The Recasting of Authority

The various backgrounds out of which house church groups and Christian communities have come in the last 10 or 15 years often did not provide a clear basis for appropriate leadership. Some house church groups grew up in major Christian denominations. Whether Protestant or Catholic, these denominations assumed a focus on the pastor or the priest as the leader.

Very often there were those in the house churches who rejected the pastoral form of leadership. This reaction may have reflected adolescent growth syndromes or bad experiences with authoritarian pastors. Whatever the reasons, that kind of reaction and response often did not lead to an alternate vision of what leadership should be.

House churches have also been influenced by student movements in the late '60s and the early '70s, where there were various cultural and sociological forces at work. For example, there was a sense of experiential immediacy: everyone wanted to experience truth and reality directly. Traditions, structures, authority patterns seemed distant, mediated ways of discovering reality. Stated more positively, the student movement wanted total and unmediated participation in all decision making, in the whole process.

Included in this mood was an egalitarian view of individuals. The biblical phrase that every person has a gift or a ministry was often interpreted in the context of this mood to mean that everyone takes a turn at doing everything. Everyone should take his or her turn at moderation, leading, preaching, teaching, speaking, dancing, or whatever else might be happening.

Another part of the student movement mood was a generational vision of the world in which everyone over 30 is compromised and everyone under 18 is unaware, leaving only those within a 12-year range as trustworthy. Because leaders had usually been over 30, and because they had ostensibly demonstrated both in church, political, and social life that they could not be trusted, the generational vision added to reactions against leadership.

Yet another element of the student mood was often an anti-institutional ideology which questioned leadership understood in terms of a particular office with particular status, and which used both office and status in order to accumulate power and manipulate others. Leadership looked like a child of the devil or one of his henchmen.

House churches which were influenced by these movements and moods discovered that groups which have no known and designated leadership have difficulty simply surviving and working together. Without clearly defined patterns of leadership, consensus was next to impossible. There were innumerable small groups and households that started with great vigor and broad vision, but completely folded within four to six months because they could not reach consensus on significant issues.

There was often lack of agreement on who should take initiative, or on who should follow through in the sometimes intense conflicts, arising often when people try to live and work together intensively. On the pragmatic level, it became evident that not everyone was equally gifted in all roles and functions of group life. Not everyone could lead singing, either by playing a guitar or carrying a tune; not everyone could moderate a meeting. Such experiences led to frustrations and confusion.

In the search for solutions to these frustrations, several of the house churches rediscovered that the Bible speaks about leadership authority and leadership roles. Throughout the book of Acts, the apostles exercised significant leadership roles. In some English translations of the New Testament, terms such as "ruling" over the flock and of members "being subject" to those who are over them in Christ are used. That certainly didn't sound attractive to egalitarian-minded people, but the words offered reassurance and guidance in the context of confusion and frustration.

This rediscovery of biblical language in the midst of frustrating experiences with leaderlessness has often been used to reaffirm an hierarchical pattern of leadership. Because some house church groups organized their life by households, the "father of the household" image also reinforced this trend.

In some cases members of house churches drew on the traditions of their denominational origins. For example, persons coming out of the Episcopal Church or Roman Catholic Church had experienced subordination to the bishop as subordination to Christ's representative on earth. This tendency was further reinforced by the charismatic renewal movement, partly because the movement in the late '60s arose in, and spread to, churches having an episcopal polity, and partly because strong individuals reinforced with qualifying experiences became the "leaders" of the charismatic movement.

In some of the house churches, the exercise of a therapeutic function in household settings reinforced the pattern. People who are troubled or weak, or whose families have disintegrated, need clearly designated structures for support and healing; hierarchical patterns of leadership have worked effectively in providing such structures.

Varieties of Gifts
Although the movement from egalitarianism and reaction against central leadership to a reinforcement of hierarchical patterns of leadership may be understandable and even partially justifiable, there is a third model which speaks to the situation of the house churches and which is intrinsically more biblical and more appropriate.

This model has four major characteristics. First, all members in the church have a particular and identifiable gift or ministry. This is stated literally in two lists of ministries and gifts in the New Testament, found in 1 Corinthians 12:7 and Ephesians 4:7. These lists enumerate a series of gifts and ministries: apostles, prophets, teachers, miracle workers, those who heal, helpers, administrators, etc. In both of these passages it is clearly and unequivocally stated that everyone in the church has a gift.

1 Corinthians 12 describes this universal ministry as characteristic of the Spirit's presence among the believers. Participating in the body of Christ means that everyone has a gift and that everyone has a part in the church's mission. There is no fundamental distinction between a clergy and a laity, however, that may be defined in various denominational patterns.

This universality of gifts and ministries does not therefore reflect a highly developed democratic society in a philosophical sense; it is rather living in the presence of the Spirit and participating in the body of Christ. A part of salvation in Christ means affirming and practicing this universality of ministry and gifts in the Christian church.

These key New Testament passages counter the general human trend to move away from the vision of a universal ministry toward religious specialization, where only one person in a particular religious community, or perhaps a few people, performs the necessary leadership functions, and where this person is given particular status.

Second, there is within the New Testament a particular gift or ministry which is leadership. One of the terms used for this kind of function is "elder." The term "elder" apparently derived from synagogue usage, where a group of older, experienced men provided the kind of oversight and leadership needed in a local synagogue. The "overseer" or the "bishop" terminology refers to a similar position, but from a more functional point of view.

Shepherds, Elders, Apostles
The term "shepherd" is a figurative term which reflects the imagery of the flock and the shepherd. In the Old Testament, shepherd was one of the terms often used for the king. In the New Testament, because Jesus becomes the norm for shepherds, it no longer means ruling over others like a king, but giving one's life for others in service.

The overseer/shepherd function was sometimes linked with the teaching function. In Ephesians 4:11 and in 1 Timothy 5:17, some of the elders were also teachers. There was some overlap and some diversity in the way these roles were worked out.

It appears that there were several such persons in each local Christian fellowship. In the lists we have about the various ministries, they are almost always in the plural, referring to elders, apostles, prophets, teachers, etc. In Acts 20, Luke reports several elders for the congregation at Ephesus. Thus even though there is sometimes today a tendency to go toward the idea that in one house church there should be one elder (or equivalent), the New Testament pattern is constructed on plural eldership.

The Greek equivalent for our term "leader" is used only twice in the New Testament in referring to the church (Hebrews 13:7, 17). The same term is used several times to refer to leaders in the Jewish community or in the Roman community.

It may be that the equivalents for our word "leader" in the first century culture were not used for the Christian church because of the shifts in understanding that took seriously Jesus' teaching that "among you there shall be servants and not rulers." The old language for leadership was linked with the language for ruling and domination. Jesus exemplified and taught the reality of leadership as serving.

This servant leadership in the house church takes initiative in helping the group form a consensus rooted in the Jesus tradition and moving in the direction of fullness in Christ. If we see that kind of servant leadership in the sociological context of the house church, it makes much sense. It can manifest itself more wholly in the context of small size and direct interrelationships.

Third, the New Testament describes the major characteristics of the elder/overseer/shepherd function. We learn from passages such as 1 Timothy and Titus that the kinds of persons who are equipped to be elders in a house church are the kinds of persons who demonstrate the qualities which encourage and build family solidarity.

The same qualities of leadership which inspire family solidarity will also help build solidarity in the family of God. These qualities, such as gentleness and a calm temperament, are generally antithetical to strong leadership as defined by secular society, but find their "home" in the house church setting.

Another characteristic of these leaders is that they already would have some Christian experience and maturity. Those who are "elders" are most readily agents and symbols of an internal and external group unity. People can point to them as representative of group unity and solidarity, not because they impose their will upon the group, but because they have a way of bringing the group together.

In many cases, elders are described as those who can teach, meaning that they are the ones who, rooted in the Jesus tradition, have a discriminating judgment with respect to other influences that may come upon the group. They can help the group determine whether movement is in line with the Jesus tradition, or whether it deviates from it.

There is a natural spiritual authority in leaders/elders who demonstrate such characteristics. The naturalness means that they are persons who already have a certain kind of experience, a carry-over from broader family experience and responsibility in many contexts.

The house church context provides a congruity between these characteristics and a type of leadership which best reflects the biblical model. When the apostle Paul speaks of "managing" a household, he meant more than simply managing a nuclear family; the household may have included married and unmarried relatives, as well as slaves and visitors. In that context, the head of the household served as a host, supervised the budget, and represented the household in the public forum.

This functioning in the household context prepared elders to function in the Christian community. It also helped others discern who should fill the eldering function in the congregation.

For example, Priscilla and Aquila were such elders in the house church in Ephesus. They were naturally the hosts and leaders of the gatherings. This did not mean that they did all the preaching, teaching, and worship leading, but they symbolized the unity and continuity of the group and took initiative in helping to bring and weld that group together. Stephen Clark, in the house church handbook edited by John Miller, refers to the environmental approach to leadership, over against a purely status understanding or function description. A status definition of leadership focuses on educational preparation, ordination, and the like. The functional one focuses on doing a particular job well.

The environmental perspective for discerning and affirming leadership asks primarily what happens to the total group when a given person leads it and how such a person functions in response to the whole group. This standard goes beyond status, because it attends to bringing out the gifts and the ministries of the whole group as well as the individual. It is more than an individual's effective functioning, because it extends to an ability to relate to the group and to encourage others in the group to relate to each other in such a way that the community life is enhanced.

According to Clark, "A good term for the type of leadership that is natural to community is elder. An elder has a position, is one of the recognized heads and has an openly accepted responsibility for the order of community life. But an elder is chosen because he or she is really one of the elders and not only in name. Elders are chosen because they have the natural position of respect and leadership in that community."

He goes on to say, "If the church is going to be able to return to a community life, the position of elder has to be recaptured. Leaders are needed who can work with an environmental approach. They have to be the kind of people who have a spiritually natural authority. It is only as we have the kind of leadership which is appropriate to community life that we can have a successful community."

Fourth, the ministry of eldering should be exercised in the context of mutual subordination. The concept "mutual subordination" may help us in several ways: 1) by correcting the temptations to return to hierarchical models of leadership with a unilinear direction of subordination, 2) by correcting the tendencies to reject any kind of subordination and designated leadership, and 3) by correlating the domestic household language of the Pauline epistles with church structure in the house church.

In the "house tables" (for example, Ephesians 4-5), the apostle Paul refers to those who made up the domestic households of the first century, describing the relationships between wives and husbands, servants and masters, parents and children in terms of "mutual subordination." This idea of mutual subordination brings together the concern for an authentic order in social relationships without adopting the hierarchical pattern of the surrounding pagan society.

In an analogous fashion, the eldering role is a specific gift or ministry exercised along with others. It would not be fitting to say that all other ministries are only subordinate to the eldering role. There is rather a more complex interrelationship in which the elders are subordinate, for example, to the apostles and prophets, just as they are subordinate in a specific sense to the elders.

There are several clues in the New Testament which point in this direction. Let us begin with the role of the apostle. In the various places where apostleship appears as a ministry or as a gift, it always comes first in the list. According to traditional Western ways of thinking, this should mean that the apostle would be at the top of a hierarchy in a structure of descending authority.

What it meant, however, was that in his apostolic ministry Paul provided a unique kind of leadership in founding and teaching churches. He was subordinate to other ministries and gifts in the church.

For example, in Acts 13 we see that Paul as apostle was commissioned and sent out by prophets and teachers together with the congregation and that he regularly reported back to that congregation. As an apostle, Paul exercised leadership and took initiative and moved forward in a dramatic kind of way; simultaneously he remained subordinate to others who were exercising their gifts and ministries in the church.

Another clue in the New Testament is found in 1 Corinthians 14. The prophets were expected to prophesy, admonish, and exhort the congregation. Other members of the fellowship at Corinth were subordinate to the prophets on these points.

But the prophets needed to be tested by the congregation which was to listen and discern. The authority of the prophets was exercised in the context of mutual subordination rather than in a unilinear structure of subordination. On the one hand, the prophets provided leadership in the prophetic ministry; on the other hand, they were accountable to the congregation for discriminating between true and false prophecy.

Yet another example would be 1 Timothy 5 which refers to the procedure for correcting elders. Even the elders who exercised a foundational ministry were themselves accountable to others in the church, and needed to be open to fraternal admonition and discipline, even by non-elders.

We have discovered a pattern of leadership in the New Testament house churches which provides both the model and the characteristics of what leadership should and can be in the house churches of our time. The recasting of authority, from the right to rule to the freedom to serve in a community of mutual subordination, is a biblical model which goes beyond both the restoration of hierarchical structures, on the one hand, and egalitarian individualism on the other.

Marlin E. Miller was president and professor of theology at Goshen Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, when this article appeared.