The Biblically-Driven Church: How Jesus Builds His Body: How Jesus Builds His Body

By Cliff McManis

How does a church grow?

Who builds the church?

What is the real, honorable church anyway?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524539306

Cliff McManis

Clifford B. McManis is a graduate of The Master’s University and The Master’s Seminary. He began local church ministry in 1989, having served in six churches in Southern California, Utah, Texas, and Northern California. He has also taught in six different Christian schools. He has been the teaching pastor and an elder at Grace Bible Fellowship of Silicon Valley since its inception in 2006. He currently serves on the board of The Cornerstone Seminary in Vallejo, California, where he also teaches Bible exposition and apologetics. Cliff and his wife, Debbie, have four children and reside in the Silicon Valley.

Book preview

Endorsements

It has been my rare privilege to teach seminary-level Greek exegesis of the NT text in two accredited seminaries for over fifty years. To have one of my students put into book form some of the things he has learned in applying these lessons in a local church as has Cliff McManis in this book is another great privilege.

Dr. Robert L. Thomas

Author of Understanding Spiritual Gifts

and former Chairman of New Testament

at The Master’s Seminary

As our culture is changing so dramatically these days and moves toward a complete rebellion to God, and as many churches have begun to compromise their own standards to more align themselves with society, it is refreshing to read a book that is committed to the truths of Scripture and seeks to build a church God’s way. This book will definitely challenge and stimulate the churches today to stay true to what God has designed.

Dr. Tom Halstead

Dean, School of Biblical Studies

The Master’s University

The

Biblically-Driven

Church

How Jesus Builds His Body

Cliff McManis

Copyright © 2016 by GBF Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Rev. date: 09/13/2016

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

1.    The Modern Church: Ecclesiastical Confusion

2.    The Meaning of Church: Identifying the Body of Christ

3.    The Manual for the Church: The Priority of the Bible

4.    The Management of the Church: Elder Shepherding

5.    The Mission of the Church: Clarifying A Biblical Purpose

6.    The Mandate for the Church: The Promise of Jesus

7.    The Method of the Church: Every Saint Serving

8.    The Ministries in the Church: Fulfilling Biblical Priorities

9.    The Music in the Church: Harmonizing Biblical Principles

Bibliography

About The Author

Dedicated to Dr. Robert L. Thomas,

Long time mentor,

Peerless exegete,

Faithful teacher of the Word,

Selfless servant of Christ’s Church

Acknowledgements

There are many people to thank who contributed to make this work possible. First, I want to thank GBF Press for the production of this work, from beginning to end. Thanks to Alex Guglielmo for typing the original manuscript. Thanks to Patricia Biehn, Alec Shcherbakov and Jane Schindler for proof reading contributions. Thanks to Pastor Bob Douglas for the cover design.

Thanks to the faithful saints of GBF whom I have had the privilege of serving since 2006. Your hunger for God’s Word, your exuberant love for the brethren and your faithful commitment to biblical ministry is a blessing.

A special thanks to a personal mentor since 1989, Dr. Robert L. Thomas—professor emeritus of The Master’s Seminary. Few have had a greater impact on me with respect to my love and view of God’s Word. Dr. Thomas trained men for ministry faithfully for more than fifty years and will always be noted for his mastery of Greek, his precision in exegesis, his simplicity of faith, his staunch defense of inerrancy, his indefatigable work ethic, and his invaluable contribution which helped bring the New American Standard translation of the Bible into existence. I am honored to dedicate this work to him. Thanks Dr. Bob for your investment in me for so many years.

Foreword

Before I went into ministry I worked in banking for fourteen years. In those years I saw all kinds of counterfeits – counterfeit identification, counterfeit money, and counterfeit tax returns. To help prepare us, the bank would train us in two ways. They would work to make us very familiar with what was real and true. We were made aware of what a driver’s license from every state looked like. We would handle so much money that we knew what real currency felt like… in the dark… with our eyes closed. We also were made aware of common characteristics of the counterfeits. Periodically, we would receive warnings about bad money that was being passed in our area so we could be on the lookout for it.

Reading this book, The Biblically-Driven Church, by Clifford B. McManis reminds me of the training that I received in the bank. Dr. McManis not only teaches us the biblical truth about the church, but he lays out for us, and warns us about the all too common counterfeits that fill the church world of our day.

When you read this book, especially as a church leader, you feel like you are in the huddle with the Apostle Paul and the elders of the church in Ephesus as recorded in Acts 20:17-38. It is so helpful to have the truth and the warnings laid out side-by-side as Paul did and Dr. McManis does in following the example of the great Apostle. This book will particularly help church leaders as it will lay out for them the issues and help them to lead their flock in the truth.

I have known Dr. McManis for over twenty-five years. We were seminary students together and fellow pastors serving in the same church for a time. Cliff writes as someone committed to the text of Scripture and one who is passionate about the life of the church. The fruit is seen in the growing church he is currently serving. I appreciate the work he has put into this book, knowing that it has been percolating in his soul for some time. I thank God it finally came to a boil.

Dr. Bruce Blakey,

Pastor, Believers Fellowship

San Antonio, Texas

1

THE MODERN CHURCH:

Ecclesiastical Confusion

Jesus and the Church

Jesus said, I will build My church (Matthew 16:18). This is one of the most glorious, astounding and encouraging statements ever uttered by Christ. Its implications are limitless and profound. And the fulfillment of this promise has defined history and will determine the future, including eternity to come.

Jesus is sovereign over His church. That is true today just as much as it was 2,000 years ago when Jesus issued this binding prophetic decree about His precious spiritual bride, the Body of Christ. Jesus went on to give His Apostles all the divine revelation they needed to know about His church after He departed back into heaven at His ascension.

That requisite revelation is contained in the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The Bible tells us everything we need to know about the church. God has entrusted to His people sufficient information, now found in Scripture, to address every and all questions we may have about the church; questions like, What is the church? When did the church begin? How long will the church continue? What is the purpose and mission of the church today? What are the priority ministries of the church? Who runs the church? How should the church interact with unbelievers? How should churches interact with each other? How should the church react to the cultural issues of the day?

Confusion About the Church

Sadly, there is much confusion about those questions among church members of today. Many who call themselves Christians, believers, Evangelicals or the like, voice countless disparate answers to the most fundamental questions about the church. The past four decades have witnessed a proliferation of books, conferences and seminars related to basic ecclesiological matters, on a popular as well as an academic level, offering a myriad of conflicting viewpoints in an attempt to answer all these questions. This hit home with me on a personal level not long ago at a social gathering of believers from many different local churches. When one of the attendees discovered I was a pastor, he asked me pointedly, in front of a small crowd, So what church model do you ascribe to and follow?

Befuddled, I asked for clarification. He replied, You know, what church model do you follow? Acts 29? The Willow Creek Model? The Purpose Driven model?

I said, The Bible.

At that, he was quiet and surprised as well as confused or disappointed, so he further inquired, What do you mean? How does that work?

I said, The New Testament—we do church just like the early church did church; it’s all right there in the Bible. Strange stares…end of conversation. Awkward silence.

That conversation is an apropos microcosm of Christianity in the 21st century. Many professing Christians, and even pastors, are found routinely scrambling to discover the latest church model coming down the pike in a feverish attempt to replicate it in their own assembly; they are not looking to the Bible for answers about how to do church today. Others would suggest that the model to follow is already found in the Bible. Yet, even those who agree on the idea that the Bible provides the needed model for doing church today don’t all agree on what the Bible says about the topic. Hence the confusion abounds all the more.

It seems the church today lacks more homogeneity and clear identity than it has in its 2,000-year history. The church has, in many places, lost its bearings. Or at least a lot of people who call themselves Christians have lost their bearings as to what constitutes the church. It is amazing today what passes for the title of church. It’s pretty safe to say that fifty years ago if you showed up spontaneously to a certain kind of church on a Sunday, you knew what you were going to get. If it was a Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian or a community church, for the most part, it represented its name and tradition with consistency and integrity.

Today that is not the case at all. I talk with folks all the time who visit my church telling me of the terrible difficulty they have had trying to find a church with the basics of traditional Christianity: worship, prayer and Bible teaching. One of the problems today is even with the names of churches—their titles and ascriptions many times defy interpretation from afar. So many have nondescript, inane names that you don’t know what you’ll find eventually behind their closed doors when you show up—health, wealth and prosperity; new-age spiritualism; religious socialism; green worship; hip and relevant missional emerging platitudes; incense, candles and strobe lights; repackaged neo-orthodoxy or liberalism—all under the guise of being a local church.

I once served on a church staff of a historic Baptist church in which the head leadership team decided it was time to shake the troublesome and unwelcoming moniker of Baptist that apparently was scaring all the visitors, unbelievers and unchurched away from our congregation. So it was decreed that we needed to change our name, hide our true identity if you will, so that non-Christians would not be threatened by our overtly religious name, and as a result, I was told, visitors would then flood our campus in waves.

Permissible suggested new names for our congregation that we as a staff were to consider included, words like center instead of church, community instead of Christian, and the name of our city in place of overly-religious words like Baptist, Bible, Cross or Christ. Well, they did end up changing their name; and I left that organization; and years later that place is not being over-run with visitors and unbelievers. I went on to plant a new church from scratch with a few other believers, and we proudly called it Grace Bible Fellowship Church.

The foregoing is a classic example of confused church leadership trying to make decisions based on human wisdom and conventional influences instead of on biblical truth. The shallow decision to change the name of the church was motivated by a desire to manufacture and create church growth—How can we manipulate non-Christians into visiting our church? That is shameful. Jesus said, I will build My church (Matthew 16:18). We don’t build the church; Christ does! It’s not our church; it’s His church—His precious Bride; His beloved Body that He purchased with His own sacrificial blood (Acts 20:28). Jesus is the only Head of the church (Ephesians 5:23) and its sole Architect (4:15-16). We don’t grow the church. God causes the growth! (1 Corinthians 3:7).

A Biblical Ecclesiology

This poignantly illustrates the urgent need for a renewed commitment by all true pastors and all true churches to delineate, articulate and master a working knowledge of a functional ecclesiology that will serve as the model for their local church. The New Testament is the source for defining that model. When we neglect what the New Testament says about the church and look to other sources to define our ecclesiology, then we compromise what Christ intended His Body to be. History is rife with groups and organizations that deviated from Scripture when establishing what they intended to be a church.

There are two main ways to have a compromised ecclesiology: 1) neglect Scripture altogether and create your own idea of what you think church should be, based on human wisdom, personal experience, the surrounding culture, novelty, tradition, felt needs and the like, or 2) use Scripture mixed with human wisdom to various degrees. The end result will cross the spectrum of unhealthy and unbalanced mongrel options, manifesting anything from one-dimensional, shallow and myopic, but well-intentioned, Christian enclaves to popular, amorphous, ubiquitous spiritual movements, all the way to full-blown deviant Christian denominations and dangerous, heretical cults that twist and distort the Bible to advance their nefarious causes.

Simply stated, the basis of one’s church model needs to be Christ and His Word—Jesus and Scripture. When there is a compromise, pseudo-church paradigms emerge and compete with true biblical ministry. Counterfeits are given credence among the faithful as legitimate options and alternatives. Today churches with compromised ecclesiologies litter the religious landscape, and as a result biblical ministry is short-changed or undermined, spiritual growth of God’s people is stunted, and the saving message given to the lost world is skewed or altogether clouded and smothered.

This book aims to lay out a simple biblical ecclesiology using the Bible and nothing more. Its goal is to get back to basics—what does the Bible say about Jesus’ church? The New Testament clearly models and proscribes foundational principles of what the church is to be. The Bible spells out divinely-mandated priorities to implement and follow, and it warns of extremes to avoid in order to have an obedient church.

Before defining at length the biblical priorities for a God-honoring church, I first want to give a brief diagnosis of church-life in our current day by identifying some typical, and widely popular, unhealthy or unbalanced competing models. For the sake of illustration I will highlight nine of them. Some of the nine overlap having common features among them, while some are quite distinct. But all nine have one glaring thing in common and that is that the foundation on which they stand is not ultimately Christ alone and Scripture alone, but rather some competing notion, cause or idea. Let’s look at these nine basic current church models.

The Experience-Driven Church

First is the experience-driven church. This is a community of believers who put a premium on shared experiences, subjective encounters, emotional aspirations or mystical expectations. Personal, subjective spiritual occurrences are a priority. This kind of church appeals to the emotions and not the mind. Affiliation with the group is not determined by objective biblical doctrine or propositional truth as defined in Scripture. As a matter of fact, doctrine is often regarded as detrimental and is said to quench the work of the Holy Spirit. What one feels or experiences is more important than what one thinks and believes.

In our day, this kind of congregation is typified by countless charismatic and Pentecostal churches, Renovaré-like groups aspiring toward spiritual formation, churches driven by the mystical and existential, as well as the more fringe Word of Faith and health, wealth and prosperity groups.

The How-To Driven Church

A second kind of popular church model is one driven by a shared methodology—or the how to church. Or the church that says, You need to do it this way and upon closer investigation it turns out that way is not found in the Bible. Most methods are neutral in and of themselves. But methods can be taken to an extreme when they are manipulated, overly-defined and showcased as the panacea for solving all the church’s current problems or passed off as the only way to fulfill the Great Commission of Christ. Congregations like this are known for propagating a canned approach to ministry—one size fits all. If it worked in that church, it will work in your church. Just do what this guy did and you’ll get the results that guy got. So goes the mantra.

These methodologies are endless too—year after year, decade after decade it seems the newest save-all fad Christian methodology is being produced. And the secret-for-success methodology is usually invented or crafted by one individual who is smarter than the rest of us who could not discover the secret on our own. From reciting the Prayer of Jabez, to being purpose-driven with 40 days of purpose, to being missional and emerging—the prized methods of ministry success are endless.

This style of church could also be called the pragmatic church—if it works, do it; the end justifies the means. A pragmatic approach to church ministry has dominated the scene for decades. To be pragmatic means to do what works, not necessarily do what is right, or do what is biblical. As such the pragmatic church is typically not interested in a timeless, transcendent, universally binding scriptural approach to ministry. It’s a relative approach; and it’s always changing.

There are a few key movers and shakers who are responsible for mainstreaming the pragmatic approach into American Christianity in the 20th century. One of the giants was Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993), the liberal Methodist minister who pastored the popular Marble Collegiate Church in New York—a position he held for fifty-two years! He also wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, the pop religious psychology book that was on the New York Times bestseller list for 186 consecutive weeks, selling over five million copies. Peale was innovative and cutting-edge in his willingness to integrate secular methods of psychiatry, psychology, business, anthropology and politics into the local church. The end result was making a priority of keeping people feeling happy and not on what honors God Who is holy.

On the heels of Peale, and following in his shadow, came cultural and spiritual titans like Bill Bright (1921-2003), Robert Schuller (1926-2015), C. Peter Wagner (b. 1930), Bill Hybels (b. 1951), Rick Warren (b. 1954), and Joel Osteen (b. 1963). Few have had more influence in propagating pragmatic Christianity than Wagner, who for thirty years was the Professor of Church Growth at Fuller Seminary’s School of World Missions and the founder of the highly questionable and influential, New Apostolic Reformation movement. Wagner was highly influenced by the father of the modern Church Growth movement, missiologist Donald McGavran (1897-1990).¹

The Cell-Driven Church

A third kind of church model promotes structure as the defining characteristic of the true church. By structure I mean the organizational lay-out or composition. The secret to true spirituality and Christ-like ministry is having the right structure, and in this case these people would say cell groups or house churches. This church model says big is bad; small and intimate is good. Simplicity is divine; complexity and program is worldly. Organization and formality enslaves; spontaneity liberates. They champion the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and eschew the doctrine of delegated authority represented in local elders. Hierarchy is domineering; democracy breeds community. We should not be professional, rather we should be organic, they surmise.

Proponents of the house church movement believe they are biblical purists and that the rest of us non-house church people have compromised by being too organized or institutional. Listen to a couple advocates of the house church movement:

The house church movement is an attempt to get away from the institutional church, seeking instead to return to the small gatherings of peoples that constituted all of the churches of the New Testament era….The house church is the biblical church. All of the churches in the New Testament era were small assemblies that met in homes.²

This author asserts dogmatically that the house church is the biblical church. Drake says several things above that expose his biblical ignorance, one being the assertion that all New Testament churches were small and met in houses. The Book of Acts shows that to be categorically false since the first church that began in Jerusalem was from day one a mega-church! It started on day one with 120 adults (Acts 1:15). That is a large core group to start a church with. We started our church plant in 2006 with only nineteen adults. And the church plant in Acts one did not meet in a small house. They met in an upper room that could accommodate all 120 adults—that sounds like a big house to me. Luke 24:53 says that early group of believers were continually in the temple praising God. They did not confine themselves to some small house for worship. The temple was a formal religious structure built for corporate gatherings. And that core group of 120 exploded into 3,000 additional adults being added to the church the first day (Acts 2:41). And this large group met together (2:44), and God continued adding to their number day by day (2:47). Shortly after that the church grew to 5,000 male adults (4:4). Counting women and children, the church had increased to 10,000 plus. And this church met in many places—at the temple, in public, in the upper room, in houses. And despite their massive numbers, they continued to be one church (4:32-35). To say the early church was small and met only in houses is clearly misrepresenting the Bible.

Another home-church author is just as dogmatic about preserving a certain structure and simplicity while avoiding the common approach to church when he writes,

There must be no appointed leader in these home meetings. What goes on in those home meetings must not be organized. NO designated leaders. None! And only the barest instruction of what to do in those home meetings. Minimum instruction. This is an absolute essential. Forfeit this, and you greatly reduce informality and spontaneity in meetings.³

The points of emphasis above in italics and in caps are his, not mine. Anyone familiar with the New Testament should be able to discern clearly some basic flaws in the house church-only model as articulated here. One main deficiency is that the house church-only paradigm ignores the biblical mandate to appoint a plurality of elders in every local church assembly (Titus 1:5; cf. Philippians 1:1; Acts 14:23). They despise hierarchy and what they call professionalism in the ministry.

The home church-only movement is a thriving and burgeoning reality today among Christians. And it manifests itself in a few different ways—informally and formally. The most popular or famous house-church or cell-church is the Yoido Full Gospel Church (Assemblies of God) in Seoul, South Korea. It had its beginnings in 1958 with David Yonggi Cho. He started out as a traditional pastor, but then developed a cell-group model of church that replicated itself many times over until it reached an attendance today close to 900,000 congregants. So much for big is bad.

Cho has influenced countless others over the past fifty years, including the now well known Pastor César Castellanos of Bogotá, Columbia who is the brainchild behind the cell group church model called G12. The G12 model suggests that the biblical model for Church should be patterned after Jesus who called and discipled twelve others. With a small group Jesus was able to emphasize intimacy, prayer and personal relationships. All other Christians should do likewise and hence should be part of a group of twelve.

Another leading advocate of mandatory cell-group structure for the church is Ralph Neighbour. He popularized his ideas in his book, Where Do We Go From Here? He has been very influential the past two decades and his model is gaining followers of every ilk. Interestingly, Neighbour says the cell-groups should be fifteen in size, max, not twelve.

Witness Lee (1905-1997), a disciple of Watchman Nee, also had a tremendous influence on churches in China, Japan and America with his small-group approach to ministry. In the 1980’s Lee determined that the traditional way of going about church was wrong, so he created what he called the four step God-ordained way of doing ministry. Ironically, it was very formulaic, programmatic and controlled. He charged his followers to gain three to four converts, disciple them in home groups for ten weeks, one to two times a week. The ultimate goal was to get every believer to prophesy and then have those disciples replicate the process.

From a biblical point of view, structure is not to be ignored. Structure matters and is important. The New Testament even lays out a structure for the church, but it is not restricted to having only small groups, cell groups and house churches. The true biblical structure allows for way more diversity, flexibility and freedom than many house church devotees are proscribing for their followers. The New Testament church was nurtured in small groups, home groups, large groups and even in massive crowds. Artificial strictures for ecclesiology can’t be foisted upon God’s living and dynamic Body of Christ.

The Heritage-Driven Church

A fourth kind of church model is the heritage church—congregations that emphasize a certain culture, historical identity, political leaning, social cause or even ethnicity as their focal point of belonging. This is not the same thing as a homogeneous national church where all the Christians in a local church are from the same country and speak the same language. I recently went to India and preached in several churches, and all the people were native to India and spoke Telugu. They were all the same because no foreigners live in that particular remote part of India. They welcomed me as their guest with open arms and received me as an equal brother because of my faith in Christ. This kind of church is normal, and healthy, and different than the heritage one I am concerned about.

The foundation of the exclusive heritage-church paradigm orbits around a parochial cultural affiliation and as a result, these churches are unapologetically ethno-centric. They frown on integration. They prefer to preserve an artificial homogeneity. Christian Jewish Messianic congregations typify this church model. For Messianic congregations, that affiliation is related to all things Jewish. Messianic congregations don’t base their ecclesiology on the New Testament model, but on an admixture of select Old Testament rites, some New Testament gospel teachings plus various Jewish traditions. Some would describe Messianic congregations as satellites of modern day Jewish Christianity.

Jews for Jesus, the Chosen People Ministries and Friends of Israel are a few Christian organizations that would endorse Messianic congregations to varying degrees. The Chosen People Ministries explains some distinctive features of this worship model in response to the question, How is a Messianic congregation different from a church?:

Messianic congregations are the same in the sense that they support and teach the basic tenets of evangelical Christianity. They are different because they do so in a Jewish way, with Jewish liturgy, music and other features of Jewish community life…Sabbath worship…High Holy Days observances [like] Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover…circumcision.⁴