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The Equipping Church: Recapturing God’S Vision for the Priesthood of All Believers

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The Equipping Church: Recapturing God’S Vision for the Priesthood of All Believers THE EQUIPPING CHURCH: RECAPTURING GOD’S VISION FOR THE PRIESTHOOD OF ALL BELIEVERS. A BIBLICAL, HISTORICAL, AND REFORMED PERSPECTIVE. A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY BY JUSTIN CARRUTHERS AUGUST 2019 Copyright© 2019 by Justin Carruthers All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT The Equipping Church: Recapturing God’s Vision for the Priesthood of All Believers. A Biblical, Historical, and Reformed Perspective Justin Carruthers Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2019 Many protestant versions of believers’ royal priesthood, including the Christian Reformed Church in North America, are missionally inadequate: priestly functions are often monopolized by the Ministerial Priesthood,1 which leads to the defrocking of the ministry of the priesthood of all believers. In essence, the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is treated as though it is a true, factual, and fascinating piece of Christian doctrine, but is not always practically lived out in local congregations. We believe in it in theory, but not in practice. A biblical and missional understanding of the church must root the priesthood of all believers in baptism, the initiatory rite that ordains all people into priestly service in the world. A proper re-framing of the priesthood of all believers will serve as the catalyst for a more robust ecclesiology and will be the impetus for the royal priesthood to commit to their earthly vocation to be witnesses of Christ in the world. Content Reader: Dr. David Rylaarsdam Words: 185 1 In the case of the CRCNA, there are four offices of the Ministerial Priesthood: Minister of the Word, Elder, Deacon, and Commissioned Pastor. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are numerous people to acknowledge for whom I am grateful to God: I am indebted to my brothers and sisters in Christ from First Christian Reformed Church of Hanford. You, dear friends, inspired me to learn and grow. As a result of your generosity, you gave me the means and the time to cultivate my gifts, expand my learning through my doctoral work, and grow as a pastor, knowing full well I would not always be your pastor. Thus, you inspired me with your Kingdom perspective. It was not, and never has been, just about our local church. It is always about God’s Kingdom and our small part in it. And you modeled that for me. You have made me a better pastor with a vision to meet God where He is in expanding His Kingdom. This doctoral dissertation was made possible because of you and, in many ways, my passion to equip pastors and ministry leaders for the Kingdom was cultivated by you modeling that same perspective to me. I never served as a pastor before arriving to serve alongside you, but that did not stop you from putting your trust in me and challenging me to lead with boldness and humility. I remember when I arrived to serve alongside you in 2013, expecting to minister to you. Then my father died and we had our first child and, before I had the chance, you ministered to me. As often as I think of you, I am grateful to God. I am also grateful for our Life Group – the men and women who started off as random acquaintances, but ended up becoming our faith family. It was there, in that sacred space of the Jason and Aaryn’s living room, that I learned how to be ministered to by others. This was the place where I felt at home. My research into the priesthood of all believers has developed over these last six years through the gift of academic research and the training ground of serving two local congregations. Initial interest and research on this topic was done with the support of Professors Dr. David Rylaarsdam and Dr. Carl J. Bosma. I owe them a debt for raising critical questions, challenges, and critiques early on that have made my research better. I felt very alone in my “holy discontent” with regard to incoherent theology regarding the priesthood of all believers in our denomination and you sustained me through your iii encouragement and prayer. It was your passion for this vital topic that gave me the courage to continue in developing my dissertation and the ultimate goal of resourcing pastors and ministry leaders to champion the priesthood of all believers within their local contexts. A special place must be reserved for Dr. David Rylaarsdam who strengthened this final product through a careful reading and constructive critique of the original manuscript. While Fuller Seminary provided the space for me to learn and grow, my writing would never have seen the light of day without the support of my editor, David Kludt, for his contributions in making this final product possible. I am especially grateful for my Christian brothers and colleagues in ministry: Adrian DeLange, Michael Nanninga, Jonathan Fisher, Brandon Haan, and AJ Gretz. You, friends, have truly taught me the meaning of friendship. I am grateful to be serving alongside both in ministry and in life. Finally, I have received extraordinary support from my wife, Julie. She has always believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. Julie, it is your love, support, prayer, and spiritual friendship that are God’s greatest gift of all to me. My love and gratitude to you grows day by day, and I dedicate this project to you. Writing this project has taught me much about God’s divine grace and I pray that those reading it would experience God’s grace more deeply as they participate in God’s royal priesthood as prophet, priest, and king. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii PART ONE: THE ROYAL PRIESTHOOD, TEMPLE & SACRIFICES IN SCRIPTURE INTRODUCTION 2 CHAPTER 1: GOD’S DESIGN 7 PART TWO: THE ROYAL PRIESTHOOD ACROSS HUMAN HISTORY CHAPTER 2: THE EARLY CHURCH 39 CHAPTER 3: THE REFORMATION & POST-REFORMATION 55 CHAPTER 4: DENOMINATIONAL POLITY & PRACTICE 68 CHAPTER 5: THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CHURCH 103 PART THREE: RE-ROOTING & REFORMING THE ROYAL PRIESTHOOD CHAPTER 6: A BIBLICAL VISION FOR THE LOCAL CHURCH 115 CHAPTER 7: GETTING PRACTICAL: DEVELOPING A CULTURE AND 125 ENVIRONMENT THAT EQUIPS THE PRIESTHOOD OF ALL BELIEVERS SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: THE CHURCH: MISSION, FUNCTION 164 AND CONVICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY 169 PART ONE THE ROYAL PRIESTHOOD, TEMPLE & SACRIFICES IN SCRIPTURE INTRODUCTION So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success. "But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said. "Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?" said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on." "But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all.1 I have long felt the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is treated as biblically authoritative, spiritually sound, and worthy of every Christian’s affirmation but, then, in reality not lived out. It is embraced in form but rejected in function. We call it a vital component of our faith, but reject it in practice. In my view, the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers (PoAB) is treated as though it is a true, factual, and fascinating piece of Christian doctrine but a rather silly thing to try and live out. A chasm has emerged between orthodoxy (what we profess we believe) and orthopraxy (what we practice and live out). As this project explores, even though the Reformation largely became a movement because of this doctrine, it still did very little to impact the practice of the PoAB. Ultimately, this is a matter of incoherent doctrine. Incoherence between our theology and the practice of the PoAB has implications for many facts of ecclesiology. As we will see, the PoAB is related to issues of leadership, offices, preaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, discipleship, authority, 1 Hans Christian Andersen, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” accessed February 25, 2019, http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html. 2 spiritual gifts, and so on. Ecclesiology is the theological crisis of our day. The crisis of the fourth century church was the doctrine of the Trinity. In the fifth century it was Christology. In the sixteenth century it was soteriology. Today, we are facing an ongoing crisis of ecclesiology. We must consider the ways our theology is lived out with respect to the aforementioned issues within a church (ekklesia), the body of Christ, steeped in a hyper individualistic twenty-first century culture. As this project will explore more fully, faith formation is always rooted in the ordinary, day-to-day (but always deeply spiritual) liturgical practices that cultivate and form our identity in Christ and are rooted in our baptism ordination. This project invites consideration of how we, as a body of believers, can model liturgical practices that cause us to form our identity as the royal priesthood. Since the Christian Reformed Church of North America (CRCNA) is rooted in the Reformation, it might be assumed that the denomination would champion the doctrine of the PoAB.
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