Why Ecclesiology Still Matters

The Church Needs Order

I have always had an interest in how the Church was governed. As the son of a minister and growing up in the Church, I have found the way the Church was run to be peculiar. Not in the sense that there is something wrong with it, but in that because of the Church’s purpose, its goals are very different than most any other organization (or at least it should be).

It would not be a stretch to say that too often we take this aspect of our church experience for granted. We do not alway appreciate the many layers of doing life together with others. And living out our faith in community must be informed by what we believe about God and the Gospel.

There is usually little wrong with assuming that things will work in our local congregation. However, when a difficult decision needs to be made or a contentious interpersonal conflict arrises, understanding how the church operates becomes critically important. Maybe even the most important.

A Church Without Wisdom

There is an interesting passage in 1 Corinthians where the apostle Paul chastises the Church. The reason? They were not able to resolve their disputes as brothers in Christ. They were suing each other and bringing lawsuits against each other in civil courts.

⁵ I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, ⁶ but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? ⁷ To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? ⁸ But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!

1 Corinthians 6:5-8 ESV

And Paul points out two consequences of this behavior in the Corinthian Church.

First, it revealed their lack of wisdom. One would hope that there was someone who could lead those with disputes toward reconciliation. But there was not. Paul describes this as a lack of wisdom not just on the part of those seeking the lawsuits, but of everyone in the Church! No one was mature enough or brave enough to even attempt it.

Second, the context in which the Church found itself was being negatively impacted by this behavior. It seems to be Paul’s point of view that their indifference to the effect of such actions on the Gospel was doing great damage to the Church.

Ecclesiology is about more than Rules

When we don’t understand the order of the church, we run the risk of acting in ways inconsistent with our beliefs. This link has not always been apparent to me. However, as the years have marched on and my own service to the Lord in the Church has matured, the real connection between what we believe as a local congregation and how we live in community has become more clear.

While our ecclesiology does not compare to our understanding of our glorious redemption in Christ, they are related. They are interconnected realities of our faith. How we live with one another in the body of Christ is an expression of what we believe about the head of that same body.

The curious connection between every subject of theological import has been strangely minimized in the Church. And to our detriment. Just becuase something is not “the most important” doesn’t mean it cannot affect our understanding of those things that are.

Taking this approach to ecclesiology has exposed a deficient understanding of what we can know about our common life of faith. While most of us tend to focus on the “major” theological disciplines, these “minor” areas go neglected. And in their neglect we may find ourselves needlessly untethered.

To put it more simply, our ecclesiology can serve as a framework within which we live our theology. They are not in opposition to each other. It may be that they are far more complimentary than we may have originally thought. This has become my growing conviction.

A Fresh Look at Church Order

Having grown up in the Baptist tradition with its emphasis on congregationalism, the idea of other patterns of church organization was something I learned about later in life. I knew that there were other denominations. The reality of other churches that were not Baptist was not new.

What was new was that most of those other churches were not organized the way I was familiar with.

This may all sound silly. And upon reflecting on it, I would agree. But how often to do we really think about how other churches are organized? How often to we consider how their structures inform and impact the decision making process?

We are often too busy working within the confines of our own congregations to think about it.

At the heart of a study of ecclesiology is this sociological reality. People of various backgrounds and differing experiences seeking to live in peace and harmony. Whether we see it or not, whether we fully appreciate the subject, ecclesiology still matters. And it matters for reasons that we will explore on this site.