The Dialog
Church, leadership and authority
What is the church for, and how should it be led? Church tradition, spiritual authority, honoring leaders you disagree with, the early church and loving your neighbor.
Eight episodes from my podcast, The Dialog. Each one is a search for truth where ancient philosophy, history and theology meet modern life.
- One degree off: when church tradition drifts from truth 1.12
Church should fulfill the Great Commission. Everything else is method, and method hardens into tradition, which is always a degree or two off truth. So keep checking it against God's word.
- Judge the fruit, not the motive 1.13
Jesus didn't say to judge people's motives. He said to judge their fruit: the sustained evidence of a person's life over a long period of time.
- Who is my neighbor? 1.14
Anyone you'd tend to see as an enemy is your neighbor. Jesus answered the question with a Samaritan, the person his listeners avoided most, and told us to go and do the same.
- What does the Bible say about leadership? 1.18
That leaders keep watch over people's souls (Hebrews 13:17). If you lead anyone, God has made you responsible for more than results. The question isn't where you want to go. It's where they need to go.
- How did the early church grow under persecution? 1.34
With love. The first Christians didn't fight the empire or overthrow the emperor. They rescued abandoned children, fed the poor and cared for the sick, and the church kept growing.
- Do you have to honor a leader you disagree with? 1.35
Yes, when the leader isn't doing anything immoral or unethical, just something you don't like. We don't honor because they're honorable. We honor because we're honorable.
- Have we mistaken tradition for truth? 1.40
Often, yes. Traditions are preferences, not truth. Jesus gave the church its vision and left the method to us, and Scripture shows three ways to lead a church.
- What is the church for? 4 roles the Bible gives it 1.41
To gather, to worship, to equip and to sacrifice. If a church does those four things, the rest is methodology.
Watch the playlist on YouTube · Every episode