Sermon Tone Analysis

I have heard this said of the local church, “A church is one bad pastor away from crumbling into liberalism.”

In other words, if I the pastor were to die tomorrow, and you all were left with the decision to call a new pastor, if you make the wrong choice the consequences could be devastating for the church.

Why do people say this?

Well, it has happened in the past.

But, where it has happened in the past there must have been a failure to understand and vigorously live out one key biblical priority of the local church.

What is that biblical priority?

It is this- the NT church must be ruled by the Congregation themselves.

If you don’t understand this truth, and vigorously apply it, make it yours, shoulder this responsibility- then it could be said of this church, “it is one bad pastor away from crumbling into liberalism.”

But, the truth of Congregational rule properly understood, proper applied, proper taken on as a responsibility for all of the members of this local church, will safe guard our church and enable it to continue to be a genuine pillar and ground for the truth.

What is the church?

What exactly is the NT church?

What should it be according to the Scriptures?

What should it look like?

How should it function?

What are its goals and what is its purpose?

Specifically, how should each one of us, as members of this church, function?

What are the roles and responsibilities of every member of a church?

Why even join a church membership in the first place?

To begin answering this question we looked at many of the different pictures in the NT of the church, and specifically of the Universal church.

And out of those pictures we developed several important themes.

Unity-

One Flock with One Shepherd

One New Humanity

That they might all be ONE as we Father are One

This unity is twofold- first there is an objective unity.

This objective unity is on the basis of our common faith in the gospel.

Our salvation in Jesus Christ objectively unifies us, it makes us all part of the One New Humanity, One New Race- The Christian Race.

Only people who have put their faith in Christ’s blood for the forgiveness of their sins have this objective unity.

Only believing sheep are a part of Christ’s Flock, only believers have had the middle wall of partition broken down and have been added into the New Humanity, only believers experience the kind of unity that the Father and Son experience because We are only ONE because of our common union in Christ.

So there is an objective unity.

Secondly, there is a subjective unity.

And this subjective unity determines how closely believers can fellowship with each other.

We only have subjective unity as we follow our Shepherd Jesus Christ.

If we all of us follow after Christ as closely as possible then we automatically will have this subjective unity.

And through our study we determined that there is one primary factor that determines if we can have this kind of subjective unity- and that is our common belief in the the Word of God- it is our doctrine, our theology that gives us this unity.

And in fact, at the church member level, there must be a very close agreement about the Word of God in order to have this very important thing called unity.

So, in our endeavor to answer the question, What is the church?

One very important theme keeps popping up- and that is the centrally, the importance, the primacy of the Word of God.

Out of our discussion of the Universal church we then funneled those truths into our understanding of the local church.

The local church should mirror, as closely as possible, what the Universal church actually is.

So these key themes of unity, both objective and subjective, and the centrality of our common belief in the Word of God, should have great impact on our specific local church here in Oconomowoc.

We talked about church membership and what actually makes us a church- and again the key to our understanding was the Word of God.

What actually makes us a church is our covenant together to be a church.

And much of the content of that covenant focuses on encouraging one another, exhorting one another, holding one another accountable, and even disciplining one another based on our common agreement of the Word of God.

And this defines the responsibilities of ever church member.

Even one of you voluntarily entered into an agreement to help one another obey and fulfill the commands of Scripture- unified together around the Word of God.

This defines our focus, this defines our purpose.

What is the church?

The church is not the building, you are the church- in fact Scripture says that we ourselves are the building.

We are the dwelling place of God.

And God is growing this building together as the church.

What kind of building in God growing us into?

He is growing us into a temple.

So, the primary focus of the church is to worship and glorify God.

And we have covenanted together to obey that purpose.

It is all of our jobs to encourage everyone in this church, to be the temple that most please God, that brings the best and the most worship to God.

It means that our job as a church is to obey the command of Scripture to make disciples, to encourage each other on a constant basis to be giving the gospel and winning souls to Christ.

But not just to stop there.

We are all of us at one level of discipleship or another.

And we all of us need each other to continue to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ- and this defines for us what our role or purpose or function is as a church.

Because, activities like confronting, counseling, encouraging, warning, disciple making, evangelizing are not the sole responsibility of spiritual leaders.

These kind of things are the duties and privileges of all the members of our church.

These are the kinds of things that ordinary saints must learn to do if we are going to progress toward being a church that is biblical.

I pray that all of the Scripture that we have looked at has shaped and changed your thinking about what is the church!

This morning we are going to add to that understanding, by talking about the ruling structure of the church.

How should a NT church be governed?

Who makes the decisions in a local church?

Should our church be ruled by a bishop in Rome and the other bishops who are in communion with him?

Should our church be ruled by a group of bishops acting collegially?

Should our church be ruled by representative bodies that operate at various levels of authority?

Should our church be rued by a self-perpetuating board of elders?

These are all ruling structures that have been adopted by various churches.

Our ruling structure is different from all of these.

We believe that a church ought to be ruled by the congregation itself.

That is, we believe that the final authority under Christ for making the church’s decisions is invested in the congregation as a whole.

We believe in Congregational rule.

Why do we believe this?

The short answer is we believe this because it is the consistent pattern we find in the NT.

In other words, we think it is biblical.

My goal is to prove that to you today?

In order to show that Congregational Rule is biblical we have to address several questions.

Are congregations, that is a group of believers (who are still sinners by the way), are they really competent enough to make spiritual decisions.

If the church is to be ruled by the congregation, and if that church is filled with people who are at all different points of discipleship, can they really be trusted to make wise decisions for the church as a whole?

I. Congregational rule is biblical because all believers possess the spiritual qualifications for understanding and obeying God.

One argument against congregational rule is that regular ordinary believers lack the necessary skills to make wise decisions in the local church.

One author wrote this, “Sheep are really dumb animals!…

Since the Lord calls us sheep, the above description gives us a rude awakening as how we must really be spiritually.

Helpless, hopeless, and un-trainable by nature!

Thus we need shepherds.”

(Mal Couch, A Biblical Theology of the Church, 166.)

In response to such a statement I would hold two baptist distinctive up in defense.

By baptist distinctiveness I mean truths that define what it means to be a baptist church.

I don’t mean that only baptist churches hold these truths, but that these truths are part of the makeup of our theology as a baptist church.

These two distinctives are 1).

The priesthood of the believer- We have already laid the groundwork for this truth from Hebrews 10 (available online).

All believers are themselves priests before God.

All believers have access into the presence of the holiest of holies and can draw near to God.

We all have direct access to God.

We all are priests who stand directly in the presence of God.

This means that every believer has the right of addressing God without having to go through any separate priesthood.