The problem in the Charismatic Church isn’t sin—it’s structure. In fact it’s true for literally all of Christianity. Sin will be with us until we go home or the Lord returns for us.
The modern charismatic movement is experiencing a “shaking” characterized by internal stress, major scandals involving key leaders, and intense scrutiny of its theological foundations. This period of disruption, often described as a “reckoning,” is forcing a re-evaluation of the movement’s focus on experience, spiritual gifts, and prosperity theology.
The writer of Hebrews describes a time when God shakes everything that can be shaken so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Since that shaking has begun, the issue may not simply be the failure of individual leaders. It may be the exposure of leadership systems that slowly replaced the pattern the apostles established for the Church.
“Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens… so that what cannot be shaken may remain.” — Hebrews 12:26–27
When God shakes His house, the purpose is not destruction but exposure and removal. Structures built by human design begin to crack, while what is rooted in the kingdom remains.
Across much of the church today we are witnessing leadership structures being shaken—sometimes dramatically. Moral failures, abuses of authority, celebrity ministries collapsing, and widespread disillusionment among believers are appearing across multiple movements. The list of the walking wounded in the Body of Christ grows daily.
While individual sin is certainly involved, a deeper question must be asked:
Is God only judging leaders, or is He exposing a leadership model that slowly replaced the original apostolic pattern?
To answer that question we must revisit a warning that appears in the book of Revelation.
The Warning About the Nicolaitans
In the opening chapters of Revelation, Jesus addresses several early churches. In two of those messages He mentions a group called the Nicolaitans.
To the church in Ephesus He says:
“You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.”
— Revelation 2:6
To the church in Pergamum He adds:
“You have some there who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.”
— Revelation 2:15
The striking thing about these passages is the strength of the language. Jesus says that He hates their works.
Yet the New Testament gives almost no detailed explanation of who the Nicolaitans were. This has puzzled commentators for centuries.
However, the meaning of the word itself provides an important clue.
In the 1970s Derek Prince talked to us about the spirit behind the Nicolaitans and how that spirit is and will negatively impact the Church.
What the Name “Nicolaitan” Means
The word is a compound of two Greek terms:
- nikao — to conquer or dominate
- laos — the people
Together the term can be understood as “those who conquer the people.”
In other words, it describes a system where leaders dominate or rule over believers.
This interpretation aligns closely with the warning Jesus gave His disciples about leadership:
“The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… it shall not be so among you.”
— Matthew 20:25–26
In the kingdom of God during the Church Age, leadership was never meant to resemble worldly power structures. Authority was meant to function through service and shared responsibility, not domination.
The Leadership Pattern of the New Testament
In the earliest churches, leadership was remarkably simple.
Local communities were shepherded by a plurality of elders, not by a single ruling figure.
For example, the apostle Paul instructed Titus:
“Appoint elders in every city.”
— Titus 1:5
Likewise Peter wrote:
“To the elders among you… shepherd the flock of God.”
— 1 Peter 5:1–2
The pattern was consistent:
- multiple elders
- shared oversight
- mutual accountability
- leadership as shepherding rather than ruling
No New Testament church is described as being governed by a single pastor functioning as the central authority. In fact Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:28, “And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues.” Paul doesn’t even mention evangelists and pastors placement in the church.
When Paul outlines the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, he focuses almost entirely on character rather than ministry gifting. Elders are to be mature, self-controlled, faithful in their families, and respected within the community. Only one functional ability is mentioned: he must be doctrinally sound.
Paul does not say an elder must be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, or teacher. This distinction is crucial. The ministry gifts described in Ephesians 4:11 exist to equip the body of Christ, but the government of the local church rests with plural elders whose authority is recognized through proven character and spiritual maturity rather than platform ministry.
Overlooking this simple but extremely important distinction has contributed to many of the structural problems we see in the church. When authority is assigned primarily on the basis of ministry gifting or public platform rather than the biblical qualifications for eldership, leadership easily becomes centralized around dominant figures rather than shared among mature shepherds within the local body.
When authority becomes concentrated in one dominant leader rather than shared among qualified elders, the structure begins to resemble the very pattern Scripture warns against—the domination of the people by a ruling figure rather than the shepherding of the flock by plural overseers.
How the Pastor System Emerged
After the death of the apostles, the structure of the church gradually changed.
By the early second century writers such as Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John, began encouraging churches to unite under one bishop rather than plural elders.
Over time this model developed into the hierarchical clergy structure that has dominated much of church history.
Even after the Protestant Reformation rejected the Catholic priesthood, many churches retained a similar structure—simply replacing the word priest with pastor.
In practice, the modern evangelical church often revolves around a single leader who functions as:
- primary teacher
- primary authority
- primary vision-giver
- final decision maker
Even when a board of elders exists, the senior pastor often remains the central authority.
This arrangement can easily drift into the very pattern Jesus warned about: authority concentrated over the people.
And no safeguards to prevent error or expose sin.
When Leadership Becomes Domination
Whenever authority becomes centralized in one individual, several dangers emerge:
- accountability weakens
- correction becomes difficult
- personality replaces plurality
- the church becomes dependent on a single leader
History shows that this structure often produces cycles of crisis when that central leader fails.
When the entire system depends on one person, the fall of that person shakes the whole structure.
This may help explain why so many modern church scandals have occurred in environments where leadership was heavily centralized.
The Present Shaking
Since Hebrews 12 describes a shaking that removes temporary structures, then it is possible that the leadership systems we have inherited are part of the problem.
The exposure of leadership failures not only involve individual sin—it also reveals the weakness of church structures that concentrate authority in ways the New Testament never intended.
The shaking exposes what was built on personality, power, or institutional control.
The solution is going back to the Scriptural pattern. It is there if you know how to look.
A Brief Historical Detour
The leadership crisis we are witnessing today did not appear overnight.
The Charismatic movement that began in 1960 was largely a movement of spiritual renewal within existing churches.
Believers across many denominations experienced the gifts of the Spirit and gathered for prayer and worship.
During those early years the phenomenon was generally called the Charismatic Movement.
By the early 1970s it came to be known as the Charismatic Renewal, reflecting the hope that the Spirit was renewing believers within the historic churches.
Its high-water mark came with the large gathering of believers at the 1977 Kansas City Charismatic Conference, where 50,000 thousands spirit-filled believers met in Kansas City to worship, learn and fellowship.
However, during the 1980s a significant shift began to occur.
Instead of focusing primarily on spiritual renewal within the body of Christ, increasing attention began to shift toward new forms of spiritual authority. Prophetic ministries rose to prominence—the most notable being the Kansas City prophets—and by the mid 1980s some leaders were teaching that prophets would identify and usher in a new generation of apostles who would govern the church.
Over time this idea developed into apostolic networks that later became widely associated with the New Apostolic Reformation.
Ironically, this shift did not correct the structural problem already present in most, if not all, churches. It simply changed the titles.
Where churches had once revolved around a senior pastor, they increasingly revolved around prophets and apostles. Yet the structure remained essentially the same: authority concentrated in a dominant leader.
In other words, the system moved from pastor-centered leadership to apostle-centered leadership without returning to the plural eldership pattern described in the New Testament.
Instead of correcting the Nicolaitan pattern, the new structures often intensified it.
Returning to the Apostolic Pattern
Since, as I believe, the Lord is restoring the Father’s original pattern—His blueprint for the church, reflected in the Hebrew concept of qāhāl (קָהָל), the assembly—then the issue before us is not merely improving our existing structures, but whether our structures actually reflect the pattern established by Yeshua and His apostles.
To evaluate that question, we must first understand how leadership functioned in the apostolic church.
The New Testament consistently presents local assemblies being shepherded by a plurality of elders, functioning in shared responsibility under the direct authority of Messiah. Within this pattern, apostles serve as Christ’s sent representatives who relate to the elders and the wider body of believers, not as solitary rulers over congregations.
To understand this pattern correctly we must define our terms carefully—particularly the words elder and apostle.
The qualifications for elders are clearly defined by Paul in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. These passages emphasize character, maturity, and spiritual stability rather than public ministry gifting. Elders are shepherds within the local body whose authority is recognized through proven life and faithfulness.
The word apostle is often more misunderstood. Much of the confusion surrounding apostles—from charismatic excess to cessationist denial—arises from defining the term solely through its Greek form, apostolos, while overlooking the Jewish framework in which Jesus and the early apostles operated.
Yeshua and His earliest followers were Jewish and lived within a Jewish worldview. Their understanding of representation and authority was shaped by a well-known legal and relational concept.
The Hebrew term shaliach (שָׁלִיח) describes “one sent as the personal representative of another.”
An ancient Jewish principle summarized the concept:
“A man’s shaliach is as the man himself.”
— Mishnah, Berakhot 5:5; Kiddushin 2:1
This means the shaliach acts with the authority of the one who sends him. He represents the sender’s message, decision, correction, or blessing. To receive the representative is to receive the one who sent him—a principle echoed in the words of Jesus:
“Whoever receives the one I send receives Me.”
— John 13:20
In this framework apostles function as sent representatives of Messiah, serving the church rather than ruling over it. Their role is relational and accountable, not hierarchical.
In the New Testament pattern, therefore, both elders and apostles function within a distributed form of leadership. Authority is shared and accountable, not concentrated in a single dominant figure.
Since this is the pattern given in Scripture, the question becomes unavoidable:
What happens when we replace that pattern with something else?
Over time much of the church has adopted leadership structures centered on a single ruling figure—usually called the senior pastor. In other circles the same concentration of authority appears under different titles, including “apostle.”
But a change of title does not change the structure.
Whether the central figure is called pastor, bishop, or apostle, a system that places governing authority in one individual over the congregation departs from the apostolic pattern.
Many so-called apostolic churches are therefore structurally no different from pastor-driven churches. Both revolve around a central leader who functions as the primary authority over the people.
Scripture warns about a pattern in which leaders rule over the people rather than shepherd them. Again, in Revelation this pattern appears in the name Nicolaitan—those who dominate the people.
The issue is not whether sincere believers exist within these systems. Many faithful Believers worship in pastor-led churches and love the Lord deeply.
The issue is whether the structure itself reflects the Father’s blueprint—because only the Father’s blueprint can produce His desired results—feed the sheep and equip the saints for the work of the ministry.
A building may contain sincere occupants and still be built on the wrong foundation. In the same way, a church may contain genuine believers while operating within a leadership model that does not match the pattern established by the apostles.
The shaking described in Hebrews then is exposing more than individual failures—it is revealing leadership systems that have departed from the design the Lord intended for His people.
If the church is to be restored to the apostolic pattern, the recovery will have to return to:
- plural eldership
- shared authority among shepherds
- relational discipleship
- communities centered on Christ rather than a dominant leader
- and elders and apostles being rightly related
In other words, a return to the Father’s blueprint rather than the models that gradually replaced it.
What Cannot Be Shaken
The shaking described in Hebrews does not destroy the church—it allows the true church to be rebuilt. It reveals the difference between what God built and what man has built. Each believer has the right through the blood of Yeshua to have a personal relationship with the Father—but that doesn’t mean the institutions we go to are under the headship of Jesus. For why would Jesus be the head of something that is not in Divine Order?
Jesus said to the religious leaders, you would rather keep the traditions of men that honor the commandments of God.
Programs may disappear. Institutions may falter. Leadership models may change.
But the kingdom remains.
Communities of believers gathered around the authority of Jesus the Messiah will continue to exist long after every human structure has been tested.
And when the shaking is finished, what remains may look less like a religious institution and more like the simple communities of disciples we see in the pages of the New Testament.
Blessings and thanks for reading,
Rick Fox