[BBC List] elders

[Mike Abendroth]

Defining Elders

By D.A. Carson

A lightly edited transcript of a talk given at Capitol Hill Baptist Church
1 Timothy 3:1-7
1Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an
overseer, he desires a noble task. 2Now the overseer must be above reproach,
the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable,
hospitable, able to teach, 3not given to drunkenness, not violent but
gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4He must manage his own
family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. 5(If
anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of
God's church?) 6He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited
and fall under the same judgment as the devil. 7He must also have a good
reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into
the devil's trap. 
Titus 1:6-9
6An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose
children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and
disobedient. 7Since an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be
blameless-not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not
violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. 8Rather he must be hospitable, one who
loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined.
9He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so
that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose
it.
Before plunging into these texts, I should perhaps begin by saying that in
New Testament times, there were only two distinctive offices. On the one
hand, there were elders, also called pastors, also called overseers
("bishops" in older English); on the other, there were deacons. The reason
for thinking that "pastor" and "elder" and "overseer" refer to the same
person or office springs primarily from the way the three are linked in such
passages as Titus 1:5-7 and 1 Peter 5:1-2. The point has long been
recognized. That illustrious Anglican scholar, J. B. Lightfoot, undertook a
lengthy demonstration of this point in his commentary on the Epistle to the
Philippians. It was not until the second century that "bishops" (i.e.
"overseers") were split off to constitute a third office. 
The word "pastor" comes from a Latin root that means "shepherd," which in
Jewish metaphorical usage carried overtones of authority, looking after the
sheep, directing them, nurturing them, protecting them, ruling them. The
"elder" terminology springs from both the synagogue and the village, and
suggests maturity and (one hopes!) wisdom. The word "overseer" recognizes
the legitimate place of governance. All the words are necessary because the
task is complex and integrated. 
So now we turn to our text.
These verses teach us that the primary characteristic of the Christian
elder/pastor/overseer is that his life constantly reflects Christian values,
morality, conduct, and integrity; that's the baseline. In some respects, the
list is remarkable for being unremarkable. In other words, there is nothing
about superior IQ, charisma, powerful personality or the like. The Christian
minister is supposed to be gentle, not supposed to get drunk, and so forth:
the list is remarkable for being unremarkable. Indeed, with only a couple of
exceptions, all of the qualifications listed here are elsewhere in the New
Testament demanded of all Christians. For instance, this elder is supposed
to be given to hospitality. But that is demanded of all Christians in
Hebrews 13. What this means, then, is that the Christian pastor must
exemplify in his own life the virtues and graces that are demanded of all
the people of God. There are only a couple of entries here that cannot be
demanded of all Christians, viz. "not a novice" and "able to teach."
Everything else is the responsibility of all believers, not just the pastors
of believers.
We must rapidly survey the entries on this list. In 1 Timothy 2:2, Paul
begins his list of qualifications by stating that elders must be "above
reproach" - in a sense, blameless. This doesn't mean that such a person is
sinlessly perfect; there's too much in Scripture to the contrary of that
sort of expectation. What it does mean is that there is no obvious
inconsistency or flaw that everyone agrees is there and serves as a reproach
to the man. 
Second, he must be "the husband of but one wife." In some ways that is the
most difficult or disputed qualification in the list. It has been variously
interpreted. Some think it means that this man must be married - that he
must be a husband. That interpretation is highly unlikely. It is clear that
Paul wasn't married, at least at this point in his life, and certainly the
Lord Jesus was never married. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul acknowledges that
there are certain advantages to being single in the ministry. I was single
when I was senior pastor of a church on the west coast of Canada, and there
were all kinds of advantages to that. There were some disadvantages too. But
there were some wonderful advantages in terms of the hours I put in, evening
visitation, calls when I could get people at home. So there are advantages
to being single in the ministry, and singleness should not be despised. It
is highly unlikely that this text, therefore, stipulates that an elder be
married. 
Some people think this verse suggests that the elder/pastor/overseer is
forbidden to remarry, if, for instance, his first wife dies: he must be the
husband of only one wife, this interpretation would have it, no matter how
long he or she lives. Again, that is unlikely. In Romans 7, Paul insists
that there is nothing dishonorable about remarrying, marrying a Christian
spouse the second time around, after the first one has died. Certainly he
gives no hint that such a step is unthinkable in the case of an elder. 
Some believe this verse teaches that an elder cannot be a divorcé who has
remarried. The Bible certainly warns against divorce in many ways. But it is
also very important not to make divorce the worst sin on the horizon, the
unforgivable sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit. Some have tried to impose
a prohibition against anyone becoming a minister of the gospel who has ever
been divorced at any time in his life. So he might have been a murderer, and
then paid his debt to society, got out of prison and been converted and
become a minister of the gospel. But if he's been divorced, he can't enter
the ministry - which somehow projects an image of divorce as the
unforgivable sin. Where divorce does disqualify a person from ministry, it
seems to me, is bound up with a category we've already discussed: an elder
"must be blameless." It's a credibility issue; or, again, a little further
on, "he must be able to govern his own house well." You worry about someone
whose life has cracked up in his marriage, and then three months later, he
feels he's qualified to be back in ministry. He has repented, after all, and
the gospel is all about forgiveness, isn't it? Clearly the Bible has
something more stringent to say than that. Divorce is not the ultimate sin,
nor is it the unforgivable sin, yet it may disqualify a person for ministry
precisely because it destroys so much of a person's credibility, it destroys
so much of his believability. There is more I could say, but divorce simply
is not what this qualification is about.
Some people interpret this verse to mean that an elder must not be a
polygamist; that is, not somebody who is married to two or more wives. What
people object to about this interpretation is that no one in the Christian
church was married to two or three wives, so why should it be stipulated at
all? Moreover, it is argued, in the first century, polygamy wasn't all that
common. Why then do you have to stipulate this particular thing? But it can
be shown that there was more polygamy in the first century than some people
think, especially in the strata of society where people felt above the
common rule. Herod the Great had ten wives. Now, he didn't have them all at
once because he murdered two of them, but he had several at a time. Both in
the aristocracy and in the borderlands of the Empire - places like Lystra -
polygamy was not all that uncommon. If you go to Africa today, you discover
that in some tribes polygamy is still not all that uncommon. The more power
you have - if you are the chief, for instance - the more likely it is that
you have a plurality of wives. The number of wives is connected with your
public persona; it's almost bound up with the office, so if you're a chief,
you're likely to have four or five wives. For a start, you can afford them.
In such a culture, polygamy almost seems to be a kind of leadership
qualification. But in the church, it's the reverse: polygamy disqualifies
you for leadership. 
Suppose a Christian witness moves into one of these tribes today, and large
numbers of the tribe, including the chief, become Christians. Does the chief
of the tribe become chief of the local church? Not according to Paul; that
is precisely what is ruled out. Just because you are a chief in the secular
world doesn't mean you are automatically entitled to be chief in the local
church. In a derivative sense, that is where the rubber hits the road for
us, too. You sometimes find that in a high-flying church, whose members
include a lot of middle-level and senior-level executives, it is simply
assumed that because these people are leaders in the larger culture, they
should be leaders in the local church. Sometimes the people who think that
most strongly are the high-flyers themselves. Such people, it must be said,
can on occasion be right pains in the local church. The fact of the matter
is that if they do not meet the requirements set out by the Scriptures, then
regardless of their impressive credentials outside the church, they do not
have the right to be elders/pastors/overseers within the church. So far as
the precise matter Paul treats here is concerned - the matter of polygamy -
polygamists are simply ruled out. One of the reasons is that, in the Bible,
marriage is presented not only as a social institution, but a model, a
"type," of the relationship between Christ and his "bride," the church - and
Christ does not have many brides, many churches. Marriage is a type of the
relationship between Christ and his people, the church. So there is
something to be modeled about Christ and the church by husband and wife, and
thus by a marriage structure characterized not only by fidelity and
integrity, but also by monogamy. In any case, Paul rules out the polygamist
from being pastor/overseer/elder. 
The next three qualifications, "temperate," "self-controlled," and
"respectable," all have to do with orderliness of life. "Temperate" conjures
up notions of clear-headedness, self-possession, not an extremist. It has
nothing to do with the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Then, we read,
the pastor is to be "self-controlled" because, after all, we read elsewhere
in the Pastorals that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power
and love and self-control. The word "respectable" sometimes has negative
connotations in today's culture; it sounds almost pompous. But that is not
what is meant here. The "respectable" person attracts some kind of respect. 
The next two qualifications in the list are bound up with Christian witness:
"hospitable" and "able to teach." The Christian pastor/elder/overseer must
not be a hermit or a recluse, must not be someone who wants always to be
isolated from people. It won't do to have a pastor who is a great reader of
books and a disciplined thinker, but who loves the church only in the
abstract, while being unable to stand people. The ministry is about touching
people's lives. 
The entry "able to teach" we'll come back to for more probing consideration,
but here we may at least say that the criterion presupposes knowledge of the
truth and of God, and the ability to communicate such truth. Occasionally
you'll find people who are wonderful communicators, but they don't have much
to communicate. Alternately, you find some people who have massive
knowledge, but just cannot get it across to anybody. In both cases, they're
ruled out of this office. Ability to teach presupposes knowledge of the
Scriptures and of the God of the Scriptures, and the ability to communicate
such knowledge. 
Then, verse three, "not given to much wine." That means not only free from
drunkenness but free from addiction. The slave of Jesus Christ must not be
the slave of anything else. Then "not violent but gentle" - that is,
patient, kindly, forbearing; not quarrelsome, not contentious. There are
some people who are not only ready to fight, but ready to enjoy it - not
least some of us who come from a fundamentalist background where our very
orthodoxy is measured not by contending for the faith, but by being
contentious about the faith. In this connection, then, it is very important
to read a passage like 2 Timothy 2:22-26:
22Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and
peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. 23Don't
have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they
produce quarrels. 24And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he
must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25Those who oppose
him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance
leading them to a knowledge of the truth, 26and that they will come to their
senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to
do his will.
Do you see that image? Someone who's not a wimp, someone who's standing up
to them and trying to teach them, but somehow, someone who doesn't have his
ego so much on the line that if he's challenged at any point he loses his
cool and blows up and damns them all to perdition and tries to get on with
his task of ruling the church. There's no place for that attitude in the
life of an elder; there should be self-denial and a firm, immovable
gentleness. 
Moreover, the pastor/elder/overseer is "not a lover of money." Jesus Christ
has promised all of his disciples enough for their needs. Therefore the
leaders of the church must display a certain carelessness about such needs,
because they are trusting Christ. The worst conceivable situation in the
local church occurs when the church adopts the attitude, "Lord, you keep him
humble and we'll keep him poor," and the minister adopts the attitude, "I'm
going to get every cent I can out of this selfish congregation; they have no
idea how much I do for them." The best situation occurs where the
congregation sees itself in the privileged position of supporting someone in
the ministry generously so that he is free to get on with the work of the
ministry, and the minister for his part doesn't give a rip - in a sense, he
is above all that. 
There's a profound sense in which, in the ministry, you do not pay someone
for the work they do. There are some things I've done in ministry - some
funerals that I've taken, some wretched situations I've gotten into - that
you could never pay me enough to do. In fact, what the church is doing is
supporting someone so that he is free for ministry. In that kind of
framework, you do not want him to be worried about where his next meal is
coming from, but you also do not want him to say, "Considering how important
I am as the leader of this church, you ought to pay me so much." Somewhere
along the line, the combination of 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Timothy 5 come
together: he is not a lover of money, but he is worthy of "double honor" -
and the word "honor," of course, is quite often used for "pay" - "to be
worthy of double pay, not least those who are committed to the ministry of
the Word."
Then, in verses four and five, we are told that the elder/pastor/overseer
"must manage his own family well." Verse five calls to mind the parable of
the talents reported in Matthew 25:14-30 - if you cannot do it in the
smaller arena, how can you be expected to do it in the larger arena? This
principle gives an impressive dignity to the Christian home. Not all men are
eligible to be elders in the church, but most are eligible to be elders in
the home. Within that sphere their responsibilities are somewhat similar. I
want to see elders in the church leading family worship, teaching children
the way of God, thinking through patterns of modeling and discipline, for
this is what demonstrates their qualification for similar roles in the
church. Spiritually speaking, the worst Christian home is the one with high
spiritual pretensions and low performance; the best is the one with low
pretensions and high performance. I say that out of gratitude and respect to
my parents. My parents didn't think of themselves as anybody. They thought
of themselves in many ways as losers and failures, partly because they lived
through the tough years of Quebec when nothing much was happening. Yet I
cannot remember a day in all my life when my father didn't pray for at least
forty-five minutes, and we knew that he was praying for us and for the
church and for his ministry. Burned in my memory is my mother sitting in the
kitchen with her open Bible on her knees. My father was never a threat to us
from his own ego; he just did not operate on that plane. And when I left
home, I could never dismiss them as old fogies or hypocrites: I had been a
lifelong witness to the integrity of their lives. 
Does this mean that the children of an elder must be devout Christians?
There is a passage in the second paragraph that I read at the beginning of
this address (viz. Titus 1:6-9) that is sometimes taken to support that
view. I think it is mistranslated in the NIV. The NIV renders Titus 1:6, "An
elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children
believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient." Does
this mean that the children of every leader must be Christians? And if you
say yes, then from what age? Two? Five? Seventeen? In fact, the particular
term that is used there, "must believe," is an adjective that in many places
is rendered "must be faithful." And in fact, in contemporary first-century
lists of social virtues, where moral characteristics are laid out, the word
always has that force. I think that what the text is saying is not that the
children must be saved - after all, grace doesn't run in the genes - but
that at the end of the day, they must be faithful, not wild or profoundly
disobedient. 
The verse does not mean that children of ministers are sinlessly perfect. It
does not mean that they cannot do some pretty stupid and immoral things. The
question really is, how is the home being handled? What kind of discipline
is imposed? What kind of encouragement is there? And how are these strengths
reflected in the character, the faithfulness, of the children? Certainly it
does not mean that when the children have left home and become adults and
are outside their father's purview - when he has no control over them - that
they must all be fine, upstanding believers with nothing publicly wrong with
their lives, or else their father is disqualified for vocational ministry.
Even while they are still children and in his house, what is demanded is
neither conversion nor perfection, but the kind of parental discipline that
produces "faithful" children. There has to be some kind of display of that
least common of gifts, Christian common sense, and grace and tact and
discipline and encouragement, and sometimes a yank on the rope and sometimes
perhaps an administration of the "board of education" to "the seat of
learning," that produces "faithful" kids. Such a combination of modeling and
discipline is important because that is also required in the leadership of
the church. If you cannot do it at home you certainly cannot do it in the
church. If it becomes obvious that the man has lost control of his dependent
children entirely, if the kids are thirteen years old and the terrors of the
neighborhood, the man is disqualified from public ministry in the church.
That is what the text says.
We are told in verse six, "He must not be a recent convert," lest he be
puffed up with pride, making his fall seem all the greater. Rapid promotion
usually spells disaster; he falls under the same judgment as the devil, for
the devil himself was lifted up in pride against God. But this is
nevertheless a relative category. For example, in the book of Acts, Paul
goes out through what is now Southern Turkey and plants various churches
there, and then on the return swing he appoints elders in every place. There
is no way that those Christians have been Christians for more than a few
months; that is what the chronology demands when Paul appoints elders in
every place. It would be inappropriate to appoint such people as elders at
Capitol Hill Baptist Church. This church is comprised, in part, of
Christians who have been Christians for a long time with a lot of
experience. 
I was brought up in French Canada, and during the tough years, as recently
as 1972, in a population of 6.5 million people, there was a grand total of
about thirty-five evangelical churches. Only one or two of them had more
than thirty or forty people on a Sunday morning. They were small works,
mostly supported by English Canadian dollars. Then between 1972 and 1980,
those thirty-five churches grew to about five hundred churches - in eight
years. Some of these churches had hundreds of people. I would go to speak at
a church in French Canada and discover that there wasn't a single person in
the room who had been a Christian for more than eighteen months. In that
kind of framework, the elders were people who had been Christians for
sixteen or eighteen months, because they were older in the Lord than anyone
else in the church. So in that kind of missionary expansion, "not a novice"
means something relatively different from what it means in a
long-established church. But still, "not a novice" is an important
principle, even if it must be variously applied. 
Then let me mention a number of characteristics that are drawn from other
passages that are not mentioned in this particular list. In 1 Timothy 5:21
Paul tells Timothy at all costs to avoid favoritism, partiality. The result
is that there is sometimes a degree of loneliness in leadership. We all have
favorite types of personalities, people we get along with better than
others. But Christian leaders do not have the right to indulge in such
preferences: leadership in the church should not be partial, it should not
play favorites. More generally, 1 Timothy 6:11-12 says the Christian elder
must pursue all godly virtues. And more generally yet, in 2 Timothy 2, 3,
and 4, leaders in the church must expect serious difficulties and be
persistent in the face of them, remaining utterly committed. If you think
this is going to be an easy ride, go be an astronaut, do something easy in
life; don't become a Christian pastor. 
I turn now to the one exceptional characteristic, "able to teach." It is
exceptional within the list in that it cannot be demanded of all believers
(except in the most general sense that all Christians are to "teach" others
in some general sense - but certainly not in the sense of James 3:1, which
specifies that there should not be many teachers in the church, since we
know that they will be judged more severely). It is the one characteristic
that is never demanded of deacons. In other words, a deacon may teach, but
that is not a necessary part of his role as deacon.
Perhaps, in passing, I should mention that some translations render the
Greek expression as "teachable" rather than "able to teach." I shall not
take the time here to explain why I am persuaded that the second rendering
is correct. I shall instead restrict myself to saying two things about this
qualification. First, there are some people who argue that there are two
orders of elders in the New Testament, those whose task is primarily
administration, and those whose task is primarily teaching. That distinction
is based entirely on one verse, 1 Timothy 5:17, which says, "The elders who
direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially
those whose work is preaching and teaching." So some have argued that there
are two tiers of elders, namely those who direct the affairs of the church,
and then another group, the "especially" group, who add to this the gift of
teaching. My hesitations in this regard are twofold. 
Number one, this is the only text in the New Testament which might be taken
to support that view, and I am reluctant to impose on the conscience of the
church something which on the face of it is said only once - not because
something has to be said many times for it to be true, but because something
has to be said more than once for me to be sure I understand it properly.
For instance, in 1 Corinthians 15, there's a reference to those who were
baptized for the dead. Now the Mormons think they know what that means, but
I'm not sure I do. In fact, in the history of the church, there have been
about forty different interpretations of what that phrase means. The
multiplicity of interpretations stems from several things: the phrase only
shows up once (so there are no parallels to help us out), there is more than
one syntactical possibility, and in any case the expression itself is
slightly obscure. I think I can narrow the options down to three, but even
if I ventured a guess as to which one is correct, there is no way I have the
right to impose my conclusion on the conscience of the church. So also with
respect to 1 Timothy 5:17: the fact that the relevant expression shows up
only once makes me reluctant to infer an entire ecclesiastical structure
from this one text. Number two, the word rendered "especially" in this verse
does not refer to a separate category of elders so much as it accentuates
what all the elders must do: "those who direct the work of the church,
indeed these who teach or preach the Word of God" - something like that. You
see, in the New Testament, the authority that rules the church is not
primarily an authority of independent office; it's an authority that is
ministered through the Word. I cannot stress that enough. We do not obey
pastors/elders/overseers because they are pastors/elders/overseers, because
they've got the job and therefore they're "up," we're "down" - they're the
administrators so we obey them; and then also there are people that teach.
That is not the idea. 
The idea is that the authority they wield in ministry is precisely the
authority of ministering the Word of God. That is why if they claim to be
teaching the Word of God, yet are transparently lending their support to
false teaching, you have every right to challenge them, because they are not
to put themselves over the Word of God: they are under the Word of God. But
if they are genuinely teaching the Word, then of course devout Christians
will see that the real authority lies in the Word, in the Lord of the Word,
even if in due course such elders accrue to themselves an enormous amount of
credibility and a functional authority, because they are seen to be faithful
teachers of the Word of God. Thus, the administration of authority in the
church is not so much bound up with office, or merely manipulation of
administrative leaders, although in any large organization there are various
needs for and kinds of administration. Rather, the fount of authority is the
Word. And out of this framework come teachers who explain that Word well and
apply it well, so that believers say, "Yes, this is the mind of God."
The second thing to say about this, then, is that when you look at all the
passages on this teaching authority in the Pastoral Epistles and beyond, the
teaching/preaching of elders is bound up with an extraordinary mixture of
proclamation on the one hand and superb modeling on the other. It is never
one without the other. You find this not only in the Pastorals, but in other
texts as well. In 1 Peter 5, Peter writes:
1To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ's
sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed: 2Be
shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers-not
because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not
greedy for money, but eager to serve; 3not lording it over those entrusted
to you, but being examples to the flock.
So you have an emphasis on oversight, but also on examples. 
There is one more qualification for vocational ministry that I dare not
ignore. There is a stress in the Pastoral Epistles on observable spiritual
growth in the leaders. Look at 1 Timothy 4:14-16 - "Do not neglect your gift
which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid
their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to
them, so that everyone may see you progress. Watch your life and doctrine
closely." If your pastor isn't more knowledgeable and a better preacher and
teacher of the Word of God five years from now than he is now, and if he
isn't better now than when he came here three-and-a-half years ago, quite
frankly, there's something wrong with him. He ought to be growing in his
thinking, his reading, his understanding, his ability to apply the Bible and
get it across. You should see in him an apparent growth in holiness and
conformity to Christ, that is, in his life, on the one hand, and in his
doctrine, on the other. Ministers are not static people.
It is intriguing that two other New Testament themes are sometimes
interwoven into passages about spiritual leaders. They are, first, doxology,
praise of God; and, second, eschatology, that anticipation of the end which
keeps everything in a certain kind of perspective. Let me give you a passage
or two by way of example. In 1 Timothy 6: 11-16, Paul writes:
But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness,
godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. 12Fight the good fight of
the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you
made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13In the sight
of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while
testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14
to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord
Jesus Christ, 15which God will bring about in his own time - God, the
blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16who alone is
immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can
see. To him be honor and might forever, Amen. 
All of this exhortation is what a leader is supposed to be. Paul wants
Timothy to press on to the very end - that's eschatology - for God himself
is absolutely glorious - and that's doxology. Those sorts of links are
fairly common: we read something about leaders and what they should be like,
and then the leaders are seen, or see themselves, in the light of Christ's
return and final judgment, and especially in the light of God's sheer glory,
majesty, and wonder. Another passage with the same combination of themes is
2 Corinthians 4:7-18. Read it at your leisure, and you will see why these
themes are linked. The ministry is not an end in itself. The ministry is
committed to preparing the whole church of God for Christ's return.
Moreover, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ - elders/pastors/overseers
- should not be in this business in order to garner praise for themselves,
but to bring glory to God. 
Finally, there is one more reflection that I should offer. It comes out of a
lot of passages from the New Testament, but the reflection cannot be
generated by putting your finger on a single one of them. It would take
fifteen or eighteen passages to establish this reflection in some detail,
but a brief summary may prove useful even though I cannot here provide all
the evidence. In the New Testament, how many elders/pastors/overseers should
there be in any local church? This question elicits rather complex answers,
in part because some of the New Testament terminology is not exactly like
ours. For example, in the New Testament, the word "church" in the singular
is regularly bound up with the city. One reads of the church at Jerusalem,
the church at Ephesus, the church at Rome. However, the word "churches" (in
the plural) is bound up with larger geographical units: the churches in
Judea, the churches in Samaria, the churches in Asia Minor. Today we do not
use that kind of distinction: we speak of the churches in Boston, for
example, or of the churches in Chicago. But in the first century, not only
were the cities smaller than ours, but the ecclesiastic terminology was
distributed a bit differently. 
The church in Jerusalem was made up of one unified "church": denominations
had not yet been invented. But although for a while Christians could meet
together in a large venue such as Solomon's porch, it wasn't long before
this venue would not do, both because they became too numerous, and because
of virulent opposition. This meant that the one "church" in Jerusalem was
soon broken up into many house groups. It was the same in Ephesus. There
wasn't one physical assembly, even though Christians spoke of the "church"
(singular) in Ephesus. All the people of the one church in Ephesus met in
different locations, in different assemblies. It was not long before
Christians became so numerous that there was no one site suitable for a
single meeting. Obviously, they could not rent the stadium - the same
stadium where, slightly later, they were fed to the lions - so they met in
various houses. As a result, what we refer to as "house churches" in the
ancient world functioned in some ways a bit like our individual "churches,"
except that our local churches are often bigger, and sometimes much bigger,
than their "house churches." But all of their "house churches" in one city
constituted, as far as they were concerned, the "church" of that city. How
the elders of that one "church" were distributed, it is impossible to say.
Perhaps smaller house churches had one elder each; perhaps larger house
churches had several elders. We simply do not know. 
Out of these terminological realities have sprung two or three competing
theories. In particular, the Presbyterian view of things holds that all of
the elders - the presbyters - of a particular area constitute one body, the
body as a whole having some kind of control over all the local churches in
that area. But there is another view, one with which I am personally more
comfortable. But to explain it, I need to establish a larger framework.
In the New Testament, a final authority rests, in many cases, with the
congregation. In 1 Corinthians 5, for example, there is an instance of
church discipline that goes to the whole congregation, however much it may
be instituted by the elders. Again, in Matthew 18, the Lord Jesus insists
that when things come down to the crunch, you tell the conflict to the
church. You tell it to the church - for not only is there wisdom in the
whole church, but there is a final sanction in the whole church. 
In fact, in the New Testament, there is a running tension between the
authority that rests with the church and the authority bound up with the
elders/pastors/overseers. There's a running tension because, quite frankly,
either side can go bad. Thus, in 2 Corinthians 10-13, there are leaders in
the church who Paul says should be kicked out by the church. And if the
church does not effect this discipline, then when he gets there he, as an
apostle, will take action and remove them. On the other hand there are
passages like Hebrews 13 where the emphasis is on obeying the leaders. After
all, the church as a whole can go bad, or simply be in need of instruction
and discipline more generally. The leaders are supposed to take primary
responsibility. But, in fact, sometimes they have to be disciplined too, so
there is a running tension in this pattern in the New Testament. 
Assuming the importance of this running tension between the authority of
elders and the authority of the church, we remind ourselves of the fact that
"churches" today vary in size from the little "house church," which may have
only one elder/pastor/overseer, to the sort of big Jerusalem-sized church,
which might have thousands of people in it and many elders. As far as I can
see, there is no absolute biblical rule requiring that a certain number of
elders is necessary for larger churches, or that a percentage of the
congregation must be elders. Of course, one might reasonably argue that
there is safety in numbers; even more reasonably, one might argue that one
should not appoint as elders those who are unqualified. Probably it is true
to say that in the New Testament there is a bias towards a plurality of
elders in the church, but instantly one recalls that the New Testament local
"church" might have numerous "house churches" or assemblies comprising it. A
large "church" today, with many elders/pastors/overseers, may easily be
comprised of more Christians than were found in entire cities in the ancient
world. It goes beyond the clear teaching of Scripture to argue that such a
church's form of government is inappropriate unless its
elders/pastors/overseers are linked with those of other churches. In any
case, what is clear is that elders/pastors/overseers are charged with
general oversight, direction, and teaching of the Word of God in the local
assembly, but that the local assembly is nonetheless collectively
responsible for the elders.
Much more might be said, but these observations on what the Bible says on
the topic may serve as a beginning point for further reflection and
discussion.
Q&A
Q: If a prerequisite for being a pastor is to be able to teach, what
motivates so many seminaries to give out degrees to people who can't? I
mean, we've all sat in churches and you think, man, where did this guy come
from? Who gave him that diploma? Is it that they're afraid? Is it money? The
school doesn't want to lose money or the dean is afraid he'll lose his job?
DC: I'm sure all of those things apply on occasion. On the other hand, I
think that one must also say that at least in the free church / Baptist
churches tradition, you don't proceed from seminary graduation to
ordination. That is, a seminary education is a step along the line, but then
there is inevitably a period of trial, training, apprenticeship in the local
church - it's called various things - before ordination. But the ordination
is done by the church. Most of the people to whom you are referring were
finally ordained by a church. In other words, there is shared responsibility
for having pushed them quite that far, for there is nothing that obliges a
church to ordain someone just because he graduated from a seminary.
Moreover, seminaries train people other than pastors. Some people will be
trained for other roles in Christian ministry (e.g. editing, writing,
lecturing, counseling, and so forth). But I do agree with you that there
needs to be more emphasis in many seminaries on how to teach the Word of God
well.
Q: Where in the New Testament is the idea as we currently see it today of
the senior pastor or lead pastor?
DC: If by "senior pastor" you mean a separate category, i.e. someone rather
different from "pastor," then obviously there is no New Testament warrant
for the office. But where you have a group of elders, a group of pastors, a
group of overseers, then inevitably, in the very nature of the case, some
are going to be more senior than others, whether because they have been in
the task longer, or because they are more experienced or they know more, or
because they are better teachers of the Word of God. So inevitably a
functional discrimination is made. That is also true within the pages of the
New Testament. For example, Timothy is told to find others who will be able
to learn the foundational Christian things and pass them on to others. That
means there should be some kind of mentoring going on within the local
church. Functionally, then, you have a senior elder and a trainee elder. So
there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such functional distinctions.
Those who try to insist on a purely democratic structure to every elders'
board, as if everyone on that board has exactly the same authority, not only
overlook the degrees of competence and maturity attested by the New
Testament, but they forget that at the end of the day the authority is not
in the individual but in the Word. Inevitably, this fact suggests that the
person who knows the Scriptures best and who teaches them best is likely to
end up with an enhanced functional authority, whether formalized or not. If
formalized, then he is being recognized by the church (whether or not the
title is used) as the "senior pastor." This doesn't mean he knows
everything, or that on every topic he is invariably the best teacher, but by
and large, in terms of his experience, his example, his knowledge of
Scripture and his ability to teach the Word of God, that person will become,
de facto, the senior pastor, even if he does not have that title.
Q: How did the church move from the relative simplicity of the New Testament
division between "deacons" and "elders/pastors/overseers" to the three-fold
office that dominates in many denominations today (namely, bishops [or
overseers], pastors, deacons)?
DC: The changes came about for many reasons. The first step occurred early
in the second century. The church was expanding so fast Christians were
happy to embrace a lot of roving teachers who were able to communicate the
Christian faith to people in one locale, then move on to another locale, and
so forth. Moreover, this was culturally acceptable because there were a lot
of roving "philosophers" in those days who earned their money by such
itinerant lecturing. But eventually some of these roving preachers proved to
be heretical or near-heretical. Alternatively, and equally sadly, some who
were formally orthodox became grasping or greedy. Eventually rules were
imposed on the churches about what should be done in this regard. 
There is a very famous document dated from the beginning of the second
century, some years after the last of the New Testament documents was
written, called the Didache, which gives a handful of rules about what to
do. If a traveling teacher comes by and he wants to stay for more than three
days, don't trust him. If he asks for money, don't trust him. You give him a
bed and food, but if he asks for money he is probably a charlatan. And above
all, if he does not adhere to the glorious gospel of our blessed Jesus, then
do not trust him, even if he formally adheres to the other stipulations. 
The fact that such rules existed hints at the scope of the problem. So
eventually, what happened was almost predictable. I myself have been to
parts of the world where the church is expanding very quickly, and very
large numbers of immature believers desperately need serious teaching.
Sometimes in one small geographical area you find, say, ten, fifteen,
twenty, thirty churches, most of which are painfully ill-taught. But among
this collection of churches, there might be two or three that are led by
pastors who really are better informed, better trained, more discerning, and
more widely read, than the common run of pastors. Pretty soon they are
consulted by the others. This group of two or three more mature pastors soon
exercises remarkable (even if informal) influence over pastors and churches
that are less gifted. Who else will protect these small and immature
churches from dangerous teachers - not least if those dangerous teachers
come like wolves in sheep's clothing? One can imagine the leaders of
smaller, weaker churches saying to an itinerant, "You know, I don't know if
I should take you on or not. Go see Pastor Jim over there, have a chat with
him, and if he says you're okay, you're okay." So the itinerants go and get
checked out by Pastor Jim. Well, de facto, Pastor Jim is now exercising a
kind of veto ministry over everybody else in that area. He is becoming a
bishop in the second-century sense.
Thus the bishop was soon seen as the one who defined doctrine and in some
sense protected the churches in his region. Not too surprisingly, already by
about A.D. 115 to 120, Ignatius goes so far as to say that where the bishop
is, there is the church. You cannot imagine anyone saying that sort of thing
in any New Testament document. But however good the motives that called
forth these developments, the plain historical reality is that now the
church was lumbered with the beginnings of a fledging power structure that
would attract more and more authority to itself. It is not difficult to
understand the further developments that took place across the centuries. 
Q: With the clear teaching from 1 Timothy 3 about who should be elders, how
did things get so topsy-turvy where sometimes the pastor and his wife assume
the headship of the church?
DC: That question could be answered comprehensively only by looking at a
great many passages outside the purview of this initial survey. In other
words, the answer to your question turns on the adjacent topic of the
Bible's teaching regarding the roles of men and women in the church and in
the home. Even after we make as many allowances as possible for different
interpretations of the one set of texts, it is very difficult to avoid an
embarrassing conclusion: very often current practices and interpretations of
the Bible depend rather more on faddish cultural stances quietly but
effectively domesticating the Scriptures, than on close and reverent study
of the Scriptures themselves. Still, these are questions slightly adjacent
to today's topic, so I shall leave them to one side. 
For more extensive treatment of some of the relevant passages of the
Pastoral Epistles, delivered in oral form, visit christwaymedia.com.


Charis,
 
Mike Abendroth
 
"Make us choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to
be contented with half truth when whole truth can be won.   Endow us with
courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns
to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when right and truth
are in jeopardy."
  - West Point Military Academy Cadet Prayer
 
HYPERLINK "http://www.bbcchurch.org"www.bbcchurch.org
 


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