Historical Truth 1 – Old Testament G2M
A good while back the Israelites had neither kings, nor judges. This was God’s will. He set it up this way. They followed God directly in cooperation with Moses. The cloud moved, they moved. The role of Moses was not one of ‘king’, nor leader, but perhaps if you had to slap a title on him it would be ‘prophet’ – delivering God’s messages as an obedient mail man. He was a normal man, not without sin. It was not Moses who brought them out of Egypt, it was God – and God made sure this point wouldn’t be confused by means of wild and terrible acts against their oppressors. This relationship, was God-to-Man (or G2M for the sake of creating an acronym). He was a pillar of smoke during the day and a pillar of fire by night. God said move left, and the people moved left. God said move right, and the people moved right. God said “jump” and the people said “how high?” – kind of.
However, when Moses went to the mountain to speak to God, he stopped to tie his shoe and took a bit longer than expected and the people, losing their G2M mouthpiece for longer than they wanted, ended up making a golden calf to worship – a heinous and adulterous breach in their relationship with God. It proved that having a man-in-the-middle (MITM) was an unnatural relationship and doomed to fail.
Following Moses, the Israelites set up more leaders (kings/ judges) because they preferred a MITM relationship rather than G2M. The end result of this choice was a total degradation and ultimately the complete abandonment of the God who delivered them.
There was a restoration, of sorts, in Nehemiah but it was never as G2M as it was with Moses. There was always a MITM.
Historical Truth 2 – New Testament G2M
The book of Acts was not only a restoration of this G2M relationship, but the fullness thereof where God’s own Spirit was poured into man and ‘the people’ went wherever God’s Spirit instructed. Jesus had ripped the veil, the holy place of God was accessible to all men, and the MITM relationship was fully, officially, and legally ended. God had taken up residence inside his newly restored earthly tabernacle – the body of believers.
As you read the book of Acts, you see that they acted as one body, and did acts of God on the earth – without priests, pastors, kings, or judges. Everyone was G2M when the Spirit poured out on the believers in Acts 2, but at some point, it went MITM and then the church went bad – real bad.
My Opinion (Read at Own Risk)
MITM is not the will of God, nor can anyone spiritually grow in this secular, man-made environment. It is a recipe for stunted spiritual growth at best, but spiritual degradation at worst (I’ve seen this too much to track it).
I reason that if you were to remove the Pastor, the Priest, or the (insert your one-man-show church position) that many of the churches would cease to prevail at that moment. They would either go to another establishment that had a strong leader, or they would leave the church completely.
But it’s happening anyway.
People are tired of hearing ‘about God’. They want to know God, or not bother.
And thank God!
Imagine going every week to a travel agency where they pumped up a trip to a nice resort. They showed you nice pictures, they showed videos, they walked you through slide presentations, they showed how awesome it was in this place. You went week after week diligently because you badly wanted to go. But no one showed you how to go. How horrible would that be? How long would you keep going to torture yourself? The reality never happens.
Same deal in many churches. How long will go you and hear about transformed lives: miracles, signs, wonders, love, joy, giving, dying to self, blah, blah, blah, and blah… but not get a chance to live it? The reality never happens.
But worse than all of this is the fact that most sincere believers I know just want to *know God*. We want God to be the ruler of our hearts and lives. We want to be holy, pure, and with a clean conscience before God and man. We want to walk with Him, talk with Him and experience the fullness of His plan for our life. We want to love God and love others – but all we have is a well-composed 3-point sermon (and some coffee and cookies afterwards for ‘fellowship’).
Thank God the people are tiring of it because God was tired of it the day it started.
It’s time for a G2M relationship.
I’m done with MITM.
Hey, stumbled upon this article under the “Faith and Religion” category, and I was just wondering if you really believe that being led by a pastor/priest would “stunt your spiritual growth”? I don’t think a pastor would be a true MITM because although they teach us and lead the congregation, Jesus still died for us so we could have a personal relationship with God without a “man in the middle,” or a priest. In the old testament regular people could only converse with God THROUGH a certain appointed man, but now anyone can speak to God and have a relationship with God as long as they are committed to Him. A pastor is a teacher, and they may lead us or guide us towards God, but it is still ultimately our responsibility and our job to have a true relationship with Him. I personally think that God’s will cannot be explained by just two ways of living. And I also believe that there is no “right or wrong” way of doing this. It is definitely possible for someone to have a strong relationship with God without a leader or a teacher, but it is much harder. You claim that the MITM strategy is doomed to fail, looking at the example you gave with Moses. However, according to biblical history, people without leaders ends in chaos (and so God appointed Judges, and later Kings). My definition of a pastor does not match your description of an MITM, because a pastor is not someone who relays messages from God to us, but more like someone who leads you to understand messages that He has sent to each of us personally. In the end, it is ultimately up to us – we either live in Christ or don’t, regardless of “MITM” or “G2M.”
If you could elaborate further on your opinion, I’d love to hear it.
Hey Jean,
Great comments and thanks for sharing. First, let it be known clearly that I fully, 100% believe in *leadership*. I fully agree with you that without a leader in a home, or in a body of believers, or even a classroom, that chaos will ensue. We are in agreement 100%. In fact, it is the lack of godly leaders that I’m talking about here. Because of the ‘MITM’ the individuals are deceived into thinking that they are ok and that the ‘pastor has my back’. The entire structure is messed up from the ground up. You said the error yourself: “the pastor is like a teacher”. No, that’s exactly the problem. A teacher is a teacher. He probably should be a teacher expounding on the Word of God but instead he’s ‘pastoring’ and the rest of the needed ministry positions such as counseling, prophesying, praying, etc, etc, etc, are also loaded on top of this poor man and he, his family, and ultimately, the whole church suffers.
Bad model.
In business, investors would pull out of such a doomed model. In fact, there is insurance you can buy in business called ‘key man insurance’ so that when the ‘key man’ kicks the bucket and all his knowledge and skills about the operations go with him, you can at least make some insurance money on all the imminent losses….
And, that’s not the model we see in the Bible and that’s really my point.
You and I can blog each other to eternity about these semantics but let’s look at the fruit. If you are seeing individuals gaining Christ and being seriously transformed by God directly, then probably things are biblical and one man is not doing everything. If you are seeing a body of believers living lives that are barely different from the worldly unbelievers, or longing to serve the Lord and never serving… then we have a problem, captain.
My main point here is not to church-bash. That’s a massive waste of energy. Jesus didn’t spend a lot of time with his ‘woe to you pharisees’ but, he did say it so someone has to address this totally unbiblical ‘church system’ because believers are drying up, and spiritually dying.
So what is the model?
A body of elders who teach each and every person from young to old how to *gain Christ* and count all the rest loss. And they teach from their own experiential transformation, not from some ‘school of divinity’ (don’t get me started on that one, either, haha) Not one person. A *body*. The Body of Christ. What I see out there and experienced myself is the ‘arm of Christ’ or the ‘mouth of Christ’ trying to do the work of the legs, feet, hand, ears, heart, lungs, etc. What happens? ‘pastor burnout’ and screwed up pastor’s kids and wives. There is even an acronym out there for a pastor’s kid “PK”. And many of them are more messed up than the worldly kids. Wha?? uh…
So, understand my heart here: if your ‘church’ can somehow manage to get your MITM to hand over 80% of his ‘spiritual duties’ to those in the Body God has brought to him.. beautiful! Otherwise… yeah….
May God restore His Body for these last days in great anticipation of His return!