Psalm 34:19 (KJV)
Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.

Proverbs 24:15-16 Do not lie in wait like an outlaw at the home of the godly. And don’t raid the house where the godly live. [16] They may trip seven times, but each time they will rise again. But one calamity is enough to lay the wicked low.

1 Thes. 5:24 (KJV)
Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.

2 Thes. 3:3 (KJV)
But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.

Psalm 89:2 (KJV)
For I have said, Mercy shall be built up for ever: thy faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens.

Thanks for the word today brother.
Gods plans for you are great!

How would you do it different than the typical church today?

I have been to church buildings that preach Repentance.
I have been in church buildings that teach the need to serve God with a pure clean heart.
I have been in church buildings that have baptized hundreds in the name of the Father, son and Holy Spirit.
I have been in church buildings whose leaders believe and declare Baptism symbolizes submission to Christ, a willingness to live God’s way, and identifies us as belonging to the family of God.

All of these church buildings have had a leadership staff of Godly men. They all believe in Christ and are sincerely committed to make disciples.

They all have chosen church buildings and programs as their primary vehicle for making disciples.

They either rent or purchase a building to meet in.

From that building they establish a day to worship and make disciples by preaching the word of God.
From that building they establish a youth program to reach and disciple the youth.
From that building they establish children’s program to reach and disciple the children.
From that building they establish benevolence programs to reach the homeless and disciple the poor.

If God was to call you to establish a new church in this community, how would you do it different?

Would you get rid of their primary vehicle for making disciples all together?

You stated:
He did not say, ‘Therefore, go and build churches all over the world”, No! He said, “Therefore, go and make disciples.” Somehow we have come to the conclusion that the only way to make disciples is to build earthly church buildings. We have forgotten one very important fact in our quest though, disciples are the church. The only way we can build a church is to make disciples. Church is not a building or a place, church is a people. We have forgotten one very important fact in our quest though, disciples are the church. The only way we can build a church is to make disciples. Church is not a building or a place, church is a people.

I understand what you are saying, but I need to know what kind of vehicle you are going to use to make disciples.

I am assuming that you don’t see a need for church buildings. If you do see a need for some sort of facility to meet in, how is yours going to be different from all the other church buildings?

Are you still going to have programs, or are you going to get rid of them all together?
If you do have programs, what makes yours different?
It’s easy to say just go make some disciples. It’s hard to establish how you are going to do that.
You have to have a vehicle in order to get from point A to point B.

For example:

You and I are a part of a group. This group is directly related to West Ridge Church. They utilize their Church Building to draw people in and begin to teach them that they need to become a part of a small group. This is a vehicle they have chosen for discipleship.

I think we have all benefited from this group.
Is it wrong for them to have and use that building to reach this community in order to plug men into these groups for discipleship? I believe the word of God is being taught in this group.

I understand exactly what you are saying. I just want to challenge you to look beyond the problems you see to solutions that can be put into practice.

I believe:

The New Testament established family integrated churches that designate the family and their extended communities as Gods primary vehicle for discipleship, versus corporate integrated churches that designate religious structures and programs as Gods primary vehicle for discipleship.

I don’t have a problem with utilizing a building in order to come together and worship God; as long as we don’t make it the primary vehicle for discipleship. God’s primary vehicle for discipleship is the family and their extended communities. The scriptures are clear about this from Genesis to Revelation.

God wants to live in our homes and he wants Fathers and Mothers to worship Christ and teach their children the word of God seven days a week.

The local church should be built to support this vehicle and not replace it. That is getting to the root of the problem.

We have replaced the family as Gods primary vehicle for discipleship with a clergy class that oversee buildings and facilitate teaching programs, instead of elders that oversee families and teach them to shepherd their own families.

Paul was an Apostle. He was not a Pastor of a single church. He established new churches. He laid the ground work and left them to themselves until he could send a letter or find time to visit on his second missionary journey. He never set himself up as the Senior Pastor. He did not appoint any individual to pastor a church nor did he give any individual the authority to handle all the teaching duties of the church week in and week out. He appointed elders to oversee the church but he didn’t even do this immediately and amazingly these churches survived without him preaching a sermon every week for the rest of their lives.

While I do believe that the work and gift to establish new churches today still exist, I do not believe that an individual can claim to have the same authority as the New Testament Apostles.
Why?
It was characteristic of the apostles and necessary (1.) that they should have seen the Lord, and been able to testify of him and of his resurrection from personal knowledge (John 15:27; Acts 1:21, 22; 1 Cor. 9:1; Acts 22:14, 15). (2.) They must have been immediately called to that office by Christ (Luke 6:13; Gal. 1:1). (3.) It was essential that they should be infallibly inspired, and thus secured against all error and mistake in their public teaching, whether by word or by writing (John 14:26; 16:13; 1 Thess. 2:13).

In short: Paul was a church planter. He was not a Pope or a Pastor. He always left the church he planted. He appointed elders (many/more than one) to oversee the church but he never appointed an individual called the Pastor to be the teaching elder and administrator of a board of directors called elders.

Leadership in the church is to be shared and established upon the foundation of equal brotherhood. Leadership authority is always functional and never positional in the body of Christ.

Just because a man has a title and gets paid to occupy a position doesn’t mean he has the authority of Christ.

Trust me, when elders are functioning according to the New Testament pattern for leadership, you would never have a problem serving under their authority and they would never have a problem serving you neither.

John 13:14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.

Christ Authority always flows through servant hood. It is not positional; it is functional. He didn’t set up another High Priest to stand over his church. He didn’t appoint a CEO to oversee his church.

I am for shared leadership roles patterned after healthy family structures of authority instead of corporate and religious structures.

The New Testament established shared leadership structures patterned after the family, verses positional leadership structures patterned after the world and religious institutions.

Jesus told the Apostle’s not to establish world leadership structures .(Matthew 20:25-28) (Luke 22:24-27
Jesus told the Apostles not to establish religious leadership structures. (Matthew 23:1-12)

Instead of one man bearing the burden of overseeing and shepherding the flock. Many Godly men share the burden of overseeing and shepherding the flock.

I would disagree with you concerning the position of Pastor. I am under the conviction that Their is a gift of shepherding but I can’t find a Pastor in the New Testament who was ordained by God to be the overseer of the elders of the church.

We have taken one of the gifts of the spirit; made an Idol out of it and created a position in the church that gives birth to religious hierarchies and ungodly positions of authority.

The assembling of Gods people in our culture has been built upon and around the Pastor and his gifting instead of Christ and his body. This is one deep rooted tradition that has opened up a door for Satan to establish his influence in the church and the mess we see today.

I am all for the gift of shepherding but I am not for making it the top position in the church and building the assembly (meeting together) around it.

Nelson’s New ILLustrated Bible Commentary 1 TIM 3:1
After NT times, it became the custom to appoint one elder as the presiding elder and to give him the title of bishop

John MacArthur: Answering the Key Questions About Elders
The biblical norm for church leadership is a plurality of God-ordained elders. Furthermore, it is the only pattern for church leadership given in the New Testament. Nowhere in Scripture do we find a local assembly ruled by majority opinion, or by one pastor. In fact, one-man leadership is characteristic of cults, not of the church.

Watchman Nee: The Normal Christian Church Life
The present day pastoral system is quite unscriptural; it is an invention of man… It is not God’s will that one believer be singled out from all the others to occupy a place of special prominence, whilst the others passively submit to his will…

Watchman Nee: The Normal Christian Church Life
The first question usually asked in connection with a church is “who is the minister”? The thought in the questioner’s mind is, “who is the man responsible for ministering and administering spiritual things in the church? The clerical system of church management is exceedingly popular, but the whole thought is foreign to Scripture.

John MacArthur: Answering the Key Questions About Elders
There is no reference in all the New Testament to a one-pastor congregation. It is significant that Paul addressed his epistle to the Philippians “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers [pl. episkopos] and deacons” (1:1). Some have said that Revelation 1 supports the one-pastor concept. There, the apostle John speaks of “the angels of the seven churches” (v. 20). Angel can mean “messenger,” and those who argue for the single-pastor church say that the messengers here and in chapters 2-3 are the pastors of the churches. There are a number of problems with that interpretation. First, it cannot be proved that angelos refers to a pastor. These “angels” are never called “elder,” “bishop,” or “pastor.” In fact, it is debatable whether they are human messengers at all. Angelos is nowhere used to refer to a pastor, elder, or bishop in the New Testament, and every other time angelos appears in the book of Revelation, it refers to angels.

A.W. Tozer
The youngest Pastor (in the modern sense) has more real authority in the congregation than Christ does. This has resulted in the transforming of the church from a body, each member actuated by and responsible to Christ the Head, into an organization with human leaders who have superior authority and come between the members and Christ. Coupled with this has been the inevitable substitution of man’s talents for the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit which has in turn taken from the church its spiritual equipment and power.

Believers Bible Commentary
Nor should an elder be confused with the modern pastor, who is primarily responsible for preaching, teaching, and administering the sacraments in a local church. It is generally acknowledged that there was no such person in the early church. The primitive assemblies were composed of saints, bishops, and deacons (Phil. 1:1)—that is all. The clerical system did not rise until the second century.

Preachers Commentary
1 Tim 5:17
The distinction between ruling and teaching elders is misleading, if not erroneous.

James Stahr, Interest, April, 1984, p. 2.
The New Testament knows only of “saints, bishops and deacons” (Php 1:1). “Bishops,” “pastors” and “elders” all refer to the same body of men (Ac 20:17, 28). The oversight of the church is conceived of as a body of elders (1Ti5:17; Jam 5:14). However, the traditional practice of “calling a pastor” separates this “office” from eldership at virtually every point. Under the New Testament pattern, laos (people) and kleron (clergy, inheritance) refer to all of God’s people; hence, elders and deacons are part of the “laity/clergy,” not separate from or above it. “Most denominational churches have departed from this pattern by distinguishing between the pastor and the elders. Common practice makes the pastor a full-time employee of the church, while the elders are laymen who function much like a board of directors”

Ray C. Stedman: A Pastor’s Authority
At this point many may be tempted to say, “What difference does it make? After all, the pattern of command authority is too widely established to alter now, and, besides, many churches seem to be doing all right as it is; why try to change now?”
In response, consider the following:
The Bible indicates that any deviation from the divine plan inevitably produces weakness, division, strife, increasing fruitlessness, and, ultimately, death. The present low state of many churches is testimony to the effects of ignoring, over a long period of time, God’s way of working.
A command structure of authority in the church deprives the world of any model or demonstration of a different way of life than the one it already lives by. Worldlings see no difference in the church, and can see no reason why they should change and believe.
A command authority inevitably produces resentment, repression, exploitation and, finally, rebellion. It is the law, which Scripture assures us we can never redeem or restore, but which must, by its very nature, condemn and repress.
The desire of the Lord Jesus to show to the world a wholly new form of authority which is consistent with grace, not law, is nullified by a command structure among Christians, and the gospel of dying-to-live is denied even before it is proclaimed. This means that God is robbed of his glory and distorted before the watching world. Nothing could be more serious than this!
Admittedly, a call for a change of this nature is radical, even revolutionary. But since when was the church called to be a conforming society? Is it not high time we took seriously our Lord’s words: “it shall not be so among you”?

(What would you do different if God called you to start a church in this community?) I guess the main thing I would do differently is refuse to conform to societies demands for tolerance. Christ would be the center and His word would be the authority that ruled. Those that have professed to be born again would be held accountable, and would hold accountable according to God’s word. The Gospel would be given away, not sold. The Leaders of the church would work real jobs to support their families and no salary would be paid to anyone until the essential finances of the church had been paid first.

(What would your leadership structure look like?) I believe the bible teaches an elder type leadership with a Pastor leading the way in servanthood. The elders would be expected to follow the Pastor, so long as he was following Christ. All should be capable of and willing to be led by the Holy Spirit. The elders and pastor should be a team that works together to hold one another accountable and provoke spiritual growth.

(What would make your meetings different?) Services would be centered around Christ, not activities. The purpose of worship is just that, to worship Christ as King and Lord.

(Would you get rid of the stage and platform all together?) The only real purpose I see for a stage or platform is the ability to hear and see the one speaking. I really don’t have a problem with the stage and platform, however, I am concerned with how they are used.

(How would you protect your church from becoming a show?) Spirtual discernment. I believe this is the only way. Test the spirits and see if they are of God by getting to know those whom you worship with. The leadership must not be in fear of one another, but fully trust each other and know that each has the best interest of the other at heart.

(What makes a church meeting a show?) Church becomes a show when all that matters is that the people are impressed. It becomes a show when we spend more time patting ourselves on the back and less time growing in God’s grace. It becomes a show when the service is put on our time table and started or stopped when we say so, rather than the Holy Spirit. If the schedule of events absolutly cannot be changed, then it’s a good sign the service has become a show.

(Would your meeting still have spectators?) I suppose, but really I guess they would be called “the lost”, because after you have been born again you become a participator.

(Would it be built around your gifting or the whole body of Christ?) The whole body of Christ. Each persons gifts and talents would be used to bring glory to God in an orderly and biblical fashion.

(Would it be organized around a worship leader and a band?) No. The musical portion of the service should be organized around Jesus. The person called to lead in this capacity will need lots of prayer and humility.

( Maybe you will decide to get rid of the spot lights but keep the platform. Maybe you will decide to get rid of the props but keep the stage? But does this really change anything in the long run?) Truthfully, probably not. However, I believe when we let the world penetrate the church and we start resembling a rock concert with smoke, lights and camera’s we have conformed to the wrong image. It’s the people that make a church holy or unholy, not the stage or props. It’s deeper than that, it’s a spiritual issue.

(Would you get rid of leadership titles?) I’m not sure on this one. I guess their is somewhat of a need for titles, but I think their importantance should be limited to a discription of order, not as a sense of lordship over another. All are subject to Christ and His order.

(Would you call yourself Bishop Adam, instead of Rabbi Adam? Would you prefer Teaching Pastor over Brother Adam?) I’m just Adam.

These are short answers, but I think they show the spirit in which I would lead if God ask me to start a church. To be honest I would be thrilled to find a church like this to serve in. I would gladly serve along side others as a nobody as long as Jesus was the only somebody.

Love you brother and thanks again for asking some tough questions! You provoke me to seek God more and strive to grow in His grace. You are the type leader I’m honored to serve with.