CHURCH GOVERNMENT For years preachers, pastors and teachers as well as church members have ask me to define church government mostly because they or someone they know have been battered and bruised by church leaders and have been left to suffer in silence, many times while being asked to minister to these saints I was suffering the same affliction this is a common occurrence. When the pastor, leaders, or members of the church persecute saints for something other than sin it leaves that member of the body of Christ battered bruised and bitter while all the time asking God, how could this be? IS IT ME? AM I WRONG? More often than not that person leaves the church family that they have worshiped and served with for years and sometimes they never find another church that they can call home, often the congregation at large never here of the circumstances that led to their departure. Those who chose to stay are often striped of all ministerial duties and slandered publicly; some eventually leave to suffer as an outcast. This is not an accusation against any pastor or leader in particular, not your pastor or mine, nor am I making reference to any single congregation, what I I’m talking about is a church governmental system that is outside of the will of God, foreign to scripture and needs to be fixed. I believe there are hundreds if not thousands of pastors, evangelist, and teachers who have been either striped of their responsibilities, encouraged to leave, or forced out of their place of worship and service because they dared to point out flawed policy, abuse of authority, or sin/ the appearance of sin in leadership, or doctrinal error. This should never be tolerated, we need to repent. Now you may wonder why I out here in this public arena am airing our dirty laundry. In the same way that rape and incest can be known but not dealt with and allowed to reproduce itself in the natural family structure this wickedness exist in the church. The only way it can continue to destroy members of the body is for the body to be silent. The bible is replete with the faults and failures of the people of God. Christianity is a very public life style we dont do ministry behind closed doors or in a vacuum, we live or lives so that the world can see our God glorified publicly!!! Would a man light a candle and hide it under a bushel? Christians were wrapped in animal skins and burned as human touches because they chose to glorify God in the public square. Therefore let us dare to have this conversation on this public media site. Churches are normally ran by a pastor who appoints deacons, trustees and official board members and they handle all the business, policy, and governing affairs of the church with the pastor having the absolute authority to make all final decisions. The assets of the church belong to the pastor or a combination of the pastor and leaders appointed by the pastor, their names are on the deed they handle all financial affairs they determine who is on payroll and make all decisions related to church government, they run the church. What we have is a one-man system of leadership making every final decision in every area of responsibility. When a members voice disagreement with the pastor or officials in this form of leadership final decisions are often based on preference and opinion, they can also be self-willed and self-serving because the biblical model for conflict resolution cannot be instituted if the biblical model of government is not mandated. You might say it appears that I have a bad attitude or a grudge, or my opinion or point of view is tainted by my past experiences and if so I should keep my opinion to myself. I agree that my opinion aint worth two dead fly’s so let’s go to the Word of God and see what the biblical model for church government looks like. In his booklet, answering the key questions about elders, John MacArthur writes. Clearly, all the biblical data indicates that the pastorate is team effort. It is significant that every place in the New Testament where the term presbuteros is used, it is plural, except where the Apostle John uses it of himself in 2nd and 3rd John, and where Peter uses it of himself in 1Peter 5:1. The norm in the New Testament church was plurality of elders. There is no reference in all the New Testament to a one-pastor congregation. That is not to say there were none, but none are mentioned. It is significant that Paul addressed his epistle to the Philippians “to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers (pl. episkopos) and deacons” (1:1). Some have said that Revelation 1 supports the one-pastor concept. There, the Apostle John speaks of “the angles of the seven churches” (v. 20). Angel can mean “messenger,” and those who argue for the single-pastor church say that the messengers here and in chapters 2-3 are the pastors of the churches. There are a number of problems with that interpretation. First, it cannot be proved that Angelos refers to a pastor. These “angels” are never called “elder,” “bishop,” or “pastor.” In fact, it is debatable whether they are human messengers at all. Angelos is nowhere used to refer to a pastor, elder, or bishop in the New Testament, and every other time angelos appears in the book of Revelation, it refers to angels. Second, even if it could be demonstrated that these angels were pastor, that sill does not prove that they were not representatives of a group of pastors. The clear New Testament pattern for church government is a plurality of elders. Acts 14:23 says, “And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.” Titus 1:5 says, “For this reason I left you in Crete that you might set in order what remains, and appoint elders in every city as I directed you.” It may be that each elder in the city had an individual group in which he had oversight. But the church was seen as one church, and decisions were made by a collective process and in reference to the whole, not the individual parts. Much can be said for the benefits of leadership made up of a plurality of godly men. Their combined counsel and wisdom helps assure that decisions are not self-willed or self-serving to a single individual (see Proverbs 11:14). In fact, one-man leadership is characteristic of cults, not of the church. (Answering the key questions about elders pg. 26) It is my prayer that this posting will lead to dialogue that ends in the proper application of The Word of God as it relates to this subject
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 09:27:23 +0000