"Power Tends to Corrupt" - Why we Should Beware the Monarchical Episopate

When I was being interviewed by the leadership at Bethel with a view to my taking up the pastorate, someone asked me my views on Church leadership. I replied, a little facetiously, "I am not in favour of the monarchical episcopate." The immediate response from a group of ordinary men was, "What?" I then explained that the Monarchical Episcopate is the reign of one Bishop, one-man Church leadership, where the authority finally rests in one person at the top.

The historic episcopal denominations, such as the various national Episcopal churches, many Lutheran national churches and the United Methodist Church of the USA with the various Methodist Episcopal Churches planted by them have evolved a series of checks and balances; that and the fact that many local clergy just tell the Bishops where to go if they do not agree with them, a definition of "canonical obedience" which may be defined as, "I obey the Bishop when I think he is acting canonically". Behind and above the bishops lies the Canon law. Of late even the Roman Catholic Church has had priests who have done this.

But we have seen the rise within evangelicalism of what can only be described as one-man megachurches. Now, there have always been individuals possessing great charisma who have gathered Churches, or regenerated decayed churches and who have as a result had a great following. In these cases it has been hard to deal with such people when they go off the rails. But this is a new phenomenon, dating back to the decline of the old denominations after World War 1.

The old denominations had just that in their favour - they were old. They had a past, a heritage and a tradition. The Methodists had their Conference (British Methodism is not Episcopal), the Presbyterian system was well defined, Congregational Churches had the power to depose their pastor by a majority vote. What was more, they looked back on their heritage, and the Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians could all say "our forefathers tore down episcopacy, we will not build it again." But the new Churches, the Pentecostals in particular, had initially very unclear ideas on the government of the Church. Where one man planted a Church, he could very easily become a monarch.

The modern megachurch does exactly that; the minister is a monarch, accountable to no-one but God. That Divine Right of Kings, so forcefully rejected by our Puritan forefathers, has been brought into the Church as the divine right of pastors. Brethren, this ought not to be so. It tramples on the rights of the Christian people, and it exalts a man to a very dangerous place.

Lord Acton famously wrote: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It should be no surprise that churches where the power is concentrated in one man have so often ended up in spiritual abuse, as even elders cannot stop the 'Man of God' in his rampage, however delusional he may have become. The end result in far too many cases is a man who is a little local pope, whom none may question without facing his wrath and ultimately anathema if they persevere in criticism.

This is, I would contend, the necessary result of such a form of monarchical Church government. Make a man a king, and such is the nature of sinful humanity that he will be tempted to act like the worst sort of absolute monarch. Add to that the idea that he has a special personal revelation from God, and you have the sort of mentality that drives the cults. Is it any wonder that a refugee from one of these churches said to a friend of mine, "the Church has become a cult centered on the Pastor"?

I am one of four elders in a Church governed on Congregational lines. For all the criticism that has been made of that system, it has one great advantage; it does not concentrate power in one person, but shares it among the people, it recognises that God's temple is the people of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in us all. And best of all, it recognises that as councils and synods may err, so too pastors and elders may err.

I See Adulterous People: Mark Driscoll and the Dangers of Supposed Revelations

Mark Driscoll, senior pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington State, is an odd figure. Originally identified with the Emergent Church movement, he distanced himself from that group a few years ago when it became clear that Brian McLaren, Rob Bell and others were leading the way into a new phase of Protestant liberalism and away from historic Evangelicalism. At the same time Driscoll began to identify himself as a Calvinist, one of the so-called "New Calvinists". Many saw this as a promising sign; while we found Driscoll's use of profanity in the pulpit offputting (and let's be honest, what is the point of that? It's to shock, it's to provoke a reaction), we recognised, and still recognise, that people mature and change. His affirmation of Calvinism was a step in the right direction.

Recently, however, a number of things have happened to cause deep concern for Driscoll. First of all, Mars Hill has become a multi-site megachurch. The idea of the Multisite is that in addition to the main location, you have a number of satellite campuses where the sermon from the main location is beamed in on big screens. This amazes me, because the Emergent Church began as a protest against the inauthenticity of the big-box megachurches, and an affirmation of community. Now, I can imagine few things as inauthentic as a church meeting where the sermon is beamed in rather than being live. Ironically, the musical portion of the service is live at these locations, perhaps a telling point. We put this down to an inadequate doctrine of the Church, recommend that Driscoll read P.T. Forsyth's The Church and the Sacraments and move on.

More worrying was Driscoll's participation in the mainstreaming of Word-of-Faith teacher T.D. Jakes at the Elephant Room 2 conference earlier this year. Despite having the doctrinal knowledge to pin Jakes down, Driscoll refused to do so. Many of us were left with the impression that Jakes was affirmed because he has a huge congregation, and so his false teaching on the Trinity, the nature of faith and the whole Prosperity issue was roughly papered over and another person was allowed to insinuate that opposition to Jakes was racist, a low blow if I ever heard one. And not a whisper of criticism from Driscoll. It seemed that he had been pulled off course. It happens sometimes, a man passes through orthodoxy on his journey from one form of heterodoxy to another. I pray that is not what has happened to Mark Driscoll.

And then there was Driscoll's very public claim that God gives him what can only be described as "pornographic visions". Well, this is the result. You may ask why I tend to believe the woman over Driscoll? Very simply puit, because I have come across such things before. I have counselled a woman whose pastor falsely accused of having an affair, and asked to leave the Church and go elsewhere. Thankfully in this case it was the pastor who left, though leaving the Church in a terrible state. But this man I refer to was not Driscoll, he did not think he was having direct revelations from God; he was just suffering from a mental complaint.

Leaving aside the question of Driscoll's sanity (though the parallel worries me), here is the problem: when a minister says, "I suspect that Mrs. Smith is having an affair", then his fellow-elders can ask, "Really, John, are you sure? What makes you think that?" (Names have been changed to protect the innocent and the recovered). But what if Pastor John says, "God has shown me that Mrs. Smith is having an affair"? What if he shares salacious details? Well, then to question Pastor John is to question God. This is the Achilles' heel of the Charismatic; when a popular and influential pastor claims visions about private lives, how can he be stopped? Well, you may say, what about Pastor Driscoll's story? Wasn't it accurate? We do not know. If a man is actually delusional, he may see things that are not there and reconstruct events in his memory. So the claim is unproven.

And it gets worse: Driscoll believes that he has a vision from God as to how Mars Hill ought to develop, and anyone who disagrees with that should be "thrown under the bus". Well, it happens to those who were in leadership roles at Mars Hill, as we see here. Now, call me an old-fashioned Congregationalist, and I will take it as a compliment, I am an old-fashioned Congregationalist. I am also a firm believer in a collective leadership and plurality of elders - in fact I am one of four elders at Bethel Evangelical Free Church, and we each have equal authority, but different roles. Mark Driscoll is over the elders at Mars Hill. That means that anyone who does not sign up and follow him 100% gets thrown under the bus, because Mark is certain that he has a special message from God.

Now, he is by no means alone in this: whenever a person or a group think that they have a special revelation of God's will, this tends to happen. It happened in the Ecumenical Movement in the 1960s and 70s, when the advocates of church union schemes so identified their schemes with the will of God that they were willing to ignore the proper procedures in their denominations in order to reach that union (see Ian Henderson, Power Without Glory [London, Hutchinson, 1967] for Scotland, and R.W. Cleaves, Congregationalism 1960-1976 [Swansea, John Penry Press, 1977] for the URC in the UK). The man or organization that believes it has a private revelation from God is liable to become a despotism. Worse, this supposed private Word will tend to overshadow the revealed Word. In a culture obsessed with modernity and the now, a word given yesterday is far more exciting than a ward given almost two millennia ago, or before. And so they will follow that word, even though it is, to quote the very worst of the Star Trek films, "A vision you created."

My plea to all who think so is that of Cromwell to the Scots Presbyterians: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."