or many of God’s people the “stage and pulpit” era of ministry is fortunately drawing to a close. Whether it will end by virtue of persecution or simply because God will abolish it Himself within their hearts remains to be seen. For some it will simply be the clear voice of the Spirit on the inside that says” Come out of her my people”.
Many Christians in China and other places, have had to master church life without the synagogues on Sunday a long time ago.
The idea of having one pastor preaching week after week is not found in the New Testament. It is a man made construct which moves the local church a long way towards becoming the daughter of the harlot, mentioned in the Revelation of Jesus Christ. The pastortution model (pastor+prostitute+substitute) is a disaster. see The pastortute is probably a good man
Tithers are mostly too scared and too subjugated to address the problem, but we have one or two modern analogies that cast a lot of light on how church can and should work.
In the classic banking system, each bank has one ledger (and some back ups) in which all records are kept. This ledger is regarded as the truth and the authority but there is essentially only one ledger. The backups are copies and under control of the bank and carry no authority within themselves. The backups are dumb slaves of the master record set. Somehow like tithers.
With block chain we now find a way to distribute the record of the truth over many peers and find that this system is must less vulnerable to fraud, deception and corruption. There is no single point of failure anymore but multiple peers who all carry the “truth” inside them.
For the church, this shows us a little parable of how we can KNOW THE TRUTH without having clergy, pastors, priests, theologians trying to hold sway over the church and claiming power and money at the same time. The clergy system and the centralized control we find in local church has decreased processing power and created single point of failure (the pastor).
Many baby Christians think their pastor is wonderful just like a little child thinks their mother is wonderful and that they will always be safe if mommy makes all the decisions. In real life, this doesn’t work and the child must grow up, become part of the adult world, and take responsibility for the truth and for the movement and reality of life.Fathering & Mothering
In previous generations, a computer had one processor. That is like a church having one pastor.
Now computers have multiple cores and we have found ways to coordinate the various cores without chaos of conflict. The Holy Spirit has always worked through multiple leaders and multiple ministers and multiple pastors without any human having supreme authority, or veto power over others. The pastors in the Bible were part of the elders teams, made up of many mature Christians, some of whom would be Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist & Pastor-Teacher, none of whom has more authority than “truth working though love ” just like normal elders and none of whom will be a paid professional. Being gifted and anointed makes one a teacher and coach, not a controller and caption.
Under the mantra “God is a God of order”, we have had pastors take over local churches and run them like their personal ministries and domains, or worse like a spiritual creche. The babies can be taxed of course. This is perversion and has been perversion from the beginning. Just because God has not wiped it out does not mean He is happy with it. Please remember the dark ages lasted for a thousand years and only then did Martin Luther and the reformers bring significant worldwide light.
Just because huge swathes of Christian believe in tithing and sit in a docile and submitted or disengaged manner, listening to sermons does not mean this pleases God, or that is it is correct or that it was like that from the beginning.
33. “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.34. “No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Jeremiah 31:33-34
27. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.
1 John 2:27