Open-source Church

New technology is opening up new perspectives on organizational management.  I think the Church should have the copyright on this philosophy.  Unfortunately, the historic Church has for the most part looked more like a monarchy.  I feel like I am reading some spiritual devotional material when reading some of the material at opensource.com.   Also if you follow the links you can see this video clip by the National Journal referring to the book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. 

 

In defense of the Common English Bible's translation of Titus 1:5-6

“5 The reason I left you behind in Crete was to organize whatever needs to be done and to appoint elders in each city, as I told you. 6 Elders should be without fault. They should be faithful to their spouse1

1 “Or they should be a one-woman man.“


If someone is going to critique the Common English Bible, I think it is useful to compare it to another imperfect translation (of which are all of course). Since most misogynists like the ESV, I choose to compare it to the ESV. If you are going to say such negative words about the CEB translation of Titus 1:5-6, then I would only hope you can accept a similar critique of the ESV which you prefer. Once upon a time all the men were content to accept Junias, the man, as one notable AMONG the apostles, but when it became undeniable that “Junia”, the woman, was the most reliable reading, some translators were afraid that some might read this passage and understand that Junia was an apostle. So the translators of the ESV decided to translate ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις as “TO the apostles”. I think anyone comparing these two translations of ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις will certainly understand them differently. So when almost all translations in English translate this phrase as “among the apostles”, it is easy to understand as did the Greek Church father Chrysostom that Junia was a woman apostle. So if Junia was a woman apostle then it is obvious that an apostle is also qualified to be an elder therefore not only is it acceptable to translate πρεσβυτερους in Titus 1:5-6 as non gender specific, but also translate the following idiom in a way that allows this non-gender understanding of elder . If the phrase “one-woman-man” is not understood idiomatically than it requires that an elder must also be married. So if there be any error in the CEB’s translation of Titus 1:5-6, I see it certainly no worse than the ESV’s misogynic acrobatics in Rom. 16:7. So if you concede that the ESV translation of Rom. 16:7 is less than acceptable I will accept that the CEB has taken liberty to not translate Titus 1:5-6 literally.

The Church, just the bare necessities.

When we speak of bare necessities, I really think that we do not need to include any organizational forms when thinking of church but see the church more organically than organizationally. What was church to Jesus? What was church to Luke and Paul? Jesus was still living in the Old Testament worldview. In the Old Testament the church was the assembly of the people. In the nation of Israel, the church and the people were synonymous. Synagogue=Assembly Of course by the time of Jesus the synagogue had developed into a separate meeting hall. The church that Jesus refers to is the true followers of Jehovah, the kingdom of God, which would exclude those part of the Jewish nation who were unfaithful, and include those Gentiles who came into the faith relationship with Jehovah. Jesus is only credited with the translated Greek word ecclesia twice, once in relation to Peter's confession and the other time in relation to community discipline of a sinner. In the latter time it is obvious that Jesus is referring to the community of Jews and not a church as we usually think today as in the New Covenant. The church according to Luke and Paul was focused on a new community that transcended nations, having only by grace through faith as the common denominator plus the law of Christ as the practical application of the faith life. To me it seems that Paul had a very loose concept of church and Luke had his own interpretation, but also a pretty loose community or fellowship. Whether Luke and Paul were in complete agreement in their ecclesiology is difficult to ascertain.

Leaders

I use the word leader with great hesitation, because most people's concept of leader is different then what I see Jesus's model. Even when people say "servant leader" I still think they usually have a too rigid authoritarian concept. 

Whenever we have two people interacting there is a natural tendency for the stronger personality to lead the other. So when the group gets a bit larger, this tendency brings out the strongest personalities. This can be a good thing as it can facilitate the groups movement towards a common purpose, but because of the selfish egotistical bias in each of us, the one leading will always become abusive to the weaker ones in some way or another. For this reason a group of leaders is still better than one leader. I guess this would agree with what you say about leadership being a necessary evil. With no leadership, the group might lack direction, but with a leader or leaders, there will come leadership abuse. So we must create an foster a model that will best guarantee a system to continually evaluate the "leaders" so that they are representatives of all the group especially the weakest and most silent. One mistake many make is thinking that in a good democracy the rules are made by the majority. Actually, this is often true, but in a healthy democracy the constitution will ensure the rights of all people so that the majority cannot pass a rule that will infringe on the liberty of any minority or individual. I would be interested to hear your ideas on how we can best avoid the abuse of leadership and all the politics of it withing our church and church organizations.