(35) Church Order Is a Good Thing (BC 32)

Immanuel Fellowship Church

We have a complicated relationship with rules. Our sinful nature rebels against restrictions. Saint Augustine tells a story from his pre-conversion life about how he and some friends stole pears from a neighbor. They didn't need food. Their "pleasure lay" simply "in doing what was not allowed." We don't like limitations. But we also recognize the need for good rules. Augustine asks, "What thief can with [calmness] endure being robbed by another thief?"Even in the church we need regulations to help us faithfully serve the God of order who calls us to follow him according to his will. So it is "useful and good for those who govern the churches to establish and set up a certain order among themselves for maintaining the body of the church" (BC 31). Church leaders promote God's honor in the church through two types of ordinances. The first we might call "house rules" and the second "holiness rules."