Hierarchy in the Church

 I first want to make it clear that I think this overarching evolution of the church is something that has taken place along side the miracles and revivals God was doing on earth not because of them. Revivals caused the model of the church to change for the better. And at each step there would have been churches from every model of church that moved when God moved

I think however, that when multiple church models were around during a move of God some of those church models had lower participation in them than others. And of course I will have gaps in my narrative but I think I have enough of it to tell the story. 

 So we begin with just after Jesus rose to heaven. There was a period of time we read about in acts where the church had almost no hierarchy in it. Small cells of people (like the group of disciples were) that kept in touch with each other and coordinated with the cells near to them.

The structure of the church just after Christ rose resembled a body. Made up of families who were linked together via community and worked with the surrounding groups to give what was needed in order to stay in good health. This was the body of Christ.

From there the church slowly stars to become more and more hierarchical in thought. I haven’t studied this part of church history so I am not sure if there were many steps in between or if it went straight from the non-hierarchical organic model to the structured pyramid model. I believe there is a book that goes over this period of time called Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola Author and George Barna.

The church became completely hierarchical in nature when Constantine declared Christianity a state religion. The Roman Catholic church. The hierarchical thinkers finally had church back to the way they liked it, like it was before that rabble rouser Jesus mucked things up. 

 Resembling a pyramid in structure the church became a dead being. The pyramid of course had the pope at the top, then the cardinals, arch bishops, bishops, priests, deacons, active church member, pew warmer. This was a very comfortable period of time for hierarchical thinkers.

However although the structure of the church was effectively dead, that doesn’t mean individuals within it were dead. Many were alive in Christ like neurons firing in a body long after the heart stops. Luckily the defibrillator of the Holy Spirit revived it and this defibrillation took place around the time of Martin Luther.

The structure of the church changed after Luther. Again I have a period of time I have not studied but I am fairly certain that post Luther the church largely settled into denominational-ism. Denominational churches were different from the Roman Catholic church because they did not have a pope (for example). 

 Following this were a huge number of revivals that happened and they pushed the church towards the church model that broke away from denominational-ism. Non-denominational churches. The structure remained almost the same but it was less rigid in its expression.

Non-denominational churches thought they had no hierarchy. They were an arrow pointing forward instead of a pyramid that was going up (top down denominations) or a pyramid that was going down (bottom up denominations). *I cringe at the memory of their propaganda.

But when you take a closer look at the arrow it ends up looking a lot more like just the same old pyramid just lying on its side. The one in front is Jesus (sometimes he was off the page), and the one just behind him was the apostolic team leader who was luckily almost Jesus.

Then you could follow the pyramid back down, inner circle apostolic team member, regular apostolic team member, (most wealthy church tither in some churches, not all, some skipped that rung), church leader who did mission trips, regular church leader, elder, deacon, home cell leader, home cell member who goes on duty, regular home cell member, pew warmer.

At least it was now explicit that you had to be (or at the very least appear to be) more like Christ than others in order to climb the hierarchical ladder. Yes everybody did it both before and after this non-denominational-ist revolution, but now it had an updated set of clothing. 

 And at each point where the church model gets less and less hierarchical more and more diverse people are meeting together and being freer to preach their own messages. And each time freedom and autonomy increases the ability for the Holy Spirit to guide the church gets stronger.

Next we saw a step further away from hierarchy, instead of your church belonging to an apostolic team it could be part of a multi-site church grouping. This was the least hierarchical of church models since the Roman Catholic church as it was more flexible by allowing small groups of churches to agree on their expression rather than an entire apostolic team.

Even if you weren’t part of a multi-site church group, if a church leader were to be very successful within this structure even as an independent church they would have been able to start planting their own “sites” and lead their own multi-site church. This was a good incentive for budding church leaders to ride off into the sunset in search of gold. (plant churches that were independent from other multi-site church groups so that they could become their own multi-site).

It’s probably a coincidence but church groupings of this kind resemble the stock exchange but now with congregations being bought or sold for growth opportunities as they are added or broke away from other church groups or apostolic teams. Their elders always had many coffees with the richest people in their congregation and those rich people had gotten rich by buying and selling and making a profit, but it’s probably just a coincidence. 

This new model was great leap of progress because you had even more autonomy and freedom of speech and your hierarchical ladder was much easy to climb: pew warmer, home cell member, home cell member who helps with duties, home cell leader, deacon, elder, lead elder, multi-site church leader.

Sure it kinda looks like starting a new company but it’s probably totally organic, just a coincidence. Well they do have offices and take in tithes and offerings *cough* membership fees *cough*. And sure the more people who join their church means the more money the get. And sure they do make sure those wealthy members keep coming (whoever thought of mentoring rich congregants was a genius).

Respectfully, under this model millions of sincere churches flourished and they were and are not in it for money and God used and is using them in awesome ways (as He has in every phase). I mention that because I wanted to remind everyone that this is all happening parallel to God’s moving on earth not in synchronous with it.

But this structure was still hierarchical. And if this structure is still hierarchical, then it’s still not like how it was just after Christ rose to heaven. It might have been revived but it hasn’t yet reached the fullness of life. 

 A Singaporean megachurch pastor has been convicted of fraud after prosecutors charged that he used money from his church to fund his wife’s pop music career. 

 And in fact if you wanted to find an expression of church with even more autonomy and freedom you could look at that original model we read about in Acts. Which means living in a community as family without a leader, coordinating with the surrounding cells(groups) as part of the same body.

Once the entire church reaches this last non-hierarchical stage it will once again be a church that resembles a body. Instead of an unmoving pyramid we will be a fully alive, a living church. 

 This has implications for those of us who are part of the non-hierarchical church. If you can imagine this battle against hierarchical thinking as being like a tug of war, then we need to try and make sure we pull the rest of the global church towards non-hierarchical thinking.

And this does need to happen on a global level because both hierarchical and non-hierarchical thinking are contagious. We will either be swallowed by hierarchical thinking or we will swallow it in the tale of history.

Hierarchical thinking is not only applicable to the church.

We should be encouraging non-hierarchical structure in as many areas as possible to sow the seeds for the church to move in that direction too. The greater the percentage of people in the whole world who think non-hierarchically the greater the percentage of people in the church who think non-hierarchically. 

PS. Mega Churches are equivalent to cancer in this analogy. But I am not pointing at any specific person / group of people, it’s a criticism of the structure not it’s inhabitants.