by Pas­tor David Cox

When we begin to exam­ine what is the local church, its con­cept and def­i­n­i­tion, we must under­stand that the local church is a con­cept con­ceived in the genuis of God’s mind. It is His answer to how we humans should do the min­istry of God. It is His method, and it is His cre­ation. It is the bib­li­cal and spir­i­tual pat­tern for doing the work of the min­istry, and man will always twist and per­vert that divine bib­li­cal pat­tern, but those who are true, obe­di­ent Chris­tians will resist going for the “new thing” and instead sup­port the divinely ordained thing.

First let me explain a con­fu­sion intro­duced in the begin­ning move­ment which even­tu­ally became the Roman Catholic Church. There is no such thing as the uni­ver­sal church as many Chris­tians con­ceive of it. The Bible speaks of the church using local exam­ples or in gen­eral of the con­cept of the church. It is like same bib­li­cal exam­ple of  mar­riage and the fam­ily. The Bible speaks to hus­bands, and to wives as to their duties, oblig­a­tions, and priv­i­leges. It tells chil­dren to obey their par­ents, par­ents not to be rough with dis­ci­plin­ing their chil­dren, and wives to sub­mit to their hus­bands, and hus­bands to love and cher­ish as pre­cious their wives.

But there can be no such thing as a “uni­ver­sal mar­riage, fam­ily, hus­band, wife, or chil­dren”. It sim­ply doesn’t exist. The con­cept can be the­o­ret­i­cally sep­a­rated and exam­ined and talked about (i.e. “mar­riage is good”), but mar­riage doesn’t really exist out­side of indi­vid­ual exam­ples of mar­riage. The exis­tence of a hus­band means that that man has estab­lished a rela­tion­ship of mar­riage with a woman (in the Bible’s view, a for­mal spir­i­tual and civil rela­tion­ship). Two men together are not a mar­riage, two women together are not a mar­riage, a sin­gle woman with her child is not a mar­riage (some seem to take on weird roles as if that was a mar­riage). Every mar­riage is estab­lished by two peo­ple, “until death do they part.” Now the Bible speaks of mar­riage in gen­eral terms, but that does not mean that there exists or that there can exist a mar­riage with­out a man and woman mak­ing that rela­tion­ship. Being a pas­tor that coun­sels, I think many men and women live together with a mar­riage cer­tifi­cate on the wall, and they don’t have a clue what a mar­riage is either.

So when we see the con­cept “church”, it is lit­er­ally the called out of the world redeemed ones of Christ. A “church” or a “con­gre­ga­tion” is always a group of peo­ple in that unit that defines them, the church. You indi­vid­u­ally as a Chris­t­ian are not the church of Christ, because a church is a “GROUP” called out of one body to form a new and dif­fer­ent body. A sin­gle mem­ber isn’t the group. A sin­gle church does con­sti­tute a “church” though because they (PLURAL — PEOPLE) form the church. One sin­gle per­son can never be “a fam­ily” or “a mar­riage”. It takes two. You can­not have a church with­out an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the redeemed. Christ did not save you, and only you. The con­cept of church is a local group of redeemed which meets locally to do the pur­pose God gave the church to do. Within Catholicism,it became frag­mented into “min­istries” which each one took a life unto itself over time. They want to func­tion sup­port­ing one another, but they are not under the author­ity of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment of the Pope and Rome, (much less Christ), and so they draw resources and peo­ple from each other in com­pe­ti­tion with each other.

That has trans­fered to the Chris­tian­ity of our day. We have min­istries galor, but as much as these min­istries want “to be bib­li­cal” (they drag a sin­gle verse or phrase or word out of the Scrip­tures to give bib­li­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their exis­tence), they just make up this stuff. There is no war­rant for Chris­t­ian sum­mer camps, for Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ties, Chris­t­ian radio sta­tions, Chris­t­ian coun­sel­ing min­istries etc. That is not to say that these types of “min­istries” shouldn’t exist.

The Bible presents the pastor-shepherd as the per­son who cares for the flock of God. Pas­tors who ful­fill their mis­sion and divinely appointed min­istry will coun­sel, but when this “min­istry” is bro­ken away from the bib­li­cal con­text of a local church, every­thing goes wrong. We see no finan­cial charg­ing as a con­di­tion for coun­sel­ing in the Bible. The good shep­herd gives his life for his sheep, and he doesn’t take a pound of flesh from the sheep every time the sheep needs the pastor’s attention.

The “Jesus University”

Why didn’t God make a Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity in Jerusalem under the direc­tion and teach­ing of the Apos­tles? It is very note­wor­thy that God totally by-passed the con­cept of a Chris­t­ian School to opt for the con­cept of a local church. What is the dif­fer­ence, and why is it impor­tant (or is it impor­tant, or is it all the same?). First of all, the dif­fer­ence is that a Chris­t­ian School charges for its ser­vices (as does the vast major­ity of Chris­t­ian min­istries today). We should also note that for a “nor­mal” fam­ily, the pur­chase of a house for them to live in is an eco­nomic project that lasts many times 30–40 years. Yet send­ing two kids to a typ­i­cal Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity for 4 years each will cost the same as a house. Is it right, just, fair, and approved in God’s eyes to spend the equiv­a­lent of a family’s most major pur­chase in their entire life (the pur­chase of a house) on their children’s “Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tion?” We have been brain­washed into think that this is cor­rect. Those fam­i­lies that don’t have the money and the kids indi­vid­u­ally get school loans and pay for 20–30 years of their lives for an edu­ca­tion that in 30–40% of the cases will not pre­pare them for their life’s voca­tion, and they will have to retrain after fail­ing in their endeav­ors to find work in what they stud­ied in, and just get into some other pro­fes­sion. Chris­t­ian uni­ver­si­ties don’t get young peo­ple into good pay­ing jobs, their busi­ness is to fleece them of their life’s sav­ings. Very few schools have guid­ance coun­selors and none will turn down youth from a field because it is sat­u­rated, it is impos­si­ble to get into, or because the stu­dent just won’t make. The norm is to grad­u­ate them how­ever is pos­si­ble, so that they will get 4 years of tuition out of them, guid­ance coun­selors are just a “thing of the past.”

Mat 10:8 “freely ye have received, freely give”.

Christ set the spir­i­tual prin­ci­ple that min­istry is not to be charged for. When he sent out his dis­ci­ples to evan­ge­lize the lost and teach the con­verted, his instruc­tions were set in a prin­ci­ple like one of the ten com­mand­ments. It is sim­ply unspir­i­tual for a min­is­ter of the gospel to “charge” or “ask for money”. There are coun­ter­bal­anc­ing prin­ci­ples that the peo­ple of God have a finan­cial oblig­a­tion with the min­is­ter that serves them (phys­i­cally teach­ing them in the local church), but even then, the require­ment is set many times in speak­ing of a min­is­ter that he is not to covet other men’s cloth­ing, sil­ver or gold. Min­is­ters are to teach the oblig­a­tion of sup­port (a worker is wor­thy of his hire 1Tim 5:18), but to charge or ask or demand for a cer­tain amount is sim­ply the mark of a false prophet.

Schools will defend them­selves with the argu­ment that they are teach­ing insti­tu­tions, and as such they need class­rooms, teach­ers, dorms, etc. Yes, to have all that you need money. But that is why the entire sys­tem of a Chris­t­ian school is wrong. God has pro­vided for the edu­ca­tion of his peo­ple in a sys­tem called a “church” in which in each local­ity there is one set up by spir­i­tu­ally mature peo­ple who are com­mit­ted and sac­ri­fice to the work of God in their town, and that church is sup­posed to be in charge of the reli­gious edu­ca­tion of God’s peo­ple. Nowhere is any­thing else pro­posed as an alternative.

THE method which God has given us is local churches. The prob­lem here is that (1) an alter­na­tive exists although it is unbib­li­cal. (2) most local church pas­tors are lazy, don’t study much them­selves, are not inter­ested in doing the hard work of seri­ously prepar­ing peo­ple for the Chris­t­ian life, and leave all that to “when they get to a good Chris­t­ian col­lege, they will learn what I haven’t taught them.”

They “del­e­gate” their spir­i­tual respon­si­bil­i­ties to Chris­t­ian col­leges, and in the end analy­sis, this is sin. It is wrong. There is no bib­li­cal war­rant for it in Scrip­tures, and to “pass the buck” is just not obey­ing God. What if a man says he doesn’t want to father chil­dren, and so he lets some other man go into his wife. He is del­e­gat­ing his duty to some­body else. Is that bib­li­cal? God doesn’t allow you do del­e­gate what is your indi­vid­ual and per­sonal respon­s­abil­ity to do.

Another issue here is that between local churches and Chris­t­ian schools they reg­u­larly pass the buck on the fail­ure of these youth to be real seri­ous Chris­tians. The churches say they send their youth to the Chris­t­ian col­lege to get a good sound edu­ca­tion. The school says “Garbage in, Garbage out.” Hav­ing said that, they mean the youth come with no spir­i­tual inter­est, they are worldly, unsaved, and repro­bate in gen­eral, and the school can­not do any­thing with them. Basi­cally what both are say­ing is that the cur­rent sys­tem every­body so proudly pro­motes just is in com­plete sham­bles and fail­ure. It doesn’t work. The youth learn facts and fig­ures, and get a “good, well rounded edu­ca­tion” (what is that? Why are they strong Chris­tians com­ing out of these places?), but in gen­eral, you fol­low their lives, and they are gen­er­ally a spir­i­tual failure.

Well, let’s see. (1) They aren’t local churches, and the kids learn that local churches are unim­por­tant things that one can use real well to get mar­ried in, get buried in, and basi­cally other things, but they aren’t really essen­tial to their spir­i­tual life. Run­ning down the road back to the Chris­t­ian Col­lege every 3–4 months is what keeps them spir­i­tu­ally on a high though! (2) While in school, church atten­dance and par­tic­i­pa­tion isn’t a require­ment, it is for extrem­ist stu­dents that are reli­gion majors. (3) They have no real moral edu­ca­tion in a Chris­t­ian school. Many will take issue with that state­ment also, but God has set in con­crete the prin­ci­ple that we learn morally at the feet of a per­son is first has a vibrant rela­tion­ship with Christ, sec­ondly lives a good Chris­t­ian life in front of his “stu­dents,” and thirdly, teaches them well. The whole sit­u­a­tion of a Chris­t­ian school is to shel­ter and hide the daily lives of the “spir­i­tual teach­ers” from the stu­dents. It is inten­sive, but there is no short­cuts to learn­ing the Chris­t­ian life, so being inten­sive doesn’t work. It only shifts the major­ity of the learn­ing from moral prin­ci­ple learn­ing to head knowl­edge that is not given a chance to be lived out in actual life of the people.

This where God has the upper­hand. Col­lege edu­cated Chris­tians know more, and live less of the Bible, and church edu­cated (in a bib­li­cal church set­ting) live the Bible they know. Chris­t­ian schools teach spir­i­tual hypocrisy from begin­ning to end. We all know what Christ taught about our oblig­a­tion and duty when we see a brother or sis­ter sin, go to them one on one. In a Chris­t­ian school that is thrown in the trash, and we are to report them to the admin­is­tra­tion. The entire bib­li­cal sys­tem is ejected and not used “because we are a school, not a church.” Rules (with­out bib­li­cal sup­port) are imposed as if the school has a secret com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God, and life becomes mil­i­ta­rized. This is how you become spir­i­tual. Kow­tow­ing to the admin­is­tra­tion, and lad­der climb­ing are the way really spir­i­tual Chris­tians are iden­ti­fied. Any­one who falls into that sys­tem can­not func­tion in a local church or in their spir­i­tual life until they “undo” all that they learned in the Chris­t­ian college.

What good is it to learn spir­i­tual prin­ci­ples that don’t work, aren’t bib­li­cal, and that you have to “unlearned” them before you can be of any good to God? When we break the bib­li­cal pat­tern, we break every­thing, and we are no longer “bib­li­cal”. God’s genius, eter­nal wis­dom, and infi­nite under­stand­ing of how things work, and how man func­tions, includ­ing his propen­sity to cor­rup­tion, is all behind God’s orders and the divine pat­terns He gives us to fol­low. When man “improves” on God’s plan, he ruins it, totally ruins it.

God is a genuis. God put all His genuis into mak­ing the struc­ture of the local church. That is what God uses to do the work of the Lord. There is noth­ing wrong with a young per­son going off to col­lege to learn a pro­fes­sion. But it is sheer folly to think that going to a Chris­t­ian col­lege will make a young per­son a Chris­t­ian, or a bet­ter Chris­t­ian. A strong Chris­t­ian will go to a Chris­t­ian school, and wher­ever he goes, he will con­tinue to grow spir­i­tu­ally. Per­haps being around a bunch of other Chris­tians will be a great help to his spir­i­tual growth. Being around a bunch of hyp­ocrites in a sys­tem that plays on hyp­ocrites and false appear­ances of spir­i­tu­al­ity can also be his down­fall, as many who go to Chris­t­ian col­leges return in fail­ure to their families.

The burn­ing ques­tion in all of this is sim­ply this: If God made a sys­tem for us to learn the Bible at the feet of a godly man of God, a Pas­tor of a local church who lives week in and week out his nor­mal life before his con­gre­ga­tion (includ­ing the mem­bers know­ing his chil­dren, his fam­ily, his per­sonal life, being in his home, he being in their homes, etc), what bib­li­cal rea­son do we have for dump­ing this in order to learn our Bible and moral­ity at a Chris­t­ian school? Why should we spend so much of our money for some­thing which God has set up that we should get for free (for those who are imma­ture Chris­tians, and mature Chris­tians give what God moves on their hearts, and in no way are these Bible teach­ers to set up mil­lion dol­lar build­ings)? You can­not just set aside the pat­tern that God has imposed for some­thing else.

Many Chris­t­ian youth could go to junior col­leges and live at home for a frac­tion of what a Chris­t­ian Col­lege costs, but the guilt trip that pas­tors (who have sold their souls to these Chris­t­ian schools so that they can get noto­ri­ety from them) put on these Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies is all too much to bear. Their spir­i­tual leader (their pas­tor) tells them, encour­ages them, and basi­cally pres­sures them to go to the indi­cated Chris­t­ian school.

God’s genuis is set aside for man’s mas­ter­pieces, the Chris­t­ian col­lege. If it is right and the best way, why didn’t God give us this in the first place?

Par­ent Page:

• What’s Wrong with the con­cept of a Chris­t­ian University?

Pages in this series:

• Only a liv­ing exam­ple can teach morality
• The Church: the Genius of God
• Invest­ment of tithes in “God’s work”
• Excel­lence is not greater than faithfulness.
• The sin of “min­istry for hire”