Leadership within the church is vitally important. With the right leadership, a church can grow deep and in numbers. The Kingdom of Jesus Christ benefits. With the wrong leadership, churches suffer, as well as the Kingdom. Within a congregational model of church government, there is no such thing as clergy or laity. That distinction is a Catholic idea. It is not found in Scripture at all, and it continues to be a curse to the church. Congregationalism means that we all have the same status: believer-priests.
Then how do we choose our leaders? Leadership in a congregation is based on one’s spiritual gifts, not one’s status. Leaders are leaders because they have the gifts that equip them to serve in a particular area, whether hospitality or administration or teaching or encouragement.
Baptists and most other Congregationalists have generally recognized two types of offices in the church: pastors and deacons. Our focus here is pastors.
We could use the term pastor, elder, or bishop for this office, since the three are used interchangeably in Scripture. Acts 20 offers a clear example of the office of pastor. In verse 17 Paul sends for the elders (presbuteroi). In verse 28 he tells them the Holy Spirit has made them overseers (bishop - episkopoi), and their job is to pastor (be shepherds- poimen) God’s church. Other examples are found in Titus 1:5 and 1 Peter 5:1-2 where elders are told to shepherd and serve as overseers. The term pastor occurs only in Ephesians 4:11 in conjunction with teacher.
In the past, Baptists used the more frequent term, elder, for this office. In fact, in 1820 the Sandy Creek (NC) Association voted to use elder to denote their pastoral leadership. Today most people use pastor (and in rural areas preacher), which describes only one of the functions of the office. The only term which is not good is minister which implies that the other members of the congregation are not ministers, which is untrue.
As an Anglican presbyter who is under the authority of an episkopoi, with deacons serving the episkopoi at my direction, as you can imagine, I find this discussion fascinating.... ;>) We all see ourselves as equippers of the saints for ministry.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see that we have the same view of believer-priests....
I might put it as follows:
A leader is a leader if they have gifts that pertain to equipping others for ministry. But whether we are equippers or being equipped, the ministry and mission of all believers in the love and Name of Christ, is the point of these temporal offices. Our eternal vocation is the same: worshiper.
Chris, I feel complimented and blessed that you would comment on these musings. These are documents I have been using to teach our congregation church government from a convictional perspective of a Southern Baptist. Many of them come from independent Baptist, mainline, or Pentecostal backgrounds, and those who are life-long Baptists only vaguely remember this kind of thing taught years ago.
ReplyDeleteThese posts are a window into the study in ecclesiology I am doing on Sunday nights with a large amount of application verbally. Those who most like what I'm doing are the younger and middle-aged folks. The older adults do not care for it all that much, I deduce, because they know all this. The younger ones do not.
Thank you for your comments on believer-priests. I agree with you that leadership should be spiritually gift-based.
You are right: our eternal vocation is as worshiper. Thank God. And you would be at the front of the line on that one. I have always admired your powerful abilities at worship.
Every blessing,
Gene Brooks