Church of the Living Dead
or Suckers for Systems
God chooses certain men to do great works. Their work is duplicated and multiplied in the institutions they found. When these men are gone, those who remain tend to rely on systems. The machine must be maintained for pride’s sake, regardless of whether it is being used by God or not. This violates two basic biblical principles.
The first is the head-and-body principle. God lifts up the head (some great teacher) and a body naturally forms.[1] This is good. This is discipleship. But it should result in more heads. Every church should be an academy. Every church should be able to find their next pastor within their ranks.
The second is the principle of harvest. It has a beginning and an end. When that Bible study you started which was highly enjoyable and edifying comes to its natural end, let it go. When that home care ministry is running out of steam (and volunteers) but you want to keep it running in honour of the now deceased woman who founded it, let it go. (She’s in heaven thinking “Let it go, people. Let it go.”) Some churches come to a natural end. There’s no shame in that if it is a natural end. What’s creepy is when it is kept going for no good reason. Somebody new turns up with fresh ideas and they are the weird one (like Marilyn!).
God’s work is always fresh because it is cyclical.[2] New life comes from fresh seed.[3] Watchman Nee wrote:
“David served in one generation—his own. He could not serve in two! Where today we seek to perpetuate our work by setting up an organisation or society or system, the Old Testament saints served their own day and passed on. This is an important principle of life. Wheat is sown, it grows, it ears, is reaped, and then the whole plant, even to the root, is plowed out. God’s work is spiritual to the point of having no earthly roots, no smell of earth on it at all. Men pass on, but the Lord remains.
Everything to do with the Church must be up-to-date and living, meeting the present—one could never even say the passing—needs of the hour. Never must it become fixed, earth-bound, static. God Himself takes away His workers, but He gives others. Our work suffers, but His never does. Nothing touches Him. He is still God.”
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[1] This is true for both good and evil, although evil is always eventually exposed as impotent. See Totus Diabolus.
[2] I don’t know Watchman Nee’s position on Bible prophecy, but this has a huge bearing on eschatology. Postmillennialists, to my mind, have the best understanding of history and how God works in and through it (typology). And yet this results in postmillennialists being the very ones who don’t live in the past. Closed ranks with open minds. For a great read, see James Jordan’s How To Do Reformed Theology Nowadays.
[3] This death-and-resurrection sequence of living ministry is the true apostolic succession. See Apostolic Succession?
