NO MORE SACRED COWS
SACRED COW MAKES GREAT HAMBURGER!
The shift we are now in … Old Wineskin to New Wineskin … has been coming for the better part of the last 5 DECADES. God has given us plenty of time to get rightly positioned! And yet, in the hour we now find ourselves, it is clear that many churches have chosen NOT to prepare!
I hear a lot … and I mean ALOT … of talk coming from churches that claim to firmly BELEIVE in the biblical teaching of a New Wine coming to The Body of Christ, yet they remain in the bondage of OPERATING in the Old Wineskin! I am often asked, “What do you think makes it so difficult for churches to actually shift”?
My answer is simple … IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE A WINESKIN WITHOUT KILLING A COW!
It seems that the structure of the western church has become a “sacred cow” that is making it very difficult to shift into a new wineskin. That sacred cow, unfortunately, is fed by the largest majority of Christians in America by the prevailing assumption in most churches that “pastors” are supposed to hold the primary office in the church.
It’s time to KILL that sacred cow! But to do so, we have to understand that the paradigm of the modern-day church today …
PASTOR
][
CONGREGATION
… scarcely resembles the church launched in Acts 2, by the apostles. The founding apostles never imagined a church made-up of a CEO pastor, leading a congregation of “laymen” (I will discuss that flawed term in a future blog)!
Have you ever done a word-search of the word “pastor” in the Bible? I have an app on my electronic devices called “STRONGS KJV” … I recommend it! I typed in the word “pastor” and hit the return key: not a single result! I typed it in the plural of the word … “pastors”, and was directed to Ephesians 4:11, where it says, “He gave some … as pastors.”
Is it just me, or is that a STUNNING reality? The sum total of all biblical teaching about “pastors”, is that … THERE ARE SOME! The startling fact is that in the original text of scripture, "pastors" are only mentioned one (1) time!
Are you aware that no church in the New Testament is described as having "a pastor"? The Apostle Paul wrote many letters to the churches he founded. Have you ever realized that in all of those letters, he greets elders, deacons, & the people that were meeting in houses across the city/region? He never even mentions pastors, as overseers of the body!
In I Corinthians 12, when Paul ranks the ministries within the church, he says … “First apostles; second prophets; third teachers …”. Pastors are not mentioned in the list. WHY? Because “pastor” was not the predominant office in the New Testament Church! This, IN NO WAY, minimizes the importance of pastors within the Body of Christ. It simply makes clear that pastors are not mantled to plant OR lead churches!
I recently did a study of the New Testament, seeking to find out how many times each of the 5-fold offices of Ephesians 4:11 are mentioned. I’m not sure that most modern-day churches are ready for the results:
Apostles: 87 times
Prophets: 157 times
Teachers: 121 times
Evangelists: 3 times
Pastors: 1 time
Now think about what the American church has done. Most do not even believe that apostles OR prophets even exist anymore! They’ll let teachers teach a Sunday School class, as long as they use a resource approved by their denomination. They might invite someone they acknowledge as an evangelist to come in once or twice a year, to lead “evangelistic services”. Yet they will commission a “search committee” to go out and locate a man or a woman (maybe) who can be brought in for a popular vote of the people, to elevated a "pastor" to the spiritual equivalent of a business CEO ... to run the church, and oversee all of its ministries.
Can you see why the western church is in such a mess today, with not a single evangelical denomination reporting a net growth in over 2 DECADES (Barna Research Group)? Again, hear me CLEARLY … pastors are important, even VITAL to the life and health of the New Testament Church. Every church should have pastors! But the biblical truth is …
PASTORS WERE NEVER INTENDED TO PLANT AND/OR LEAD CHURCHES!
The shift we are now in … Old Wineskin to New Wineskin … has been coming for the better part of the last 5 DECADES. God has given us plenty of time to get rightly positioned! And yet, in the hour we now find ourselves, it is clear that many churches have chosen NOT to prepare!
I hear a lot … and I mean ALOT … of talk coming from churches that claim to firmly BELEIVE in the biblical teaching of a New Wine coming to The Body of Christ, yet they remain in the bondage of OPERATING in the Old Wineskin! I am often asked, “What do you think makes it so difficult for churches to actually shift”?
My answer is simple … IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE A WINESKIN WITHOUT KILLING A COW!
It seems that the structure of the western church has become a “sacred cow” that is making it very difficult to shift into a new wineskin. That sacred cow, unfortunately, is fed by the largest majority of Christians in America by the prevailing assumption in most churches that “pastors” are supposed to hold the primary office in the church.
It’s time to KILL that sacred cow! But to do so, we have to understand that the paradigm of the modern-day church today …
PASTOR
][
CONGREGATION
… scarcely resembles the church launched in Acts 2, by the apostles. The founding apostles never imagined a church made-up of a CEO pastor, leading a congregation of “laymen” (I will discuss that flawed term in a future blog)!
Have you ever done a word-search of the word “pastor” in the Bible? I have an app on my electronic devices called “STRONGS KJV” … I recommend it! I typed in the word “pastor” and hit the return key: not a single result! I typed it in the plural of the word … “pastors”, and was directed to Ephesians 4:11, where it says, “He gave some … as pastors.”
Is it just me, or is that a STUNNING reality? The sum total of all biblical teaching about “pastors”, is that … THERE ARE SOME! The startling fact is that in the original text of scripture, "pastors" are only mentioned one (1) time!
Are you aware that no church in the New Testament is described as having "a pastor"? The Apostle Paul wrote many letters to the churches he founded. Have you ever realized that in all of those letters, he greets elders, deacons, & the people that were meeting in houses across the city/region? He never even mentions pastors, as overseers of the body!
In I Corinthians 12, when Paul ranks the ministries within the church, he says … “First apostles; second prophets; third teachers …”. Pastors are not mentioned in the list. WHY? Because “pastor” was not the predominant office in the New Testament Church! This, IN NO WAY, minimizes the importance of pastors within the Body of Christ. It simply makes clear that pastors are not mantled to plant OR lead churches!
I recently did a study of the New Testament, seeking to find out how many times each of the 5-fold offices of Ephesians 4:11 are mentioned. I’m not sure that most modern-day churches are ready for the results:
Apostles: 87 times
Prophets: 157 times
Teachers: 121 times
Evangelists: 3 times
Pastors: 1 time
Now think about what the American church has done. Most do not even believe that apostles OR prophets even exist anymore! They’ll let teachers teach a Sunday School class, as long as they use a resource approved by their denomination. They might invite someone they acknowledge as an evangelist to come in once or twice a year, to lead “evangelistic services”. Yet they will commission a “search committee” to go out and locate a man or a woman (maybe) who can be brought in for a popular vote of the people, to elevated a "pastor" to the spiritual equivalent of a business CEO ... to run the church, and oversee all of its ministries.
Can you see why the western church is in such a mess today, with not a single evangelical denomination reporting a net growth in over 2 DECADES (Barna Research Group)? Again, hear me CLEARLY … pastors are important, even VITAL to the life and health of the New Testament Church. Every church should have pastors! But the biblical truth is …
PASTORS WERE NEVER INTENDED TO PLANT AND/OR LEAD CHURCHES!
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