What’s changed?

Reading through Acts 5 this morning, I was struck with some radical differences between the early church and today’s American church. And I was pressed to consider my role—a leader of a larger group of churches—and how different I function in that role than those leaders in the early church did.

There was such a vitality in the infant church that often eludes us now. There was a presence of passion and a sense of urgency that has largely been replaced with a preponderance of process, and with a good helping of risk-avoidance thrown in. Modern denominational leaders can get stuck focusing on getting organizationally compliant churches; the early church was barely organized.

Look at a few things that marked the leaders of the Acts 5 church, and notice how they might differ from leaders like me today:

• Authority: Ananias and Sapphira—when it comes to walking in spiritual authority, that was the real deal. I don’t want to make anyone dead by my rebuke, but there was no question that the leaders of the Jerusalem church carried supernatural and relational authority, as opposed to the positional authority so many of us function in today.

• Supernatural Power: There was a God-expression of life and supernatural Kingdom signs happening through the early church and its leaders. Do we see that, or even expect that, today? For instance, what would happen if, when I showed up to one of my churches, they expected folks to get healed and delivered? Maybe that should be the norm.

• Evangelism: Waves of people coming to Jesus was a marked expression of this kind of leadership. I’m appropriately happy when a few make decisions for Christ, but as a Bishop or leader of leaders, I want to suggest that this kind of evangelistic response should mark my ministry, too.

• Teaching: The early leaders were deeply involved in teaching and shaping the movement, not primarily, like me, organizing it.

• Opposition: These apostles had no problem ticking off the religious leaders—if we are truly leading the Church in the power of the Spirit, we need to understand that we will face significant opposition; religious people may hate us and will strongly disagree with us. I’m not sure when the last time someone hated me for the right reasons was.

• Persecution: Ultimately, the leaders of the Acts 5 church celebrated the persecution they received because they were courageous for Jesus. We are often so worried about what others might think that we never even cross the line of opposition, much less be persecuted for our actions.

I’m not suggesting we press for a lack of sound policy or process or healthy organization. I am suggesting that we may have put the cart before the horse, and forgotten that all of those administrative things are only intended to serve the mission of the alive, unpredictable, messy church and her human leadership who moves by the power and life of the Spirit.

As a leader in a religious organization, I want to be available to the move of the Holy Spirit like that, and not just vested with the trappings of positional authority that come with the job!