How To Be A Christian And Still Go To Church

Church- Going

Mark Daniels begins a series here of letters to his non-church-going friends. In it Mark argues briefly that it is pretty hard to be a Christian while not going to church. I agree and I think the two basic arguments that Mark presents are sound. However, I think there is a flip side to the deal.

Christians do not have to force themselves to church when church is just flat out wrong. There is nothing that hurts me more than the wounds I have suffered at the hands of the church and the far worse wounds that many others have suffered from the same source. I have much sympathy for the idea that the church has done as much harm as it has good.

I've met Mark, he is a good man, and nothing condemnatory I write here applies to him.

Because of my sympathy exrpressed above, I always have a hard time when clergy talks about the necessity of supporting the church believing the genuiness of their motives. Are they motivated by true conviction or the need to maintain thier paycheck/power or other self-interest? I spend much time in deep prayer on that fact, greatly saddened both and my cynicism and that conditons exist that justify it.

So how can a church and its representative clergy get through my cynicism? Well, as I have said, lecturing me on the necessity of going to church is not going to do the job. What I usually look for is confession, its attendant humility, and sincere effort to lead the church towards the holiness it is supposed to exemplify.

The church as an instituion and it clerical representatives need to become very, very comfortable with the words, "I was wrong."

In the age of the "already/not yet" we will not achieve the perfection God intends for us. Thus confession has its so vital role. This is a difficult problem for clergy as leadership often demands the appearance of rightness. But we must remember that in our faith context rightness comes from confession - it is our strength, not our weakness.

I grant such an apporach to leadership may in fact limit our worldly impact, but I think it will add to the Kingdom in ways we cannot imagine.

Related Tags: church, church-going, confession, cynicism, strength, leadership

How To React

I am not at all sure how to react to this report out of England.

Churches in Britain are a "toxic cocktail" of bullying and terror, as parish priests struggle to lead congregations dominated by neurotic worshippers who spread havoc with gossip and manipulation.

The ?dark side? of parish life is detailed in a report published by the Church of England, which describes how peace and love are in desperately short supply in the pews of churches this Christmas

If I am entirely frank, and I usually am, I think this is a bit of a self-inflicted wound. I mean you build a consumer oriented church, you are going to get consumers and consumers like to complain. The story takes a slightly different approach seems to hint at that fact by saying "nice" may be the problem.

Dr Savage says one of the problems is that churches are hierarchical systems, with all the attendant echoes of feudal society. Thus they elicit bad behaviour such as status seeking, fawning, bullying, passivity, blaming others and gossiping.

Clergy soften the impact of this, while at the same time preserving it, by being "nice", she says. "The norm of Christian niceness is ubiquitous, despite the portrait the Gospels paint of Jesus as an assertive, sometimes acerbic personality who readily confronted people in order to pursue their spiritual welfare."

He agrees that nastiness is unproductive, but argues that niceness ?can tie churches up in knots?. Because lay volunteers, such as churchwardens or vergers, are unpaid, they do not expect to be confronted by their "nce"vicar over the way they fulfil their role.

I am going to agree that nice is part fo the problem, but not necessarily the "echoes" of feudalism. God is, after all, a monarch. As I see it, the problems are threefold.

Elevating The Spiritual Part Of The Gospel Over the Behavioral

The life in Christ is more than ascent to a set of beliefs, and yet we talk about what we believe SO much, we lose sight of the consequences those beliefs are supposed to produce in our life. Worse, we allow people to continue in their assumption of salvation when all consequential evidence is missing. I know we will never know for sure until we get there, but come on...

"Lowering The Bar" For Leadership

Desire for office, no matter how strong, does not necessarily reflect suitability. This is even true amongst people who are indeed very mature in their faith and truly transformed by the gospel. God grants each of us gifts and abilities that suit us to specific tasks, sometimes for a season, sometimes for a lifetime. Regardless we would do well to access those abilities and act accordingly.

And yet, as the article points out, people view office as status and thus seek it, regardless of suitability. But the problem is not the heirarchical nature of office, it is instead our unwillingness to demand suitability of those to whom we award office. They are not service awards, they are not lifetime acheivement recognitions, they are not even the natural progression from seminary.

We may be quite egalitarian in who we allow in our pews, but not in our leadership offices. Scripture is full of lists of characteristics and standards for leadership. A lifetiem of dedicated service as an infantry man is laudable and honorable, and much appreciated, but it does not automatically make that person officer material.

A Desire To Preserve The Institution Over The Mission

Both of the above points are reflections of this point. We emphasise the spiritual and deemphasise the behavioral, because we have lower attendance if we "ask too much of people." The same is true when it comes to qualification for office, compounded by the fact that the institution demands that the offices be filled.

And yet, as this article evidences, when we preserve the institution without the mission we do not get what we are looking for.

In sum, and with complete sympathy to all my clergy friends and the ugliness they encounter, that ugliness is a result of the church not doing it's job the way God called us to do it. Maybe it's time we worried less about our position and more about our mission.

Related Tags: church, office, ugliness, mission, institution, transformation

Why Is It Rare?

After posting Friday on some of the difficulties of pastoral leadership, I ran across this quotation in this book

One of the greatest obstacles to effective spiritual formation in Christ today is our failure to understand and acknowledge the reality of the human situation. We must start from where we really are.

Some years back, within a period of a few weeks, three nationally known pastors in Southern California were publicly exposed for sexual sins. But sex is far from being the only problem inside and outside the church. The presence of vanity, egotism, hostility, fear, indifference, and downright meanness can be counted on among professing Christians. Their opposites cannot be counted on or simply assumed in the standard Christian group, and the rare individual who exemplifies these opposites - genuine purity and humility, death to selfishness, freedom from rage and depression, and so on - will stand out in the group with all the obtrusiveness of a sore thumb. This person will be a constant hindrance in group processes and will be personally conflicted by them, for he or she will not be living on the same terms as the others.

Paul summed up the root of human evil by saying, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." When God is put out of the heart and the soul, the intellect becomes dysfunctional, trying to devise a "truth" that will be compatible with the basic falsehood that not God, but rather man, is god; and the affections (feelings, emotions, even sensations) soon follow along on the path to chaos.

The path of spiritual transformation today lies through the illumination that we have ruined souls. This must be gratefully and humbly accepted and applied, to oneself above all. When the prophet Jeremiah, for example, said, 

"The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?" (17:9),

we have to recognize from our heart that we are the ones spoken of, that, indeed, I am the one described. Only then is a foundation laid for spiritual formation into Christlikeness.

I could not help but be dumbfounded by the statement that the attributes of real spiritual transformation and not merely rare in the church, but perhaps considered a "hinderance to the process."

This tells me that our institutions are very sick. We breed our leadership to show attributes other than what we desire, and we reward those that show not the correct attributes, but the ones we encourage in leadership.

How do we fix this?

Dear Lord help us!

Related Tags: church, leadership, transformation, reward, institution

Emotions Are Powerful Things

...and also quite fleeting.

I actually started this post before I came across Jollyblogger's and Adrian Warnock's discussion of the role of emotions in faith, but in his latest entry, buddy David says so much of what I intended to say that I have to reorient completely.

One of the most refreshing things about coming to a reformed point of view was the objective orientation of reformed theology. In other words, it affirms that Christianity is not about what I do for God, nor what I feel toward God, but what God has done for me in Christ. Christianity says "look outside of yourself to Him" rather than "look inside at your feelings."

Many of us fled evangelicalism mysticism with its subjective emphases and finally found peace in the reformed tradition with it's objective emphases. It gets tiring to continually take your spiritual temperature by your feelings because they are all over the map. What we need is to constantly be reminded of our inclusion in the beloved because of the work of Christ on the cross. It reminds us that even when I am feeling bad, because of Christ I am still as close as I can be to the Father.

Insofar as Adrian and Piper and Edwards affirm that, I am all for it. Insofar as they say "look to the cross and let the cross shape your emotions," that's great. But I think they need to be careful about making emotions the measure of spirituality.

I have something to add, but find that I must disclaim any specific personal aiming point for my comments since I have now placed them in the context of David and Adrian's discussion. They are not aimed at Adrian.

It is quite appealing in a ministry role to manipulate emotion. In my day in Young Life we were masters at it. Not only is it easy to manipulate emotion, it's really easy in adolescents. Like counting butts in pews, emotional response is another tempting, but misleading, method to measure ministry effectiveness.

In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis says

Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.

In ministry we seek to help people develop genuine faith. That is terribly hard work. Frankly it is work only the Holy Spirit can do, reducing us as ministers to simply placing ourselves in that same Holy Spirit's hands to use and to produce result.

It is so tempting to control "the weather," by building a nice facility with all the right programs and technology, and help people have "good digestion," Starbucks in the Narthex - lunch after service, and achieve the emotional result we desire, an emotional result that produces the illusion of genuine faith, but a faith that disappears with the change in weather and the lousy meal.

Will faith in Christ change our emotional state? Absolutely, but our emotional state DOES NOT produce faith in Christ. We cannot afford to substitute mere emotional manipulation for genuine ministry. We cannot allow the temptations of the measurable to substitute for the reality of God's immeasurable grace.

Related Tags: faith, emotions, moods, minstry, manipulation

The Church and Trends

Why does the church have "trends?" Oh, I understand it socologically, but I am asking in a more theological vein. This post from the Out of Ur blog sent me to asking that question.

My friend’s comment got me thinking because over the years I have seen the church get excited about "small groups", or about being "seeker sensitive," or "Vineyard worship music" and other various bandwagons the church jumps on for a season. And there have been many other trends that I wasn’t a part of like cell churches, or using the baseball diamond for assimilation, or the breakouts of laughing in the Spirit by certain types of churches, or radio preaching, or whatever it may be. Whatever the trend the routine is the same. First there is excitement, then early innovators adopt them (maybe not the laughing in the Spirit), then in time most churches may do it. But eventually, it passes and we wait for the next “new” thing.

The whole idea of "trends" in institutions definitionally devoted to the eternal and unchangable causes cognitive dissonance in me. Somehow when we chase the current, when we evaluate the fad, we lessen God. I mean to think a God about whom it has been said

Heb 13:8 - Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever.

Rev 1:8 - "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."

is worried about a "trend?" Somehow I think what is important today to such a God was important yesterday and will be important tomorrow.

I also wonder if when we present such a God. we are not supposed to cater the message and the medium to Him, as opposed to the other way around. As far as I know, 2 + 2 = 4 just like it always has and despite "new math" and all the other "innovations" in teaching, people still need to come to terms with that fact of addition written in that way. If a simple arithmetical statement is routinely acknowledged as so static, how can we treat the unchangeable Creator of all in a lesser light?

Somehow, I cannot help but be struck by the fact that if the church spent less time worrying about trends and more time dealing with God, we'd all be much better off.

Related Tags: trend, church, Christianity, unchageable, God, Christ

A Call For Our Time

Unveiled Face reviews the book The Reformed Pastor by William Baxter. I'm sold! Mick concludes the review this way

He really does cover a massive range of issues that are surely just as relevant today as they were then. He wants to see ministers engaged in one-on-one ministry with their flock, not just pulpit ministry. He wants to see ministers forsking their lives in order to convert non-Christians and strengthen the Christians. He wants to see Pastors be as open to correction as they expect their congregations to be. Yes, Baxter's message is very relevant to us and I highly recommend it.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that the largest problem confronting the church today is the wall between pastors and the pews. This wall is expressed in so many ways. In the mega-church, it is the great wall, massively thick and strengthened by the sheer distance in a room that big. In a smaller church we see it in the pastor that says to "the inside circle", "I wouldn't say this to the congregation, but..."

This wall is a problem for both sides. Mick's review lays out the problems on the pastoral side very well, so I think I will leave that to him, and address the congregational side. The wall sends three distinct, but related, messages to the pews that are problematic.

First, the wall says, "It's OK if you don't pursue your faith too deeply - you can leave that to use paid professionals." The mere existence of a professional Christian class divides in ways that it is not really intended to do. At best it says there are good Christians and better Christians. This fact places an extraordinary burden on the clergy to do everything in thier power to tear down the wall.

The second message the wall sends is the message that what a Christian aspires to is not to be the best Christian fill-in-the-profession-here, but to join the professional Christian class. This is not God's intended plan for the world. we aspire to be who God created us to be, and to work that out in whatever context He has placed us. How many, oh Lord, have felt what they thought was a "Call" that was realy just a misunderstanding of this very point.

The foundation of the wall is pastoral pride as Mick makes clear is Baxter's primary point. And yet, humility is the hardest Christian characteristic to learn, and, at least in my experience, the most valuable. Humility is the point in which we learn where we really stand with God, and gain the graditude necessary to define genuine submission. The third message of the wall is that humility is not a valuable Christian attribute, regardless of what may come from the pulpit. For if the message is humility and practice is the wall, the wall speaks much louder than the sermon.

I'm looking forward to reading this book and am grateful to Mick for pointing it out.

Related Tags: The Reformed Pastor, William Baxter, humility, clergy, laity, maturity

On Submission

Reggie Kidd writes at Common Grounds Online about learning samurai sword and the lessons in submission that come with it.

Really, though, it’s been remarkably easy to submit to a man who himself has submitted to another.

That God calls us to submission is, I think beyond arguement. I certainly have that no debate when it comes to submitting to God, but I do when it comes to submitting to people. I haven't found a lot of people lately that have "submitted to another.

Here is a post from a fellow Presbyterian demonstrating how we tend to submit ourselves to groups rather than individuals.

Presbyterians like to talk about discerning the voice of God through the voice of the community.

I served a church in Tennessee once and found the people there were always saying, "God is telling me this or that."

Not, "I feel that God is moving me to do this or that," but that "God is telling me this or that."

My first reaction was to think, "How arrogant, that people would think that God speaks to them and no one else."

My second reaction was to think, "How dangerous."

Marty decided God was telling him to start a home for children. A year later he was angry and came to see me. "Why would God do this to me? I've lost my house, I'm in debt up to my eyeballs. I gave up my job for this. God told me to do this and now He has left me hanging."

No -- God did not tell you to do this. You WANTED God to tell you to do this, but you never actually heard the voice of God speak.

One reaction I heard was in a committee meeting. "God is telling me this or that," one of the members of the committee said. It was her way of saying, "It's my way or the highway. I'm putting God's seal of approval on my opinion so you can argue with it."

In other words, "God is telling me..." was a way of using the Lord's name in vain.

Needless to say, I like the Presbyterian approach, I figure if God is going to say something to one person, He'll say it to several. But even this submission is becoming more and more difficult as we see Sessions and other groups having just as bad a discernment and acting with just as much arrogance as an individual.

Nope, the problem I have with submission is not submitting, but who to submit to. Who is worthy?

In Perelandra, wherein C.S. Lewis imagines the creation story coming out differently, the prohibitions God places on Perelandra's Adam and Eve are, in the end, completely arbitrary. When temptation has been successfully won over, the restriction is removed. The point is not reasonable submission, but total submission, submission beyond reason.

So, the question becomes, when I am having trouble finding someone to submit to, is it because I am letting my reason stand in the way of my submission, or is it legitimate? Frankly, I don;t think it is an either/or.

I have been in situations where arbitrary submission resulted in evil. Take the Jim Jones example. Other situations though are just about disagreement on matters that do not rise to the level of evil. In those cases, am I called to submit, even if I know the direction is wrong?

Before you answer quickly, I have been in such a circumstance. Decsions being made that required my submissions were, in my opinion wrong, but not de facto evil. I walked out. Years later, the wrongness of those decisions became evident, as the church collapsed, leaving in its wake a great number of very hurt people. Did the wrong elevate to evil? I have been told by others that my discernment of the wrong was, in fact, prophetic. I will adopt no such label for myself.

The answer I think lies in the quote from Reggie Kidd above - submit to the submitted. We are not called to submit to leadership, for leadership can be gained through many channels - we are called to submit to the submitted.

In the situation I described two paragraphs prior there was an elderly woman that I grew to adore, and to whom I would, and did, readily submit. She was not on Session or in any leadership capacity whatsoever. I came to her to minister to her when she was in the hospital. How quickly those tables turned. Here was someone that had given herself wholly to the Lord's service.

My point? - submission is mandatory. Find someone to submit to, look hard, look very hard. I am not sure they will be where you think they should be. Remember the example of Christ. You will likely find the person you want to submit to in a humble place. Such a person will never seek your submission, they will simply earn it. Their example will not be one of glory, but one of humility.

Related Tags: submission, humility, suthority, Christianity

Getting Nurture In Giving It, Or Church Is Not For Me

I did a post Monday wherein I bemoaned the fact that I have given up the expectation of receiving nurture from church. When I read this post at GospelDrivenLife, I want to riff on that idea a bit. I should not have moaned on this fact, but celebrated it. Lauterbach begins by looking at Jonathon Edwards.

To use another term -- sin turns us in on ourselves. All things revolve around me. My interest and their affect upon my happiness or misery is the final measurement. This, says Edwards, is the opposite of true virtue, which is a benevolent desire to all beings, founded first in delight in God.

Edwards goes so far as to assert that all "benevolence" outside of a delight in God Himself -- philanthropy, family affection, patriotism, and apparent interest in the public good -- is nothing more than self-absorption in new forms. That is offensive to our day -- as it was to his day. What is surprising is that Edwards thought loving family was not necessarily virtuous -- nor loving country -- not unless it was accompanied by wider sympathies.

But he goes on to quote BB Warfield:

It is not to mere self-denial that Christ calls us, but specifically to self-sacrifice; not to unselfing ourselves, but to unselfishing ourselves. Self-denial for its own sake is in its very nature ascetic, monkish . . . . it concentrates our whole attention on self . . . narrows and contracts the soul. . . . It is not to this that Christ's example calls us . . . He was led by His love for others into the world, to forget Himself in the needs of others . . . . and self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there we will be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there we will be to help. . . . Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means entering into every man's hopes and fears, longings and despairs. . . . It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives.

I read this material and I conclude that while dividing church into what I get and what I receive is a step in the right direction (at least I am giving something) it does not take where I am supposed to be, which is to simply give.

The hard part is to remember Who I am giving to. It is so easy to give to people, maybe the institution. It is even easier for those in institutional authority to take advantage of my desire to give for their own ends, instead of the God that I seek to serve. But therein lies the place where I can find the real nurture in the sacrifice.

You see, if I can learn to give to God, even in bad circumstances, then I am learning to imitate Christ - Christ who gave His life for a bunch of ungrateful sinners like us, abused, misused, and crucified by the religious authorities of the time. Isn't that what it is really all about.

Related Tags: sacrifice, nurture, Christian growth

What Mission? -- To Whom?

JollyBlogger is looking at what congregation one should join. Buddy David is "discussing" the issue with another blogger. I don't really want to join the particular fray, but comment on a side issue. To get there I want to look, brielfy, at where their argumenets reside:

1. mission emphasis
2. local mission
3. theology

Something about the discussion is eating at me, so I am going to try and work it our as I write.

First of all, I find the discussion foreign simply because I have not been "in love" with a church in nearly forever. I tend to stick to the closest denominational church, as David's discussion partner suggests, out of default. For the last 9-10 years I have attended a church that is literally across the street. We can see the front facade from our bedroom which aften results in calls on rumors that the church is on fire...seriously.

I think the reason this sticks in my craw a bit is because of these two statements. First from Anthony Bradley, who set David thinking

I don't understand at all how it's possible to justify going to a good church that's NOT in your own neighborhood UNLESS you've sold out to the idol of personal preferences.

And then this one from David

Mission - most churches aren't missional. What happens to the missionally minded person who goes to a church that is not missionally minded?

I think there is more sense to Anthony's position than David's - but Anthony robs his point of impact by stating it as a negative instead of a positive.

We should all be missionally minded,a nd our mission is not to the neighborhood or the Dominican Republic, or Latvia, or whereever - OUR MISSION IS TO THE BODY OF CHRIST. What do I mean by that? I am called to build up that body. HOW that is accomplished can take different forms at different times. Sometimes I do so by teaching, sometimes by door-to-door evangelism, and sometimes by cooking for a pitch-in dinner.

Having said that I don't think this is an either/or question. The question is not whther I like a church or not, or even whether it has the right idea of mission or not - the question is simply, "Is the congregation a reasonable facsimile of the Body of Christ?" If it is, then I need to go there and find where I am supposed to serve.

It's even possible, in fact sometimes I think likely, that the image of Christ's body will be so faint as to be nearly unrecognizable, and where I am supposed to serve is to increase that image in the congregation.

This implies that there are congregations out there that are not reasonable facsimilies of the body of Christ. That statement is sad but true. I must stae; however, that I think that is a congregation-by-congregation thing, and not a denominational thing. The congregation I now belong to, I rejected some 15 years before, for a bunch of reasons.

There is some bad in how I developed this viewpoint, but the result is, I think, completely positive. The bad in how I came to this place is simple. In a congregation one should both nurture and be nurtured. I; however, long ago gave up on the expectation of resonable and consistent and good nurturing from any congregation. I've simply been let down too many times. It happens, to be certain, but it is usually a pleasant surprise. Which leads to the complete positive in the stand itself.

This viewpoint, I believe results in the kind of positive denial of self that God demands of his. This is the point that I think Bradley is ham-fistedly making. God can meet us anywhere, in any circumstance. I am not looking for a congregation to find Him; He is after all everywhere. I am looking simply to be His. That means I cannot be mine. In the end, the congregational decision cannot be about what I want, but about what He wants.

If, when seeking a congregation you don;t ask about anything but, "God what would YOU have me do?" I think you will end up in the right place, near or far, denominational or independaent, missional or not.

Related Tags: Christianity, church, congregation, denomination, self-denial, service, mission

Making Room For Genuine Lay Leadership

Here in the Godblogosphere there are, I think, a lot of frustrated vocational ministers. Some of us have tried and hated it; others have just failed, or at least been told we failed; other still have the background, but just never tried for whatever reason. We are people that are more mature in our faith, our understanding of our faith, and our personal relationship with Jesus that seek an outlet for that which God has given us to share. In many cases we have been frustrated by a vocation that seems to be about everything but what we thought it was about.

Many of us rail about the church's failures because, in addition to not having the outlet for ministry we believe we are called to, we feel we are on our own, unable to find the leadership that we need to take the next step in our own faith life. There are a lot of authors out there writing books about how people can find deeper and more meaningful faith. People like Dallas Willard and Richard Foster come to mind.

The problems I have described exists, I think because despite protestations to the contrary, Protestants have not really given up on the priestly role, they have relabeled it, they have limited it, but it still exists. There is still a formal differentiation about who can and cannot perform certain functions. In the mainline Protestant denominations, only those with the proper education and ordinations can preside at sacramental occasions. In many evangelical churches, the distinction is more along a business model and less a sacramental model, but the distinction remains - There are those that as "in" and those that are not.

Most of this official offices descend from the apostolic role. Have you ever thought about the fact that it's pretty funny when cessassionist denominations hold to apostolic roles? Perhaps even misguided?

There are two really important points that I think come from this introductory discussion.

The first is that as things stand, the role of vocational ministry appears to be reaching the pinnacle of being a Christian. That perception simply must end. It places undue pressure on those in vocational ministry and it does not aid in the building of mature Christians that function in the rest of the world. Once they get mature, they think they are supposed to go to work for the church. The best way I can think of to end this perception is in the hands of those in vocational ministry. More than anyone else, they must demonstrate the humility that only the Holy Spirit can provide. They must demonstrate that theirs is a role, not a goal, and that they have a long, long way to go towards becoming genuine and complete imitators of Christ.

The second point is related, the church has to make a genuine place, for genuine ministry by the laity. Not limited roles, not just boards - I mean real and meaningful ministry. There should be nothing reserved exclusively for the clergy. This doesn't mean there will not be standards and restrictions, it means that the clerical role will change from holder of certain special duties, to being the gatekeeper of those duties, the arbiter of when an individual has met the standard.

Which brings us back to humility. It is tempting when acting as gatekeeper, to keep what is behind the gate for oneself. Only genuine humility can overcome that tendency.

When God has taught me humility, it has generally been through someone explaining to me how much I did not know, and how poor I really was at X. And now the circle is complete. The first role of the laity is to help the clergy maintain the proper levels of humility - to hold them accountable, and the clergy must submit to it. To not to breeds the corruption that has become all to apparent in church, after church, after church.

Related Tags: lay leadership, humility, accountability, maturity, Christianity