally shaped, where the demands of the gospel are made concrete in a particular local church (see 1 John 4:20).
Being a member of a local church should be made to seem normal for Christians. Lives lived in regular love, fellowship, and accountability make the gospel clear to the world. Jesus said that Christians' love for one another would enable the world to recognize Christians as those who follow Christ (John 13:34–35). In that sense a vigorous practice of church membership helps a congregation's evangelism. It also helps Christians gain a proper assurance of their own salvation. As Christians observe, teach, encourage, and rebuke one another, the local church begins to act as a cooperative that corroborates assurance of salvation. Church membership is good for weak Christians because it bring them into a place of feeding and accountability. Church membership is good for strong Christians because it enables them to provide an example for what a true Christian life is like.2
Committed church membership is also good for the leaders of the church. How will God's work go forward if Christians do not organize together to serve him? And how will Christians receive the gifts God gives them in their leaders if there is no flock marked out for those leaders to steward? Finally, practicing church membership glorifies God. As Christians gather together to form the body of Christ, his character is reflected and expressed. Recovering this understanding of church membership should be one of the chief desires of congregations today.3
Before one quickly points to the parachurch as accomplishing the same objectives, remember that the parachurch neither has the same commitment to systematically proclaiming the whole counsel of God, nor does it have the mechanisms of baptism, the Lord's Supper, and church discipline for drawing a clear, bright line that says to the world, "Here are the people of God." The parachurch is and always intends to be a particular subset of the church centered on a shared task. As Byron Straughn put it, the parachurch is like our soccer team, but the church is like our family.4
Requirements
The idea that membership in a local church should only require a profession of faith in Christ is an idea that is both common and destructive to the life and witness of the church. Historically, Baptists have realized that any profession of faith should be tried and deemed as credible. After all, a saving profession of faith includes repentance. A Christian life will be revealed not only by participation in baptism and the Lord's Supper but also by regular attendance at the congregation's gatherings and a submission to the discipline of the congregation. This includes regularly praying for the congregation and tithing. Every congregation has the responsibility for deciding what membership standards are appropriate for its own church.5
Relation of Children to the Church
One of the areas in most need of reexamination in today's churches is the relation of the children of church members to the church. In non-Baptist Protestant congregations this relationship begins with infant baptism and is usually completed by confirmation around age 12. In Baptist churches traditionally children were recognized as having an important role. They were regarded as the objects of all natural affections, but they were also recognized as specially entrusted to Christian families for training in the Lord. Conversions could occur at early ages, of course, but it was generally thought most wise to delay baptism until maturity tested the reality of their conversion.6 Earlier Baptists understood that time is necessary for seeing a Christian profession lived out, especially in those who are not yet mature.7 Many Christians in antiquity and around the world today regularly practice a period of waiting after profession as a means of evidencing the reality of the person's profession.8 There seems to be little doubt that, at least in Southern Baptist churches, the last century has seen an increase in nominalism while the average age of baptism has been decreasing. It seems likely the two statistics are related.
Moreover, concerns with false baptisms (leading to a growing number of rebaptisms) should not be limited to the adverse effects a local church bears when pagans are welcomed into membership and called saints, as serious as those effects are.9 The effects borne throughout eternity by pastors and churches who give false assurance of salvation to unbelievers are grave and discourage haste. In some cases there is a great need for wisdom to balance between the sometimes competing interests of encouragement and healthy caution.
A right doctrine of the church should affect not only a church's leadership and membership; it should also affect its structure.
The Need for Both Clear Leadership and Congregational Responsibility
Too many in the last generation have derided authority. Authority may well be, as one book title suggested a few years ago, "the most misunderstood idea in America." "Americans do not distinguish authority, which is something good, from authoritarianism, which is something bad."10 A suspicion of all power because of the abuse of some power holders has created a whole strain of misshapen Christian piety in which the powerlessness of Christ on the cross is viewed as the sole paradigm for all who exercise authority. While humility should inhere in all Christian exercise of authority, God has also placed leaders within the body to teach, give direction and guidance, be examples, and make decisions.11 Exercising trust in almost every sphere, whether marriage, family, work, the state, or the church, is for the Christian ultimately a reflection of trust in God.
Denominational battles within the Southern Baptist Convention in the last century have spawned a virulent strain of novel and naïve Baptist history which suggests it is the essence of Baptist identity to be individualistic, cantankerous, and divisive. The rich Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers,12 originally formulated to oppose a mediatorial class of ordained Roman Catholic priests, has been transfigured into the optimistic and simplistic early twentieth-century phrase (by E. Y. Mullins) "soul competency." A biblically faithful stress on the sole mediatorship of Christ (the Reformation emphasis) has been traded (wittingly?) for a mistaken defense of human ability.
At best the idea of soul competency simply restates one implication of the fact that humans are created in the image of God—that we are made spiritual beings who are able to have a relationship with God. At worst the idea degenerates into a semireligious humanism in which proclaiming Christ's work becomes unnecessary. Following in the train of this misused doctrine, every locus of theology is reshaped—from the atonement to the inspiration of Scripture. In ecclesiology it tends to undermine ideas of authority and leadership in the church. But leadership is a gift from God and should be received by churches as a gift. Rejecting leadership deprives the church of Christ's gift, impoverishes the body, and hinders the church in its life and work. The polity of the church is like the prongs of a ring which hold the precious treasure of the gospel—comparatively unimportant, its purpose and role is to secure that which is of most importance.
Three gospel-preaching congregations with differing polities (e.g., Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregational) may look the same when everything is going well. But if problems occur, their polities come out in living color. Differences are seen to be important, sometimes even vital—even to the point of determining whether or not a faithful gospel witness continues in that church. While no polity eliminates problems from a congregation, a carefully biblical structure which recognizes both the leadership of the elders and the responsibility of the congregation best protects the flock (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet 5:2) and encourages the leaders (Heb 13:17). While even the most biblically structured congregations will make mistakes, the nearer a church's polity gets to recognizing the biblical responsibilities held by the elders and by the congregation, the better protected and prepared the congregation is for the storms that inevitably come to all churches in this fallen world.
Gender Roles and Leadership in the Churches
One factor that has led many local congregations either to adopt an elder-led model or to avoid such a model has been the increasing controversy in popular culture over gender-based distinctions. After all, the New Testament is relatively clear on reserving the office of elder for men. But a society that has dismissed gender as an appropriate boundary marker for marriage is a society that has long ago lost any sense of gender roles in the church. Historically the church took the New Testament's teaching on male eldership at face value. But that position was slowly abandoned in twentieth-century America. In 1924, the Methodist Episcopal church voted to ordain women. They were followed by the main body of northern Presbyterians in 1956, and then the Episcopalians in 1976, and finally the main Lutheran body in 1979.13 Among the new Pentecostal movements, Aimee Semple McPherson, Kathryn Kuhlman, and other women had prominent teaching ministries.
Among Baptist churches the movement toward female ordination has been slower, but the process has undoubtedly been aided by extrabiblical structures such as committees, church councils, and staff positions, which are neither mandated nor described in Scripture, and which have, therefore, been more easily filled with women—even in otherwise biblically conservative churches. Moving to a plurality of elders brings clear biblical passages to bear on these issues, which support male leadership in the congregation.14
Not only are matters of leadership, membership, and formal structure affected by a doctrine of the church, so too are matters of the church's culture.
Culture of Discipling in the Church
Along with the hard and defined skeletal structure of a church, there is also the more subtle, changeable, variable, and enveloping culture of a church. The culture of a church is constituted by the combination of peculiar expectations and practices which do not make the church a church but which do in fact typify a particular congregation. Suppose then that a congregation is marked by graciousness, a concern for truth, and a zeal for missions. These qualities are certainly appropriate and consistent with the scriptural presentation of a church, but they are not specifically required of every congregation in order to be recognized as a true church.
That said, the soundness of a church is greatly improved when the congregation cultivates a culture of discipleship and growth in which individual Christian growth is normal, not exceptional. One indicator of growth, moreover, is an increasing level of concern for the spiritual state of others. A concern for others should include non-Christians around the world (thus an emphasis on missions), in the congregation's own local area (thus an emphasis on evangelism), and especially for other members of the congregation (thus an emphasis on discipling one another). A culture of discipling, evangelism, and missions best encourages the church to be what God has made it to be—a reflection of his own character.
Churches receive God's grace, relish it, and reflect it to others. Congregations should note and repeat evidences of God's grace in one another's lives through testimonies and other public encouragements. Baptismal testimonies, thoughtful prayer requests, interviews during members meetings—these and many other ways can encourage the church in discipleship and make the atmosphere helpfully provocative for Christian growth.15
Current Challenge of Nominalism
Ranged against this radiant vision of the church is a large and growing nominalism in many evangelical churches today. Congregation after congregation is marked by membership roles filled with nonattending "members." Even among those members who do attend, too many live lives indistinct from the nonbelievers around them. This nominalism dulls and undercuts Christian evangelism; it pushes the church and individual Christians toward disillusionment, apathetic discouragement, or division; and ultimately it dishonors God.16 Surely if this situation is to be addressed, the importance of the nature and life of the local church must be recovered. Evangelicals have advanced various answers to today's decline in churches. Space here permits a brief mention of only a few.
Spirit answer: Pentecostalism. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the rise of Pentecostalism has arguably been the most significant sociological development in world Christianity. The Christian landscapes in Africa and South America have been transformed, and more established churches in Europe and North America have been affected. Many of these Christians think the answer to the church's problems lies in rediscovering the biblical teaching of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Many Pentecostals say this experience, which includes speaking in unknown tongues, signifies conversion. Many newer charismatics say the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a second experience intended for every believer after conversion. They believe that Christians invigorated by this baptism would replace the lamentable and dull witness of too many Christians and their congregations.
Size answer: Every member/small group/house church. Other groups of Christians have suggested that the answer to nominal Christianity lies in recovering the dynamic of smaller groups, in which no function exists for inactive members. This has been variously advocated through the use of small groups, the cell church structure, and the house church movement.17 Some have even advocated setting low quantitative limits on congregations, saying that anything beyond the set limit turns churches into mere "preaching points" and undermines the ability of the pastor to pastor as well as the ability of members to involve themselves meaningfully with other members in ministry.
Substitute answer: Parachurch, purpose-driven, homogenous, mission-centered. Still other Christians have given up on the traditional local and heterogeneous congregation. This despair or rejection can be observed in the growth philosophy that recommends forming whole congregations around a single vision statement. It is also seen in some "purpose-driven" models. The rejection of heterogeneity is even more pronounced in congregations that set their mission on one homogeneous group, whether defined ethnically, generationally, sociodemographically, or otherwise.18 The homogeneous unit principle lies behind this approach—the recognition that in mission settings like reaches like. Members of one caste in India, for example, have more difficulty reaching individuals from a different caste. Yet the homogeneous-unit principle has reordered the ecclesiology of many churches in the name of evangelism. Its logical conclusion is the rejection of the whole congregation in exchange for a missional parachurch subgroup, though they may continue referring to themselves as a church.19
So-long answer: Individualism. Still others who call themselves Christians have perceived the doleful state of many congregations and have concluded that the organized congregation should simply be rejected. This rejection can occur publicly, as with radio preacher Harold Camping's pronouncement that Christians should desert the churches because the church age has ended.20 Or it can occur more quietly, as when individuals simply desist in church participation. Yet in both cases self-defined Christians emphasize something like Jesus' teaching on the heart or doctrines like justification by faith alone in order to justify their rejection of the congregation's role in the Christian life. In short, nominalism and hypocrisy in churches are used to justify noninvolvement.
Sales answer: excitement, give them what they want, pragmatism, marketing, consumerism. Others place the church's hope for recovery in recreating excitement. Many authors and pastors appeal to a convert's experience of newness, a historical church's experience in a time of revival, or even the young church in the book of Acts in order to argue the best way forward is to replicate such excitement. While specific diagnoses of problems vary, most solutions tend toward a "give them what they want" pragmatism. Evangelism begins to resemble marketing, and church membership begins to resemble consumerism.21
Sacramentalist answer: high-church alternative services, the emerging church, "the Great Tradition." Still others believe the problem in the churches stem from a wrong (or at least unnecessary) focus on the subjective appropriation of the Christian faith by individuals. In response they advocate refocusing on the objective ordinances, or sacraments, of the church, not on individual responses of piety. Such sacramentalist responses can be found in great variety. Some multiservice congregations are offering alternative high-church services. Some in the "emerging church" movement are reengaging with pre-Reformation (and in some cases pre-Christian) practices of spirituality without fully comprehending the pre-Reformation understanding of the gospel often latent in such practices.
Among the Reformed, some are calling for an objectivism in the Christian life and profession which seems to deny any role for personal piety and subjective response to the gospel. Instead they are promoting a "federal vision" built specifically in opposition to what they regard as problematic evangelical pietism.22 More generally many Protestant evangelicals are increasingly rejecting whatever is specifically evangelical or Protestant and replacing such distinctives with "the Great Tradition."23
Biblical answer: The church created by God's Spirit through his Word in the shape of his church. To these and many other putative solutions to current problems in the churches, recourse must be relentlessly taken to Scripture. A clear understanding of the gospel is foundational for any genuine renewal in evangelical churches. Solutions treated as normative but which are not found in Scripture must be rejected as latter-day tradition that lacks the authority of the apostles. Ecclesiology cannot be reduced either to evangelism or to self-enhancement. In the Christian church the reigning consumer must become the repenting sinner, and the Christ-ordained sacraments are better not received than being received without personal faith (see 1 Cor 11:30). God creates his church by his Spirit through his Word. All other answers to the lack of discipleship in too many of today's churches compound the problems they intend to address.
The culture of the church, like the life of an individual, simply reflects the church's character. If the doctrine of the church enunciated in this chapter is to be applied, the practice of corrective church discipline must be recovered.
How to Practice Church Discipline Today
The recovery of church discipline requires viewing it as a natural part of church membership. It should be taught in new members classes. It should be addressed in sermons, testimonies, and newsletters. And books on the topic can be recommended. Too many people treat this topic apologetically and act as if admitting to the practice of discipline is regrettable. While the sins and their tragic consequences requiring discipline are of course regrettable, the attempt to correctively discipline unrepentant sin is not. When done in humility, prayer, and love, it edifies the body and glorifies God.24
One caution is in order here. Church discipline will seem odd and even offensive if introduced into a congregation not marked by a culture of mutual care, a desire to be involved in one another's lives, and a passion for discipling in the faith. A pastor may desire to be obedient to Scripture, but congregations will feel that the deep involvement in their lives required by the practice of discipline is unnatural and wrong if things like church covenants and membership expectations have not been clearly taught. The first step toward practicing church discipline in a congregation is simply teaching the people to pray and care for one another. Learning to love and disciple one another—truly practicing the priesthood of all believers—is a prerequisite to introducing corrective discipline. Formative discipline must precede corrective discipline.
Why Practice Church Discipline Today?
Church discipline provides one part of the necessary response to the nominalism prevalent in churches today. Pastors must consider that following biblical instructions in every area of church life—including their practices of membership admission and discipline—may be the key to health lacking in their church. If pastors desire sinners to repent, they must realize that discipline is a biblical way to pursue that. If church leaders want their congregations to be characterized by thankfulness of heart and holiness of life, they should reexamine their practice of church discipline. The health of the whole church would be radically improved in many congregations by excommunicating those members who are committed to sins like nonattendance, divisiveness, adultery, or fornication more than they are committed to God's glory. The action of excluding the unrepentant enables the church to give a clear witness of the gospel to the world. And it ultimately brings glory to God, as his people more and more display his character of holy love.
The Church as Display Evangelism
John L. Dagg concluded his introduction to his Treatise on Church Order with this appropriate admonition:
Church order and the ceremonials of religion, are less important than a new heart; and in the view of some, any laborious investigation of questions respecting them may appear to be needless and unprofitable. But we know, from the Holy Scriptures, that Christ gave commands on these subjects, and we cannot refuse to obey. Love prompts our obedience; and love prompts also the search which may be necessary to ascertain his will. Let us, therefore, prosecute the investigations which are before us, with a fervent prayer, that the Holy Spirit, who guides into all truth, may assist us to learn the will of him whom we supremely love and adore.25
Many Protestants have begun to think that because the church is not essential to the gospel, it is not important to the gospel. This is an unbiblical, false, and dangerous conclusion. Our churches are the proof of the gospel. In the gatherings of the church, the Christian Scriptures are read. In the ordinances of the church, the work of Christ is depicted. In the life of the church, the character of God himself should be evident. A church seriously compromised in character would seem to make the gospel itself irrelevant.
The doctrine of the church is important because it is tied to the good news itself. The church is to be the appearance of the gospel. It is what the gospel looks like when played out in people's lives. Take away the church and you take away the visible manifestation of the gospel in the world. Christians in churches, then, are called to practice "display evangelism," and the world will witness the reign of God begun in a community of people made in his image and reborn by his Spirit. Christians, not just as individuals but as God's people bound together in churches, are the clearest picture the world sees of who God is and what his will is for them. Jesus said, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). And Paul stated, "His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph 3:10–11).
1 If this were widely understood among the members, congregations would be able to consider carefully the delicate question of the relation of children of church members to the church.
2 For more on why a believer should join a church, see Jim Samra, The Gift of Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010).
3 For more on this, see Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004); also Mark Dever, A Display of God's Glory (Washington, DC: 9Marks, 2001); Mark Dever, "Regaining Meaningful Membership," in Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches, ed. Thomas White, Jason Duesing, and Malcolm Yarnell (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2008), 45–61.
4 See Byron Straughn, "For the Parachurch: Know the Difference Between Families and Soccer Teams," http://www.9marks.org/ejournal/parachurch-know-difference-between-families-soccer-teams, accessed 28 July 2011.
5 A helpful guide for this is Thabiti Anyabwile, What Is a Healthy Church Member? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008). Anyabwile explained that a healthy church member is an expositional listener, a biblical theologian, gospel saturated, genuinely converted, a biblical evangelist, a committed member, seeks discipline, a growing disciple, a humble follower, and a prayer warrior.
6 Much historical work remains to be done in this area, but the following facts are suggestive. Consider the noted Baptist ministers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. John Gill was brought up in a Baptist home and was baptized at age 19 in 1716 (just three weeks shy of his twentieth birthday). Samuel Medley was brought up in a Baptist home and was baptized at age 22 in December 1760. Richard Furman was brought up in a non-Christian home and was baptized at age 17 in 1772. John Dagg was baptized in Middleburg, Virginia, at age 18 in the spring of 1812. J. Newton Brown was baptized in Hudson, New York, at age 14 in 1817. J. M. Pendleton was baptized near Pembroke, Kentucky, at age 18 in 1829. P. H. Mell was brought up in a strong Christian home and was baptized at age 18 in 1832 (according to his biography by his son). J. R. Graves was brought up in a strong Christian home and was baptized at age 15 in 1835 (according to O. L. Hailey's biography). Sylvanus Dryden Phelps (author of the hymn "Something for Thee") was brought up in a Christian home and was baptized at age 22 in 1838 (according to Cathcart's Baptist Encyclopedia). John A. Broadus was brought up in a strong Christian home and was baptized at age 16 in 1843 (according to A. T. Robertson's biography). Charles Fenton James was baptized in 1864 at age 20 in the trenches near Petersburg, Virginia, while he was a Confederate soldier (see George B. Taylor, Virginia Baptist Ministers, 38). C. H. Spurgeon baptized his two sons when they were 18 (see Dallimore, Spurgeon, 181). John R. Sampey was brought up in a Christian home and was baptized at age 13 in 1877 (according to his Memoirs, 7). He had already worked on his father's farm. E. Y. Mullins was brought up in the home of a Baptist minister in Texas and was baptized at age 20 in 1880. The above pastors all had jobs by the time they were baptized. H. Wheeler Robinson was brought up by a Christian mother in Northampton, England, and was baptized at age 16 in 1888. This delay is still typical among most Baptists in Africa, Europe, and elsewhere overseas. E.g., consider the practice in France: "Positioned in the middle of the service, it [baptism] serves as the centerpiece of worship. Baptism in France tends to come at a later age—sixteen is the youngest—and candidates always testify in the service before being baptized. While these traditions and practices seem a bit strange, the result is a vibrant and dynamic faith that puts Baptists on the cutting edge of the evangelical movement in France and Europe" (C. Frank Thomas in Why I Am a Baptist, ed. Cecil P. Staton Jr. [Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 1999], 170).
7 See Dennis Gunderson, Your Child's Profession of Faith (Amityville, NY: Calvary, 1994); and Jim Eliff, Childhood Conversions (Parkville: Christian Communicators Worldwide, 1997).
8 See Hippolytus, On the Apostolic Tradition, trans. Alistair Stewart-Sykes (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2001), 103.
9 See P. B. Jones, et al., "A Study of Adults Baptized in Southern Baptist Churches, 1993," Research Report, January 1995 (Atlanta: Home Mission Board).
10 Eugene Kennedy and Sara Charles, Authority: The Most Misunderstood Idea in America (New York, Free Press, 1997), 1.
11 C. J. Mahaney, Humility: True Greatness (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2005) is an excellent resource to consider the nature and cultivation of the Christlike humility that should mark the church and its ministers.
12 For an excellent treatment of this doctrine, see Timothy George, "The Priesthood of All Believers and the Quest for Theological Integrity," CTR 3, no. 2 (1989): 283–94.
13 See Mark Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 513.
14 See Grudem and Rainey, Pastoral Leadership. It should be noted that genuinely biblical leadership is consensual, not coercive, and is concerned with guiding and serving, not "lording it over" others in pride. Should more secularly conceived questions of power be raised, it must be remembered that in most congregations women comprise the majority of members, so women could organize as women (along with men who agreed with them) at any time and change their church's practice if they became convinced that the positions laid out in this chapter, and traditionally practiced by Christians, were in error.
15 A good course of study for local church leaders to understand and move toward this more organic view of the church would be the following four books, and in this order: Joseph Bayly, The Gospel Blimp (Chicago: David C. Cook, 2002); Robert Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1963); Colin Marshal and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine (Youngston, OH: Matthias Media, 2009); and Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway 2005).
16 Surveying the state of the churches in the mid-nineteenth century, John L. Dagg wrote: "Much that has existed, and that now exists, among the professed followers of Christ, cannot be contemplated by one who sincerely loves him, without deep distress" (John L. Dagg, A Treatise on Church Order [Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1858], 11). A century and a half later, John Piper reflected on the disturbing state of many churches today: "The injustice and persecution and suffering and hellish realities in the world today are so many and so large and so close that I can't help but think that, deep inside, people are longing for something weighty and massive and rooted and stable and eternal. So it seems to me that the trifling with silly little sketches and breezy welcome-to-the-den styles on Sunday morning are just out of touch with what matters in life. . . . I doubt that a religious ethos with such a feel of entertainment can really survive as Christian for too many more decades" (Counted Righteous in Christ [Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002], 22–23).
17 Mark Dever, "The Priesthood of All Believers: Reconsidering Every Member Ministry," in The Compromised Church, ed. John H. Armstrong (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998), 85–116.
18 For a critique of one popular stream of homogeneity in churches, see Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) (Chicago: Moody, 2008).
19 For a good ecclesiological explanation of the diverse nature of the local church—its biblical roots, theological significance, and practical outworkings—see Bruce Milne, Dynamic Diversity: Bridging Class, Age, Race and Gender in the Church (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006).
20 However, it must be noted with amazement that this elderly radio preacher has announced that the church age has been succeeded by the "radio age." See J. Ligon Duncan and Mark Talbot, Should We Leave Our Churches? A Biblical Response to Harold Camping (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2004).
21 For a fascinating account of the influence of business practices in churches, see John Hardin, "Retailing Religion: Business Promotionalism in American Christian Churches in the Twentieth Century" (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 2011).
22 See Guy Prentiss Waters, The Federal Vision and Covenant Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006).
23 Sadly too many of these advocates, though they understand themselves to be Protestants, are taking the Roman Catholic position in the Reformation-era debates about the apostolicity of certain practices and doctrines. Concern for the teachings of the church fathers is nothing new among evangelicals. It was prominent in the work of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Jewel, and other Reformers across Europe. But today's disputants lack the Reformers' experience of having lived in a Roman Catholic church that was unchallenged by Scripture and loaded down with centuries' worth of doctrinal accretions, accretions which had not been sifted by apostolic teaching.
24 For good practical instructions on carrying out church discipline, see Jay Adams, Handbook of Church Discipline (Grand Rapids: Ministry Resources Library, 1986); and Mark Dever, in Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life (Washington, DC: Center for Church Reform, 2001).
25 Dagg, Treatist on Church Order, 12.