Liberty in Relational Organic Christianity (part 1)

1/3/2007

In your house you have that liberty for people to express themselves. If you guys were all sitting in somebody’s living room, you know good and well if one of the others wanted to say something they could. Why does it have to be different when instead of seven there are seventy or three hundred and seventy? Why does it have to be different? Everyone has liberty to be who they are if there are seven in the living room. And everybody knows that’s okay, even the so-called “pastor.” And I keep saying “so-called” because that word is not in the Bible. But it is in man’s system.

So even if a so-called-man’s-system “pastor” was sitting in the living room with ten or twelve people—even he knows everybody has liberty to say something. He’s not going to push a pulpit in the corner after dinner and totally control everything that happens after dinner. Instead, you’re sitting around talking and eating some dessert and he shares whatever he wants to share and everybody else shares what they want to share. Even he’s smart enough to know he doesn’t control these people if they’re really a family after dinner.

So why does that have to change if there’s seventy or seven hundred? It doesn’t have to change is the point. He knows better in a family environment, yet he doesn’t know any better on a Sunday morning at some kind of religious meeting. How did he lose perspective as he walked from the parking lot into this building? It’s because the traditions of men have nullified the voice of God. He assumes he’s supposed to start the meeting and end the meeting and he has usurped Jesus’ Headship by doing so.

So leadership is a good thing, but it has to be organic leadership. It’s not chaos. It’s not every man doing what’s right in his own eyes. It’s not disorderliness, but it’s a theocracy. It’s not a democracy where everybody gets to say or do whatever they want whenever they want, but a theocracy where everybody’s functioning trying to really hear God and keep quiet.

“The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet” (1 Cor. 14:32). I might have a gift of being prophetic, but the spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet. This means I can shut up if I want to. God didn’t make my voice turn stained-glass holy and just take over everybody. I chose to let that happen. The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet.

So we all use our gifts. We have the courage to use our gifts and we also have the courage to let other people use their gifts without fear. There’s no chaos in that. Twenty years later I can say this is not theory. We’ve been doing this for twenty years and there’s no chaos in that environment if Jesus is allowed to be Head. It’s not a democracy. It’s a theocracy where Jesus is allowed to do whatever He wants at any given moment. Make sense?

•  Liberty in Relational Organic Christianity (part 1)