Who Qualifies as a Christian Minister?

In 2007, renowned church leader Andy Stanley was interviewed by Christianity Today about the ministry model he had established for his church. In that interview, Stanley stated:
“I think a big problem in the church has been the dichotomy between spirituality and leadership. One of the criticisms I get is ‘Your church is so corporate.’ I read blogs all the time. Bloggers complain, ‘The pastor's like a CEO.’ And I say, ‘OK, you're right. Now, why is that a bad model?’ A principle is a principle, and God created all the principles.”
Pirate Christian Radio speaker Chris Rosebrough is quoted as saying:
“Peter Drucker, who is the ideological mind behind the Seeker Driven Church Movement, along with the Fascists of the 20th century, bought into Rousseau’s philosophical worldview which denied the existence of the individual in time.
“Rousseau’s ideas about a single leader mystically embodying the collective will of the community were adopted by and further developed by fascist theorists, and then later put into practice by the fascist governments of the 20th century.”
It is Rosebrough’s assertion here that modern church leaders are interpreting their position as something akin to fascistic “fuhrer” rather than to that of a shepherd.
In Matthew 23, Jesus said this:
"But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant."
The Greek word that Christ uses for “instructors” in this passage could be literally translated “leaders,” exactly the word that the Seeker Driven Church movement has latched on to when describing the role of their pastors.
In Matthew 23:8-11, Christ not only places God as the sole authority to which all others were subservient, but establishes the core principle of his church. In contrast to the Jewish leadership, which was essentially a totalitarian system in which the parishioner was obligated to follow the commands of the religious leader or risk excommunication, Jesus was establishing a system wherein the “greatest
among you shall be your servant.”
In his critique of the fascist-style leadership being adopted more and more by the Seeker-driven Church movement, Rosbrough describes it as a top-down authoritarian model. That is to say the leader, or “fuhrer” has all of the authority, while all of the responsibility is placed on those under him to carry out his will. This as opposed to a Republic wherein the people have the authority and the governing official has the responsibility to carry out the will of the people.
The system Christ describes in this command is neither top-down or bottom-up. If anything, it is a lateral
system. The authority and responsibility are placed entirely with God. It is the duty of the Church to serve one another equally, and to make disciples of those outside the Church; acts which can only be done in the power of the Spirit. This is illustrated by Christ when he says:
"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
God is described here as "The Lord of the Harvest," taking responsibility for the harvest as well as being the one ascribed the authority to send out the laborers; just as it was Christ who recruited those he chose to be his ministers:
“And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’”
This verse speaks to the commission of the minister to "make disciples of all nations," that is, to preach the Gospel to non-believers. As for the responsibility of the minsters within the Church, Christ best summed it up in his request of Peter:
"Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”"
It is interesting to note here that Peter’s motivation for “feeding the sheep” is his love of Christ. He is neither bribed by rewards nor goaded by fear of punishment; rather, he is doing so out of gratitude toward God and love of Christ.
But as with the rabbi in Jerusalem, who turned their commission to teach the law and the prophets to the Nation of Israel into an opportunity to put words in God’s mouth and lord power over their charges, the Church fell to the same abuses.
As the governing structure of the church came to be understood as a separation between clergy and laity, a gap began to form between the individual in the church and God. The individual could only approach God through the agency of priests, bishops, popes, and saints, and were powerless to go to God on their own.
History, it seems, repeats itself. The Seeker-Driven Church of modern times has reverted to a structure they call “vision-casting.” In this model the pastor or leader claims to receive a vision directly from God.
This “vision” often looks similar to a corporate “mission statement.” The pastor then presents the vision to the church body, and it becomes their responsibility to fulfill this mission for the pastor. Any disagreement with the vision on the part of a parishioner results in immediate excommunication. The pastor has the authority to interpret the vision in any way he or she sees fit, allowing them essentially limitless power over the church body through a mission given them (they claim) directly from God.
This shift between Peter’s commission to “feed my sheep” to the Seeker-Driven model of “vision casting” is possibly best illustrated in this quote from a sermon by Prosperity Gospel advocate Creflo Dollar:
“You know you people say ‘Well why do you go to that Church? So I can be fed.’ You don’t come here so you can be fed! You come here to help me to fulfill His vision! That is, if God called you here. You haven’t been called so you can be fed the Word. Now if you get fed in the midst of it, that’s good. But you’ve been called to find your part in bringing this vision to pass in the earth!”
It is not difficult to understand the motivation for these kinds of ecclesiastical power-grabs. The Bible and History books are replete with examples of opportunists abusing politics and religion for personal power. But, as Christ said, call no man rabbi, father, or master.
It is not just that Christians are not obligated to submit to those claiming religious power over them; it is that Christians are obligated not to submit. To do so is to place allegiance in some human agency rather than God, a violation of the first commandment and of the greatest commandment.
How, then is one to understand the structure of the Church?
In the book of Hebrews, the author makes this criticism of his audience:
“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
Jesus had commanded his Apostles to “make disciples of all nations,” and the author of Hebrews tells his readers that “by this time you ought to be teachers.”
The natural trajectory of the Christian is to mature in their faith, to preach the gospel to the unbeliever and to encourage and instruct the new believer. There is no one single person or council of people outside of Christ singled out for the task of holding power over the Church.
The Apostle Paul best summarized Church Structure this way:
“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”
In this sense every Christian is a minister, that is, a servant, first to God and then to His Church. The Gospel - the good news that believers are commissioned to preach - is that every person is free to approach God by the grace purchased through Christ’s sacrifice. But this fails to be good news if, once converted, the believer is obligated to appeal to a structure of priests, bishops, popes, saints, and church leaders in the hopes of possibly reaching God.
If a person has been washed of sin, and has been given the freedom to approach God directly, that person, through love, has become a minister of God:
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you
may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

A Biblical Perspective on Extraterrestrial Life

A Biblical Perspective on Extraterrestrial Life
Since the UFO craze began in the late 40’s and early 50’s, there have been some few prominent Christian ministers and theologians who have ventured to guess at whether or not intelligent biological life exists elsewhere in the universe. Successful world evangelist Billy Graham made some statements affirming his belief in aliens in his book Angels, God’s Secret Agents. Renowned Christian philosopher William Lane Craig speculated that aliens may exist in the August 2008 episode of his “Reasonable Faith” podcast.
On that episode, Dr. Craig made the very relevant point that whether or not aliens, in the classic science fiction meaning of the word, exist has no real bearing on the Christian faith. If little green men should touch down tomorrow on the White House lawn, all the premises of Christianity would hang together just as they did prior.
That said, there is a fairly solid case to be made against the existence of intelligent aliens if one takes the Bible to be truthful.
The first argument comes from the creation account. This is a much debated account both within and outside of Christian circles, but the gist of the account tends to be that the earth is the central focus of creation, with special emphasis on human beings themselves. If this seems unlikely in the vastness of the universe, keep in mind that size does not necessarily equate with significance - as any particle physicist could tell you. This point alone does not make a strong argument against other intelligent life forms in the universe, but when added up with the whole of the argument, it hangs together.
The second point flows out of the first. If taken at face value, the creation account (Genesis chapters one and two) indicates that the world, and the universe around it were created in perfection. This is not the picture given, however, in the book of Romans where Paul says:
“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”
What happened between the creation of the Genesis account and this creation of the Romans account that groans in corruption? What happened was a fairly significant event Christians refer to as “The Fall.” This occurrence, in which humans rebelled against God, not only affected human nature but, according to Paul, affected all of creation. In fact, no matter how one views scriptural accounts, it is clear that the entire universe flows from order to entropy in such a way that the entire structure is headed toward an extinction event that scientists call “heat death.” Paul, who could hardly have known about the ins and outs of entropy and heat death in the first century, does a fairly good job of describing just that in the Romans passage. This flow toward entropy, which the Bible attributes to the Fall of Man, would include any poor aliens that happened to be elsewhere in the universe. This hardly seems fair if humans were the ones who rebelled and not the aliens.
In fact, the entire redemptive story is decidedly human focused. God came in human form, died, rose, and ascended to heaven where he will reign for eternity in a human body. In this story human beings appear to get special treatment over and above extra terrestrials.
Finally, scripture makes it fairly clear that all of creation is scheduled to be destroyed (because of its corruption due to The Fall) and replaced by a newly perfect heaven and earth. These hypothetical aliens would presumably be swept away in this fiery holocaust without a second thought.
Now it should be made clear at this point that the Bible certainly does affirm the existence of a sizable number of spiritual beings that are both intelligent and fairly alien to humans, and while these beings have interactions with the physical realm throughout scripture, it would be a stretch to equate them with science fiction aliens. The Bible and the Christian faith don’t seem to leave much room for extra-terrestrials.

Babel: a Biblical study of Language. Part 1: Overview

I am going to be using this blog over the next several weeks as a method of gathering my thoughts on a subject that I am interested in exploring and discovering the true implications of: language.
I am no linguist, myself.  For the purpose of this study, I wish I were.  My focus will be specifically on what the Bible has to say on the subject of language, its origin and its purpose. 
I believe this study is necessary because of some of the current philosophies that are being popularized by the post-modern movement.
The main tenant of Postmodernism is that truth is determined by the individual, that we each make our own realities by our beliefs and ideas.  While this may seem very empowering at first, it actually has the effect of isolating each person from the other.  If everyone you meet is living in their own self-constructed universe that is alien to your own, then any connection you make will be superficial at best.
As it regards language, the Postmodern ideal is 'deconstructionsim.'  Rather than interpreting texts in the traditional way, deconstructionism assumes that each person uses language uniquely according to their own personal experiences.  The purpose of deconstructionism is to determine what the meaning behind a text is based on what we know of the author of the text.
The other thing that postmodernism does to language is to say that every person will interpret a text as to what it means to them.  So that what YOU get out of the Bible and what I get out of the Bible when we read it are two separate messages, and I have no right to tell you what it actually means.
Finally, Postmodernism leads us to the conclusion that our individual universes are constructed from language.  For this reason, whoever controls the language controls the universe.  The practical result that we see from this is a focus on controlling the language that you and I use in the everyday.  Certain commonly used words and phrases suddenly become taboo as our language is subjected to 'political correctness.'  Businesses adopt and frequently update their mission statements, which they make their employees memorize and carry around with them.
Now you may have noticed that the first two postmodern ideas regarding language contradict the third.  Furthermore, the first two ideas render language practically useless for the purposes of communication.  However contradictions do not greatly bother a postmodernist.  Because truth is determined by my say-so, if I say that two contradictory ideas can co-exist, then they can.
Hopefully, you can see how this devaluing of language impacts the Christian Faith.  Our knowledge of God comes through the word of God as delivered by the Holy Spirit.  God does not speak to us in an audible voice, as He did to people prior to Moses.  He does not speak to us through prophets as He did to Israel.  He is no longer physically present in the person of Christ Jesus.  Our whole knowledge of God comes from the Scriptures.  This, by the way, is no bad thing.  When God spoke audibly, very few people were privileged to hear him.  The prophets were only good for as far as their voice projected.  In the flesh, Jesus could not be everywhere.  And in all these epochs, only a portion of God's plan was revealed.  We are privileged in our day to have ready access to a written statement that details God's plan from the very beginning to the very end.  But if truth is what you make it, and language is unstable at best, then the Scriptures become a novelty to be made what we wish them to be.
In order to address this issue, I wish to examine what the Bible has to say on the subject of language.  If we know that, then we will know how the medium through which God speaks should be addressed.