{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Dialog","title":"1.40 / How should a church be run?","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2331,"description":"Church in the 80s meant an overhead projector. Today it looks like a concert. Both felt like the one right way to do church. Have we mistaken tradition for truth?\nJesus said, \"I will build my church.\" Then He handed it to people and never gave them an org chart. In this episode, my co-host Nick Surface and I talk through what the church is for, why every generation fights over how to do it, and how to tell a preference from a principle.\nAre church traditions the same as biblical truth?\nNo. Traditions are preferences. Interpretations become opinions, and for a lot of people opinions quietly become truth. If the only way you hear from God is a sermon, a Bible study or a worship song, you have a relationship with that person's relationship with God. Read it for yourself.\nDoes the Bible tell us how to run a church?\nNot in one verse. The Old Testament spells out the rules, down to the sacrifices. In the New Testament, Jesus gives the vision (discipleship, the Great Commission, the Great Commandment) and leaves the method to us. Scripture shows three leadership models: elder or board governance (Acts 15, 1 Timothy 5, Titus 1), congregational governance (1 Peter 2), and overseer or episcopal governance, from the Greek ἐπίσκοπος (episkopos). I see all three in the book of Acts.\nWhy did Jesus keep breaking the Pharisees' Sabbath rules?\nThe Pharisees built fences around the law. Mixing mud counted as work, so Jesus healed a man with mud on the Sabbath (John 9). Over and over, He showed them that what they built around the law was not the law itself.\nIs the modern megachurch just the next tradition?\nI think so. The screens-and-lights model of the early 2000s was built to reach new people, not to be comfortable. Thirty years later, a lot of churches keep it because it is comfortable. Someone is going to create the new model.\nScriptures\nExodus 33:18-19 · Matthew 5:16 · Ecclesiastes 7:10 · Matthew 16:18 · John 9:6 · Acts 15 · 1 Timothy 5 · Titus 1 · 1 Peter 2:9\nWords and ideas...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/7YsfA4gq5VzjhvmKvDET1pQqT0OM6yxv1laklKclR7g/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS83ZWZh/MTRmZDEzOWRjZGQz/Y2M2NThkNzYwOTJj/ODA4MC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}