by Sandy » Wed Apr 20, 2011 11:02 am
I think God did spell out the model he wanted for his church in the New Testament, and I would call those references "simple" rather than "nebulous." They only had the Old Testament, in some cases oral tradition, in others copies of a few epistles, and later on, perhaps, the gospels, during that apostolic period, but they put together the body of Christ with that. It was comprehensive enough to be identified, called "Ecclesia," and identified by location. It was only as the church headed toward apostacy following Constantine that it adopted the heirarchial structure and was influenced by paganism, and following that, the church organization and heirarchial structure it developed became the model for most of the main branches of Protestantism, with faint but discernable resemblances to the Papacy.
The much-criticized Anabaptists, and some of their forerunners, got it right with their ideas of a free church with a regenerate membership. The church, from the fourth century on, including many of its Protestant branches, became a bureaucracy, descriptions of which bring to mind Paul's words in 2 Timothy 3:5, "...having the appearance of godliness but denying its power."
Personally, I think far too large a portion of the church's resources go to supporting a needless, inefficient bureaucracy in many denominational structures. There's not much visibility of people in the pews of what goes on in a denominational office, so there's less accountability there, and when you have networks of friends and supporters involved supervising each other, as most denominational offices do, there's even less. A good friend of mine who graduated from college with me went to work at a state Baptist convention. He told me it was a great job, not much work or effort, basically doing "consulting" with churches, conducting some training conferences, nice travel, stayed in high dollar hotels, got mileage, and had a nice retirement package. He got the job because his Dad worked in an executive level job in the state convention and knew people. It had been planned since he was in high school. That is denominational bureaucracy. Could the churches have been as successful at their work without his consulting services? Absolutely.