Structuring for Growth and Glory
Stephen Kneale has served as the full-time pastor at Oldham Bethel Church since 2014, where he has carried the main responsibility for preaching and teaching. A prolific blogger, Stephen’s writings have come to be valued for their candour, theological rigour, and heart for the health of the local church. Over the next few weeks, we will be sharing excerpts from the introduction to his new book Independent Eldership, the first volume in our church polity series ‘A People on Purpose’.
Discussions about church governance often meet with all the enthusiasm of a dental check-up. We know it matters in theory and may catch some problems but we’re never going to enjoy it. Few ever followed Jesus because they fell in love with the church constitution or membership structures. It can all seem so unnecessary, a bit tiresome and likely to keep us away from all the important gospel matters that we want to be about.
The truth is, many people reckon polity and governance just don’t matter that much. That is, until something happens that requires a response. Then everybody wishes the constitution said something about what to do. That’s the point at which everybody wishes there was some sort of process. Everybody wishes they knew who should do something and what, exactly, they are meant to do. If we ignore polity and governance, dismissing them as unimportant, we end up like those who wonder whether they should have taken gas safety regulations a bit more seriously after their boiler has blown up. These things never seem to matter until suddenly, they do. Something else always seems more important until it suddenly becomes the most pressing issue in front of us. Only, at that point, it’s all too late. The processes and systems we need just aren’t there and things start to fall apart.
The fact is, the goal of the local church is not to be as efficient and organised as possible. Organisation and structures are means to an end, not the sum total of what we are aiming to do. The reason the church exists is to glorify God, enjoy him forever and equip God’s people to do God’s work. Local churches exist to grow believers to maturity in Christ and reach the lost with the gospel. They exist to do the work of discipleship and evangelism for God’s glory. Clearly, structures and administration are not their primary focus. But that doesn’t make them unimportant. Church structures and administration are secondary means of achieving the church’s primary goals. Without them, the church will not fulfil its purpose to equip the saints and reach the lost to the glory of God.
