Hamstringing the Holy Spirit
I just finished the first round of consulting and training with the Action Chapel International. It is a movement of Pentecostal churches out of Ghana that has gone world-wide over the past twenty years and is now in the U.S. My role is to help them bring some order to the movement without turning it into a denomination- the archbishop is very clear on that point. We put a loose structure in place that will allow them to truly be one church in one location throughout the world. Now my role is to provide ongoing training.
The reason I’m telling you this is because of something that happened the last day that made my trip. Keep in mind that we were imposing order on a movement that for twenty years was allowed to run with the wind. I was a bit concerned how well this new twist would be received. When we finished unfolding the new structure and accountability system, the Archbishop led the group in another round of prayer-centered worship. When he finished praying, without any prompting the entire room broke into clapping and praise. All I could think of was, now this is the way it should be in the church- when the spiritual leader speaks, the church rejoices.
I’m sure you’ve been in meetings where radical change was being unfolded to a board or congregation and the response was vastly different. Somehow in most of the U. S. churches, especially those that are declining, pastors are not considered to be the spiritual leader of the congregation. Instead, they are looked upon as the servant of the congregation who is suppose to take care of the congregation the way a caretaker of a museum takes care of the artifacts.
How did we come to this when the Bible is very clear about the spiritual authority of the Elders (pastors). They are to be respected and their leadership is to be followed or they are to be replaced. Somehow we have replaced biblical authority with a demonic form of democracy. But we have no written record of God leading through democracy. Yet most churches impose some form of democracy on their people.
But here’s the catch- democracy and Holy Spirit are like oil and water- they don’t mix, ever. Isn’t it time we owned up to our sin of replacing biblical authority with democracy, and throw the villain out?
I talked about this in the opening chapter of the book I co-authored with Bill Cornelius, Go Big: How to Have Explosive Growth. Anytime you have an organization with meeting-layered Democracy and consensus building, you hamstring the power of the Holy Spirit and you reduce the effectiveness of God’s movement in the world.
See you at the chaos.
Bill Easum
www.easumbandy.com