COM
Understanding the role of a minister in the Church established by Jesus Christ may require not only study but deep soul searching within the hearts of Elders and Ministers. It has been 2000 years since Jesus called his first Ministers and appointed to them a Kingdom.[1]
He and John the Baptist were preaching a different way to govern and be governed. The "little flock"[2] were understood to be one form of government which was not like the government of the other nations who had Benefactors who exercised authority but they were to benefit the people and provide spiritual guidance and a Daily ministration for their welfare with Pure Religion by way of the Faith, Hope and Charity of the people in Free Assemblies through something James called the Perfect law of liberty.
This was not a new system of self government but was very old. The pattern of Tens had been used by Abraham and also Moses along with many other nations.
Voluntary governments have been the rule in man’s history and not the central or even democratic authorities so common world-wide in modern administrations. It is commonly understood by historians that, “our modern reliance on government to make law and establish order is not the historical norm.”[3]
Jesus came to bring the Kingdom of God’s liberty into every aspect of our lives. God’s precepts and character should govern us and the nations of the world. Liberty is conducive to growth and maturity. Virtue is the avenue of God’s grace through an international Daily ministration for Christians near and far and even the strangers in their midst. Faith is in The Way and the Sacrifice of our hearts is a gift that brings us into a fuller knowledge of God.
- “The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” Luke 4:18
If we are going to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness what form and structure was employed by the early Church?
The Pharisees were in conflict with Christ and according to Christ were also in conflict with Moses while the Essenes had many things in common with the teachings of the early Church.
There were congregations that were so united during the early days of Christianity that In Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he praised “the union and discipline of the Christian republic”. He also pointed out that “it gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire”.[4] The early Christian ekklesia was a republic in form and was recognized by Rome through the proclamation nailed to the cross by order of the Proconsul of Rome, Pontius Pilate. When Jesus rose from the dead to stand again upon the earth, so did His Kingdom. His kingdom now lives in the hearts of those who follow His way.
Everyone is encouraged to study the materials linked above before continuing.
A CORE is already defined as a group of families represented by their heads or Elders in Free Assembly and bound only by love and honor in righteousness.
But a Congregation of Ministers or Congregation of Official Ministers (COM) is not merely a congregation of Elders. It has the capacity of a CORE, which is not an entity but a Free Assembly, but also has some official duties granted it within the adjudication power of the Church.
A minister's Membership with the Church is or may be a limited capacity either by appointment or anointing, ex officio or ordination. Since an Ordained Minister of the Church must be separate from the world he may have no part of a personal estate within the world.
This is sometimes hard to understand and it is not what most Modern Christian ministers do. But it was essential in the early Church and even back in the days of the Levites and Essenes.
A minister is part of the Body of the Church as a member of their Congregation of Ministers, "COM". A COM has no individual existence in the world but has its legal existence within the Church. That existence resides in their Ordained Overseer or Minister as the Church in order to remain a Free Assembly.
As ministers ex officio they hold property as a trust within the Church but as ordained ministers they hold property as join heirs.
There is a reason Moses and Christ used these forms and relationships to build the institutions of God which are based on individual choice and liberty but remain institutions based on one form of government for the purposes of God.
Congregationalist
While each local religious congregation or CORE is independent and self-governing in the kingdom those congregations are merely Free Assemblies of families....
Each minister has a CORE he serves but he is not a member of that CORE.
The kingdom factor comes in because the minister of a congregation is not a member of the congregation he serves but as a part of the Church he is a member, whether ordained or ex officio, of the Congregation of Ministers he is bound to by his commitment to serve His Church in a particular capacity. It is that Congregation of Official Ministers (COM) where he will find and fulfill his duties of Religion.
His first duty is of course to Christ/God but his second is to his Congregation of Official Ministers (COM). That congregation is not the ones he serves, his CORE, but those ministers with whom he is in congregation by a common Overseer of his COM.
Without that understanding and religious duty there is no kingdom and the pattern is not sacred nor separate.
In fact a great danger arises if he does not attend to his fellow ministers first. His CORE congregation may become more his personal Church rather than HIS Church meaning Christ's Church.
His congregation my isolate itself with the cares of the world and start looking to each other only and let go of its kingdom thinking. His congregation becomes an altar of clay that he stands upon and serves in hope they will mutually support him. His service becomes for his own purposes.
While a minister is supported when he works, when he is retired or ill or in great need it is his fellow ministers that he will depend upon. Those ministers and many more in a network of ministers shall become his support.
The early Church had a great deal of resources, including land and buildings as well as funds to provide for the Daily ministration.
We know this is why the Diocletianic Persecution confiscated the property of the Church's ministers. They owned that property in common and reclaimed it from Rome eventually. The whole Christian conflict echoed the jealousy and envy of society.
The early Christians did not need the free Bread and circuses of Rome. They had a better system that did not require force.
The Roman cult failed as the people and the Church prospered. Each village and community became more isolated where it did not think to come to the aid of others. Those ministers who focus on their congregation rather than the whole kingdom are undermining the bonds of the "kingdom".
This loving of one group more than another, especially you own congregations and those closest to you, spreads seeds of division.
This is why Christianity was overrun back in the turn of the first millennium as one valley after another was overrun by that militant coercive church.
They had lost sight of the kingdom and they did not cast their bread upon the waters or come to the aid of the next valley or village.
Each minister serves other people and those people are important to other ministers not because they know them but because they know their minister.
When a minister is sick or ill or needs help he may get that help or aid or moral support from tents of his congregation, the flock he tends (his CORE). But he should first look to his fellow ministers in his own Congregation of Official Ministers, (COM) just as the elders of a CORE of the Church should serve one another.
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Footnotes
- ↑ Luke 22:29 And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me;
- ↑ Luke 12:32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
- ↑ The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State. Bruce L. Benson Publisher: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (San Francisco), 1991
- ↑ Rousseau and Revolution, Will et Ariel Durant p.801. fn 83 Heiseler, 85.
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