Weaving Work-Truth into Church Life (Part Seven)

This series of blogs explores how your local church can include God’s truth about daily work in the Sunday agenda. Part Seven points to the need to include those with workplace experience on the teaching team. Links to previous articles in this series: (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Five) (Part Six)

Who do you see as the three greatest teachers in the New Testament? Would Jesus be your first choice? How about Paul—would he come in second? And would Peter make your list? In terms of life-shaping background, what do these three preacher-teachers all have in common? Each spent years toiling in ordinary workplaces. Some think Jesus probably put in a couple of decades as a builder or craftsman. Paul earned his way by making tents. Peter grew up working in the family fishing business.

Each of these great teachers—Jesus, Paul, Peter—had been molded by years in so-called “secular” work. Is such on-the-job experience spiritually significant? “I’m prepared to contend,” wrote Eugene Peterson, “that the primary location for spiritual formation is the workplace.” Notice that Peterson did not name the work world as a primary location but as the primary location for spiritual formation. If true, should we take workplace experience into account as we select church leaders today?

The Pastor Who Became a Carpenter

One pastor decided to do something about his lack of experience in the work world. Paul Stevens, after serving 25 years in the pastoral role, took a job as a carpenter. Why? He explains why in his book, Liberating the Laity: “What gripped my conscience,” he says, “were the areas that I had not yet applied to myself. One such area was that I had never supported myself in ministry by the work of my own hands or mind. . . . This plunge into the lay world was for me the only way I could gain the experiential base for a larger equipping ministry.”

After his years in the construction business, Stevens—like Jesus, Paul, and Peter—had “won his spurs” in non-church work. All of which raises a question in my mind: Should we twenty-first century Christ-followers intentionally include among our teaching leaders those whose spiritual formation includes substantial workplace experience?

Insight from Church History

Church history seems to support such a practice. Non-ecclesiastical work occupied many early church leaders. In Liberating the Laity, Stevens gives several examples of leaders engaging in so-called “secular” work. In a fourth century letter, Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote: “Although our clergy do seem very numerous, . . . the majority of them [work at] sedentary crafts whereby they get their daily bread.” And a decree from the Fourth Council of Carthage says, “Let a cleric however learned in the word of God get his livelihood by a craft.”

One New Testament Benchmark for Church Leadership

These two and many other early-church examples line up with New Testament teaching. When he counseled Timothy on selecting a church overseer, Paul said the candidate was to have—in addition to the ability to teach— “a good reputation with outsiders” (I Tim. 3:1-7). Two observations here.

First, the teaching. Paul seems to take it for granted that overseers will form strong relationships with people outside the church—strong enough that non-Christians say good things about them. I once took part in a meeting of church leaders in which the speaker challenged us to pray in pairs for non-Christian acquaintances. The pastor-friend seated next to me said, “I don’t know any unbelievers.” Spending all his time in and attention on the gathered church, he had no standing with outsiders. But what better way to build a solid reputation with unbelievers than to have regular and frequent contact with them on the job? The workplace generously supplies opportunities to nurture relationships with “outsiders.” Jesus, Paul, and Peter certainly had built reputations with their coworkers and customers.

Second, the practices. Paul, Peter, and Luke (in Acts) all reflect a pattern of plural church leadership. Having multiple overseers/elders/shepherds opens the door not only to a diversity of giftedness but also to a wealth of occupational experiences. A shepherding team that includes several from the work world can offer teaching with fresh-from-the-front-lines illustrations of the challenges and opportunities other believers face in that arena.

The Teaching-Preaching Team in Westview Bible Church

For years, Westview Bible Church in Pierrefonds, Quebec, has heard from a teaching team with firsthand workplace knowledge. Nita Kotiuga, one of the pastors says, “It is crucial that the people who are preaching have common experience with the congregation. So our preaching-teaching team has included a teacher, a professor, a dentist, an engineer, retirees, and a stay-at-home mom.”

That workplace connection, Kotiuga says, is vital. “Every Sunday there are people who come up to the preacher and say, ‘I want to share something that happened to me this week at work.’ But if you’re a pastor with no track record in the workplace, what experience do you have working for a dysfunctional boss? Sure, you report to the Elders’ Board, and they function as your boss. But at Westview, this board is made up of really nice people who want to think the best of their employees. When our preacher-teachers pray with people who’ve walked through similar difficulties it means so much more.”

Westview Bible plans to hire a lead pastor who will speak about 60 percent of the time. This should bring in the indisputable benefits of excellent theological training. But those from the various occupations will still be bringing the other 40 percent of the messages. So the preaching-teaching team will continue to include those with the workplace perspective.

The Pastoral Task: Equipping

Looking back on his years as a carpenter, Paul Stevens writes, “Unless we equip the laity to live all of life for God, Christianity will degenerate into mere religion. I had to learn that true spirituality is hammering nails for God and praying before a precise saw cut.” He adds, “Equipping is in the end a pastoral task. . . . Equipping starts with the equipper getting equipped. . . . The weakest link in the gathered services of the church surely is in the preparation for re-entry into the world.”

In what way is that link weakened if all the sermons come only from those whose salary comes from the church? To ask the question in another way, what does a congregation miss if no teaching leader works in a day job?

Why Did Paul Work at Making Tents?

Paul himself provides the answer: “For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow” (II Thess. 3:7-9).

Had Paul not worked making tents, the Thessalonian believers would have missed his model, his pattern, for them to follow. Even before the days of kindergarten with its show and tell, Paul knew not only how to tell the gospel but also how to show how it works in life outside the gathered church.

A teaching team that includes some who earn their living in so-called “secular” jobs is a team that can lead not only by word but also by example.

The Biblical Case for Shared-Church Meetings

Several authors have urged a return to what I call “shared church.” But their books don’t appear on best-seller lists, and few Christ-followers know about them. This blog is the fifth on such books.

Can church meetings act as a spiritual fire extinguisher? Yes, according to Andrew W. Wilson in Do Not Quench the Spirit: A Biblical and Practical Guide to Participatory Church Meetings.

When I first saw this book, I asked myself, “Are its title and subtitle a mismatch?” Not quenching the Spirit, of course, points to I Thess. 5:19. But what does that have to do with participatory church meetings?

How Can Meetings Quench God’s Spirit?

Here’s how Wilson makes the connection in the I Thess. 5:19 context: “To ‘quench the Spirit’ refers to trying to stop the powerful working of the Spirit of God in the life of the church by restricting the freedom of the people of God to use their spiritual gifts.” So if the format of a church meeting leaves the congregation speechless, it douses the flame ignited by God’s Spirit in all for mutually encouraging one another.

In other words, if only a few up front on the platform—those with microphone rights—have the freedom to speak, then the Spirit-given gifts of the great majority get suppressed. What Wilson is saying flies in the face of the traditional agenda for church meetings. However, his message lines up with the participatory meetings seen in the New Testament church.

The words “Biblical and Practical” in the subtitle provide a preview and broad outline for the book. The book’s early chapters explore what those first-century Christians did when they gathered together. Later chapters explain the foundational principles for shared-church meetings, deal with arguments against them, and answer questions often asked about them.

Watching a First-Century Church Meeting

In Chapter 2, Wilson unpacks I Corinthians 14:26-40. Verse 26 says, “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” “In this passage,” Wilson says, “we have the most detailed picture of what actually went on in a church service in New Testament times.”

He notes the absence of several elements we associate with church meetings: sermons, liturgies, pulpits, platforms. “Paul nowhere mentions ‘the sermon’, one main message, the centrepiece of a church service. This is not because Christians in apostolic times did not believe in preaching. Rather the reverse: they believed in preaching so much that they allowed opportunity for multiple people with different spiritual gifts to preach in the church service.”

Wilson has done his homework, often quoting well-known New Testament scholars. For example, he cites Gordon Fee: “What is striking in this entire discussion [in I Cor. 14] is the absence of any mention of leadership or of anyone who would be responsible for seeing that these guidelines were generally adhered to. The community appears to be left to itself and to the Holy Spirit.”

Does this mean those first-century meetings were chaotic free-for-alls? No. In verse 40 of I Cor. 14, Paul cautions that “everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.” This “principle of orderly decency,” Wilson says, is “a second principle that is to be balanced against the principle of opportunity for participation given in verse 39.”

If we twenty-first-century Christians were to visit one of those first-century church meetings, we’d be in for a jolt. “The variety of gifts, contributed by multiple people interacting with each other,” Wilson says, “shows that the New Testament church was not a ‘one-man show.’ How different the New Testament picture is to what we find in most contemporary churches, with our productions and programs, liturgies and set orders of service.”

More Insights into New Testament Gatherings

The picture Paul paints in I Corinthians 14 is just one of several New Testament descriptions of how New Testament Christians regularly met. In his third chapter, Wilson examines I Thess. 5:19-21. “These exhortations,” he says, “appear to depict a church whose gatherings were participatory.” He quotes Scottish theologian, I. Howard Marshall: “Gifts for ministry were being exercised, but some people were trying to suppress them (we don’t know just how), but it is wrong to do so.”

In Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus, Wilson sees even further evidence of participatory patterns in church meetings. Paul told Timothy to stay in Ephesus for a while so that he could “command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer” (I Tim. 1:3). Paul left Titus on Crete to appoint elders who could “encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (Tit. 1:9). By their teaching, these well-trained elders could silence those who were “teaching things they ought not to teach” (v. 11).

The fact that some taught wrongly shows that the teaching/preaching role was not limited to just one specialist. Wilson says, “Neither Timothy nor Titus are given honorific titles anywhere in the New Testament . . . .Timothy and Titus were neither the first bishops nor the senior pastors of the churches. . . . Many (if not all) of the brothers were free to speak, upon whatever subject they wished, but abuses that this system allowed were not left uncorrected, and high standards of teaching were encouraged and expected.”

Principles Behind Participatory Church Meetings

In Chapter 8, Wilson identifies New Testament elements that undergird participatory church meetings:

1. The Holy Spirit’s work: “It is possible for us to restrict God’s Spirit’s activity within the church. We shut God’s Spirit out, hose down the fire of His power, hinder His operations and stop His activity among His people.”

2. Gifts of the Spirit: “In modern evangelical churches there is a shrinking gift-pool due to the increasing professionalization of Christian ministry.”

3. Mutual Building Up. “The New Testament lays heavy emphasis upon the need for Christians to know each other, closely and intimately enough to be able to bear one another's burdens, confess faults one to another, encourage, exhort, and admonish one another; and minister to one another with the Word, song and prayer.”

4. All-Believer Priesthood. “The idea of a distinction between the ministry and other Christians, leading to the setting up of a clerical ‘caste’, is unknown to Scripture.” Wilson again quotes Gordon Fee who deplores “the one-man show of many denominational churches.”

Other elements include the government of the Church (participatory), the Church as a Body (not a few superstars), and Christ as Lord (who rules the Church through the Holy Spirit). Wilson quotes A. W. Tozer, who said: “We must acknowledge the right of Jesus Christ to control the activities of His church. . . . It is not a question of knowing what to do; we can easily learn that from the Scriptures. It is a question of whether or not we have the courage to do it.”

Moving Toward Participatory Meetings

Because “a church that is not used to participatory church gatherings will probably not be able to start having meetings like this without a transition period,” Wilson offers 20 suggestions for making the shift. Among his recommendations: persistent prayer, personal Bible study, good expository preaching, multiple preachers, testimonies, questions and discussion after sermons, to name just 6.

He closes his book with these words: “Doing anything for God requires that we step out in faith, that obstacles and opposition will arise, and that nothing will ever be perfect on earth. Conviction is required for all who wish to do the will of God in their own generation, like David (Acts 13:36). ‘Let each one be fully convinced in his own mind’ (Romans 14:5).”

How Would Jesus Teach in Church?

Monologue or Dialogue?

Think back to the church meetings you’ve attended in the past year. How did the usual method of teaching compare with the way Jesus taught? “Jesus seldom, if ever, monologued,” says Charles H. Kraft, a Fuller Seminary Professor. Instead, “He interacted.”

In his book, Communicating the Gospel God’s Way, Kraft writes, “The word ‘preach’ that is ordinarily used in English translations of [Mark 16:15] is only one way of communicating. Indeed, it is a form of communication that Jesus used very seldom.” 

I checked that out. What we call the “Sermon on the Mount,” as Matthew records it, is monologue. Jesus does most of the talking in John 13-16. But his teaching in those chapters is full of dialogue, conversational back-and-forth. Nearly 60 times the gospels say “Jesus [or he] asked.” Just about the same number of times gospel writers report that “Jesus [or he] answered.” His exchanges included both groups and individuals. Among others, Jesus interacted with John the Baptist, the twelve disciples, women, men, Jewish religious leaders, and foreigners.

Before coming as one of the pastors to Jacob’s Well Church in Chicago, Mark Brouwer, had traveled to coach other pastors. “As I visited churches during that period,” he says, “I discovered how strange it was to sit through a service as a passive observer. I came to believe including discussion times is more biblical and helpful to spiritual growth.”

What do you think? Why did Jesus mainly rely on teaching with dialogue rather than monologue? Why is his method so rarely used in the teaching/preaching that takes place on Sunday mornings today?