I started this discussion by relating to a conversation I am having regarding the development of a church’s governmental and leadership structure as prescribed by their By Laws. In my last post I discussed the error of replacing the headship of the church with a man rather than keeping Christ as the head. This leads us to the second error. That error is setting up a system that creates a class system within the body of Christ (laity and clergy) rather than allowing for each believer to develop/mature under the leading and lordship of Christ in community. This leads to many problems within the Church and I would like to discuss of few of those here. This has been major error which is in direct relation to the first error previously discussed (The error of replacing the headship of the church with a man rather than keeping Christ as the head).

The problem is rooted in the tendency that men (and women) want to be in power. Therefore, there must be an “us” (the clergy class) and a “them” (the laity class). How does this happen? Sometimes they set themselves up as a separate category of disciple or class of believer. Then they proclaim that if you want to grow, if you want to mature, if you want to have gifting and even our degree of anointing, then you must allow us to govern, rule over you as your overseers. There are even claims of financial success, prosperous lives and good marriages if you remain submitted to this man or system. This cuts the believer off from the head who is Christ and replaces Christ with an elite class of clergy. We see that this happened historically and it originated in the Church out of Rome as well as the perversions of pagan practices of the Constantine era.

It does not matter if the church structure minimizes the titles and offices normally labeled as clergy. If they continue to set a group apart as being superior or closer to Christ because of their anointing or position the same erroneous practice is at play. The clergy laity system ignores the biblical pattern of a body and has established a hierarchal order based upon the professional and the non-professional Christian. There is no biblical precedent for this at all. This class system causes several errors and weaknesses in the body of Christ. I will be discussing in later posts six of these errors or weaknesses:

  • A misunderstanding of overseer
  • A misunderstanding of leadership
  • A misunderstanding of anointing
  • Ignoring the priesthood of all believers.
  • A departure from making disciples of Jesus Christ
  • The development of a separate entity other than the church of Jesus Christ

In my next post I will continue to share the errors and weaknesses of creating a class system within the church and discuss the misunderstanding of overseer.