Spiritual Authority

I was working on some things today that required me to look at my job description in our by-laws. All it says is that I am the spiritual authority of the church. I wanted to run from my own job description and re-write it immediately. I am not the spiritual authority, the Word is the Spiritual authority in the church, the Word as Jesus and the Word as the Bible.

The goofy thing is that on Sunday I preached about authority, particularly Jesus' authority as it related to the passage from Mark 1 where He is in the synagogue in Capernaum. The word itself is a legal term that refers to something like power of attorney, it isn't an independent authority but a delegated one. In that sense I am, in our context, the Spiritual authority in the church but that word feels scary and over the top to me but I think it has much to do with the abuse of authority in both society and in the church that I feel that way about it.

If I understand the Biblical concept of authority properly, I can better be the spiritual authority in my church because it also implies that like the Roman centurion in Matthew 8, I am a man under authority, the authority of the Word. So long as the people in the church see me acting under or within that authority, they have reason to accept my authority, but if not, they need to call me on it. How do we create a culture of accountability to make sure that happens?