I have attended church my entire adult life and I have never found one that got everything right. Not one. And I’ve been to a lot of them. Southern Baptist as a kid. Charismatic in my twenties. New Covenant Theology Reformed in my thirties. Sovereign grace congregations founded by men I admired for the past fifteen years. And at every single one, I found the same thing: truth mixed with error, held by imperfect people, in imperfect structures, under imperfect leadership.
And I kept going. Because churches are hospitals for sick people. And I’m a patient too.
But I want to tell you something about the hospital that might surprise you. The building, the staff hierarchy, the organizational chart, the one-man-up-front-everyone-else-sit-down model that you’ve been attending your whole life - none of that is in the Bible. The church as you know it is largely a human invention. And it’s an invention that has done enormous damage to the very body it was supposed to serve.
Here is the standard model of church in America. One man stands at the front. He preaches for thirty to sixty minutes. Everyone else sits quietly and listens. Maybe they take notes. Maybe they nod along. Maybe they mentally check out after the first ten minutes. But the flow is entirely one-directional. One man speaks. Everyone else receives.
This model is not in the New Testament.
“How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.” (1 Corinthians 14:26)
Every one of you. Not one of you. Every one. When the Corinthian church gathered, the expectation was participation. Multiple people contributed. One had a psalm. Another had a doctrine. Another had a revelation. The meeting was a body in motion, not an audience at a lecture. And Paul doesn’t correct this model. He endorses it. He says let all things be done unto edifying - keep it orderly, keep it constructive, but the participation itself is the design.
This is the ecclesiology that Darryl Erkel articulated and that I have held for twenty-six years. It’s called participatory ecclesiology. And once you see it in the text, you can’t unsee it.
The one-man pulpit developed gradually over the centuries as the church adopted institutional structures borrowed from Roman government and Greek philosophy. The bishop became a position of authority rather than a function of service. The pastor became a professional rather than a gifted brother among equals. The congregation became an audience rather than a body. And by the time the Reformation happened, the one-man pulpit was so entrenched that even the Reformers never questioned it. Luther changed the theology but kept the structure. Calvin changed the doctrines but kept the hierarchy. And here we are, five hundred years later, with a model of church that looks more like a Roman senate hearing than a first-century house church.
The New Testament model is radically different from what most Christians have experienced.
“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12)
The church is a body. Not a body with one mouth and a hundred ears. A body with many members, each functioning, each contributing, each necessary. The eye doesn’t say to the hand, “I have no need of thee” (1 Corinthians 12:21). And the mouth doesn’t say to the rest of the body, “Sit down and listen to me for forty-five minutes while you contribute nothing.”
In the participatory model, teaching happens in conversation. Prophecy is tested by the group. Songs are shared by individuals. Questions are asked out loud. Disagreements are worked through face to face. The brother who has a burden shares it. The sister who has a word of encouragement speaks it. The elder who has wisdom contributes it alongside, not above, the rest of the body.
And yes, I said sister. In a participatory model, women participate. They pray. They share. They encourage. They contribute. What they don’t do is exercise teaching authority over men (1 Timothy 2:12), which we’ll address in the next chapter. But participation is not the same as authority. And the one-man pulpit has flattened both into a single thing, so that “participation” and “preaching” have become synonymous. They shouldn’t be.
I’m going to be blunt here because I’ve held my tongue on this for years and I’m writing a book now, so I might as well say it.
Church membership, as practiced in most churches, is a bunch of baloney.
There. I said it.
You fill out a card. You attend a class. Someone reads your name from the front. The congregation votes. And now you’re a “member.” Of what? Of an organization that has a constitution, bylaws, a bank account, and a tax exemption. And none of that has anything to do with your actual membership in the body of Christ.
You are in the body of Christ by regeneration. The Spirit placed you there. No card. No vote. No class. No human being’s approval was required. “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). The Spirit baptized you in. Not the church. Not the pastor. Not the membership committee. The Spirit.
And the thief on the cross - again - was in the body of Christ without being a member of anything. No church. No baptism. No membership. No pastor. Just the Spirit’s work and the Lord’s word: “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
Now, I’m not saying that formal church structures are evil. They serve practical purposes. Someone needs to manage the building. Someone needs to handle the finances. Someone needs to coordinate the meetings. Organizational structure has its place. But the moment the structure becomes the thing - the moment someone says “you can’t take communion because you’re not a member” or “you can’t participate because you haven’t been officially received” - they’ve made the institution the gatekeeper of something God didn’t give them authority to gate-keep.
The institutions of man are flawed. Those five words contain my entire worldview, and they apply to the church as much as they apply to government, business, or any other human organization. The church is the body of Christ. The institution of the church is a human structure built around the body. And the structure should serve the body, not replace it.
“But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” (Matthew 23:8)
All ye are brethren. Not some of you are brethren and some of you are reverends and some of you are doctors and some of you are bishops. All of you. Brethren. Brothers. Equals before Christ. Different gifts, different functions, different levels of maturity and experience. But no hierarchy of spiritual authority that elevates one believer above another by virtue of title.
“Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.” (Matthew 23:10)
Jesus says don’t call anyone master. Don’t use honorific titles that elevate one person above the rest. The whole concept of a “senior pastor” or a “reverend” or a “bishop” as a hierarchical office is exactly what Christ told His disciples not to do. Leadership in the church is by spiritual gift and example, not by institutional appointment.
Peter understood this:
“The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.” (1 Peter 5:1-3)
Peter calls himself also an elder. Not the chief elder. Not the pope. Not the head of the hierarchy. An elder among the other elders. And he says the way to lead is by example, not by lording over. Not by institutional authority. Not by positional power. By being the kind of person others want to follow because the Spirit’s work is visible in your life.
I attend both 13th Street Baptist Church and Hurricane Road Grace Church in Ashland, Kentucky. I belong to neither.
Some people think that’s uncommitted. Some think it’s arrogant. Some think I’m hedging my bets or playing both sides. And I understand why it looks that way from the outside.
But here’s what it looks like from the inside. Both churches have truth. Both churches have error. 13th Street is where Henry Mahan pastored, the man whose preaching shaped my theology more than anyone else’s. But the church that followed Mahan has problems - I was removed from the preaching rotation without a word, accused of believing things I don’t believe, and treated as suspect for attending Hurricane Road. Hurricane Road has faithful preaching and a warmth that I love. But they have their own blind spots, their own errors, their own humanity.
And I can see both clearly because I’m not invested in either institution. I’m invested in the people. I’m invested in Christ. And I can sit in both congregations and hear truth, filter error, love the brethren, and be loved in return, without pretending that either building has the whole picture.
Churches are hospitals. Both of these hospitals treat real diseases with real medicine. Both of them occasionally prescribe the wrong dosage. And I’m a patient in both, getting what I need, knowing that the Great Physician isn’t confined to either building.
I want to address the concern that many people have when they hear about participatory ecclesiology: won’t it be chaos?
Paul anticipated this:
“Let all things be done decently and in order.” (1 Corinthians 14:40)
This verse is often quoted in defense of institutional structure. But look at the context. Paul says this at the end of a chapter about participatory worship. He’s just described a meeting where multiple people speak, where tongues are interpreted, where prophecy is tested, where everyone contributes. And that is the context for “decently and in order.” Order doesn’t require a hierarchy. Order requires the Spirit’s guidance and mutual submission.
The early church in Acts met in homes. They broke bread together. They shared their possessions. They taught and were taught. They prayed. And they did it without buildings, without budgets, without boards of deacons, without constitutions, and without a senior pastor. And the gospel spread faster in that first century than it has in any century since.
The institutional model didn’t produce the spread of the gospel. The Spirit did. Through ordinary believers, participating in a body where everyone mattered and no one was elevated above the rest. The institution came later. And it brought with it all the problems that institutions always bring - power struggles, politics, control, and the substitution of structure for substance.
I’m not naive about this. I know that house churches can have problems too. Where two or three are gathered, there’s politics. But the answer isn’t to build a bigger institution. The answer is to trust the Spirit to do what He promised to do: guide His people into all truth, through the body functioning as a body.
“Hebrews 13:17 says ‘obey them that have the rule over you.’”
Yes, it does. And the word translated “rule” is hegeomai, which means to lead, to go before, to guide. It doesn’t mean to command, to legislate, or to exercise institutional authority. In a participatory model, there are leaders. Elders. Gifted men who have the Spirit’s anointing to teach, exhort, and guide. They lead by spiritual gift and by example (1 Peter 5:3). They don’t lead by hierarchical authority or institutional title. The passage is about recognizing and following spiritual leadership, not about submitting to an organizational flowchart.
“Without a pastor and formal structure, churches descend into chaos.”
The church in 1 Corinthians 14 had order without a one-man pulpit. Paul gives detailed instructions for how a participatory meeting should work - speak in turn, let others judge, let women ask their husbands at home, let all things be done decently and in order. None of those instructions require a senior pastor. They require maturity, mutual submission, and the Spirit’s guidance. The assumption that chaos is the default without institutional control says more about your view of the Spirit’s power than about the structure of the church.
“You attend two churches - isn’t that uncommitted?”
Or it’s the only honest option when both churches have truth and both have error. I don’t pretend either one has the complete picture. I love the people in both. I hear Christ preached in both. And I see clearly in both because I’m not defending either institution - I’m just listening for the truth and filtering the rest. If that’s uncommitted, then commitment requires pretending a flawed institution is perfect. And I won’t do that. Because the institutions of man are flawed. All of them. And the church that admits it has the best chance of getting closer to the truth.
“What about accountability? Without membership, who holds you accountable?”
The Spirit holds me accountable. And the brethren I walk with hold me accountable through relationship, not through institutional authority. Accountability doesn’t require a membership roll. It requires love, honesty, and the willingness to speak truth to one another. I have that in both churches and outside of both churches. Accountability is relational, not organizational. And reducing it to a membership card cheapens it.
“The church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15) - you’re undermining the church.”
I’m not undermining the church. I’m undermining the institution that has claimed to be the church. The church IS the body of Christ - every regenerate believer on earth. That church is the pillar and ground of the truth. The local institutions where believers gather are expressions of that body, valuable and important, but they are not the body itself. The body existed before any of them were organized. The body will exist after all of them are gone. Confusing the institution with the body is the same error as confusing the ceremony with the covenant. The substance is bigger than the structure.
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