{"id":6127,"date":"2025-06-03T19:03:33","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T19:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/?p=6127"},"modified":"2025-06-03T19:14:39","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T19:14:39","slug":"the-power-and-danger-of-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/the-power-and-danger-of-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power and Danger of Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n\t\t\t\t\"rules\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n

A friend recently asked me to state, in one word, what I thought could kill a movement. As I reflected on that, my mind went to Acts chapter 15, where the Jerusalem Council met and struck down the whole issue of circumcision. This isn\u2019t about circumcision, but it is<\/em> about rules.<\/p>\n

That was my one word answer\u2014\u201crules.\u201d Rules that have outlived their original purpose.<\/p>\n

I believe rules have their place\u2014they have their time, and then they\u2019re done. Too often, however, rules hang around long after their purpose has expired. Some were meant for a generation ago\u2014or maybe thirty generations ago\u2014and yet they still hold back the work of the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re serious about doing the things God has really called us to do, we need to regularly take a hard look at our rules. Maybe once a year, reassess: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? Should we keep doing it\u2014or should we stop?<\/em><\/p>\n

Lessons from the Jesus Movement<\/h2>\n

I came up during the Jesus Movement, and so much of what we did back then was considered off-limits by others\u2014at least in their minds. The way people dressed, the simple fact that we served coffee after church\u2014those things upset a whole bunch of people.<\/p>\n

Then we got into a tangle with our denomination over something else. We had a 58-year-old aerospace engineer who volunteered his time as an associate pastor. This man had led very successful, large Bible studies in the region where we lived, and he was thrilled with what we were doing as a young church. He joined us wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n

But I couldn\u2019t get the denomination to give him a pastor\u2019s license so he could officiate a wedding. I got into a heated argument over this with a wise denominational official. Eventually, he got them to change course and created an entirely new system for licensing pastors trained in local churches, not seminaries.<\/p>\n

A New Generation Facing Old Rules<\/h2>\n

This brings me to a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a very exciting young couple. I had met three men, all missionaries from Liberia to the United States, serving alongside their wives. All of them are church planters, and all hope to multiply more churches.<\/p>\n

One of these men is married to an American woman who had been trafficked in the sex industry as a young girl. The remarkable thing is that these people are now doing short-term missions to Kenya, where they have met young girls caught in similar situations.<\/p>\n

The big problem? Their denomination has a rule: no woman can be a pastor. And these young women in Kenya don\u2019t trust men\u2014for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n

She wanted to start an online church for these girls.<\/p>\n

I felt my role in this situation was to remind this brave young woman that she wasn\u2019t hired<\/em> by the denomination, and that she could choose to do what God was putting before her. I\u2019m not sure where that\u2019s all going to lead, but I have a strong feeling it\u2019s going someplace good.<\/p>\n

Once again, the rules in place have their reasons. I happen to disagree with this particular rule to some extent. But in the end, the rules aren\u2019t the main issue\u2014the young girls in need of a pastor<\/em> are.<\/p>\n

And if this young woman is able to shepherd them through WhatsApp and other social media platforms, then she should be free to do what God has clearly placed in her lap.<\/p>\n

Balancing Submission and Speaking Up<\/h2>\n

We need to remain submitted to our leaders and their wisdom. But we also need to learn when to respectfully push back and to hope and pray that, like the men at the Jerusalem Council, our leaders will respond to genuine spiritual need the way those men did when Paul and Barnabas presented their case.<\/p>\n

What About You and Me?<\/h2>\n

My point here isn\u2019t really about them\u2014or even about the people who seem to be blocking ministry efforts in Kenya. This is about you and me, and whether we\u2019re willing to assess the rules and policies we\u2019ve put in place over the years\u2014and ask if they\u2019ve outlived their usefulness.<\/p>\n

In our church staff, we always made this kind of assessment during our annual planning meetings. We intentionally looked for ministries that had outlived their usefulness so we could shut them down or phase them out.<\/p>\n

It would have been wise for us to do the same with our policy manual. Throughout the year, we developed policies based on decisions we made, and at the end of each year, we would try to harvest those decisions that seemed worthy of becoming formal policy.<\/p>\n

But we never quite figured out that we should spend the same amount of time asking which existing policies had outlived their usefulness.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Ralph Moore<\/strong>\u00a0is the Founding Pastor of three churches which grew into the Hope Chapel ‘movement’ now numbering more than 2,300 churches, worldwide. These are the offspring of the 70+ congregations launched from Ralph’s hands-on disciplemaking efforts.<\/p>\n

He travels the globe, teaching church multiplication to pastors in startup movements. He’s authored several books, including\u00a0Let Go Of the Ring: The Hope Chapel Story<\/em>,\u00a0Making Disciples<\/em>,\u00a0How to Multiply Your Church<\/em>,\u00a0Starting a New Church<\/em>, and\u00a0Defeating Anxiety<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

The post The Power and Danger of Rules<\/a> appeared first on Newbreed Training<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A friend recently asked me to state, in one word, what I thought could kill a movement. As I reflected on that, my mind went to Acts chapter 15, where the Jerusalem Council met and struck down the whole issue of circumcision. This isn\u2019t about circumcision, but it is about rules. That was my one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6127"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6127"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6130,"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6127\/revisions\/6130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bergcom-engineering.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}