Foundations of Christian Leadership, Mentor's Guide, MG07

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F O U N D A T I O N S O F C H R I S T I A N L E A D E R S H I P

C. The Melvin Hodges paradigm: the “selfs” of church government

Churches require freedom to grow and reproduce.

1. Self-governing: the indigenous church controls its own affairs and direction.

2. Self-supporting: the indigenous church supports its activities and leaders on the basis of its own funding and resources.

3. Self-propagating: the indigenous church produces outreach and mission through its own efforts, evangelizing, discipling, and reproducing daughter churches.

4. The problem of the “selfs” model if viewed by as self-and-only-ourselves alone

a. No church can be fully autonomous (i.e., a law to itself; we are all connected to one another and Jesus Christ), Eph. 4.4-6.

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b. It is unrealistic to expect every church to meet its own needs entirely; the apostles ignored this rule (the Jerusalem famine and the Macedonian offering, 2 Cor. 8-9).

c. The early Church was a network of churches bound together by their common parentage from the Apostles and common struggles under the Roman rulership, 2 Cor. 11.9.