We’ve encountered, in our relational participatory churches over the years, a common problem that enslaves many Christians and hinders their ability to initiate or enter into healthy fellowship.

It occurs when longstanding hurts, disappointments and emotional wounds become so ingrained into someone’s sense of identity …

That it begins to define them.

When this happens, it’s hard for them to transparently expose and turn those core issues over to Jesus.

So rather than finding liberation and wholeness through new life in Christ, along with healthy fellowship …

They become stuck in their past and can’t move forward.

Here’s the thing:

The New Testament says that elders are supposed to function pastorally, but most church leaders these days have no idea how to help people find emotional wholeness and healing in Christ …

And don’t even try.

Yet if you want to help people find healing and healthy community, you need to be willing to start gently walking one-on-one with them to their internal places of hurt.

Once there, allow them to finally express – fully, openly and verbally – their past and their pain to Jesus …

And, if needed, guide them towards openly and verbally forgiving those who wronged them and then have them ask God to forgive them for how they let the offense – rather than Him – define them.

This is the nitty gritty of confession and forgiveness in action.

Next have them bundle up the hurt in their spirit, lift that bundle up and explicitly release it to Jesus.

This is the nitty gritty of repentance in action.

When they do, we’ve seen that Jesus always takes it, and in turn always gives them healing and wholeness in exchange.

No exceptions!

This is the nitty gritty of redemption in action …

Because where there was bondage before, now there is the beginning of new life and healthy community in Him.

Don’t assume that relational participatory churches don’t need leaders.

In fact, it takes strong, secure leadership to create and maintain a safe environment …

Where others feel secure enough to come forth and minister one to another for the mutual building up of each other like the New Testament commands.

To help achieve that, the New Testament provides for elders (plural) who, among other tasks, watch over and protect each local church.

We do that by helping to equip everyone else to do works of ministry according to their diverse gifts, rather than assuming the primary burden of ministry ourselves …

And by creating a safe, secure environment in our gatherings where everyone feels free to actually come forth in ministry, one to another.

As an elder in a relational participatory church that meets in my home, I can attest to the weighty responsibility this puts on us.

To do it well takes humility as we discern when intervention is actually needed to protect the church and its members …

And then firm action when it is.

For example:

In my experience, smaller relational participatory churches like we see in the New Testament …

Often attract people who tend to dominate the gatherings – either intentionally or unintentionally – with their own unresolved issues, pet doctrines and individual agendas.

They haven’t learned to properly prefer and minister to others, and participate out of their own issues instead.

A good elder sees what’s happening and privately tries to work with them to help them come into balance.

But if they refuse, and persist in trying to dominate the church and thwarting it’s ability to function as the multi-gifted, multi-part Body of Christ …

The elders must act.

Otherwise, without proper leadership …

Those churches will inevitably fail, no matter how good everyone else’s intentions may be.

Ultimately, the goal of Biblical leaders must be to help folks properly come forth, rather than elevating themselves over the church.

So the issue isn’t whether we need leaders, but how they lead …

And whether they truly function as servants to all.

Why do we persist in making our churches dependent upon, and primarily revolve around, a “Senior Pastor” …

When no such position or role exists in the New Testament?

Eph. 4:11 is the only verse where the Greek noun translated as “pastor” is used in the New Testament regarding the church.

That’s it. Just once and nowhere else.

Yet we’ve taken that one passage out of context and built our current, prevailing “pastor centric” model of church and church leadership around it.

Many have been deeply wounded by churches and ministries that used them – often when they were young and naive – to advance a particular leader’s vision by trying to mold them to his own gifts and callings.

Eventually, their own unique gifts, callings and God-given identity became subsumed to another man’s grand agenda …

And began to atrophy.

It’s liberating, however, when we finally learn that God did not create us to be like anyone else …

But instead gives us different personalities and motivations to match the differing spiritual gifts, callings and abilities He distributes among us.

So let’s be willing to learn from one another, while also experiencing His pleasure as we uniquely use and enjoy His differing gifts as He intended …

In our lives, families, fellowships and communities.

There are many problems with making a “church” primarily about “the Pastor.”

One is that if “the Pastor” goes off track, burns out, hits his own personal limits, or whatever …

So typically also goes ”his” church.

Perhaps that’s why the concept of “the Pastor” who primarily runs and leads a church – or is the lynchpin of a church – simply doesn’t exist in the New Testament.

When we instead adopt the New Testament’s approach to local church ministry and leadership, there is greater balance and stability with broader discipleship.

Church then becomes a gathering of believers with ministry by one another to one another through the many gifts and callings God bestows between us …

And “pastor” is simply one of the functions performed by elders who emerge among us to guide and minister beside us to help make that happen.

Maybe that’s why God designed US to be HIS church …

Rather than primarily being about one man with a platform.

In the New Testament, “church” is not a meeting or a “service.”

Nor is it a building, a staged event or spectator seating.

Rather, it’s a local community of people who serve God, each other and a waiting world, through ministry one to another for the mutual building up of all with Christ as the Head …

While also not neglecting to gather together to encourage and motivate one another towards love and good works.

Many “Christians” these days …

Want spectacle over obedience.

Which is why “worship” these days …

Has become spectacle rather than obedience.

Church in the New Testament is never about gathering to enter into God’s presence …

But about expressing His presence – hopefully already in us – to one another through the many different gifts He distributes among us so we can edify and strengthen each other.

Nor is it about having a “worship service” …

But includes congregationally singing God’s praises to encourage each other so we can live daily lives of sacrificial service and reverent obedience to Him, which is true worship.

It also is not about monopolizing monologue sermons by the one …

But about ministry by one another to motivate each other to love and good works.

So why do Christians accept anything less …

Each Sunday morning?

It takes a community …

To make a disciple.

Perhaps that’s why pastor-centric, institutional spectator churches are so ineffective at actual discipleship …

And produce so many carnal “Christians” these days.

Perhaps that’s also why church, as actually commanded in the New Testament, instead is a simple and participatory community …

Where discipleship “naturally” happens as they gather together to mutually build up each other through ministry one to another out of the abundant, diverse gifts and abilities God distributes among us.