PsychoDoc - fantastic questions on my post, The Plural Church! Thank you for pressing on these things. I should begin by reminding readers that I'm on the "dreaming" side of this, so my thoughts are largely theoretical at present, though I think based upon Biblical precedent and contemporary study / observation.
First, I think the vast majority of new churches begin as small groups of people gathered around a vision of and sense of calling toward what God is doing in a particular place at a particular time. Think, for instance, of the Philippian church that began Lydia, a jailor and his family. With the exception of the mass conversion in Acts 2, this seems to be the pattern of new church development in the NT. This also corresponds to current NCD practices in which most new plants begin with a small but highly committed core team.
These small groups grow into larger churches when they are passionate about forming communities that demonstrate the Kingdom on earth, in our present lives, as in heaven. Such communities, if they are to be faithful to Jesus’ calling, are to live in obedience to Jesus’ teaching and imitation of His life, which means they are to be missionary by nature. In John 20:21 Jesus said to His followers: As the father sent me, so I am sending you. To be so sent and to have this Kingdom passion inevitably means a being deeply committed to sharing the Gospel with anyone and everyone we meet who is not yet a follower of Jesus. This sharing is always an invitation to faith, which necessarily means becoming a part of a Kingdom community, a partner with God as one of “the sent ones,” and a proclaimer of the Gospel of Jesus. Faithfulness to the teaching and example of Jesus means the church is always poised for growth since it is always poised to share its faith and invite participation from those not yet “in the family.” I wonder if the strangeness of the idea of rapidly replicating churches in our culture is due to our loss of this primary missionary posture.
So what about leaders? What are the requisite credentials for leadership? Where is the accountability to doctrinal integrity? These are areas of concern that we find both in the New Testament and in modern Christian institutions. However, I would suggest that our current approaches to authenticating church leaders are a far stretch from what we see in the Bible. I can’t think of a Biblical equivalent to our practice of requiring four years of undergraduate study and at least three years of graduate/seminary work before a person can fulfill their calling to ministry. Jesus had a tendency of empowering unlikely ministers that would drive most boards of ordained ministry nowadays insane. Jesus commissioned the Samaritan woman of ill-repute, the crazy Gerasene demoniac, and a rag-tag band of Torah school drop-outs to be His witnesses. Early in His ministry Jesus sent his disciples out to do everything He did: proclaim the kingdom, heal the sick and drive out demons. What were the credentials that made these people adequate leaders in the Kingdom? I would suggest that the fundamental prerequisites are a calling from the Lord, the empowerment of His Spirit, and a posture of obedience. Everyone Jesus chose and empowered fit Paul’s description from 2 Corinthians 4:7 – they were treasure bearing jars of clay whose very ordinariness put on display the all-surpassing power of God. I wonder if our contemporary ordination practices not only hinder the birthrate of new churches but limit what the Spirit of God desires to do through ordinary church folk.
Now, the scriptures talk a lot about the gifts of the Spirit, and whereas ALL followers of Jesus are gifted for ministry, we are not all gifted for the same ministries. I believe the first line of discernment as to who a community’s leaders will be is the community itself. Note the way leaders were chosen in the book of Acts: people of demonstrable faith and wisdom were called forth from the various communities to be leaders. Wherever Paul established a church he appointed elders from among them to lead. There is a faith-commitment in this practice: wherever God calls forth a church, God provides the necessary leadership within that church. Such a practice requires the community’s discernment of gifts within its members and the empowerment of people to live into those gifts.
Since the CityWell churches will be in the United Methodist connection we have the great fortune of taking advantage of one of our equipping and deploying structures, the Local Pastor Licensing School. This school is an annual two week gathering of lay ministers who have felt called to pastoral leadership and had that call confirmed by both their local congregation and District leadership. This course will allow us to credential leaders who our communities have set apart for pastoral ministry without having to first send them to seminary. The UMC connection also entails extensive ongoing education opportunities for such pastors and accountability to doctrinal integrity that will be practiced rigorously within the network of CityWell churches and leaders.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am anything but anti-intellectual. In fact I find it very significant that Jesus calls us to love the Lord our God with our minds. Theology is HUGELY important. I believe every follower of Jesus (particularly leaders) must be continually committed to the disciplines of theology and study of scripture. However, I think we tend to operate with a mythical and destructive idea that good theology and pastoral effectiveness only come through the academy. Some of the most effective ministers I have ever known never went to seminary, and the most effective seminary trained ministers I know were effective before they went to school. Seminary can be helpful or hurtful, and, in either case, is not the place of call and gifting. At its best, a seminary is a place where gifts are honed and calls are followed. We need to remember that in Acts 4 the leaders of the Sanhedrin noted of Peter and John that “they were unschooled, ordinary men…” but that “they had been with Jesus.”
I pray that CityWell churches will raise up and empower such ordinary leaders marked by having been with Jesus, by the empowerment of His Spirit, by the authentication of the church body (local and connectional), by a love for the scripture and a hunger to learn, and by a passion to lead people in a growing life of discipleship to Jesus. Whether or not they have seminary training, is really not the central question in my mind.
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