In 2013 my congregation’s leaders proposed a significant change to who could become leaders in the church. Prior to 2013, we had a system where, at our annual congregational meeting, people were voted onto our various serve teams. Then at the beginning of the year, at the first serve team meeting, the members of the serve team would decide who would represent their team on what was then called the Ministry Council.
Certainly there were times when qualified leaders rose to the top. But there were also times when serve team members would be staring down at the meeting room table, not wanting to look up, not wanting to give any indication that they might be a candidate to represent their team on the Ministry Council. Representing your team on the Ministry Council meant going to more meetings. More responsibility.
As the serve meeting drug on, the team had to make a decision. Someone had to rep their team on the Ministry Council. Deals were brokered: “I’ll be the team chairperson if you go to Ministry Council.” What that meant was that sometimes people ended up on the Ministry Council who did not really want to be on the Council, and, worse yet, they might not have been qualified to be a leader in the church. This was a very poor way to select leaders for the church, not to mention this selection method had no grounding in biblical principles for leadership selection.
So we proposed a change to our church by-laws, a proposal that would do away with that old system, electing people directly onto a Leadership Team, people who had clearly demonstrated that they were spiritually mature, which is the biblical principle. There would be a process, led by the Nominating Committee, meant to be very intentional about only nominating people who had clearly demonstrated for years that they were spiritually mature. Then after the Leadership Team had been voted on by the congregation, the Leadership Team would decided which of its members would be liaisons to each serve team.
As with the proposal I mentioned in the previous post, this idea was called into question. Who are we to judge another person’s spiritual maturity? Wouldn’t it be wrong of the Nominating Committee to make such judgments? Jesus said we should not judge.
Or did he? At the time, I wrote a position paper on this topic of judging. Yes, Jesus said, “Judge not, you will be judged.” But Jesus’ teaching is confusing, especially when other passages of Scripture seem to ask us to make judgments. For example, Jesus himself would also say in the same passage a few verses later, Matthew 7:15-20, “By their fruits you will know them.”
Wait, Jesus, are you saying we are to make a judgment call about their fruits? Yes! But didn’t you just say, “Don’t judge”? Yes. So what is going on here?
In this passage Jesus is speaking about false prophets, saying that people will need to examine their fruits and make a decision. This implies a judgment call. Maybe making judgments is acceptable in some situations. This is not just about determining whether or not a person is qualified to be a leader in the local church. This is also vital for the topic we are discussing this week: holding one another accountable in the church family.
Consider what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:12, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked man from among you.” Clearly the situation in this passage is not one of judging leaders based on spiritual maturity. Instead the context is judgment of people in the church who are sinning. Paul explains the specific situation earlier in the chapter, verses 1-2. People in the church were being sexually immoral, and the Corinthian believers were not dealing with it. So he strongly urges them to judge the sin and address it. Hold them accountable
Paul will go on in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 to say that churches should appoint people to do the work of judging disputes between believers. Here we have at least two kinds of situations in which judging was not only encouraged but described by Paul as necessary: addressing immorality and disputes in church families. We can conclude that, despite Jesus’ teaching “do not judge”, Paul understood Jesus not as banning all forms of judging but instead as teaching a general principle that should be used in most situations. There will be, however, those rare situations, Paul explains, where judging is not only permissible but important.
But you might respond that these passages aren’t really about holding one another accountable. They don’t mention that word “accountable.” That’s true. In the next post we’ll talk about how these passages relate to holding one another accountable.
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Engaging Scripture 