This frees the Christian up from being “lorded over” (1 Peter 5:1-3) and helps them take the personal responsibility of refusing to follow leaders who lead them astray. If leaders are not leading you according to the rightly divided Word of truth then you shouldn’t have confidence in them and shouldn’t allow them to lead you.

3982 pei,qw peitho {pi’-tho} • a primary verb; TDNT – 6:1,818; v • AV – persuade 22, trust 8, obey 7, have confidence 6, believe 3, be confident 2, misc 7; 55 • 1) persuade 1a) to persuade, i.e. to induce one by words to believe 1b) to make friends of, to win one’s favour, gain one’s good will, or to seek to win one, strive to please one 1c) to tranquillise 1d) to persuade unto i.e. move or induce one to persuasion to do something 2) be persuaded 2a) to be persuaded, to suffer one’s self to be persuaded; to be induced to believe: to have faith: in a thing 2a1) to believe 2a2) to be persuaded of a thing concerning a person 2b) to listen to, obey,
yield to, comply with 3) to trust, have confidence, be confident
2233 h`ge,omai hegeomai {hayg-eh’-om-ahee} • middle voice of a (presumed) strengthened form of 71;TDNT
- 2:907,303; v • AV – count 10, think 4, esteem 3, have rule over 3, be governor 2, misc 6; 28 • 1) to lead 1a) to go before 1b) to be a leader 1b1) to rule, command 1b2) to have authority over 1b3) a prince, of regal power, governor, viceroy, chief, leading as respects influence, controlling in counsel, overseers or leaders of the churches 1b4) used of any kind of leader, chief, commander 1b5) the leader in speech, chief, spokesman 2) to consider, deem, account, think

I tried emailing you, but it doesn’t like the address is valid. Send me an email at LT@coveringandauthority.com

I’m convinced that people like Randy don’t understand that there is NO such thing as “covering”. And they are covinced that the religious system is correct. There is one head of the church and HIS name is JESUS CHRIST the only covering. Randy thinks because he has been blessed to come across a good leader that means covering and submitting to authority no matter what is biblical. However, contrary to popular belief, it’s not. There is NO where in the Bible that states there is an unconditional submission to MAN. Even on your job-submission have its limits unless it will tear down your family life. I willingly submit –not forced to submit. The forced and the fear is the problem!

Randy. We are not talking about good leadership that submits to God and the people. And that shows honor and respect to those in his congregation no matter if they have a title or not.

There are people that refuse to submit to anyone but that’s not our problem to bear. Just like Jesus said, the poor will always be among you. So keep feeding the poor with the understanding that they will always be apart of this world. Such as those that refuse to listen-lets pray for them.

The Hebrews 13 passage does pretty clearly layout the benefits and necessity of submission to church leaders. Where I think the authority teaching crosses the line is when people are threatened or coerced through fear mongering in to submission. I’ve been a church leader for 8 years now. I have found that people are more than willing to open up their lives to me when I sincerely love them. If a church leader is honest, sincere, loving and helpful people will submit to them. I also open myself up to the people I lead because I need the ministry of the body and quite frankly sometimes they see things I don’t and hear God when I don’t.

I don’t think it is fair to label people in this thread as having a “root” of his or “spirit” of that. In my experience spiritual abuse does serious damage and not everyone comes through it sounding fair. Some people are just rebellious, but only God knows people’s hearts. I run in to just as many insecure church leaders who think they need to scare people in to submission so they can feel better about their position in the church. I don’t know their hearts either, so I think guessing at people’s inner motives and issues across the Internet is unhelpful.