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Have you ever heard someone say, "I believe in God—I’m a spiritual person; I just don’t like organized religion”? I had a friend I grew up with in church who got to the point where he was extremely critical of any sort of organization in the church. He and a number of his friends decided to form their own group (which, by the way, sounds somewhat organized). They did not meet in a building and did not have a pastor, music ministry, nor adult Bible studies or kids/youth ministry. They claimed simply to “follow the Spirit’s leading” when they would meet. Some meetings would last thirty minutes, and others would go up to two hours. Sometimes they would spend the majority of their time praying; at other times they would sing. Sporadically random people, when they felt led, would teach. But their goal was not to plan or to organize anything because they considered that anything organized was worldly and unspiritual. They believed that anything in a system could not be of God.
One of my issues with this approach (and I have a few), is the argument that says formal organization is not from God—that it is ungodly. Scripture teaches that our God is extremely organized. He has created all that is, and has ordered it a certain way. When you read the creation account in Genesis 1, you see that God is very orderly. We are told in verse 21 that He created every living creature that moves, “according to their kinds.” He created all the different species, and made them in such a way that scientists can group them together by their physical features. Each day we live is ordered in a particular way. Because of the motion of the earth around the sun, we have the sun to light up our world by day and the moon by night. Everything goes on, all the time, as it should, because our God is organized.
We see that He is organized in the way He has created and sustains us. Think about our bodies. God gave us bodies that are extremely orderly in the way they perform. Because of the fall we do at times experience malfunction in its parts; but our bodies were created to function and keep functioning in a very predictable and organized manner.
Think about God’s Word. We learn in His Word that He has chosen to use His people to write orderly accounts about who He is, and all He has said and done in history. Luke tells Theophilus at the first of his Gospel, “It seemed good to me . . . to write an orderly account for you” (Luke 1:3, ESV).
So God’s world is orderly, and His Word is orderly, and we learn in Scripture that God also intended to have organization in His church. He inspired Paul to write these words in 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 (ESV): For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
Paul also says in 1 Corinthians 12:18-20 (ESV): God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
God desires that His church be organized—one body with many parts, arranged to function together in a cohesive and organized way.
Now, there are some who, unlike the friend I mentioned earlier, take church organization to the other extreme. They argue that the church is a business, and must be run like a business with the pastor functioning as a CEO. They develop these complex organizational charts with various boards and committees and sub-committees that oversee and monitor every little detail of church life. They provide five-to-six page job descriptions for everybody on staff, and four times a year they have performance reviews. While they may factor in the work of the Holy Spirit, He must work within this complex yet organized system.
Both extremes are wrong. According to Paul, the church is not an organization but an organism. While it is to be an organized organism, it is an organism. The church is a body that is alive—living, breathing, growing, and maturing, because it is made up of believers who are alive, not just physically but spiritually. They are living, breathing, growing, and maturing in Christ. It is an organized organism with many parts (believers) functioning as one body (the church), with one Spirit, under one head, with one mission—to make Christ known and advance God’s gospel everywhere.
The church must be organized to do this great work. It must develop ministries to equip God’s people to do this work of ministry (Ephesians 4:12), and have a designated place and set times to meet and be led by capable, gifted, and godly leaders.
For the church to succeed in the mission Christ has given it, it must function in this way—as one body with many parts under one head with one mission: to reach the lost and equip the saved so that God’s Gospel goes out and His kingdom advances.
Graham Hale
Graham Hale is the Pastor of Fellowship Bible Church in Jacksonville, TX. and is a Womenary Professor. He earned a B.A. (Political Science) from the University of Arkansas in 2001 and a M.Div. (Missiology) from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in 2006. Graham is currently pursuing a D.Min. (Pastoral Leadership) at Southwestern Theological Seminary.
