Pastor Joel Webbin and David Reese dissect church polity as a covenantal shield against abuse, contrasting voluntary clubs with God-imposed law. They detail "elder-led congregationalism," where elders manage secondary matters while congregations vote on theology and discipline, including excommunication via male heads of house to enforce repentant "tough love." The discussion highlights lawful public processes for defense versus cultish secrecy, arguing that proper government restrains evil, allocates funds for mercy, and utilizes graded courts like Exodus 18 to resolve conflicts. Ultimately, mature churches rely on constitutions and directories to consolidate doctrine, ensuring unity through non-oppressive structures that protect both the institution and its members from tyranny. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Covenantal Institutions and Power00:08:06
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin, here with Right Response Ministries.
In this episode, I am welcoming back to the show Mr. David Reese.
He is a man of many talents, he has many irons in the fire.
One of them is that he is the CEO of Armored Republic.
He is also a local pastor of a Presbyterian church, and he is fantastic on covenant theology, applying God's word, theonomy, a general equity theonomy, applying the principles of God's word and his law.
To every single sphere of life.
And that's what we've been talking about multiple weeks now.
So I encourage you to go back, watch some of the prior episodes with me and David Reese.
But this one, we're going to be focusing on church polity.
Now, I know that sounds exceedingly boring, but listen, we're going to be talking about how to guard against abuse.
Abuse within the ecclesiastical sphere, not just abuse in the home with a marriage or parenting or abuse with the state, tyranny, but abuse in the church.
Churches are notorious, sadly, for abuse.
Ecclesiastical abuse.
And one of the primary reasons why is because churches are ignorant, pastors are ignorant about God's design for church governance, church polity.
How does God's law and word apply in this realm?
Tune in now.
Applying God's word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin, with right respect.
Response Ministries, and I am joined once again with Mr. Reese.
He is the CEO of Armored Republic.
He is also a local pastor in a Presbyterian church.
The name of it, Mr. Reese, reminds me Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix.
Puritan Reformed Church, Phoenix, Arizona.
If you're looking for a solid church, go and check them out.
We're having them back on the show.
We've been talking about a lot of things, but really the broad, big idea is Christian power that power is not icky, that we need to utilize power.
It's not inherently good or inherently evil.
Power is as good as it is wielded righteously according to the word of God, and it's as evil as it is used in a wicked manner against the word of God.
So today we're going to take that further.
We've talked a lot about the household, but I think we're going to talk a little bit now about the ecclesiastical realm and perhaps even setting ourselves up for future episodes in the civic realm.
Mr. Reese, go ahead and take us off.
Brother, thanks for having me on.
I'm excited to be here.
So, what I want people to think about is in America, we believe that the church is a voluntary association.
We sort of treat the church like a social club.
So, what I want to do is I want to reframe people's perspective on the church.
When we think about the relationship of God and the individual, we need to understand that there's a covenantal relationship.
We are guilty before God, not because of some voluntary agreement where we said, okay, God, I'll agree to your set of rules and now you're allowed to judge me.
Instead, no, he imposes his law word on us.
And we are responsible as breakers of the law through the mediation of Adam as a covenant representative.
And then we are also guilty because we have a corrupt nature, and we're also guilty because we commit particular sins ourselves, right?
So there's this covenantal institution between God and the individual.
Now, we also think about the household you're born into a household, and you don't get to vote on whether or not you're a member of the household when you're born into it, it's imposed on you.
And so in marriage, what you have is people leaving the institutions underneath their parents.
There's exceptions, obviously, in certain cases of abuse and all that kind of stuff.
You can have people being liberated, emancipated out of a household before then.
But the ordinary pattern is to leave the authority of the parents and to secede from your parents' household.
There's a declaration of independence and a charter of a new government in the marriage covenant.
And so God's the definer of marriage.
It's between one man and one woman.
And we know how to define man and we know how to define woman.
And that's very good.
Let's clap for all of us.
So we get that.
That's wonderful.
Some people don't.
And so this idea that the household is a covenant institution, when you join into a marriage, you don't just get to leave whenever you want, there are only certain conditions under which it is permissible to leave.
And so we have this idea that it's a covenant institution.
And so then you think about the church, it's a covenant institution as well.
And baptism is a covenantal sign that's given there for entry into the visible church.
And then the Lord's Supper is a covenantal sign for the renewal of covenant.
Now, it's not only covenant with the other people in the church, but also with the king of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so we think about this.
And as we move into the idea of the state, the state is also a covenantal institution.
It's not a voluntary contract.
We don't get to.
Decide whether or not we are going to be under the laws of a nation that we're born into.
We are born under an authority.
So, these four institutions the individual, the household, the church, and the state, the individual before God, the household as an institution with delegated human authority, the church as an institution, and the state these are the centers of power.
These are the loci of dominion.
And this is where God gives us authority to exercise power to get stuff done.
And so, we've been talking about Christian power, and this is how Christian power is exercised.
As an individual doing dominion, as a household doing dominion and discipling and leaving a heritage of wealth and wisdom.
In the church, we see the concern for the teaching of right doctrine, the maintenance of the right worship of God, and the having of right government to preserve the doctrine and to preserve the worship of God and to prevent them from being profaned.
And so then we think about the state, and the state, the civil magistracy, is given the sword as an avenger, right?
We have the individual has the word of God and his conscience brings suffering on him when he sins.
We have the household has the word of God and the rod is used to bring discipline on children and servants.
That's not a popular opinion.
But, anyways, we don't beat people at Armored Republic, but, you know, if we could.
So, anyway, so then there's this idea in the church of you have the word of God and you have the keys.
And in the state, you have the word of God and you have the sword, right?
So, we're focusing now on the loci of power with the word and keys.
And those are the things that I think we need to get a sense of.
And so the word in keys implies that the church is not a voluntary association society.
It's not a social club.
It's a covenantal institution with real authority.
And pastors have an exercise of authority.
They have a duty to, as stewards of the Lord Jesus Christ, choose who to let in with the sacraments and who to keep out from the sacraments.
And that includes, in terms of admission, And that also includes in terms of who to remove by the process of excommunication or casting out of the assembly and calling for the scourging of their flesh by Satan for the salvation of their souls.
Right.
So those are real exercises of power.
And people, we also, you even hear that and you go, like, what is this?
Like, this idea that there's a power to bless and curse from ministers of the gospel and that there's a real power to call on curse on people and for this idea that the curse can bring actual demonic harm to people's bodies.
All that sounds kind of crazy to the modern American ear, but I would like to suggest to you that this is just plain old vanilla church polity.
Yep.
Yep.
So let's address that real quick because there would be some differences between us on church polity.
Saying so.
Yeah, unfortunately.
But that said, I think that you will be pleasantly surprised that you'll say, hey, you know what?
Elder Led Congregationalism Defined00:02:55
I don't agree, but for a Baptist, not too shabby.
So let me tell you where I'm at.
So I have held for a long time to an elder led congregationalism.
Elder led congregationalism.
I like adding that preface, elder led, because it's not a raw congregationalism.
What I mean by that is that the congregation, the membership of the church, is not voting on every matter.
They're not voting on the color of the carpet, which would be your typical stereotype reason for the Baptist church splitting.
Baptists, when they disagree, they have church splits.
Presbyterians, when they disagree, they form a study committee and then the entire Presbytery splits off.
So you guys split Presbyteries, we split churches.
There are problems, if we're honest.
There are problems on both sides, but the question isn't a pragmatic question of which one.
The problem is the people, principally.
Right, exactly.
And so.
That's inescapable.
But ultimately, in determining what's right, we're not seeing, well, which one is free of problems.
We're saying, well, which one does the Bible actually prescribe?
There's always going to be problems, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the problems are due to the system.
It could just be because you have imperfect people who are trying to carry the system out.
So, all that being said, as a Baptist, the congregation, as a Reformed Baptist and subscribing to the 1689, the congregation would not have a vote on every matter, but we would consider it to be, for lack of a better phrase, top tier issues, the who and the what of the gospel, things that are.
Under the banner of theological triage, it would be in that top tier.
It would be those things which a Christian must believe.
You could say three tiers must believe, should believe, may believe.
And so, may believe, I would put there is Nephilim.
I think you may believe it, as opposed to the Sethite view.
Should believe would be, for instance, I would say, well, baptism.
You could say should believe infant baptism or should believe believers only baptism.
Must believe would be Trinity.
You know, salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
I would put the solas, the five solas, in that top tier category.
So, all that being said, the Baptists would say the congregation has a vote, the membership, not just the eldership, but the membership on those top tier issues, matters of soteriology, salvation, the Trinity, doctrine of God, theology proper, these kinds of things.
So that the congregation itself becomes a hedge, guardrails against heresy.
But the congregation is not dictating secondary and tertiary issues.
The congregation doesn't determine.
What the pastor, which book of the Bible he's going to preach through next Sunday, those kinds of things.
That said, one of the main things that Baptists historically have held is as maybe one more issue that would fall underneath this congregational vote category would be church discipline.
Corporate Action Against Heresy00:10:14
Matthew 18, there's this process.
You go to your brother privately.
If he listens, you've won him over.
If not, take one or two others with you so that the testimony may be established in the presence of two or three witnesses.
But if the brother continues to harden his heart and he's stubborn, And he's not repentant, then you would eventually tell it to the church.
And the Baptist at this point wants to say, you know, tell it to the church, not the presbytery, not the council, not the elders, you know, the church.
And church means, you know, it's ecclesia, and that means the gathering.
And so it's not just the leadership as representative of the church, but it's the church itself, the gathering of the believers, the members of the church.
And then, you know, I would want to kind of a general equity theonomy kind of cross reference.
I would want to say, you know, when Israel was executing discipline as a theocracy, I do think that it's noteworthy that the way that they would apply capital punishment, they applied it, and I don't think it's random or arbitrary.
You know, shocker.
God does things for reasons.
But the way they would apply it is stoning.
I think of, you know, in our modern day, firing squad, right?
Little stones.
I would be fine with that.
Those are high velocity stones.
Yeah, high velocity stones.
You guys are in the business of that.
And so, So, that being said, my thought is one general equity application for why stoning as opposed to the electric chair is it's not just the type of death and the way that that physically would end a person's life, but the electric chair, people could be spectating, but one person pulls the lever.
Even with hanging, for instance, I know that there's a rich heritage of hanging throughout Christian countries, and I understand some of the reasons why, and it still can be a public event.
The whole public is giving their consent.
There's a participation in this, not just spectating.
But in the physical apparatus, one person is pulling the lever, whereas in stoning, it's that the whole ecclesia, the whole congregation of Israel, is saying, We all have a responsibility to protect the purity of the people of God, to see to it that this evil is purged from the camp.
And so I think there's reasons there, is my point.
And so I've taken that, landing the plane here, I've taken that and said, Well, you know, with church discipline, I believe that every member of the church, that this is a congregational matter, that the elders will tell it to the church, but they're not telling the decision that's already been rendered by the elders to the church so that the church can now carry it out, but they're rather telling the matter to the church.
And the church now, each individual member must exercise gospel courage and actually giving their consent.
They're actually throwing the ecclesiastical church discipline stone, which, just for the record, for the YouTube overlords, this is a metaphorical stone.
So it's not totally literal.
We're just killing people all over the place in our churches with stones.
They're very sharp stones.
Sarcasm.
Yeah.
So that was sarcasm.
But so it's, we're not the civil magistrate.
We don't have the sword, but we do have a sword of the spirit.
And so we are executing that discipline.
But the more I think about it, so, and this is where you might be pleasantly surprised, the more I think about it, even if the elders did render that decision to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his soul might be saved, even this is love.
It's simply tough love.
But it is with the desire not just to protect the purity of the church, but that the impenitent sinner might come to repentance.
You know, like I think of Paul, it says that they might be ashamed, but because shame is a grace and it's a powerful form of grace, it brings people around, not always, but many times.
And so my thought is what if, you know, it is possible that the elders actually rendered the decision, not merely telling the matter to the church, but that the elders are standing in representative of the church and they're telling the decision.
They've actually executed the keys themselves by handing the person over, and then the church.
Because I was thinking about back to Israel, I was thinking, it's not that the congregation, that Israel would be assembled to determine whether or not to stone the individual.
That decision would have already been made by its leadership, but Israel would be assembled to carry out the stoning, and that would apply to a congregation to say, the elders say, we're handing them over, but then the congregation, relationally and organically, each member is executing that decision by not choosing to have that person in their home, by not fellowshipping with him any longer, by.
Their only interaction with that person from here on out would be merely for the purpose of a call to repentance.
So, the congregation is still acting corporately, but not acting corporately as a court, an ecclesiastical court of opinion to render a decision, but to carry out the decision that has already been made.
I know that's not particularly Baptist, and I'm not even saying that I've concluded that.
I'm just saying I can see the validity.
And you know, part of the thing, I'll leave it here, part of the thing that's making me see some of this validity is in real time getting to have a front row seat and watching our sacred democracy on the American landscape fail miserably.
And some of my Baptist democracy kind of stuff lately, I'm like, I'm cringing left and right.
So, what do you think about everything that I just said?
So, what I would say is what you just described is kind of actually the classic Reformed congregational or Baptist position that is typically Presbyterians refer to it as independency.
And so, independency would essentially be Presbyterian government, but it is without a belief in connectional courts.
And so, what you've described is sort of the Presbyterian polity at a local level, but not connected to other churches by having a shared regional court or court where there's representatives sent from multiple local churches.
John Owen would fit that bill, right?
Exactly.
And I think you'd find if you were reading most of the Reformed Baptists that were sort of the guys associated with 1689 and stuff like that, I think you'd find agreement there.
I think if you look at Gill and stuff like that, you're going to find agreement there.
So, I think.
Nehemiah Cox.
Right.
So I think when you look at this idea of the church, take it to the church, it's sort of like does a nation decide a thing if it's legislators or if it's chief executive acts?
Can you say that their acts are representative of the whole of the nation or of the state?
Can you say that the acts of the father apply to the household or the father and mother acting together as officers of the house act?
Can you say that their actions apply to the household?
So I think you find scripturally the idea that covenant representatives act on behalf of the whole group.
On the other side, My view would, I think it's the classic Presbyterian view, but sometimes it would be referred to as a low Presbyterianism.
And what I mean by that is, although, and you'll find this in the Westminster Directory or the Westminster Form of Government, it's called the Presbyterial Form of Government.
So you can read that document.
One of the things it has is it talks about this idea of the power of the officers.
It talks about the powers of the officers to rebuke and to admonish.
So it's sort of like you can hear a case, you can determine if the person's right or wrong, and you can issue a censure that is called a rebuke or called an admonition.
where you're publicly saying this person's in the wrong, they need to repent, but you're not yet cutting them off from the table.
Then the officers could also suspend from the table.
And that's another type of church discipline.
And so those are things that the officers can do, that the elders can do without the consent of the people.
But then lastly, the act of excommunication or casting out from the midst of the church, where you're removing a person from the church, handing them over for the scourging of the flesh by Satan.
You're calling upon God to remove angelic protection and to allow demonic harm to the person's body for the sake of discipline, chastisement.
That last act, the historic Presbyterian position, is to require a vote of the people, and specifically the heads of house, the male heads of house that are 20 years old and above.
And so you have sort of the men in Israel voting on that as well.
And so the idea is that even though the officers can rebuke and admonish and can suspend from the table without the consent of the people, to see a person removed from the rolls requires two keys, right?
To cause the nukes to launch, right?
It requires both the officers and the people.
And so, and I would say that Matthew 18 is not the principle proof text for that, but rather I would say that in 1 and 2 Corinthians, when Paul is talking about the discipline of the man who's.
5 and 2.
Yeah.
Right.
So is it chapter 5 in 1 Corinthians and chapter 2 in 2 Corinthians?
I think so.
Is that what it is?
Okay, great.
Yeah, that sounds right.
So I think 5 is the one where they're saying, you know, this guy is committing sexual sin with his stepmother.
And so that's a violation of the laws of affinity.
And from Leviticus 17 and 18.
And so then this idea that there's a need to excommunicate the guy, and then they do, and then they don't let him back in.
And so I think in chapter two is what you're saying.
It's the one where it talks about how the let him back in since he's repentant, the punishment that was given to him by the majority is sufficient.
And so that majority is the majority of the people he's talking to, the saints.
So it's talking about the church.
So even there, it's not literally all of those who are visible saints, because it's not, the men under 20, it's not the women who are voting, it's still representational in that it's the heads of house, right?
So the congregational vote is by still representatives of the congregation in the forms of the male heads of house over the age of 20.
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Ordination and Office Testing00:16:51
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Real quick.
So, but could that back to my, you know, using an illustration of stoning the punishment by the majority?
So, I've always read that also as like the decision to punish made by the majority.
But would this be a fair interpretation?
Maybe it's not a necessary inference, but a plausible way of reading the text to say, well, the punishment by the majority was what it must indicate minimally is that the majority of the congregation actually carried it out, meaning they carried out the disfellowshipping.
They carried out the call to repentance.
They carried out the removal of this person from the gathering and those things.
But the decision itself still could have been made by ecclesiastical officers without meriting a congregational vote.
And I'm the congregational Baptist guy, but I'm still throwing that out as a possibility.
Yeah, so I think high Presbyterians and Episcopalians would typically argue what you just said.
Okay.
So as a low Presbyterian, I'm going to say it was both.
Okay.
I'm going to say it was both a vote of the heads of house.
And that it was their participation in it.
And I think in the context of 2 Corinthians, he's got a group that he's commending, he's got a group he's rebuking, right?
There's the guys that are supporting the super apostles, which I love that translation.
That's an amazing mockery name, super apostles.
You can just see the t shirts, right?
So, anyway, so the super apostles and the minority of the church at Corinth that's not carrying through properly the discipline.
And then there's the majority, and I think the majority voted, so there's to formally acknowledge, to give consent in a formal way to this.
To this judgment and to participate in the casting of the stones.
And then they're in an ongoing way, you know, not having casual fellowship.
When they're seeing this guy, they're either doing business or it's some necessary family duty or it is a calling him to repent.
Those are the kinds of actions that would be done towards this person after their excommunication.
And so that's how you love them.
And by encouraging that sense of shame and dishonor, you are encouraging them to repent.
And that's how you're seeking their good.
So anyway, so I think I've touched on all the points you were saying there.
So it sounds like there's a ton of agreement about it.
And then you're considering kind of is there this need for a formal vote or not?
So I would say yes, because I think that it's an act of government as well as the carrying out.
So I think there's a sort of a judicial function as well as an executive function that is being shared by the congregation there on the final act of excommunication itself.
Yep.
And just for the record, yes is where I have been and where I still currently reside.
I am.
That's part of our bylaws.
That's not something that I would change lightly.
And in fact, ironically, if I was to change that, it would require a congregational vote.
And yeah, and so that right there.
So we think about this, we think about the forms of government, what are the decisions?
I would suggest when we think about the local church, that biblically what we can find is there's some body of people that have to elect officers.
Right.
There's then the officers, and we have to look scripturally what are the offices that continue.
And so, scripturally, we can find the office of apostle.
And I would suggest that anybody who claims to be an apostle now, if they mean that they have a revelatory office, they're a heretic.
There's the office of evangelist, which, if evangelist is a revelatory office and the person claims it for themselves, they're a heretic.
And there's the office of prophet, same thing.
And so, what are the things that are left?
And what we're going to find is titles like bishop.
Teacher slash doctor, pastor.
We're going to find, um, uh, we're going to find presbyter.
Yeah, elder.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah, presbyter.
Yes, thank you.
And then we're going to find deacon, uh, which can be translated as minister or servant.
Um, and so what are those titles?
And so, so I'm going to say that the four titles that we just listed there that are after prophet, we're going to say, you know, a teacher, an elder, a bishop slash overseer, um, And now I'm dropping one of the other ones.
Deacon.
Deacon, but then there's another one for pastor, pastor, pastor.
Elder, pastor, teacher, bishop.
Those are all one position.
And you can demonstrate that by going through a bunch of different texts and showing the relationship of those titles.
There's the Ephesians 5 one that says the pastor, teacher being grouped together.
You can look at the grammar of that, and it becomes obvious those are being grouped together.
Titus relates the title of bishop and elder together.
We can find these various ways in which all these titles, those four titles, are all one office.
So, as a Baptist, you're speaking my language right now.
But for you, being a Presbyterian, I'm curious.
It sounds like you are rejecting what not all, but some Presbyterians would hold as two different kinds of elders a teaching elder and a ruling elder.
Do you just see elder as elder?
Yes.
And so, I do think there's a right to divide the labor.
Yes.
So, you can have some elders focusing on different things.
Yep.
But there's not a separate ordination.
And that's one of the things that.
You're a Baptist.
Welcome.
No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding.
So I would say that there's some people, like you read John Calvin, and John Calvin wants to have four offices.
He wants to have a deacon, he wants to have a ruling elder, he wants to have a teaching pastor, and he wants to have a doctor of the church.
And you're going to find that the Belgic Confession ends up with three of them.
And they sort of make the pastor and the doctor into one.
You're going to find that there's these various disputes amongst the Reformed.
Documents that do that.
The Scots historically had a four office view that was held.
The Westminster standards brought it to a kind of three office view, as we're going to find in the Presbyterian form of government.
And so, what I always list out is I'd say, well, if a doctor is just a type of pastor and a pastor is just a type of elder, then I would agree that those things, you can divide the labor in that way.
But it's not a separate ordination.
It's not like you have to be ordained to elder and then ordained to pastor and then ordained to doctor.
And I think that when you boil it down to is there a separate ordination, you end up finding that I think a lot of Presbyterians get real queasy.
About the idea of saying that you have to have a separate ordination as you rise to each office.
There.
Whereas going from a deacon to being an elder, people are going to go, well, yeah, there should be a different ordination there because of the transference of new powers and it's a different office.
The nature of the office is different as opposed to just a division of the labor.
So I think a lot of Presbyterians, when they're pushed on this, that's where the brass tacks are.
Yep.
I agree with you 100%.
But the OPC and PCA, they would have, correct me if I'm wrong, but they would have separate ordinations for a teaching elder versus a ruling elder, correct?
I think the OP definitely does.
The PCA has more of a blended two office view.
And you're going to find the RPCNA also has more of this like two office type of view.
So I think the OPC has published a book called Order in the Offices.
That's a rather disorderly and chaotic book that contradicts itself all over the place, where it tries to defend this idea of the different types of elders.
And it has mutually exclusive and differing views of how to interpret the same text just presented there.
They kind of like it's like throwing spaghetti at the wall or whatever.
They're just trying to be like, look, if one of these is persuasive to you, that's great.
Just go along with this.
Just pick one of the ones that you find to be persuasive.
So, anyway, so that view, so I think that that view creates a tendency towards a hierarchical kind of clerical distinction that is unhelpful.
And a lot of the time, the argument goes to the idea that the priests were different from the ecclesiastical elders in the old covenant.
Well, that's interesting because the priesthood of all believers would eliminate that distinction.
And so the eldership is not eliminated, but the idea of a separate priest class is.
And so I think it's very important.
The arguments in favor of a strict three office view, I think, are very dangerous and tend towards a clericalism and tend towards episcopacy and a high Presbyterianism that ends up removing the special rights of the people.
And what you also find is these people also tend to believe that the teaching elder is not a member of the local church.
That's what I hate as a Baptist.
To be a member of the presbytery and not be a member of the church that you're pastoring just makes no sense to me.
Right, which totally removes the capacity of the people to hold that preacher accountable.
Right.
And it makes it so the elders can't hold the preacher accountable.
And so you end up with this removal of the guy into a system of special courts where his court of original jurisdiction is always the presbytery at the regional level and never is going to be dealt with at the local level.
And so there are all sorts of problems there.
The argument is supposed to be like a jury of peers, which is the principle of English common law and not a principle you're going to find in the Bible.
And so, anyways, as far as peers go, we are all cleros.
We are all brothers.
And so we are all peers in the sense of being church members.
And so, yeah, so it gets me a little hot under the collar this separation out of the pastorate from the people and from the local church.
Yep, I'm with you.
So, okay, so as we think about these things, I want to say at the local level, I want to say that one of the assemblies of the church is the congregational assembly.
The congregational assembly is made up of all of the men of 20 and above who are communicant members in good standing.
And so those are the men in Israel, and they have the capacity to vote, and they have three specific powers that I could prove to you from Scripture.
And so, what I would say is, for example, in Acts 6, you have the apostles having the people nominate from themselves, test, and elect deacons.
And if that power exists for the office of deacon, then those who exercise even greater power, elders, that would also be a principle for considering the rule over the people.
So, the process of nomination, testing, and electing.
And a lot of times people drop the ball in the testing where they make the testing.
Private, or they make the testing only done by the officers and the people can't ask questions.
These are sort of control mechanisms.
I think it's very important that we allow for those things to occur for the congregation, that the men be allowed to ask questions and to test there.
So the nomination requires essentially you have two or three witnesses saying we see the positive qualifications in this guy.
The testing is this period of time where you're able to ask things or whatever.
And I would suggest that testing, we have the biblical example of 40 days for Jesus.
I would suggest that's a prudent time period to have as a kind of a minimum for the testing period.
They're not making it drag on past a year because a man is able to be qualified to go from his marriage into entering into public service after a year of marriage.
So there's sort of this idea that's a long enough time to see something before a man could go into public office.
Anyways, so all I'm trying to say is there's this range for the testing.
And then you get to this idea of the vote.
There's an election, there's a vote by the men.
And so there's a last step, just like we talked about how there's two keys to kick somebody out of the church.
And those keys are the vote of the officers and the vote of the men.
There's also two keys to get into office.
Right.
And so it's the existing officers ordain.
It's the other thing we see.
So, this idea that there's election and ordination.
And ordination, the essence of ordination is to set a man apart for public service.
And so, in the absence of officers, for example, you would simply set a man apart by the laying out of hands of the men.
But in the presence of existing officers, you would have the existing officers lay hands on.
But it's important that a man not take office to himself.
And so, this idea that the church is setting the man apart.
And the ordinary and mature form is.
The election by the men and the laying on of hands by the existing officers.
And when we're in a devolved state, our goal always has to be to stay as close to the mature form and order that we conveniently can.
And convenience isn't just like, well, like microwave.
It's this idea of like, can you do it without hurting the church?
Can you keep the order that's ordinary there without causing harm to the church?
And if you have to, ordination, just like the Sabbath, man doesn't exist for the Sabbath, the Sabbath exists for man.
You know, ordination, man doesn't exist for ordination, ordination exists for man.
And so you're thinking about the process of order for the sake of the church.
So, this is the power.
So, the powers of the Congregational Assembly are to elect officers, to vote to remove officers.
So, it's two keys to get in, one key to get out.
The officers can boot an officer, and the people can boot an officer.
And that's so that you're able to remove people who are oppressors quickly.
And then there's also this vote, the final vote on excommunication.
So, I think those are the three specific powers.
Of the congregational assembly.
And so that would be where perhaps you and I differ.
There is you had kind of a broader set of things that seemed like you thought the congregation might be empowered to do.
Not really, slightly, but in function and practice, and this is etched out in our bylaws, what it really comes down to, you know, because we'll say, you know, the who and the what of the gospel, top tier, you know, primary theology in that ladder of theological triage.
But then we actually spell out what merits a congregational vote, and it's exactly what you just said it's ordination.
So, receiving officers and ordaining them, installing them, and then also the removal of officers.
So, it's the receiving and the removing of elders, the receiving and the removing of deacons doesn't require a congregational vote for the receiving of members.
The elders are receiving members in as representatives of the church.
And the way that the church can guard the membership so that the church doesn't have an invasion like we currently have as a country with illegal immigration, so that you don't have a bunch of people coming into membership that are illegal.
In the ecclesiastical sense, they're not Christian.
Receiving and Removing Officers00:05:37
The way that the congregation would have authority over that is by having authority over the elders.
If the elders are, you know, so if your elected officials in your country are setting the stage for an invasion, what you do is the people don't go rogue as vigilantes and get down on the border and by force keep people out.
What they do is they overthrow their elected officials and put better ones in place that would actually hold the line.
So receiving and releasing of elders, receiving and releasing of deacons, and then just releasing.
Or, not, I shouldn't say releasing, removing, receiving and removing of elders, receiving and removing of deacons.
And then, by default, in an informal way, the congregation does have authority over receiving members, but that's by electing elders who make that decision.
But then the congregation would be involved in the removing of members, that would actually involve a congregational vote.
And then the only other thing that we, well, actually, two things.
The only other two things that our congregation has a vote over.
Would be what we call our three primary documents.
So the three primary offices, elders, deacons, and members, then the three primary documents.
So it's the who of the church, elders, deacons, members, the what of the church.
That's going to be our bylaws, so the church's constitution, our general statement of faith, and then also our membership covenant.
So that the elders couldn't, for instance, with a membership covenant, raise the bar to where people who are already members in the church are now.
Out of step.
And we're like, I'm sorry, you're not meeting the membership covenant.
But I did adhere to the membership covenant when I was brought in, and then it was a bait and switch.
You moved it on me.
So the membership of the church, the congregation itself, the leaders could not amend or revise or change, alter in any way our church's constitution, bylaws, our general statement of faith.
We have a specific statement of doctrine, which is the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith.
But we have a general statement of faith that members have to, not just elders and deacons, but even members have to subscribe to.
And that can't be altered except by a congregational vote.
And then lastly, the membership covenant.
So bylaws, and then general statement of faith, and then membership covenant.
Those would be the three primary documents the what of the gospel, and then the who of the gospel is elders receiving or removing, deacons receiving or removing, and then just removing as it comes to members.
And then the only other thing would be we do an annual vote on the budget.
And that one I don't see as being required by Scripture.
We do it as an act of prudence.
We think it's permissible in scripture, but I wouldn't, I would never preach, you know, to, I would never command to other officers of another congregation and say that the Bible binds you to this.
Yeah.
And so I would argue that as far as, so it sounds like, you know, broad agreement between us.
And I would say that two little caveats.
I think that as far as budget goes, the money that's given to the church is laid at the feet of the officers.
And so if there were a dispute between the church broadly in terms of the congregation, And the officers about how the money should be used.
The authority that Christ has given goes to the officers about how the money should be used.
And so that's what the diaconate is.
They're not just money counters, they're capital allocators.
The deacons are responsible for governing the money, the capital goods of the church.
That includes in the distribution for mercy ministry, that includes in the work for remunerating officers and for providing equipment like a place to meet for the church.
And so.
I think that to do otherwise removes distinctive power from the deacons.
And it's often the case that I find that deacons are turned into sort of glorified, like, you know, busboys for elders.
And I think that that's not the case.
I think they have a specific set of powers.
And I think that all elders are deacons, all deacons are communicate voting members, all communicate voting members are communicate members, right?
All communicate members are baptized members, right?
So you have this sort of like chain of higher offices containing lower offices.
So, anyway, so that's the one thing of the budget.
The other thing is you talked about the letting people in.
One of the things that's been kind of historically reformed as a practice for admitting people is you have the public admission of persons in terms of baptized membership, and you have kind of a lower bar for what it takes to become baptized, and you have an examination to come to the Lord's table.
I know.
That's been a mixed position, even amongst Reformed Baptists and even amongst Presbyterians, whether or not you should have adult baptisms that occur without sufficient evidence to come to the Lord's table or whatever.
But anyway, so there's sort of this idea of where do you examine a person for entry?
And the idea that where you're going to admit a person to the table, you then announce it ahead of time.
And you allow sort of a two, you have like two or three public announcements on the principle of two or three witnesses, the idea of like having two or three times.
And there's an idea that there's an ability, if there's a thing, if you know about some secret sin or you know this person's a part of a coven or whatever the thing is, and you have the opportunity to come forward and raise the objection, you can bring it to them to let them repent of it first.
Avoiding Cultish Church Practices00:08:48
Or if the person doesn't repent, then you can bring it to the elders as they're dealing with the admission of the person.
So I think all these things that we think of as sort of like these weird formalities or whatever, they all have a, when you actually take church membership and discipline seriously, these stuff, these things all have to really matter for how the government works because it's about retaining, it's about maintaining.
The holy profession of the faith and the holiness of the sacraments.
So, somebody could listen to this and start to hear these things, and we're going, What is all this?
This is all these details about how we administer things and blah, blah, blah.
It's just like, Well, if you care about Christian power, Christian power comes down to polity, comes down to how do you organize things.
In the household, we all think patriarchy matters a lot.
That's a matter of polity.
Right.
Right.
When we get to the church, all of a sudden it's like, Oh, this doesn't really matter.
It's like, Well, I'm sorry.
Is Jesus Christ the king of the church?
Is he the head of the church or not?
Is he the patriarch of the church or not?
And if he is, then does his form of government matter?
Right.
And so the details of government are important for rule because they restrain men's evil.
They encourage the activities that need to occur.
And they really help us to know how to avoid dissipation.
One of the problems in the American church is the dissipation of our resources into all sorts of things for false worship and all sorts of things that are things the church shouldn't be functioning in.
And so we spend our budgets and spend our time in silly ways and we don't focus on the big things.
And a lot of times the big things, people go, this seems boring.
It's like, that sounds like a you problem.
Right.
But if you think that the doctrine, worship, and government of Christ's church is boring, perhaps that's a you problem.
And what you need to do is to care more about those things and see that they are important and realize that there's a fog, there's a stupidity, there's a laziness of thought that makes it so that you don't think these things matter.
Right.
And so if you want to see good government and if you want to see Christian power and you want the church to thrive, caring about these things matters a lot.
So I would say that.
Real quick, I just want to add to that.
I think it was Matthew Henry.
I could be wrong.
But I think it was Matthew Henry who said that speaking of Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5 and 2 Corinthians 2, in the matter of church discipline, he said, Church discipline, Christ instituted church discipline, and he did not do so merely in order to protect the whole, the church, from the impurity of the sinner, but also to protect the alleged sinner from the potential of an abusive church.
And, you know, because the system requires, it's not just a punitive system.
System, but it's a system that requires examination and questioning and counters.
And so, even the two or three, step two of church discipline in Matthew 18, to bring the one or two others with you is not just to bring the one or two others to agree with the one who has the offense, who's saying, See what this guy did, and you guys agree with me.
Now we have three guys telling him he's wrong instead of just one.
No, the one or two are coming in.
They should be at least initially coming in as unbiased judges.
Any believer, any mature believer, you who are mature, should restore such a person in the spirit of gentleness.
So, any mature believer, I don't think it necessitates, I don't think the Bible prescribes it, it must be an elder.
Although, I do think, as a matter of prudence, elders you should be able to assume are mature, and therefore they're often your best bet for the one or two to bring in there.
But it doesn't have to be an elder.
But those one or two are coming in not just to join the person who has taken up the initial offense and As an echo chamber and just agreeing with him that this person has done wrong, but they're coming in as unbiased, impartial judges to say, okay, this is the offense that the one person says, and then to ask questions Is this true?
And what is your counter?
And they might actually, at the second stage of church discipline, you might actually have the one or two that are brought in as witnesses actually shift and say, actually, you're in sin, brother, for bringing a false charge against this person.
You've taken up a wrongful offense, and you actually are the one who needs to repent.
And if those one or two aren't sufficient to settle the matter, In that smaller court, then it would elevate to a higher court, you know, and telling it to the church.
And now all the officers are involved, and then we also are involving the congregation.
And so, all that being said, my point is back to what you're saying guys who would say, what made me think of is guys who would say, this is boring, you know, church polity.
I remember when I first started getting into church, I, you know, I avoided it for a very long time because I thought it would be boring.
And then I started to care an awful lot.
And it was around the same point of my life of just growing up and becoming a man.
The same, it's pretty much started caring about church polity right at the same time.
It's no coincidence that I started caring about politics in general and the civil realm because I started seeing that, you know, power is inevitable.
Power is inevitable.
It's not whether, but which.
Someone is going to wield power and they're going to wield it in a particular way.
So, I would like to have good men with power, wielding power in good ways.
And the only way we can determine whether or not we have good men and whether or not power is being wielded in good ways is if we have an immutable, universal, transcendent standard, namely the Word of God, that tells us how to use power and who should use power.
And this is what I realized.
I realized that the whole congregationalism and a vote of excommunication, the whole conversation about excommunication, at first I thought, man, everybody, if I teach these things, and especially if we Practice them as a church, everybody's going to think that we're mean.
People are going to, it's going to be jarring.
It's going to feel exactly in a cult.
They're going to, they're going to think it's foreign.
They're going to think it's jarring.
They're going to think it's mean.
And one of the best ways, I think the Lord just, you know, gave me some practical wisdom on how to convey these things to people.
And I want the listener to hear this if they're thinking these things, that's mean.
That's cultish.
This is how I started when I would teach on these things with my congregation.
I started saying it like this every church kicks people out.
The only question is how.
Did you know that mega churches that never take a congregational vote and don't actually have true biblically ecclesiastical officers that are elected by the card?
They don't have any of those things going on.
But if you think that they're not kicking people out, then I've got some oceanfront property in Kansas that I'd love to sell you.
These mega churches are kicking people out left and right, but they do it like a casino.
They catch someone that they think is counting cars, they take him in a back room, they break his kneecaps.
And they send them away, and nobody ever hears from them again.
That person never gets to actually defend themselves in a court.
They never actually get a fair representation.
So the question is not whether or not a church is going to be mean, whether it's going to be cultish.
Every church is kicking people out.
The question is, are they doing so lawfully?
That's what we're talking about.
So we're not talking about whether or not churches should kick people out because your sweet and nice church with your.
Prosperity gospel preaching heretical pastor who's smiling and he doesn't just pace back and forth, but he's almost floating on air because his loafers are so light.
That guy is actually, believe it or not, kicking people out, probably by the dozens.
And the difference is that those people never get to tell their side of the story and you never hear about it.
So we're not being mean.
We're not being cultish.
We're doing something that every church, and not just every church, every organization, whether it's the Lions Club or the HOA, or there is no organization on earth.
That doesn't have a process for taking people in and removing people, getting them out.
And so, everything that we're talking about is to ensure that those things are done well and that people are protected.
It's to not be a cult.
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Absolutely.
Tyranny, Secrecy, and Truth00:02:17
And so that right there, if a church silently removes people, it is behaving cultishly.
It is behaving with tyranny and secrecy.
If a church publicly announces the removal of people but does not allow for a public forum for that person to receive charges publicly, receive the witnesses and the evidence publicly, to bring their own evidence and witnesses, to be able to cross examine witnesses, to be able to give their own defense and provide a pleading.
If that doesn't happen and then there's not a public decision on the basis of the publicly available evidence, and then there's not a public sentencing based upon the publicly available evidence, then there's bad government there.
Now, some churches are going to do those things to a more mature form, and some people are going to do that to a less mature form.
And if there's a tyrannical performance of those things where there's just a non Publicity, and there's no method for there to be a dealing with these issues where there's ability to argue back and where the congregation has access to that, what you start to have is secrecy and tyranny.
So, secrecy and tyranny in government are things that are indicating that this is a false church, that it's a cult, that there's a usurpation of the authority of Christ.
And so, what we need to do is we need to judge churches based upon their government, and churches can have failures of form and be valid churches.
But once there's a prolonged and a hardened usurpation, and the prolonged and hardened usurpation especially takes the form of oppression, then what you've got is a loss of the mark of government.
So I would say that we do want to have the perfect rule of government that Christ has established, but there's a difference between being mature in the proper form versus becoming invalid, right?
So you can be immature, you can have some failures, but still be valid as a form of government.
Right.
There's a difference between a bad church.
And a false church.
Yes.
In the same way that there's a difference between a good church and a true church.
Distinguishing Bad from False Churches00:13:55
So there are lots of churches that I would consider to be true churches, but I wouldn't attend.
But I'm not saying that they're heretical.
I'm not saying it's a false church.
There's a true church made up of true believers.
It really is Christ's church, and Christ is actually, in the formal ecclesiastical objective sense, Christ is the head of that church.
And yet that church is immature, teaching certain things that I believe are bad doctrines.
They're unbiblical doctrines, but they're not to the level of.
Heresy.
So, yeah, I'm with you.
So, when we think about this, and we're talking about the elements of government, we've talked about the Congregational Assembly.
The next thing above that is the Diaconate.
The Diaconate is dealing with money.
We talked about the three purposes of money.
I think this is really helpful for people to think about the regulative principle of government, right?
The government of the church doesn't have the right to do anything and everything at once, it must obey Christ.
And if it's going to obey Christ, then what it needs to do is it needs to seek to do the positive commissioning that it's been given by the King of the church.
And also, so to not fail to do that, but also to not do a bunch of extra stuff.
And so the spending of the money is also a major point of power, right?
And so you talked about the idea that your people of your assembly, the voting members, get to vote on a budget.
And so you have this idea of is there transparency of the money?
And I posited that there are three legal uses of the money that it's remuneration of officers, the mercy ministry to care for the orphans and widows, the permanently disabled, the temporary disabled, the people with temporary hardship, you're coming alongside, people suffering persecution, you're helping to give them the money, right?
There's this idea of the remuneration of officers, the mercy ministry, and then there's the equipping of the saints in terms of a place to meet, the bread you're going to break, the wine you're going to drink, the stuff, you know, giving Bibles, giving books, catechesis, stuff like that.
So, those kinds of things.
Do you think there's any other legal uses of the money that you can find in Scripture?
I don't know.
I mean, it's such an exhaustive question.
Let's cut to the chase.
You tell me.
So, I don't think there's anything else.
I think that's it.
I think that's it.
I'm thinking there's a million different options that, not saying that they're all, you know, that any of them are good, but.
I that's for me to run through all of them.
It's pretty, pretty tough to run through them on the spot.
I can't think of any, right?
So I think you find that Old Testament lists out the uses of the tithe, and those are the three uses you end up with.
You end up with the stuff to maintain the temple or the, you know, the stuff that the operation to do stuff, right?
Right.
And then, and then you've got, you've got the mercy ministry, and then you've got the remuneration of the officers, and right.
And anything else, I'm going to say, we're throwing the money away.
So, you know, if you want to go, there's all these things like, you know, hospitality is a private thing.
And then the idea that the church has its own operations.
There's a difference.
You don't want to just be paying for this big kind of meal all the time where you're feeding everybody.
There's the eating at home versus the eating that occurs at the church and the public sacramental meal.
You find that distinction in first Corinthians.
These kinds of details make it so that you see the church government having good administration of government comes down to managing the money well.
People talk about this in civil government a lot.
You talk about like, you know, what are you doing with the taxpayers dollar?
What are you doing with the tithe payers dollar?
Right.
Right.
So, this idea of do we care about the expenditure of the funds that are given and are laid at the feet of the officers that are under Christ's government?
Right.
So, we talked about the courts and services.
Real quick, our budget breaks down to four categories, but I bet you that two of them are actually could be conflated to one.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
So, we have operations as a category.
So, the rent, the lights, those kinds of things, what you described as your first category.
Then we have staff.
And so, Renumeration of the officers of the church and receiving a wage for good work being done.
And then we also have missions.
So we have operations staff, and then we have missions, and then we have, we call it ministry missions and ministry.
And the missions would be underneath that.
We would have certain other Christian churches and Christian organizations outside of our church that we would be willing to support on an ongoing basis.
And then for ministry, The primary ministry being benevolence, a ministry of mercy.
So, what do you think about that missions category?
How would you think through that?
Yeah, so I think missions, right?
Missions are supposed to be sent out by the church, right?
You're supposed to commission men to go and plant churches, right?
So, you send out two or three witnesses to go and plant.
And so, that's essentially the remuneration of officers.
You're supporting the universal church.
It's very Presbyterian of you that you're seeing the money given to other local churches.
And so, this idea that you're either supporting another church locally or what you're doing is you're giving money to other officers to pay them for their work.
But I think all the things you just described there are essentially things that just fit into those categories.
And because of ease for your own thinking about it in terms of the tasks, you've broken it down differently.
But yeah, I think we should always evaluate all these categories and see do they fit into the stuff that Christ has authorized for the use of the tithes?
Amen.
Okay.
So, I don't know how we are in time.
I don't even know what time it is.
Well, you've got a few more minutes.
Let's say maybe five more minutes.
We're coming up on an hour.
Okay.
So I think if we think about the idea of now the eldership, the eldership very specifically has to deal with guarding the doctrine and then the idea of engaging on the idea of what worship, they guard the worship, and they are also dealing with the public courts to deal with all the discipline stuff we just talked about.
So with the doctrine, you're going to deal with confessional standard.
You're going to deal with the fact that there's actually public teaching that has to be dealt with.
Who is the guy that's teaching?
And what are they teaching?
So they're assigning the teaching assignments.
And that's a true thing for the public worship itself, but it's also be like church sponsored teaching events when you're handing off the football.
And I would say that those should always be men that are either already elders or that are being trained for the eldership.
There's a difference between private hospitality, like we talked about previously, where women can teach and there's all that kind of stuff, versus the public.
Ministry of the church.
I don't mean that you can't have a conference.
The conference is either a privately run conference or it's the church run conference.
And when you assign stuff as a church, you're always giving out a public commissioning.
And so that public commissioning by the church should always be for men who are fit for teaching.
And so that's going to be officers or it's going to be the idea of a man who's training for office.
And so that's the public teaching element.
And then there's this idea, like I said, of the worship.
So you're carefully saying, What elements exist in worship and what things are we using in it?
So, like, what are we singing?
Is singing an element of worship?
Yes.
What are we to sing?
You know, are there covenantal meals in worship?
Yes.
What covenantal meal are we to have?
And in the Old Covenant, there would have been a bunch of different types of covenantal meals.
And whereas in the New Covenant, there's one.
And so, this idea of what are the elements and what do we do?
What's the matter that's being used in those?
And so, the tale of guarding that, you're When you issue some sort of element of worship to be done, you are commanding the people to participate in that element.
And so we have to carefully guard that because it's a use of authority, and we don't want to use our authority to command idolatry.
And so when we get to the last part, again, of the government, we've talked about all the details of government there.
And so that's where you're managing things.
And so the thing where you and I would disagree when we get to that last piece, the government.
Is you end up in this place where there's disputes in the local church.
We've talked about the things with the elders.
We've talked about how the congregation's role exists there.
So the last part we move into is we move into this idea of if there are disputes where you're saying there's maladministration in the local church, is there a court of appeal?
If the dispute is between two churches, is there a court of original jurisdiction to deal with those things?
Or between two families, but that belong to two separate churches.
Right.
And so there might be a case where you have something that needs to be taken because of that to some shared court, or where you have this idea of the issue is so grievous, such a big deal, or so complicated that you're taking it to a court where you've selected for a higher degree of discernment.
And so when you look at Exodus 18, Exodus 18 has this laying out of graded courts where the local court has one elder per 10 households.
The next court has one elder per 50.
The next is one per 100.
And then there's one per 1,000.
This idea of the courts where you have officers that are elected, and then the officers, the one in 10, they choose men to then go to the one in 50.
So, you're constantly selecting people that are viewed as wise, and then the people that the wise people think are wise are selected to go to that next level.
And Moses says there in Exodus 18, there's this idea that the difficult cases don't start at the lowest courts, they move up.
And so, you see this sometimes in law.
For example, you'll have a murder case in the civil polity, it doesn't start with a justice of the peace.
You take it to some court of record or something like that, where you've got a judge that's at a higher level.
And at the same time, you'll also have disputes between states, and those get dealt with in a federal court, right?
So you see this being dealt with in civil polity.
In the church, we seem to have abandoned concern about those types of things.
And we kind of view church courts as we don't take minor sins to church courts, and we don't take really big things to church courts.
We only take middle things to church courts.
And it's because we've kind of viewed the church as not competent to deal with most things, and we don't take seriously the judgment of it.
And if we don't like a church, we just kind of run away.
As opposed to the idea of bringing the conflict, going through the courts of the church and trying to resolve things.
So I think that when we start to realize that there's this idea of a graded court system, that creates a context where you can deal with more serious matters and you can start to deal with disputes between churches and to try to have a way of trying to heal rifts.
Now, you can also just turn these into like administrative nightmares that are constantly trying to bury issues and that never want to hear them out and never want to solve them.
And frankly, most of the time when I hear about presbyteries doing stuff, They turn them into these bureaucratic messes.
They don't make things more public.
They don't resolve things.
And so it's exasperating that they turn into these sort of bureaucratic machines for handling people.
And they typically seem to be defenders of the pastors rather than administrating justice.
And so that's the exasperating thing there.
So if I were making a case against Presbyterianism, I would point to the practical realities of the incompetency of Presbyterian systems over the last century.
But that's my understanding of how it's supposed to be built out.
And that's kind of some of the key scriptures there.
I mean, I don't know if you have any thoughts on this.
No, that's very helpful.
I was just thinking, yeah, very helpful.
I was just going to say that that's one of the most common questions that I get as a pastor is, you know, people, and it's usually a family member, maybe a close friend, you know, long time, you know, lifelong friend.
But in most cases, it's a family member, but a family member who does not belong to the same local church.
And so the question is, how do I follow Matthew 18 with this person who doesn't go to our church?
So it's a pastor, I have conflict.
Most pastoral questions deal with, you know, conflict.
And so it's, you know, Pastor, I'm having a conflict.
I need to resolve this conflict.
I want to do so according to the scripture.
I want to do so biblically.
Like, for instance, I have a meeting scheduled this week with someone who, and it's the same thing it's a family member.
The family member is in impenitent sin.
They've tried to, you know, reason with this person and call them to repentance.
And they're exasperated because there's no, you know, it's just a stalemate.
You know, they say, you're in sin.
And the person's, you know, profound response is, nah, nah.
And that's it, you know.
And because they're in a biblical church, namely by the grace of God, ours, but that family member is not.
And in some cases, you know, it may be an unregenerate, non Christian family member who doesn't go to church at all.
But in many cases, it's even worse not better, but worse because they are part of a church, but they're part of a particularly bad church.
In some cases, a false church, it's heretical.
In some cases, a true church, you know, it is technically true, but.
Very immature, as we were talking earlier, that doesn't practice biblical church polity and these kinds of things.
And so, you know, they say, I think you're wrong.
And they talk to me as their pastor, and I hear the case and I say, Okay, I think that you're actually right in this matter.
I think that you've taken the right stance.
But then their family member talks to their pastors, and their pastors simply affirm them and say, Oh, you didn't do anything wrong.
And they're being legalistic, right?
That's your most common response.
They're being legalistic, right?
Because they go to an antinomian church with antinomian pastors who think that the law of God is just a bunch of hogwash.
And then, Then you're in trouble.
Now, the reality is, you know, me trying to be fair as a Baptist, the reality is that for Presbyterians, this happens all the time.
All the time.
Maturity in External Forms00:09:40
Oh, yeah.
But the question is not pragmatically, practically, what does occur.
The question should be, in theory, in terms of the system itself, what would occur?
Because, insofar as, you know, we're in this current state of, you know, where the church, thinking the church, you know, capital C, you know, 2,000 years into church history at this point, since the time of Christ and his finished work at Calvary.
The church on the whole is at a certain level of maturity.
If, let's say, things continue to progress, as I believe that they will, if things continue to progress in maturity and the church sharpens and sharpens and hones and hones and matures and matures further and further, would a congregational Baptist system, autonomy of the local church, better accommodate?
So there's plenty of problems now, whether you're Presbyterian or Baptist, but in a perfected system, Which system would better be able to accommodate these interpersonal conflicts that spread between two churches and not just in one local church?
And I am willing to concede and say that on face value, the Presbyterian system has a system for dealing with that in a way that the Baptist system becomes much more difficult.
I appreciate that.
I guess what I want to lay out for people also is this idea that what's the goal?
And if the goal is to see the church be unified in some sort of visible way, That visible form, you can say it's a shared government or not.
And I think the question, what I want to say is whether you're Baptist or whether you're Presbyterian, you need to say that the visible form of unity that manifests the invisible unity, and the invisible unity is going to be that we have the same Holy Spirit causing us to have the same faith so that we can achieve, we can pursue the same goal of the glory of God filling the earth.
And that's going to result in a shared methodology externally of applying the law of God.
Toward that goal.
So we're going to have the same goal with the same methodology.
And so, what's that methodology?
And on the corporate level, what you find in Ephesians 4 is this idea that the officers work to mature the church so that the church can then minister to itself.
So each of the members can.
And the officers are trying to see the church matured to the fullness of Christ.
In Philippians 3, you find this idea that Paul says, Look, I haven't reached the fullness of maturity yet, but I'm striving towards greater maturity to fill the earth with the knowledge of God.
And in addition to that, those of us that are mature, and he talks about maturity, there's kind of like this ideal maturity, the fullness of Christ.
There's the maturity the church is at, and there's some people who are there, and then there's other people who are less mature.
And the goal is to take the less mature people and move them up to the maturity of the mature people.
And the goal is to take the mature people and see their maturity advance towards the maturity of Christ.
And so, if we're seeing that, if we go, do we have any way of measuring our current levels of maturity?
And what I would posit is that we have this idea of church courts that exist to deal with the formal external forms that are adopted by the church.
And the formal external forms include a confession of faith, which captures the maturity of our doctrine.
That we have the idea of a directory for worship to capture the maturity of the understanding of the worship as appointed by Christ, a constitution or form of government to know the maturity for the forms that we're supposed to have for governmental.
Exercise.
And then you have cases of conscience that get dealt with through trials and through decisions about how things are going to be dealt with, what's going to be considered sin or not.
So, the directory of worship, the form of government, and the cases of conscience, historically the church has talked about as canon law.
And so, this idea that you're going to have ecclesiastical law where you're making determinations.
Now, the problem comes in when a confession of faith has stuff that's not in the Bible.
And the problem comes in when the canon law has stuff that's not in the Bible.
And that's why the London Baptist Confession and the Westminster Confession both start with this idea that Scripture is the authority and we have to judge the decrees of councils by Scripture.
But when there is an accurate judgment, it's sort of like when a parent makes an accurate judgment.
There's the authority of Scripture and children need to obey Scripture, but there's also the judgment of the parent and children need to obey the parent.
And so the idea that the church can make determinations was that there's the judgment of Scripture, and the church has no right to judge contrary to Scripture or in addition to Scripture.
But there is still an authority of the church to make determinations, and it's a ministerial authority.
It's subordinate to the word of God.
And so, what we want to do is we want to have these outward forms, and there's outward forms of confession, of directory for worship, a form of government, and then cases of conscience being dealt with so we can organize it in a systematic way and make it easier to be able to move along.
Ecclesiastes 12 deals with this idea that, look, reading books is wearisome.
There's so many books to read.
And so, what the elders do in part is they consolidate down and you give something like, you might look at the Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession and go, nobody ever accused that thing of being concise.
Right.
But yeah, it is.
When you think about the amount of doctrine there, it's amazingly concise.
Right.
And if instead you wanted to go back and read, you know, you go to like chapter two of the Confession and it's on God and the Trinity and you go, how about this?
Why don't you go back to the second and third century literature and go read all the junk?
Right.
Being written about the Trinity there.
And then tell me that this isn't concise, right?
Go to Nicaea.
Nicaea is concise.
It's a nice grabbing of the doctrine.
And then you've got the second chapter of the London Baptist or of the Westminster Confession.
And you've got this doctrine contained in a very concise way.
And you do that over and over again.
The church is working to make it more, more concise.
So reading is wearisome if you don't, if you have to read everything.
And so what we're told in Ecclesiastes 12 is that the words of the wise are like goads and the words of the masters of assemblies.
Are like well driven nails given by one shepherd.
And so, this idea that there are masters of assemblies, there's moderators of church courts that help to organize that work.
And it's not just the moderator, the moderator is working to represent the whole of the court.
But you capture that into this document that becomes more efficient.
And so, that's the external forms.
And so, what I want to put forward is this idea that the way we capture maturation is through these external forms.
And so a Baptist is going to say that's through voluntary associations, and a Presbyterian is going to say that's through a church court.
And so, I think the problem that I want to put forward is if we both believe that Acts 15 is a teaching of church councils that exist in the New Covenant era, that is the work of not only apostles but elders, then what we have is how do we determine which elders get to go?
Do we invite TD Jakes or not?
And so, if we're going to have that, that there's some determination of membership, I want to posit that it's unavoidably a court.
That we have some way of making judicial decisions as to who is in the membership of that court.
And that delegated authority either comes from the local churches or it doesn't.
If it comes from the local churches, it's a function of the church.
If it's a function of the church corporately, then those things end up being courts that make determinations.
And so I want to posit that the advance of the church that's laid out for us, that the example we have, the apostolic example, is the Presbyterian model.
It's what Acts 15 gives to us.
Which is a continuation of the Exodus 18 methodology of the delegation of authority to courts through representation.
All right.
Well said.
Mr. Reese, thank you so much for coming on the show.
And I'm very excited about our next conversation getting to talk about civil politics, taking this idea, God's idea from the Word, and applying it beyond just the ecclesiastical realm, but saying, as we say many times, saying that once more, Jesus is, he is head of the church, but he is not merely head of the church.
God has appointed him, Ephesians 1 says, ahead of all things.
That Caesar in the civil realm has a God above him.
And so, these same kinds of principles that we've been discussing in the church realm, God has something to say about the civic realm as well.
So, for the listener, stay tuned.
And in a few weeks here, you'll see us release a next part of this continued series.
Anything that you want to leave us with, Mr. Reese, at the end of this episode?
What I want people to remember is the fact that when we talk about Conflict resolution, it really matters in the details of life.
If you're trying to get anything done, it's going to result in conflict.
And as you deal with conflict seriously, unless you just throw people away as disposable, you want to go through conflict carefully.
And caring about church polity is about seeing that people are not oppressed and also seeing that conflict isn't just left unresolved.
The church government has to have the power to actually resolve conflicts.
It has to actually have also checks on it to prevent the abuse of power.
Resolving Conflict with Love00:01:12
That's right.
And so those things absolutely matter.
If we think we're going to actually accomplish anything for the glory of God here, what we need is we need to see a methodology that we can see the advance of it.
And if there's actually going to be a greater glorifying of God in the earth across time, then there needs to be a way in which that becomes more and more visible.
And so I posit all that forward, and the scripture provides the answers for all those things.
Amen.
That's a great way to end it, a good final word, because really what we're talking about is not boring pencil pushing and just ecclesiastical politics.
Really, the way that we could say it is.
Everything we've been talking about is about relationships.
It's about sustaining relationships.
We're talking about people, we're talking about friendships.
How do you ensure, best ensure, the highest likelihood of thriving, healthy, sustainable friendships that don't fracture and dissolve easily?
We're talking about covenant with people in relationships that's durable so that we have friends that last.