Church Management, Baptist Popes refutes the practice of Baptist dictators who micromanage the Church of Christ.
Contents
The Roman Catholic Church “System”
The Roman Catholic Church is a heresy. It is not biblical. Their basis for salvation is just not what the Bible teaches. But we need to understand that their entrance into “Christianity” and specific parts of Christianity is just as much an assault on the true Christianity as their false doctrines on salvation. But BAPTIST CHURCHES have taken up their methods and manners of infiltrating, and that needs to stop.
Baptist “Padres”
Within the Catholic Church, their base is the local Catholic Church, and for years they have defined “normal churches” by their lowly Catholic Fathers (“Padres”). These ministers have gotten very granular into the normal lives of their people. The essence of Catholicism is the Pope, as “the victor of Christ,” or God’s spokesman on earth, the pope tells everybody (mostly only Catholics listen to him and many Catholics do not accept what the pope says automatically), but the pope “dictates”. In other words, they teach that what the Pope says “officially” (ex-Cathedral or from the Pope’s official chair) is as if God Himself had said it. The Bible does not teach this.
But this needs to be examined. The very foundation of this is anti-biblical. In other words, Catholicism teaches that God does not give the common “Christian” the spiritual and moral principles of living, and through the indwelling Holy Spirit, each person discerns what they should do. It is only through the Pope that the common Catholic knows what he should do, but actually, each Catholic priest or “father” is the one who has to see what the decisions are, and then decide for the individual. This is the Catholic system. A term very applicable here is that they “micromanage” other peoples’ lives, as well as the church as an institution.
Why Peter wasn’t the First Pope
It is actually very telling that Catholicism picked Peter as their first Pope. Peter denied Christ three times on the night of his being taken. What a treacherous thing for the “first Pope” to do? While the rest of the disciples basically were not there either (only John Mark), but they can compare themselves to Peter. We abandoned Christ, but at least we didn’t deny Christ, and deny him three times Peter!
Later in the time of the New Testament Church, Peter also flipped from biblical Christianity to side with the Judaizers. Paul had to rebuke Peter to his face. So where is that “always-perfect-orthodoxy” of the first Pope?
In other words, without thinking it through well, the Roman Catholic Church chose Peter as the first Pope, and therein is the refutation of their thinking.
We are Humans, and No More than that
God knows that any human can make mistakes, and any human leader also can make mistakes in their leadership of the church. I am not against the leadership of the church by holy men who are dedicated to that. I am for that position. But there is a great difference between a pastor teaching their people the spiritual principles to make sound and godly decisions in this life, and that pastor “taking over their lives” and wanting to be “their spiritual father” so that the pastor makes all the major decisions in their life. This is what we are talking about, usurping the decision-making process from the individual where it belongs.
Matthew 23:9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.
What Jesus was referring to was not a person calling their biological father or father that adopted them “father”. Jesus is talking about giving up the decision-making process of a person’s life to some spiritual father. The Roman Catholic “padres” or “fathers” or priests is exactly what this is.
But while Protestants decry the Catholics who do this, many Protestant churches do exactly the same thing on a small level. Actually, the Catholic Church does exactly this same thing when each Catholic Church sets up a priest in that church as their priest-father.
Baptist Popes
The idea of “micromanaging” people’s lives is exactly the problem here. Just because the person put in charge as a dictator is Baptist, that does not now make the practice right. And to a large degree, the New Testament church as the Bible presents it does not have a high degree of organization and authority into the daily lives of its people. We do not know the actual name of the pastor of any church in the New Testament. We think James or Jacob was the pastor of the church in Jerusalem, but he is not clearly stated as such. References to that church has him as receiving people sent from outside. But “the people” of each church were the ones who made the decisions.
When our church organization does not reflect our understanding of the Bible, then we are teaching but example errors.
Not Lording over God’s Flock
1 Peter 5:3 Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.
Peter’s own words strike to the heart of this issue. God’s obedient ministers cannot “lord over” the church, the believers. It is not given to God’s ministers to be lords and decide all the issues in a Christian’s life. The ministers of God are given to study the Scriptures and preach the principles, and let God’s people understand and decide in their own cases.
Church Management, Baptist Popes