When I was growing up, it was pretty normal for most people to go to church. It’s just what you did back then. But these days, well, it’s not the norm at all. In fact ‘church’ has become a bit of a four letter word.

I’ve often thought if I were a marketing consultant and I won a tender to run a marketing campaign to give the term ‘Church’ a positive position in the contemporary mindset, you know in the secular psyche if I can use those words. I wonder whether I’d actually want the job.

I mean this word ‘Church’ has almost become a four letter word in society today. Scandal after scandal. So many people see large parts of the Church as being an anachronistic, outdated, irrelevant, the vestiges of some old style religion that still appears to be alive and well today.

At Easter and Christmas they seem to put old guys, Archbishops, Cardinals on TV for their short 8 second grab on the reason for the season. And none of them ever really inspires you do they? None of what they say makes you want to race out and go to Church does it?

I mean, I’m not being mean, I’m just telling you what most people think. And when those parts of the Church that appear to be more contemporary and with it, well you see TV footage of them and their concert style worship and they’ve got their hands up in the air and I remember thinking, ‘whoa, that’s a bit weird. Don’t want them to get a hold of me.’

So the easiest thing in the world is for those of us who live inside this thing called ‘Church’ to completely lose sight of how people on the outside see and think about this thing we call ‘Church’.

For me the greatest indictment of the Church in my living memory has been the whole issue of child sexual abuse. It seems to spread across so many denominations and so I don’t want to single any one of them out. Only it’s not so much an issue but a string, countless thousands of cases of the most appalling abuse of position and trust imaginable right across where the Church exists in the world.

People who claim to be God’s emissaries sexually abusing children and not just children, adults too. And then if that isn’t terrible enough the systematic cover ups by many major denominations. I was reading a government report into this issue, into one denomination in one particular country and the report concluded that the senior levels of this Church denomination had and I quote, “obsessively and systematically covered up the widespread sexual abuse of children by its clergy for decades.”

And this, this has happened over and over and over again. You Google the term ‘Church sexual abuse’ on the internet and aside from the fact that you get over 4 million hits, 4 million, you discover Church essays, position papers, enquiries, policy papers, white pages, on this whole subject.

Now you may well ask, ‘Berni, why are you rabbiting on about this? Why are you being so critical about this?’ Well simply to make the point that Church has an image problem in the wider society. And this isn’t the only issue but this one issue alone is so utterly appalling and reprehensible in the sight of the average thinking and feeling person on the street and why wouldn’t it be as to warrant the damnation of this whole concept of Church.

Is the whole Church like that? Of course it isn’t. But there’s enough mud flying around for it to stick and then there are so many other issues. The Church seems to be ‘anti’ so many things, anti this and anti that and please, right now, I’m not making any comment or judgement about the validity or otherwise of those positions one way or the other.

As it turns out I have some very strong views on some of those issues but it’s not the views and beliefs that I’m commenting on right now, it’s the perception of society as a whole that this thing called ‘Church’ can hold itself out to proclaim judgements on issues of sexuality for instance. I mean look at the whole child abuse thing. Is it any wonder that people look at the Church and think, ‘what a bunch of hypocrites’?

There’s a Church not far from me, a denomination that lost over 160 million dollars on some bad stock market investments. There’s another small local Church sitting a couple of hundred metres from where I live on over 20 million dollars worth of real estate with less than a dozen members showing up every Sunday morning.

These days there are so many Bible believing Christians, having been burnt by this thing called Church that they’re leaving it in droves while still hanging on their faith to Jesus. In fact academics are writing text books about this group of people.

Now maybe I’m treading on some sensitive, even painful ground for someone today and the last thing that I am about, let me be very clear, is dragging down the Church but if you belong to God’s Church, whatever denomination, whatever shape or form that takes, do you see the image problem the Church has?

Church, these days, is very definitely a four letter word for many people in contemporary society. The sad thing is so many good things are happening amongst this group of people we call Church around the world. It’s not all bad. Far from it but we live in a world today where people both inside and outside the Church are struggling so deeply with what Church means. What it is, what it’s supposed to be, what it achieves.

So many people are struggling so deeply and in many cases painfully with these issues that I believe we have to talk about this on the program. So that’s what we’re going to be looking at over the next few weeks. And as you may have noticed I’m not about pussy footing around, let’s call a spade a spade. Let’s see things for what they are and there’s a good reason for that.

Because like it or not, whatever you think about Church, whatever your experience has been, Church is part of God’s plan and it is something that lies at the core of God’s plan for this world, for humanity. Have a listen to what Jesus said to Peter the Apostle. He said, Matthew chapter 16, verse 18. He said:

I tell you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

Remember Jesus said He will build His Church and make her strong. And God also refers to the Church as His bride. Ephesians chapter 5:

Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her to make her Holy. Cleansing her by washing her with water through the word and to present her to Himself as a radiant Church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish but Holy and blameless.

And God calls the Church Christ’s body. 1 Corinthians chapter 12:

For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, although many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one spirit we were all baptised into one body. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free and we are all made to drink of that one spirit.

Now as individualistic as we may have become in contemporary society here 21 centuries after Jesus walked on the earth. As much as we’re focused on ourselves, God’s plan, God’s plan is for His children to be part of His family.

It’s a powerful plan, it’s a great plan and to be sure sometimes being a Church hurts. Sometimes it disappoints. Sometimes it falls such a long way short of what we expect these people of God to be and how we expect them to love us but its God’s plan nevertheless.

I saw a sign outside a local Church recently that said, ‘Don’t let Christians put you off Jesus’. As bad a piece of marketing as I think that is, leading with your chin, this sign somewhat clumsily and intensely puts its finger on the problem we’ve been talking about today. That Church is a four letter word.

So the thing we’re going to be looking at over these coming weeks is despite so much doom and gloom and obvious failures of this thing called Church. How do we make sense of God’s plan? How do you and I if we hunger after God and grow and thrive in the body of Christ, the Church, despite all the things in this world that scream at us that we should run a mile? Well how?

Here’s what I think. This whole church thing would be so much easier, if it wasn’t for all those other people. Wouldn’t you agree? I mean some of those people at church are a right proper pain in the neck!

You know the biggest problem I find with Churches? I mean, there are a lot of them, lots of problems, lots. Almost every other day there’s another story of some scandal in a Church and the cover ups.

But the biggest problem I have with Church, the one that is absolutely without any shadow of a doubt number one on my hit list of problems with Churches. It’s the other people. See that’s the thing, you go there and there are these other people there and as sure as God made little green apples, you get a bunch of people together and some of them are going to rub you the wrong way. They’re going to be a pain in the neck. They’re going to disappoint us and hurt us.

Now fortunately I’m not one of those people and my hunch is neither are you.  ‘You and I’, as Mary Poppins would say, ‘Well we’re practically perfect in every way. It’s always other people, they’re the ones who are pains in the neck. And if it weren’t for them Church would be fantastic. But they’re the ones who ruin it. They’re the ones who rob it of what God meant it to be. To tell you the truth, I am just not prepared to put up with it anymore. That’s it! I’ve had enough! Until I get rid of those annoying people I’m taking my bat and ball, I’m going home.’

And that my friend, that is exactly the attitude that so many people have towards Church in this consumer oriented society.

My expectation of Church used to be that it would be something a bit like a zoo. You know when you go to a zoo, you go to the different animal enclosures and you see a series of perfect, well fed, well looked after specimens. The lion enclosure, perfect specimens. The elephant enclosure, more perfect specimens. The giraffe enclosure, yet more perfect specimens.

You see you experience what you’re expecting, what you’ve paid your money for, perfect specimens.  A lion is meant to look like a lion and behave like a lion, so the elephant, giraffe and chimpanzee. And that’s when we go to the zoo, to see what we expect to see.

And you know, that’s how I first approached this thing called ‘Church’. Like it was meant to be a zoo. I expected to see and meet a whole bunch of perfect specimens. People who would give me what I came for. The perfect preacher. The perfect pastor. The perfect community. The perfect worship service. The perfect, well, everything really.

And what I discovered is that when you approach Church that way, with this expectation that they’ll give you all that you came for, all that you put your money in the offering to pay for, when we approach Church like that it’s only going to lead us to disappointment.

Here’s what I discovered. Church isn’t so much like a zoo full of perfect specimens, it’s more like, well, like a rehabilitation ward in a hospital. Full of broken people being restored back into health. Now some of them are pretty healthy to be sure. Some of them are getting much closer to being perfect specimens than you and I but pretty much, each person in that Church is going to be a broken person somewhere along that journey of rehabilitation.

Can I be really honest with you? I’ve met some really, really bad people in Churches. I mean shockers. And it horrified me that they’d be there. Of course I’ve met some utterly fantastic people too. And no matter where I’ve gone, what Churches I’ve visited or been associated with or been a part of, it’s always been the same. It is invariably a mixed bag.

And this reality, it doesn’t fit with our expectations because deep down we expect them all to be perfect. And when people in Churches are a pain, our natural reaction is to think, ‘Boy, something is seriously wrong in this place’. Let me challenge that and ask you, is there?

Interesting. Jesus disciples had a similar perception of these people who turned out to be a pain. So Jesus told them a parable to explain what was going on and just as it explained the reality way back then, it still explains the reality so graphically and perfectly for today. So have a listen to what He said and what He’s saying to us 2,000 years on. Matthew chapter 3, beginning at verse 24:

He put before them another parable. He said, ‘The kingdom of heaven can be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore the grain then the weeds appeared as well.’

Now the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where then did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him then, ‘Do you want us to go out and gather them in?’ But the master replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest and at harvest time I will tell the reapers to collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned but gather the wheat into my barn.’

Every time I open my Bible, this thing that I thought was going to be some crummy dry old theology text-book when I started out. My spirit soars because this God of yours and mine, this Jesus is so utterly down to earth and amazing and realistic and practical.

He didn’t talk about esoteric theology, He talked about real life things and turned people’s worlds upside down by looking at things from a completely different perspective. And you see here He’s dealing with this idea that we have that a Church should be perfect and if it ain’t perfect then it’s not the Church for me.

What Jesus is saying quite simply is this. That in God’s kingdom and remember, the tangible reality of that kingdom on this earth is God’s Church. In God’s Church there is always going to be a mixed bag. God plants good seeds in His Church and He calls good people into His family. But then the enemy comes along and tosses some weeds in there too.

Remember, amongst the twelve disciples whom Jesus chose, the enemy, the devil, got a hold of one of those, Judas Iscariot, with devastating effect. The enemy’s going to get hold of some people’s hearts right in the midst of the body of Christ and instead of delivering a good harvest, they’re only going to produce more weeds. That’s normal. That’s what Jesus is saying and when the servants say, ‘Master, do you want us to go and do some weeding?’ He says, ‘No, no, no. Leave them there, I’ll get to them at harvest time.’

The sovereign choice of God is to leave the weeds in place. Did you pick that? He chooses not to make His kingdom as a zoo full of perfect specimens but a mixed bag. That’s the reality. That’s God’s choice. My hunch is He puts those people there not so that we can be victims but so that we can learn to love and to overcome and to suffer and to give and to serve even our enemies.

Even those people who play politics. Those who are selfish or nasty or painful, however they rub us the wrong way in Church. My friend Church is never, ever going to be perfect in this life. There are always going to be some weeds scattered through the crop. But what Jesus is saying is this, ‘Leave them to Me. I’ll deal with them. I’ll handle them in due course. I will sort the weeds from the wheat on the day of harvest, on the day of judgement. But in the mean time, get on with it. Let the good wheat grow. Let it yield it’s grain. If you’re good wheat, go and be good wheat.’

As I said, Jesus is thoroughly realistic and when we take this parable of His into our hearts it puts those difficult people, those painful people, those hurtful people. Those people who get us all disillusioned about Church. It shines a whole new light on things and all of a sudden the Lord is giving us a license to just get on with it.

How often do we waste our time worrying about the weeds? Just get on with it.

What is it with churches, that they have to keep inventing more programs? Sometimes it feels like you’re being churned through a sausage grinder.  Why can’t we just … I don’t know … be friends? Is that too simple?

One of the saddest things that we’ve seen in the quest for higher volumes, quicker production times, greater profits is the taking of this bird that you and I call a chicken – this bird that was made to scratch around and forage – and to turn it into this grotesque thing called a battery hen.

It’s kind of a symbolic thing for me that we would take an animal and do that to it – for what? Production and profits. Turn around times. If you’re online and you Google the term battery hens, you’ll see some horrid pictures of what happens to these poor animals.

To tell you the truth I’m not one much for animal welfare, it’s not naturally my gig in life, but when you see some of those pictures, you realise how are quest for systems and volumes and production and profits can grotesquely impact on life.

These hens are kept in small wire cages, many of them don’t have feather’s, they can’t spread they’re wings or turn around or be comfortable for any part of their lives. They don’t know what it is to live a life of scratching around in a farmyard or anything like that.

And it’s something that we see done not just to hens, but to people. The people in the so-called developing world who make the toys and the clothes and the furniture that those in the wealthy west consume with insatiable appetites – many of those workers work for almost nothing, long hours, long days, appalling living conditions.

It’s amazing what we will do to people and animals, in pursuit of profits and outcomes.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, I’ve seen over the years how systems and key performance indicators and the drive towards more and more profits impacts on people’s lives. For almost two decades of my life, I worked as a consultant in the information technology industry. I worked around the world and so I’ve been into hundreds of different organisation – private sector, public sector – in many different places and cultures.

And one of the things that I saw all too often were workers lined up in small cubicles, driving to targets, to increase company profits. There’s nothing wrong with companies making a profit. There’s nothing wrong with them having some performance indicators, incentive schemes and all of that.

But after years and years and years of seeing this, I’ve drawn the conclusion that there’s a line somewhere that companies and organisations can step over. There’s a tipping point – to use that familiar term – where the systems and the performance indicators and the profit motive take people from being free range, to battery hens. Does that make sense?

Some workplaces I’ve walked into, the people have been working incredibly hard and yet they’re energised and happy and there’s some laughter in the place. But mostly that hasn’t been the case. In insurance companies, banks, call centres, so many of these places, when all that drives management is the profit motive, then ultimately that line is crossed and the people become like battery hens.

We weren’t made principally to be cogs in a production machine. You and I – we’re unique and creative and we love encouragement and we love being part of something we believe in and that we value is being valued. But systems, cubicles, targets – they can squeeze the life out of us.

Sometimes when I travel into the city on the bus or the train – something I used to do a lot of in my consulting days – I look at the faces of the people and I have to tell you, you don’t see much joy, you don’t see much of a sense of anticipation heading in to work or satisfaction coming home from work. There’s a greyness, a lifelessness that happens when beautiful, amazing, creative, emotional, intelligent, funny, wonderful, spiritual people are squeezed into a production mould.

It’s the issue of balance that’s missing. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. And here’s the thing – this is something that I’ve seen in churches too.

Over the course of this week and the next few weeks on the program, we’re taking a really frank look at this thing we call ‘church’. And one of the things that appears to have emerged in the contemporary church is ‘the program’. What do I mean by that? Well, we grow and so we organise ourselves and our activities and the members of the church. And the way we organise things is that we institute programs.

We have the welcomers who are programmed to welcome people at Church. We have the weekly home group program. We have the ladies meeting on Wednesday morning. We have the young mother’s meeting. We implement a number of evangelism programs. We set budgets, we look at outcomes we assess the return on the investment. We run events – the Easter event, the Carols by Candlelight at Christmas. We have food appeals, we go door knocking around the neighbourhood. The list goes on.

Now, let me say something at this point, there is nothing intrinsically wrong or bad or sinful about any of these things. They’re all good in and of themselves. Okay, so I’m not knocking any of them per se. But just as in everything else, there’s a line we can cross over. The line where we turn church into purely an accumulation of events, activities, meetings, committees and programs. That point – and I’ve been to churches where I’ve seen this happen – where the only way that you can be a part of the church is to participate in the programs.

I’ve heard this come from the pulpit, if you want to develop friendships and relationships you have to sign up to join a home group. Now, program driven may have worked at some place and at some point in time, but remember so many of the people who come to our churches are these very same people who spend their lives working as virtual battery hens Monday to Friday, 8, 9, 10, 11 hours each day.

And if there’s one thing – just one thing – that so many people are looking for in a faith community – it’s just that – a genuine sense of community. And community, community isn’t an accumulation of programs and events; it’s not a by product so much of signing up for this program or that. Because we can have as many programs as we like at church and have zero community.

Community is a mindset. It’s a heart attitude. I’ve been to a church where it took them 9 months to invite us to anything – and then, it was a programmatic ‘new comer’s luncheon’. That’s not community. Community is when you walk in and someone greets you and smiles and shares and gets to know you and they’re interested in you and they invite you over for a cup of coffee or lunch. That’s what community is.

Jesus didn’t say, that by this people will know that you are my disciples, if you have effective church programs. He said – ‘By this people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another’.

There’s something organic and spontaneous about that sort of love. The two words used for Church in the New Testament are ‘ecclesia’ and ‘koinonia’. The first, ‘ecclesia’ literally means an assembly – a meeting, that’s what churches do as we meet once a week or other times. And the second, ‘koinonia’, it means a fellowship, a joining together. It’s a relational word. It’s the word of organic love and organic community.

And that, that is the one thing more than any other, that disconnected battery hen people, who work all day are looking for. Welcome. Fellowship. Spontaneity. A sharing of lives. The Apostle Paul put it this way when he was talking about each one of us being part of the body of Christ:

If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.  Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:26)

If there’s one thing people are hungering for more than anything else, it’s this genuine experience of Christ’s love through community.

All too often, people are seduced by the style of a church – the music, how exciting the preaching seems to be. We judge the book very much by its cover. But as things turn out, it’s what’s behind the cover, under the surface – the heart and the soul of a church – that’s far more important than its style.

My favourite definition of marketing is this: that it’s the ultimate triumph of style over substance. Not sure where I first heard that but it’s stuck with me for a good many years now. Marketing – the ultimate triumph of style over substance.

And you see it all the time: big impersonal banks, where the customer is just a number and our needs and problems have to fit into their systems and products, and where increasingly the only way that we can interact with them is through disempowered and sometimes poorly trained, anonymous operators, jammed into their cubicles like battery hens in some call centre. Those same banks will runs ads on TV with families and happy smiling faces and friendly bank managers.

There’s a complete discontinuity between the substance of who they are and what they provide and the style that they hold out in their advertising and marketing campaigns. But that doesn’t stop them because after all, marketing is the ultimate triumph of style over substance.

Well, maybe that’s a little cynical, but you know what I mean. Spin doctors and advertising agencies are paid trillions of dollars each year to put a friendly face on unfriendly corporations, and to put a positive spin on the most awful of realities. And they do such a great job of it that Mr or Mrs Consumer out here in consumer-land – well, we struggle to know the difference anymore between style and substance. The two have blurred. Reality is a combination not only of the service provided, but of how we feel about the provider – and that latter bit was shaped by the marketing. What’s the truth, what’s the reality? No one cares much. Many of us have in fact, given up caring. It’s all too hard.

And so we kind of tacitly, implicitly accept the blurring of style and substance we don’t think about it too much anymore and so we carry this blurred reality into our experience of other things like church.

Now – there are so many different forms of church. From the small group that will be meeting in my family room and backyard this coming Sunday, through to a big, traditional cathedral with a prayer-book liturgy and hymns sung to an organ music, through to the contemporary mega church down the road with seven services of 5000 people each, packed in every Sunday, to the community church of 80 or so people in our local suburb … and anything and everything in between. 

Some seem good at developing contemporary packaging and branding and signage and website. Others seem stuck in a time-warp. Some seem to have dynamic preachers up front talking about things that appear relevant. Others have these men droning out a sermon that goes on interminably and doesn’t appear to have anything to say for my life and yours in the coming week.

Some churches appear to be steeped in the tradition of religion – men in gowns and set prayers and specific terminology like sanctification and propitiation. Others talk in plain language and you’d be flat-out recognising the full-time minister because that person looks just like everyone else.

Do you see what I’m saying? There are so many different styles of church. Some follow almost a rock concert approach or style for their weekly meetings or services, others use a liturgy that was developed back in the 1600’s. The array of approaches and styles – the packaging if you like – is so incredibly diverse. Some churches are huge, some are tiny. An incredible array.

One of the questions people often ask me when they first give their lives over to Jesus – when they accept him as the one who saves them from their sin and when they accept Him as the Lord of their lives – they ask me which church should I go to?

And in one sense, that’s a bit like asking me which shirt should I buy? Which pair of shoes should I buy? Should I live in a house or an apartment? The answer is, ‘I don’t know’,  because churches come in all different shapes and sizes. Different styles. And the church that represents a good fit with who I am and where I’m at, may be entirely different to the one that’s a good fit with you, given who you are and where you’re at.

For instance, being a baby boomer, the whole idea of denominationalism doesn’t fit well with me. Nothing wrong with having denominations per se – in fact there can be some very good things that come along with that. It’s just not me. I’m concerned more with who we are as a church in the suburb where we live, and how we can be the hands and the feet and the heart and the voice of Jesus in the context of our local community. You may have an entirely different viewpoint – and that’s just fine and dandy.

So the first thing – the first thing to recognise is that books can have a similar message, even though they can have quite different covers and even if the authors have different styles and different ways of telling the story. And rather than dismissing that reality, I think it’s something we should deal with directly and openly because it’s a reality. There are quite a number of styles of church that I don’t plug into easily. The sooner I accept that reality, the sooner I’m going to discover the place that God means me to be. 

But as important as it is to recognise the differences and to figure out where we’re a good fit and where we aren’t such a good fit with the style, there’s something more important – and that’s the substance.

I’ve seen plenty of churches that have this contemporary style that I think I can plug into – in fact, I went to one for a while. But after a few months, I realised that there was something significant lacking there when it came to substance.

The first was this: I realised I could give up taking my Bible with me to church each Sunday because we were never called to open it. And secondly, I realised – and this is what we were chatting about yesterday on the program – that the only way to become part of the church was to participate in the programs. Community was program driven, it wasn’t genuine and organic or heart felt.

Now in a few weeks time, we’re going to be chatting about things to look for in a church. And we’ll be going into this in a whole lot more detail. But I think the substance of a church – what lies at the heart of the church – is really important. And the three things that I look for when it comes to this whole thing about substance are these:

• Firstly – I want to see that this is a bunch of people who are passionate about Jesus: who’s trust is in Him, who’s lives are bowed down to Him and who’s love flows out of them. That’s the first thing. The Apostle Paul talked about this sort of substance versus style thing too. He said to the church in Corinth (1 Cor 2:1-5):

When I came to you, I didn’t come with a bunch of fancy words and great ideas. I came imperfectly, I came to tell you about Jesus. I wanted you to know His wisdom and His power.

That’s what I’m looking for first and foremost. People passionate about Jesus, people who believe that Jesus can, and is, and will make a real difference in their lives

• Secondly, I want to see that they actually open their Bibles. That when they gather together, not only do they worship God with their lips, but they want to hear what God has to say to them. God’s Word is alive and active and sharper than any two edged sword. I’m looking for a bunch of people who are serious about learning from God and changing and growing to be more like Him.

• Finally, I’m looking for a genuine community. People who love others with the love of Christ – not just with words and with platitudes, but with their genuine actions. By inviting others to a meal, by being there when others need them.

That’s the sort of church I want to be part of. I don’t expect them to be perfect at it. But that’s the substance that I’m looking for. Style’s great. It has it’s place. But it’s the substance – the heartbeat of the church that really matters. And what I believe we should all hear in our churches – if we’re prepared to stop, be still and listen – I believe that what we should hear is the heartbeat of God.

And if that’s missing, the church is dead and we’re only hanging round a grave yard, however alluring the style might be.

Authority. Now there’s a word that we only like if we’re the one with the authority. These days though, when it comes to us being under someone else’s authority – well, most people want to run a mile. So what’s the role of authority, in a place like … A church?

So many things have changed over the last 50 years. I mean, half a century ago, the church played a key role in society here in Australia where I live, and a whole bunch of other places too. A huge role. And whilst in some places it still does that’s not the case in others.

In fact, you go back a few centuries, and they were holding inquisitions and executing people in some places. Interesting how the position and the role and the influence of this thing we call church has waxed and waned over the last couple of thousand years.

And not all of it, historically, has been good or positive. The Crusades; the Inquisitions; the trial and conviction of eminent scientists like Galileo and Copernicus for holding heretical views like the earth isn’t the centre of the universe and the earth isn’t flat – no not all of it’s been good.

That’s why I’m such a great fan of the separation of church and state. Seems to me as I look back in history, whenever the church became too involved in the running of countries, it’s rarely been a happy outcome.

And so it’s easy – very easy – to become very suspicious and edgy and concerned about manipulation and control, when you hear someone talk about church … and authority in the one sentence. But we can’t talk about church without talking about this notion of authority and what it means to us, here and now.

I remember when I first gave my life to Jesus a decade and a half ago now I was very suspicious of churches. There are some pretty whacky cults out there and the last thing that I wanted to do was to end up in one of those. And the thing about cults, is that invariably they have leaders who abuse their power – leaders who insist on so many strange things being done in the name of loyalty and submission to authority.

Perhaps like me you’re old enough to remember the Jones Town massacre in South America back in 1978, when James Jones, the leader of the People’s Temple cult convinced 909 of his followers to commit suicide by taking cyanide. Now, that’s extreme, but it shows the sort of disastrous consequences that can happen when there’s blind allegiance to religious leaders. That’s one extreme.

And so because many of us hold some deep suspicions about the authority of so called religious leaders, the pendulum in many countries – including my own – has swung in completely the opposite direction. These days, churches are filled with people who believe in Jesus, but who don’t accept the authority of the leaders in their church. They see them selves as members, consumers of church, people who attend to receive advice perhaps – but not as people under any kind of authority or accountability in this place called ‘church’.

Two extremes. Both in my view are disastrous. The one that leads to legalism and at its worst to cults. The other means that instead of being the Body of Christ – people who work together to bring the love of Christ into a lost and hurting world, we’re just a bunch of semi-interested, variably committed volunteers who help when it suits us.

So, it’s a really, really interesting question, this whole question of authority in the church, and it’s one of the things that many a person – both people who believe in Jesus and those who don’t – have against the church.

What’s the answer? Where’s the middle ground? Well – there are a couple of really interesting passages we’re going to take a look at today. Here’s the first one – it’s Jesus talking. You can read it in Matthew chapter 18 beginning at verse 15:

If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Now the church is the Body of Christ: it belongs to Jesus and what Jesus is talking about here is authority and accountability. It begins with mutual accountability – church members are accountable to one another for their behaviour – that’s why if someone does something wrong against you, Jesus says the first thing to do is take them aside and deal with it. Don’t sweep it under the carpet, deal with the issue.

Chances are, that should resolve the issue. But if it doesn’t it’s time to take this matter of accountability a bit wider. Get a few other people – witnesses – involved. And then if that doesn’t work, take it to the church, to the leadership.

And if the leaders try to deal with it but the person who did the wrong in the first place still won’t listen – then, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. In other words, boot them out. Why? Because Jesus has given the church the authority to do that:

Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Matt 18:18)

Delegated authority. Straight from Jesus to the leaders of His church. Most of us have never seen that happen, and it would be an extreme step to take. I was in a church once where a couple were removed because they continued to sleep together before they were married. It was done in love, but it was done with a clear understanding that this is what Jesus told us to do. And without going into the details, this act of authority and accountability by the leadership had a really positive outcome.

The second passage I’d like to look at is the sort of leadership and authority church leaders are called to exercise. Peter the Apostle – Have a listen:

Now as an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as one who shares in the glory to be revealed, I exhort the elders among you to tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it—not for sordid gain but eagerly.

Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away. In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. (1 Peter 5:1-6)

I love that. Leaders are called to lead well by example, as shepherds guiding the flock, rather than lording it over people. And the rest of us – we’re called to humble ourselves under this good leadership because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

So what I discover is that when it comes to leadership, authority and accountability in the Church, God isn’t interested in either of the extremes. He doesn’t want harsh, cult-like leadership anymore than he wants us to imagine that the church is a free-for-all where anarchy prevails and we each do as we like. That kind of volunteer mentality, ‘I’ll obey and get involved if it suits me’.

The heart of God is to see Godly leadership on the one hand, and a humility amongst each one of us on the other where we’re prepared to submit to Godly authority. That may not be a popular message, that may not fit with our consumer mindset but that’s what the Word of God says. You look at it God’s way and it sits well though. We know it’s right. The truth, the truth inevitably rests well in our hearts – because that’s where it belongs. Godly leadership and glad submission.