Dusman

ccanuck asked earlier,
My friend Steve Atkerson (who is a complementarian 🙂 wrote an excellent article titled “Concensus Governing” and it can be found here: http://www.ntrf.org/articles/article_detail.php?PRKey=13

In a nutshell, Steve shows from a careful examination of the NT, that things were sorted out *publicly* in the early ekklesia when a great need arose, not behind closed doors with only leaders present. Early Christian churches were small enough to fit in houses and everybody knew everybody else and enjoyed intimate fellowship one with another. This type of structure allowed for elders to guide as necessary the entire congregation into a consensus when making decisions because the elders ensured that the entire congregation understood the situation and the issues involved. Thus, the early churches were elder “led” instead of “elder-ruled”.

It is clear by the testimony of all church historians that the church moved from simplicity to increasing complexity and so eventually, the ability for churches to function in this way was lost. The dynamics of the Spirit were all but lost as the ecclesiastical bureaucracy became fixed in concrete. Dependence on the Spirit in the early days of the ekklesia was replaced by inflexible, clergy-dominated traditions as time went on. The minority who were seeking to be led by the Spirit were generally treatly harshly by the hierarchy in place. Isn’t it safe to say that Spirit-led dynamics are all but shut down when NT perspectives are crowded out by human traditions and dominating clerics? When church came to be about control then it is no wonder that the vulnerability attendant with trusting the Spirit was lost and hence, a heirarchicalism developed.