The problem with Calvinism is not that it has been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

Readers will recognize in these words both G.K Chesterton’s famous comment on Christianity and the liberty we have taken with it. Perhaps they will also recognize this quotation from Peter Borgdorffs guest editorial in The Banner of 14 December, 1987:

They (who have been called to lead the church) must show why not every leadership principle is acceptable in the church of Christ.

To this we say a hearty “amen” and add: not every leadership principle which is acceptable in the church of Christ is acceptable in a Reformed church of Christ.

A Crisis Perceived

We wish we could be so sure as Mr. Borgdorff is, that church leaders have no desire to borrow organization and leadership models from non-Reformed sources. We suspect that he is mistaken. We believe that we can detect just such borrowing. In fact there is already a growing sense among our people that the integrity of their congregations is eroding, that authority is slowly but surely being centralized in Grand Rapids, and that they are powerless to reverse this trend through due process.

One such borrowed model is hierarchy, known to Christians as “episcopacy” and to secular industry as “centralized management.” But it was the conclusion of the Genevan Reformers, based on their study of Scripture, that nothing in the New Testament justified spiritual hierarchies. On the contrary, everything suggested that each believer had an individual relationship with God, and that the function of the church was merely to nurture, instruct, and correct his pursuit of Christian maturity. And so they replaced the episcopal system with the collegial. Thus collegia (fellowships) of function, jointly exercising gifts bestowed by God’s grace, replaced strata of clergy, personally wielding authority conferred by human consent.

Just as the collegial model assumes that maturity should be the goal of all Christians, the hierarchical model assumes that immaturity is the inevitable state of lay Christians. Children, of course, must be controlled. And they who enjoy controlling others wish them to remain childlike. Indeed, one respected sociologist has noted that the primary purpose of hierarchy is control, and any shift in the nature of control threatens those who might lose their authority.

Now, it wasn’t likely that the leaders of the Christian Reformed Church could be tempted by the forbidden fruit of episcopacy. No, given the nature of things, it was while Doctrinal Security kept our doors under close surveillance that Hierarchy crept back in through the windows. For they are not bad churches but good businesses which are admired by some of our well–meaning but unthoughtful leaders.

Centralization is seen by some as an antidote to growing congregationalism. Congregationalism is seen by others as an appropriate response to escalating denominationalism. This is like the old U.S. dilemma of state sovereignty and federal uniformity: only, for our Church, the issues are congregational integrity and denominational cooperation. We do not pretend to have final solutions to this inherent tension, but we do wish to point out some built-in problems of commercial-style centralization. And we wish to list some of its forms which, when observed, ought to warn our people that their Reformational liberties may be in danger.

A Crisis Explored

“Centralized,” “hierarchical,” and “pyramidal” are interchangeable adjectives for the same model. In our own “Grand Rapids trend” and elsewhere, this is characterized by organization charts, chains-of-command, increased headquarters staffs and costs, recruiting-officers, five-year strategies, Management By Objectives (MBO), employee manuals, (some already heavier than the Bible and still fattening,) and choirs of soothsayers to “say it isn’t so.”

All this is happening, oddly, at a time when hierarchical management is under growing criticism from the well-qualified analysts which business pays to monitor its own performance. From such eminent journals as theHarvard Business Review we ought to have learned, for example, that the wise executive subdues his passion for writing policy handbooks. Detailed pronouncements on institutional objectives and departmental strategies, with all–inclusive organizational objectives and departmental strategies, with all-inclusive organization charts and job descriptions—these are often the first pang of a mortal illness.

A worker’s worth in the world of MBO is determined by the overall cost-effectiveness with which he can achieve the decreed objective. For once that objective has been determined, it can only be altered by upchain and down-chain jugglings of responsibility that push credit upward and blame downward. And at every step along the way, each official must take care to cover his own . . . tracks. Only think of the time lost, the feelings hurt, and the objectives missed—all because of an undue preoccupation with Objectives in the first place! But perhaps it is chiefly because it tends to give his achievements greater importance than the worker himself that MBO is unsuitable for spiritual enterprise in general and ministry in particular.

Some other weaknesses of centralized businesses are that, revolving as they do around Chief Executive Officers, they tend to be unstable. They extract unquestioning loyalty to superiors as the price of survival and advancement. They foster fawning, politicking, and other unseemly manipulation. They shun bad tidings and punish their messengers. They emphasize corporate uniformity to the detriment of individual inspiration. They prefer corpo-babble to plain speech. They proliferate management jobs, inflating overhead costs, then play bookkeepers’ games to conceal the fact. And they create climates in which rivalry, intrigue, and bitterness replace genuine cooperation.

Why should the Christian Reformed Church just now be building corporate structures which corporations themselves are coming to doubt? Why did she not know that this doubt was growing? Actually we should not be surprised, for it is a wryly-acknowledged fact that churches are usually twenty years behind the times!

A Crisis Deplored

The Reformed objections to such novelties are several and strenuous. Where the front–line, “lowest echelon” worker is actually a minister, (one called by God Himself to work specifically for His kingdom,) a hierarchical model subverts the Reformed model. For in such cases, the church can have no higher function than assessing the validity of his call, monitoring his faithfulness to it, and supporting him to the best of her ability. Truly the “servant of the servants of God,” the church is his enabler rather than his employer.

Nor do chains-of-command find any justification in the New Testament. On the contrary, history demonstrates that every effort to systematize the operation of the Holy Spirit, whether by sacraments or structures, has ended in spiritual disaster. So unimpressed is God with man-made boxes that He will not confine Himself in them. Indeed, one can almost say that where human artifice prevails, there God’s Spirit does not. No other organizational forms have any warranty of Scripture than those unimpressive rules which convene “humble and holy men of heart” to wait with patience for His leading.

Recruitment to service in the church of Christ is not done by agents with quotas to meet.or bonuses to merit. It is done by the Spirit of God, as a promised result of the faithful preaching of the Word “which will not return to Him void.”

Long-term gameplans and MBOs are not scriptural concepts. How often have we read,

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow . . . . Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will . . . do this or that” (James 4:13-15 NIV).

Reminded of these words, directors are apt to retort, “Well! Of course we meant ‘Lord willing!’” But this does not change the fact that Management By Objectives makes us the planners and gives God no more than veto power over our pet projects.

Of course no system or model of human organization is flawless, but we must always be on guard against thoughtless acceptance of structure which are foreign to our Church Order. The Christian Reformed Church Order was carefully constructed by our ancestors. Now, it is becoming the property of those who may or may not understand it and respect it. We cannot claim that all other forms of polity than ours are intrinsically evil or unproductive. But we can strongly urge that such forms be seen for what they are and weighed accordingly.

John D. Teague lives at 1661 Madison, S.E., Grand Rapids.