Is the Local Church Becoming Obsolete?

Can you imagine a time when key apostolic leaders—both in the church and marketplace—would come together to exert strong influence over cities, communities and nations, with or without the cooperation or partnership of local church pastors and congregations? A time when the local church would almost be irrelevant when it comes to societal transformation because leaders would form their own ecclesia that would be mobile and not nuclear in nature? A time in which the local church would be relegated merely to shepherding our families, pastoral counseling, and Sunday school for our children?

There is a growing tendency in the body of Christ among practitioners in kingdom societal transformation to bypass the local church in order for the reformation of society to take place. This is due to the frustration of many marketplace leaders with the slow pace, bureaucracy, myopic local view and lack of high-level leadership found in many of this nation’s congregations.

As more of us receive greater light regarding the kingdom, and we rightly go from a church mindset to a kingdom mindset, I am afraid some will have a tendency to go too far and jettison the local church altogether!

Further exacerbating this challenge is that many who are on the leading edge of cultural change are institutional (parachurch) or marketplace leaders who by nature are entrepreneurial, independent, high-performance leaders who have not always had a strong anchor in a local church, even before they came into the kingdom message. This independent spirit and impatience for change will influence their kingdom theology to the point of finding proof texts or doctrines that justify the bypassing of local churches.

It is my position that jettisoning the local church, or relegating it merely to the purpose of shepherding our families, would be a huge mistake! Whether we like it or not, God has chosen the local church to be the beachhead that facilitates social and religious change in the nations. We need to reform the church—not jettison it! We need to help transition the local church to becoming kingdom-centered. Being kingdom-centered and local church-centered need not be mutually exclusive. To be truly kingdom-centered, one must start with being local church-centered.

In addition, each local church needs to view itself as one congregation among many in a particular region that, combined, comprise the city church. The New Testament epistles, such as Philippians, Romans, Colossians, etc., all assume one church per city or region. Hence, this view necessitates cooperation and collaboration with other congregations as a biblical responsibility.

Likewise, pastors are never solely called to shepherd only their individual flocks, but are to be shepherds or chaplains to whole communities.

Let us now go back and attempt to understand the local church paradigm and pattern.

First, when God desired to reconcile world systems and redeem individual sinners He sent His Son—who didn’t come as a political or business leader couched as a religious rabbi. Jesus began as an itinerant teacher of the Word of God (see Luke 4:18). Those with him in the synagogue were His platform for inauguration as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (see John 18:37).

With Jesus and His people there is no separation of the offices of king and priest. Jesus was a combination of priest (His body was the sacrifice given once for all; see Heb. 10:10, 14), prophet (see Deut. 18:18-19) and king (see Rev. 1:5, 19:16). All three offices are completely summarized and unified in Hebrews 1:1-3.

The model of Jesus for reformation shows the most powerful and effective starting point and matrix to initially operate, for reformation is the so-called religious sphere of society.

There has been a popular teaching during the last ten years in which people are categorized as either functioning as priests or kings in the kingdom. However, marketplace leaders miss the mark when they say preachers of the gospel merely function as priests—whose primary role concerns the priestly duties related to “spiritual” things—while Christian political and business leaders function as kings who take the cultural lead in His kingdom.

It is clear Romans 5:17 was written for all believers. This passage shows that all saints reign as kings in this world. Ephesians 2:4-6 teaches that all saints are presently reigning with Christ in heavenly places.

In the book of Leviticus, the priests not only administered animal sacrifices but were also the ultimate authority, interpreting the Law of Moses to judges and kings (see Deut. 17:18). The 613 laws involved civic as well as sacrificial rules and regulations. Individually these priests even administered in the areas of health by regulating the Jewish diet (see Leviticus 11), examining homes for harmful mold and mildew, and even examining individuals to determine if they were physically clean or unclean (see Leviticus 13-14). Thus, these priests functioned in both the context of the temple and the community without a dichotomy between sacred and secular, or as we now term it, priest and king.

The later divisions between the priesthood, the prophetic, and the kings of Israel seem to separate these offices (read 1 Sam. 13:8-13 and 1 Kin. 12:32-13:6 when the kings were judged for offering priestly sacrifices). However, King David, who was a prophetic predecessor of the Messiah, had a New Testament kingdom dispensation as he was able to approach God’s presence and offer sacrifices (see 1 Chron. 16:1-2), eat the showbread (see 1 Sam. 21:6; Mark 2:25-26), prophesy (see Ps. 22; Ps.110) and rule the kingdom (2 Sam. 5:1-3). Thus, all three functions were integrated in him.

Jesus said that even the least in the kingdom of heaven are greater than John the Baptist and all of the Old Covenant prophets and leaders (Matt. 11:11). This implies the prophetic, kingly and priestly functions are all combined in God’s people in the kingdom age. Even so, with the advent of the kings of Israel, the priests still had to regulate societal functions for the community as written in the Pentateuch. Nowadays these functions would be classified by some marketplace leaders as kingly functions.

Furthermore, in what category would we place Joseph and Daniel? They both functioned as political leaders, but would also neatly fit in the category of priest because of their spiritual bent and prophetic lifestyles. Also, who would ever say that the prophets Elijah and Elisha were merely functioning in a priestly role? Both of them gave commands to political leaders (for example, the kings of Israel as in 1 Kin. 18:18-19), and framed major policy initiatives for societal reformation. Elisha even gave military advice to Israel when the nation was at war with Syria (2 Kin. 6:8-23).