In a large corporation, various facilities are built as needed by the larger organization. If the San Jose office has training classes, they encourage the San Francisco office to attend. I would like to see churches work similarly. Your “local church” group is a workgroup pursuing common ministry and growth in Christ together. It should interact with other workgroups to achieve our corporate goals.

My church actually does “rent” the building to another church that meets in our building. Interestingly, the church that rents our facility is larger than ours and seemingly has more resources. They see no need to buy a building that they only want to use a few times a week. (They also seem to use it more than us though.) Churches should collaborate more to help achieve our mutual goals.

Of course, that’s predicated on the assumption that somebody will be at the church to help, 24 hours a day, every day. If a person can’t walk into the church building and get help for any problem (even if it’s a referral to someone who can be of help) then the church isn’t serving the community as well as it can.

A smaller church probably can’t staff the building 24 hours a day, but you get my point. Not every church needs a building, but every community should be served by a church.

There is no record at all of the NT church buying property. To the contrary they SOLD property in order to give more to those in need. It really hurts the ministry when the church invests HUGE sums of money into worldly investments. With millions of starving children around the world, a building is the LEAST “kingdom minded” expense.

The biggest excuse for this “addition” to God’s perfect model of the church is that “there are too many people to fit into a house.” It’s interesting to me that the early church had THOUSANDS of people convert as times, and yet never strayed from the home church pattern. This forced them to break up into smaller groups, and allowed MUCH more participation then you see in modern mega-churches. The scripture outlines that every believer is responsible for participating in a local body. The bigger your church, the less likely you will experience spiritual growth. The holy spirit CAN work in these places, but many benefits are lost by straying from God’s perfect plan.

Wow. This is very true and very convicting.

I will take issue with this comment. Do you have evidence of this? There is no doubt that the early church did meet in people’s homes, but was that the only place that they met? We can see from the accounts in scripture that they did not cease to use the Temple (Acts 2:46), which held thousands of people. To assume that the early church had a pattern of meeting in homes that they never strayed from doesn’t seem to do justice to scripture; they met in large groups as well. To go even further and say that the bigger the church the less likely you are to experience spiratural growth simply has no scriptural support. God doesn’t give a plan in scripture about what size the church should be.

It really hurts the ministry when the church invests HUGE sums of money into worldly investments. With millions of starving children around the world, a building is the LEAST “kingdom minded” expense.

…and allowed MUCH more participation then you see in modern mega-churches. The scripture outlines that every believer is responsible for participating in a local body.

I think both of these are quite valid, and while cannot be taken from literal scripture, I think can be proven by underlying scriptural principles.

I grew up in a small church (less than 100 attendees a week) and probably half of them did not attend an adult SS class. Some of this was because they were not following Scripture, but also some of this was tied to the very limited classes available (usually two adult Sunday School classes). Contrast that to the church I now attend (New Hope Church, formerly Crystal Evan. Free), which has 3 services averaging about 700 per service. There are opportunities for everyone to get involved with no excuse that the demographics don’t fit. In other words, there are SS communities for older adults, younger adults, young families, newlyweds, middle-age families, as well as a couple classes for all ages. A small church can’t offer that kind of participation. That doesn’t excuse those who choose not to participate, but it does appear to invalidate that statement. A big church is just a bigger community, and requires more responsibility from its members to divide and conquer (so to speak). I don’t know more than 10% of the members who attend my church, but I don’t have to know everyone to be significantly involved (leadership team for SS class, Men’s Bible Study, and church sports & fellowship teams).

- lead pastors
- worship leaders
- musicians
- speakers
- teachers

I have yet to find a big church that allows equal opportunity for ministry in these areas.

Worship leaders - There is one main worship leader, but many worship teams with members of the congregation having ample opportunity (if gifted in music) to both be in the choir and a part of the worship team. My wife is now (after only 3 years) on the worship leadership team. Once a month, they have a “gospel music” Sunday where the music is generally more upbeat and anyone in the congregation (regardless of ability) can sing in the choir if they feel so led. Music-wise, I think anyone in the church is able to get involved.

Musicians - This might be a bit of a weak spot, though I am not sure how exactly the church runs this. I do know that some musicians (a minority) are paid professionals, but for the most part, the musicians are made up of anyone in the congregation who is called to serve and have that gift. There are usually anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen musicians each week.

Speakers - If you’re referring to speakers in the actual service, outside of the pastors and some of the elders, it is unlikely that a member of the congregation would have the opportunity to preach (though there are numerous times where lay people get up and speak during the service about a ministry opportunity, something God has done in their lives, etc.). The preaching is reserved primarily for the pastors, but sharing is definitely encouraged.

Teachers - Outside of the sermon, teaching is more reserved for outside of the service (in SS classes, etc.) In that regard, pretty much anyone, even if they aren’t particularly gifted (though it may keep them from being asked to teach again), can lead a SS class or Awana or Bible Study.

Most troubling are I think the lack of opportunities for “senior” pastors and worship leaders. You would think that in a group of 2,100 people there would be more than one person whom God has called to be a senior pastor or a worship leader. For example, there are at least four people in my body (of about 90) who are abundantly gifted to lead worship (I am not talking about the other musicians). I am talking about people equipped to administrate and coordinate the music and then lead the actual music itself. It’s not just “the best” of these four that gets to do all the worship - the bible declares that the gifts are for everyone’s profit. It is essential both for them and for the body that these gifts are exercised. A large church may have 50 people who can lead worship in their body and yet maybe 48 or 49 of them are formally restricted from exercising their gift. This is a major problem.

My point is not one of opportunity or administration, but really of simple mathematics. Is the body of Christ so immature and weak that there are only a few leaders per thousand?

In many ways, I think this is how the protestant church has gone back to Catholicism’s mistake of church hierarchy. Instead of creating position after position, the protestant church has simply restricted the entry into leadership. Your statement about your wife (after only three years) disturbs m - because if she is gifted (and I take your word that she is) it should not be some long process to have her gift used in the body (obviously, you can’t make these opportunities simply free-for-alls either). That is three years where your body missed out on your wife’s wonderful gift!

Again, this is totally routine in large churches. Only one or two senior pastors and one or two worship leaders for thousands of believers. It’s crazy!

As for worship leaders, perhaps I wasn’t very clear. There is one guy who takes the lead, and most responsibility, for the worship (just as the husband has to take ultimate leadership and responsibility even though the wife have a significant role to play in a marriage), but the music is chosen by a rotating number of leaders, and the worship is led by about 4 different teams, one each week of the month or so. I don’t really see how one could ask for much more opportunity without getting into pure anarchy and chaos. I think there should ALWAYS be a worship leader who is ultimately in charge (even if he delegates much of his responsibilities week to week).

As for lead pastor, I don’t see that the position can be taken for granted and treated so frivolously as you appear to do. It is a very serious role within the church, and must be manned (literally, in my opinion :)) by someone very gifted (not partially gifted as you seem fine with) and learned in the faith and the Word. There may be plenty of people in the laity equally gifted, but until they are trained in that gift and have a deeper knowledge of the faith, they shouldn’t have equal opportunity to preach. While you wouldn’t probably admit this, you are proposing a near free-for-all.

I will admit that I propose a system with considerably less hierarchy and without a concept of “positions” as a primary use of exercising gifts in the body (instead I think usage of gifts should dictate positions, not the other way around). To the many Christians who have been born or raised into a hierarchical structure, this would probably seem like anarchy - indeed, is has to me for most of my Christian walk. But this is the same reason that the protestant reformation seemed like an anarchistic movement to the even more rigid and hierarchical Catholic Church.

It’s basically human nature: man likes to make up little rules and positions for himself to concretize the abstractions of spirituality. To many, even though the bible is blatantly against it, the perceived safety of religion is just too tough to let go of. Many people cannot fathom order and organization without people to make rules and then people to follow them; people giving orders and people taking them.

I am not advocating an abolishment of positions and authority in the church, but a reevaluation of where it comes from. Clearly gifts must be refined if people are to use them in leadership positions. But that refining process need not be arbitrarily restricted by church size. A pastor of 50 can be just as gifted as a pastor of 5,000. A pastor is a pastor - he is not defined by the number of his flock but by the quality of his gift. If this is the case, it strikes me as overly restrictive to only allow one pastor per 5,000 by restricting the position. If people in the body manifest those giftings they should be trained and used.

Some of this problem might be found in the fact that the pews are full of unbelievers (or weak believers) who want an emotional high for the week or want to taste of the things of God without fully partaking or actually having any accountability or responsibility.

I would just say that there is a nuance here:

Maybe not in preaching a sermon, but in teaching an SS class

I am talking about “laymen” who should (because of their giftings) be learning to become full-on pastors.I would think that God would provide more than one pastor to 5,000 laymen. Teaching a SS class is a great thing for a laymen, but that is merely teaching. What about a man who has the other gifts required of a pastor as well? Obviously there is a burden on the man to use his gifts, but also on the church to do the right thing and allow him that by planting.