The Imperative of Spiritual Responsibility

(Final Post on Yoder’s The Fullness of Christ)

Yoder’s final chapter is titled, “Primitivism? Progress?”

To “go back” or to “restore” as some have attempted to do assumes there is some concrete pattern spelled out in Scripture to which we could return. But, as Yoder writes, “It is neither possible nor necessarily desirable to reproduce in detail specific social structures of another age.” (86)

Some of the changes in the way churches have ordered themselves have not necessarily moved the church away from what it is in essence; other changes have, however, made alterations that result in a church that is no longer church.  Yoder suggests not that the church should never change anything but instead that any changes be weighed against the testimony of Scripture. “When, ” writes Yoder, “the entire outline of the Epistle to the Hebrews centers around the end of the priesthood, when in 1 Corinthians 12 to 14 the central theme is the multiplicity of the gifts in the church, and when in Ephesians 4 this unity in multiplicity is in fact referred to as ‘the perfection of Christ,’ it would seem obvious that the apostolic interpretation of the meaning of the multiplicity of ministries forbids our treating the matter as merely a temporary fitting solution to a pragmatic question of optimum social management.” (87)

Yoder posits there are constants which, no matter the context, are part of the Pauline vision:

1) the “mulitplicity” of the body of Christ

2) plurality (gifts are exercised by several people in the body)

3) diversity (many identifiable roles)

4) universality (no one is not a minister)

5) “the constant need of the elder-bishop-pastor function of government in the local congregation,”

6) the constant need of the teacher function

7) “the itinerant linking local communities with each other

8) the prophet “opening the community to the Spirit’s utterance.

It is point 7 that I found very interesting largely because it was an answer to a question I’ve had on my mind for a while now. The function of the itinerant is crucial; yet I am not sure I’ve ever seen this role in the way Yoder describes it in his book.  Yoder writes, “Itinerancy is one of the traits of the apostolic ministry, recurrent in most epochs of church renewal, to which little attention is being given today.”

As a connector of local assemblies, the itinerant is vital to the sense of community and fellowship among them. In discussions with others about smaller assemblies meeting in homes or other places allowing for no more than 30-50 people the question often arises as to how, as these small groups multiply and spread out across a geographic area, they will maintain a sense of community and fellowship. The role of the itinerant seems to be the answer.

One other thing stood out to me in this last chapter and that is the way Yoder makes sure he is not misunderstood to be suggesting the church should be “leaderless.”   He writes, “It is part of the misunderstanding which keeps Paul’s teaching on the universality of ministry from being understood, to assume that Paul’s is a vision of ‘leaderlessness’ or of  ‘diffused’ unlocalizable leadership. Such concepts are current in the anti-authoritarian mood of modern culture, but this is not what we find in the New Testament. We find rather several types of leadership, exercised by several types of qualified persons, each clearly defined.” (101)

He goes on to remind the reader that it is not leadership itself which is stifling to ministry, but “the mono-pastoral pattern which stifles the growth of leadership by assuming that all ministers must fit more or less the same mold, by giving a person with specialized training a jack-of-all-trades assignment, by partially filling the vacuum which otherwise would draw forth non-professional gifts by channeling increasing portions of congregational finances to the support of ‘inreach’ personnel, by accentuating the tasks of mediator and moderator above other more aggressive functions, and often by leaving the ‘minister’ alone with his perplexities, finding no way to draw others responsibly into his decisions.” (101-102)

Yoder affirms leadership roles, and pastoral roles, and even financially supported roles in the church; but affirms them in the context of universal ministry, where all members of Christ’s body participate fully as ministers. There is no room, according to Yoder,  in the Pauline vision of the church for a clergy-laity split, for ministry done by a few and “ministry assistance” done by the rest, for the kinds of organizational structures that exacerbate the divide between those who minister and those who don’t really need to and can therefore become spectators, consumers, cheerleaders, etc.

The continuing love-affair with larger and larger assemblies has done nothing but exacerbate the problem of ministry-by-the -few, and only encouraged the development of the bloated role of the Sr. Pastor.  That this Sr. leader must make a living at what he does has locked the congregational size limit into a financial spreadsheet where congregations must be built up numerically so that “the” minister and his support staff have the desired income.  A whole host of organizational decisions are made in churches primarily because of this dynamic, the central issue becoming how to keep enough people invovled and contributing financially so that leadership and support staff can remain employed by the organization.

Yoder defends his position by reminding the reader that he is not writing from a heart wounded by bad experiences, or from a mind saturated with legalistic ideas about “biblical” church structures. He is, instead writing out of a “concern for the full meaning of the work of Christ whereby God moved from the realm of religion, where specialists are needed to ask His blessings, into the common life where eveone is called into service. The professional religionist, whatever his intentions and whatever his theology, is a standing temptation for his ‘flock’ to fall back into spiritual second-handedness. Even if the shared ministry were not more effective, or in line with the newest thinking on leadership techniques, or a safeguard against certain pitfalls – all of which it is – it would still be desirable by virtue of the claling of each to exercise his or her own ‘come-of-ageness,’ by the imperative of spiritual responsibility.” (104)

Advertisement