There are a number of different church leadership structures that exist today. For instance, you have top-down authoritative models similar to how a business is run where you have a CEO doing the wishes of the board and stockholders. Churches with this structure keep a distinction between the “clergy” (who basically run the church) and “laity” (those who are told what to do in the church). If you know anything about Jesus’ teaching about the first being last, and the greatest becoming the servant of all, you’ll catch pretty quickly how UN-biblical this particular model is.

When we study scripture to learn about church leadership, you’ll see there is a consistent model Jesus established for us. And since the church has been called the Body of Christ, and the Bride of Christ, and since we belong to Christ, it’s probably a good idea to begin with HIS example…

When we went through the series this Summer on Exodus, I mentioned towards the beginning how the Exodus story is really OUR story. The Bible isn't filled with perfect examples of perfect people - at all. I told you that it was messy. Because life is messy at times --- at MANY times, in fact.

One of the places that those messes can happen is when one sinner comes into contact with another sinner. And the sparks fly! Relationships can be tricky - especially when those in the relationship haven't yet submitted their lives to the Lord. Then you have a situation where there are two people (like in a marriage) who both are REALLY looking out for themselves; they probably even chose their partner based on how that partner made THEM feel. And it's no wonder that things can get messy.

A lot of Paul's writing focuses on how to get along in the Body of Christ. Because apparently when people come to faith in Jesus, turns out, they are STILL people. And people, being as we have noted, can be messy. We need to know how to do this thing called church.