Continued from Part 3 of 4
Second, Presbyterian polity teaches that God’s governmental order is elder-ruled, not congregational. Au contraire! Congregational government has solid Biblical ground. In Acts 6, the congregation governed in selecting deacons and presenting them to the apostles who did not question the democratic power of the congregation but commissioned them.
In Acts 13, the Antioch congregation, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, commissioned Barnabas and Saul. In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council on the efficacy of Gentile conversion was composed of the whole Jerusalem congregation, apostles, leaders, and believers from across the Mediterranean.[1]
Third, beyond the obvious, that Presbyterian polity is designed for Presbyterians, not Baptists, there is a more important reason for steering clear of ruling elders in our Southern Baptist churches: It is not Biblical.
In my reading of Scripture, the term elder refers not to a self-elected clique who controls church finances and operations, but instead refers to what we today call pastors. Deacons, in turn, function as practical-needs ministers to the community and the church fellowship.
In Titus, the exhortation to “appoint elders in every town” (Titus 1:5) means to appoint a plurality of pastors in every municipality who oversee as shepherds the local bodies entrusted to their care (Acts 20:28).[2] What is often proposed in elder-rule among Baptists amounts to an unelected, self-perpetuating board of deacons. That puts us back at square one.
Fourth, what about the doctrine of the priesthood of believers? Norman Maring and Winthrop Hudson wrote, “When Baptists . . . advocated a congregational form of church government, they did not do so because it offered a convenient administrative procedure by which decisions could be reached easily by a show of hands. They did so because they believed that Christ intended the full participation of the members of the church in its total life, as implied in the doctrine of the priesthood of believers.”[3]
The Biblical model for church governance is both elders and deacons,[4] and that is what the Baptist congregational model provides.[5] Elders (pastors) tend to the spiritual needs of the church,[6] and deacons tend to the practical needs of the people of God (Acts 6). Indeed, in Southern Baptist history, the elder or elders were the pastors of the churches.[7]
Baptist polity incorporates both elders (pastors) and deacons already. What we need is not a new church government. We need to train our deacons in biblical models of servant ministry.[8]
NOTES:
[1] James Leo Garrett, Jr., “The Congregation-Led Church,” in Brand and Norman, 165-6.
[2] Further, Paul tells Titus to ordain/appoint the elders. Southern Baptists do not ordain ruling elders, but instead sees elders as pastors, an office Baptists have always affirmed and ordained.
[3] Garrett, 179-80.
[4] Gerald Cowen, Who Rules the Church? Examining Congregational Leadership and Church Government, (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2003), 13-14.
[5] Hobbs, 178, 183-191.
[6] Dever, 24. Dever says, “remember that the preacher, or pastor, is also fundamentally one of the elders of his congregation.”
[7] Ibid, 20-21. What Dever misunderstands is that the titles pastor and elder were interchangeable, not some lost-treasure, Calvinistic underpinning of Baptist churches.
[8]Ibid, 12.
Excellent article!
ReplyDeleteYour understanding of elders, rather than the presbyterian style one being pushed recently, is in keeping with early Baptists' understanding of Scripture.
On the Founder's site, Greg Wills documents southern Baptists' understanding of elders in the years prior to the the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention:
"Some churches had plural eldership."
"The churches that practiced plural eldership on this principle [ruling elders] had difficulty sustaining it."
"...they doubted the scriptural precedent for the office."
"By 1820 most churches had dropped the practice."
"Most churches agreed with Georgia’s Powelton Baptist Church, whose members concluded in 1811 that lay elders were "unnecessary and not sufficiently warranted in scripture." Many of these held that the pastor and deacons jointly constituted the eldership. South Carolina’s Tyger River Baptist Association, for example, judged in 1835 that "the eldership of the church" consisted of "the ministers and deacons.""
When I began hearing about this "plurality of elders" fad, I did not get it, as I understood the Bible to describe both pastors and deacons as elders. I know that some Baptists have expressed the idea that bishop, elder, and pastor are synonymous, but this was originally put forward in response to those who advocated more than two church offices. If one understands that elder in the scripture encompassed both bishop and deacon, much consternation can be avoided.
Note that no church in the Bible is described as having "elders and deacons". Philippi had "bishops and deacons" (Phil. 1:1); when Paul wrote to Timothy, at Ephesus, he uses the terms "bishop" and "deacons" again (I Tim. 3). Elsewhere, including I Tim. 5:17, we see church officers referred to collectively as "elders".
Comparing Acts 6:4, "we will give ourselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the word", and I Tim. 5:17, some elders "labor in the word and doctrine", suggests that one church office is to assist the other so that the latter may be dedicated to the ministry of the word. The common Baptist polity of a pastor and deacons follows scripture in this regard.
Deacons may be called on to help the church's ministry in many ways, not just physical needs. The spiritual/physical dichotomy concept of the two church officers is, I believe, what had led to the deacon downgrade of recent times that you describe. I Tim. 3:14, deacons are to have "great boldness in the faith", and the examples of Stephen and Philip in Acts counsel against a limitation of the ministry of deacons to the physical.
These ideas have been expressed throughout Baptist history:
Charles Spurgeon's predecessor William Rider, three and a half centuries ago,
Benjamin Keach in 1701, Gospel Mysteried Unveil'd, p. 217:
"Moreover, the Deacons are to be helps in Governemnt. Some think Paul calls the Deacons Elders, when he speaks of Elders that rule well (as our Annotators observe) tho others judg he means Ministers who are aged, and not able to preach the Word, yet capable to help in ruling or governing the Church ; but some others think there were men ordained Elders, that were not gifted to preach, but to be helpful in Discipline, or in the Governement of the Church : but we reading neither of their Qualifications, or how to be chosen (nor of their peculiar Work, distinct from Pastors, nor any such elders chosen in any particular. church in the Apostles days) can see no ground for any such an Office, or Officers in the Church"
the Shaftsbury Baptist Association in 1805.
in 1829 in the the Triennial Convention's American Baptist Magazine,
and in 1856 by D. C. Haynes in The Baptist Denomination: Its History, Doctrines, and Ordinances.