Roughly 1700 years prior to today, the church experienced radical change in its presentation. It became a whole lot less a living room, and a lot more like an audience. What was known as “The Edict of Milan” issued by Constantine I ratified the tolerance of church, thus ending all persecution. That’s a good thing right? All depends who you ask.

The problem was not in what larger corporate church became lest the house church movement begin shouting amen at me right about now, but rather what it replaced. Religion took on Christian-systems or “systematic Christianity”, rather than increased in God-relevance.

The church’s became more building centered modeled after Roman forums more than family centered, and the dynamic of inter-active family turned into the dynamic of “on-looking spectator.”

Popes to Bishops became very involved in political office until such leaders drifted astray in their first love of converting mortal man to Christianity which ultimately lead to splintered and scattered flocks. People lost what was their more vertical connection with God where their strength was based on direct connection with God and direct connection with a family of believers. Christianity now became more an issue of a horizontal mediation experience where the voice of the guy in the pulpit became the shortcut for the voice of God directly. Eyes became glued to the pulpit rather than towards each other. The church became professionally staffed, and professionally and program-ably institutionalized.

The bigger problem however was the loss of the priesthood. As a “layman” in the fourth century church, (by the way layman is not really a word found in the Bible, because every believer was to be a priesthood to him/herself which ended when Pastors became viewed as mediators for God; Thus the priesthood,  were re-positioned as spectators and then re-labeled as layman)

People were less challenged to grow their own spiritual sight, and trained instead to live by what God was supposedly saying to the sight of the guy in the pulpit. Sound familiar? The Bible was taken out of the hands of people and placed in the hands of the Priest.

Okay I’ll play along; if one is not permitted to decide what the Bible means for them, then why read it? When you take the Bible away from the priesthood of believers, then the Bible becomes the doctrine of our systems of God rather than the people of God; The Bible becomes what I teach you that the journey is, rather than something that becomes as real to you as where you are on your journey right now. We are using “going to a next level language” as the carrot to solicit audience arousal, when the next level in God is only as much a reality as our individual relationship with God reveals it. Asking a crowd of impressionable Christians what they want, versus what they are willing to go after on their own regardless is two different things entirely.

So with the Scriptures out of the hands of the people, the Priest, were free to play with it unencumbered by the corrective discipline of secular life. For a thousand years, cloistered monks lovingly piled theological baggage atop the Bible until by the time of “Luther” hardly a layman in Europe knew the all-important meaning of “justification by faith.”

For many, the only way out of this pit was to become a Priest, or as we would call it, “a senior pastor.” The problem was that it was the church that helped dig the pit.

The price however of going from the living rooms to the buildings was the emphasis got placed on the eloquence and star-power of the Priest. Communication during church meetings became dominated by those few who could read and had access to books. In the end that meant the Priests.

In other words…emphasis on “leadership development.” The focus on who was qualified enough, rather than on who had a heart for God regardless of how long they have faithfully served in the helps ministry until the Pastor finally deemed them fit to represent God on their own. The laity, citizens of a crumbling Roman Empire, were turned into spiritual eunuchs and lost the strength that the Empire so desperately needed at the time. Rome fell in 476 for the last time, and the church led the way into the dark ages.

Church reformation came to the rescue with Luther and Calvin a thousand or so years later, up through the Puritans and Wesley through to the 18^th century. In 1901 the Charles Parham lead Pentecostals replaced a few more lost pieces of the puzzle. But there is still a giant hole in the church. The “priesthood of the believer” which was the central focus of the reformation, has been restored only theologically, and not really practically. It mainly exists only on paper or in the “we want to be a church known for sending people out” speech that the average Evangelical Pastor says reminiscent of a political campaign speech to secure voter trust; In other words, laity today in the average church has regained the “word of God”, but not the “work of God.”

I mean how did the early church manage the dubious feat of being healthy without a King-James Bible, or a 24 hour-a-day Christian television network, or Fuller Theological Seminary, or Rhema Bible College, or a Michael W. Smith worship record? How did the primitive church ever make it without Disney-themed Children’s church or music committees or separate staff pastors for both Jr. High and Sr. High, or divorce recovery workshops? For that matter, how did Jesus even have a relevant earthly ministry without being able to point the Samaritan woman towards a “bewildered victims of multiple divorce weekly women’s fellowship?” Well it did; community worship met all of their needs; No, not just the relationship as believers, but the relational proving ground for personal change. In other words, all change is not proven by what we are taught, but what we are provoked to go outside of ourselves amongst the frailties of humanity.

When we lose the priesthood of the believer we lose any hope of reforming anything broken with a generation. True Bible reform is not based on what groups do; it is based on what individuals do who have not been “so over-discipled, and over leadership developed” they are nothing more than professional church members stuck on the blocks addicted to the preparation of the race more than actual runners in it. Company boys (and girls) walking around with their name-badges and their “I’ve been here and been faithful this long” personal portfolios who have shrunk into what they can do as the alter-egos of “bishop-big stuff” in the pulpit more than what they can do on their own. Spiritual eunuchs dwarfed in their identity and worldview living vicariously through the Pastor and the systematic ideology they have bought into; sheep who apparently do not know that being a sheep is not somehow okay just because you are a church lifer, or thinking like the pastor is somehow not okay especially when there would be consequences for thinking for yourself.

So whereas Jesus and Paul believed in “on the job training” much of Evangelicalism places their trust in seminaries and local in house Bible-schools. Pastors who validate their love of being the Priest with their cult-like horizontal discipleship ideology that instills the need for all of the laity to be over-developed by first instilling a fear of everything bad that will happen if they are under-developed.

Don’t get me wrong; I am all for formalized education for the development of life-purpose. But the duty to break the sacred bread of life cannot become the front for “just become a part of my vision and when you are ready to be sent out into an actual vision then I’ll know because God will confirm it to me first. Other than that, here are three ministries in the church you can volunteer in, because after all God is watching and He won’t bless you if you don’t serve me.” Otherwise said, horizontal ministry is when we assume that the people attend because of the “vision of the house”, rather than the personal vision of the people.

When we lose the priesthood of the believer we lose dad and mom as being the Pastors of the home. In other words, the best and most responsible Sunday- School teacher and youth pastor for the kids, not to mention the best marriage seminar for each other. Now church goes from being at home first to dad and mom become spectators at the nearest mega-mall worship experience, while Jimmy and Sally become spectators of mom and dad. Dialog on the way home each week is based on the God the church is giving to Jimmy and Sally to take home as opposed to the God mom and dad were already instilling that is taken to church. Then in a restlessness to find their true identity outside of a spectator state, Jimmy and Sally find it hard not to experiment with any number of things in secret, because after all mom and dad’s vertical responsibility is a secret also… so Jimmy and Sally act out.

Dad and mom label this as rebellion and promptly attend their monthly “family fellowship” for any help the mega-mall church can give them. Jimmy and Sally are told what not to do because Jesus won’t approve and now micro-managed accordingly. Dad and mom return to their horizontal seats at the spectator church where they inform the Children’s pastor and or Youth pastor that Jimmy and Sally might be struggling. The Children’s Pastor and or Youth Pastor promptly throw some activities or some “X-box theology” at them to help them get a grip, and dad and mom promptly praise the church for meeting the needs of its people. So we ministered to the damage of the problem rather than exposed the opportunity of the moment.

But most things considered, when we lose the priesthood of the believer, we lose the responsibility of the believer.

A lost priesthood problem is not just a matter of power and position that one guy in the pulpit can take; it is also a matter of the power and position that masses of “sheep-complex” people comfortable within a horizontal “make-it all make sense to me” Christian walk are very willing to give-up. It is when a bunch of sheep assume that relevant ministry is contained in what the Pastor labors to study to teach them, rather than what they labor or even fight to learn; Sheep who place their security in a sheep-minded system of institutional Christianity which primarily manages who people are as sheep rather who people are called to independently be as leaders.

A system not based on the identity they lose but rather the identity so many are willing to give up to the leadership hierarchy that would agree to lead them and manage them; a horizontal answer to our prayers of the Pastor and his mega-directory of programs willing to manage my life; a comfortable co-dependence that many sheep will tragically pay the 10% fee every week in order to maintain.

The vertical relationship is one’s responsibility to govern one’s own heart; the responsibility to govern God behavior from flesh behavior by knowing firsthand the true nature of God enough to measure human flesh against it. In other words, the vertical walk is the grace to get it for ourselves.

No, not that we cannot glean from the insight of those in spiritual leadership but Jesus sent out 12 guys 2×2 who were no more ready to be Apostles than I would be ready to fly the Space Shuttle, but their inability and even stupidity in the face of destiny had to become real for them as opposed to micro-managed by the almighty Son of God.

This is where it is too easy for even any well-meaning Pastors not to put their foot down in the face of their own insecurity and even lust, for having so many horizontal sheep be so horizontally dependent on them as a shepherd, when the easy excuse is all of the negative references for unruly and immature believers who abuse the vertical gift by turning it into “make it up as you go along” Christianity; a “we don’t have to listen to mom and dad anymore, so let’s party” approach.

A vertical walk with God is the ultimate personal responsibility of freedom; the age-old line from Spider-man “with great power-comes great responsibility” if you will. And negative references to those who seemingly do nothing good with it aside, it cannot be a concept theologically taught from the pulpit in order to project that we are more in favor of being more vertically independent than reality says we are; it must be insisted upon even to the point of severe insult until the sheep either become the lions they were created to be or they stay the sheep and eventually recycle their church membership somewhere else and become some other pastors problem.

The law of the Lord is good, converting the soul. (Psalms19:7-11)

It’s a new vertical day…catch the fire.

J.Konrad