Transcript:
I think the church should model the alternative kingdom, and it always has done this, I mean radically so. So if we think about the equality of women in the early church, where women forget about voting or even holding any power, they were literally powerless but they held positions of authority in the church because the community of God was meant to model an alternative community, a kingdom-based community and I think we have to figure that out, that’s what we’re supposed to do.
Very similarly to a marriage, I always say that hierarchy is the world; that’s how the world functions; that’s Genesis 3; hierarchy entered the world at Genesis 3. If you want to model a sinful world, go for hierarchy. So even in a church culture, go for putting people in charge of other people, go for like lording it over them as Jesus would say, but I’ve actually told you to model something else.
So, I’d say if you want to go for Genesis 1 let’s do equality, and let’s figure out how we co-steward together. People say that’s impossible, somebody has to be in charge but I always say, who’s in charge of the trinity, right? It’s actually blasphemy to suggest one member of the godhead is in charge of the other member of the godhead, they are co-equal in essence and glory, so somehow, they figured it out, and if you want to model the trinity, even in marriage you know, if you want to model God to the world then figure it out, do equality, cause that’s a model of God to the world. If you want to model sin to the world do hierarchy.
So I think we really have to look at how we do leadership. Now, I think we can learn some leadership lessons of excellence, some practices, but when it comes to an alternative kingdom; a relationship-based, equality-based, just-based alternative community, that’s just kingdom, we’ve got to learn that from Jesus.
