Thoughts on Church Government

THOUGHTS ON CHURCH GOVERNMENT
(By Bill Jackson of C.E.C.)

Jesus had made it clear:

“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.

Jesus is not saying it is wrong for you to have someone in the church who is great (megas, big) or chief (protos, foremost), He is merely defining the postures of those who are church leaders. We see, as church history unfolds, a three-fold result of ecclesiological leadership. To one extreme is the Roman Catholic paradigm. It is hierarchical, and it will behoove us to take sometime to explore the origin of that word and its implications.

A New Testament minister was never called a priest (Greek hierus). That designation was reserved for Old Testament priests and the Lord Jesus Christ. New Testament ministers were known as elders, presbyters or overseers. As the Church developed, its structure began to develop. Being in a Roman world, one possibility was to structure it after the Roman system with the great lording it over the lesser members. Macauley, in “Lays of Ancient Rome,” spoke of the factions in Rome between the tribunes and the fathers.

Besides the direct words of Jesus quoted above, God gave us a further word to warn His people, and He used the one man who would be later charged with instituting the very system which God decried. In 1 Peter 5:3 we read:

“Neither as being lords over God’s heritage, but being ensamples to the flock.”

We cannot say that God failed to warn us of the folly of the papal system of church leadership, or that of a non-papist church that has an exalted dictator as leader. As has been said, the difference between Roman Catholics and Baptists is that Catholics have only one pope.

However, we must not blame the Baptistic model on God, and rush to the extreme of thinking that having a multitude of popes in every assembly is better than having one pastor, because these many popes can still exercise dictatorial principles on the people.

Many are familiar with the extreme Brethrenism rampant in Ireland fifty years ago. “Brethren women” were forbidden to eat with unsaved husbands, and a number of trivialities were crammed down the throats of God’s people. So it seems that with any form of church government, excesses and problems are possible.

Irenaeus realized the necessity of having some kind of a structure. The one that he proposed was not in itself sinful, but could have led either to corruptions that would be anathema to God, or those that were biblical. His concept seemed to be that there should be leadership, but the coming centuries would prove how biblical that leadership turned out to be in the movements that sprang from the initial realization of the necessity of leadership.

One road this concept traveled was to elevate the leadership to have an area chief rule over several smaller churches, and, together with the role of the priest now called, by Cyprian, a hierus, you have the embryonic form of the Hierarchy, rule of priests (hierus-archy). Heading in this direction and spurred on by the Roman concepts of government, this quickly developed to the present set up we see in Catholicism – Pope, Cardinal, Archbishop, Bishop, Priest all in authority over the church.

The way to solve a problem is not to radically reject off hand everything that caused the development of wrong. This is what we call throwing the baby out with the bath water. After all, it was the baby who made the water dirty, so he should be chucked out as well.

The correct way to solve a problem is to look at the Bible to see what went wrong and, going back to that point in time, to proceed biblically. The question before us is two-fold. First, does the Bible allow for one-man-leadership in a local church and if so, what are the legitimate boundaries of his rule? We may, in the long run, although leaning toward one system or the other, find out that specifics are peripheral and should not cause division among the brethren. But we can find some biblical principles that can be the measure of scriptural correctness for any system.

There are bad examples of one-man-rule in the local church. A look at the Shepherding movement gives us one example of something gone very wrong. In this movement, the leader of the local church was respomsible for the day to day decisions of his flock. This seemed to absolve the individual of ultimate responsibility, as one could point to the Shepherd as the one at fault. In actual fact, it was a dimissal of the Lordship of Christ, Who is ultimately responsible for guiding the course of His sheep.

Jesus did not say there would not be a leader in a local church; He merely warned His disciples what could happen in such circumstances. One hazard of a one man ministry is that sometimes no other Christian has an opportunity to exercise any ministry. This can easily be overcome by having “lay” people teach Sunday School, and, if the discerning heart of the pastor can recognize any ministerial gifts, encourage the man by opening up more opportunities to actively serve.

People should respect and obey their pastors, but the pastor must be absolutely certain his role of leadership brings him to the state of really being one who ministers, and is willing to be a slave of his people. The Christian life is full of paradox. It is the only system where we can, and should expect to, see a slave with a crown, but still bowing in humble submission to those who are in submission to him. Let us not destroy the glory and simplicity of God’s arrangement by divisive actions and words that, if not assinine, are at the very least disobedience to God’s injunction to endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit. We must be narrow when embracing truths relating to the finished work of our Saviour, but willing to be a little kinder to those members in the same Body who have different approaches.

If we assume that God’s preferred method of government is multiple elders, I don’t expect to see pastors punished at the Judgment Seat if Christ because of their ecclesiology. A faithful pastor will have more gold, silver and precious stones than a no-pastor advocate who sowed discord among the brethren and “rescued” people from solid churches.

On the other hand, let us suppose God’s method is the one-pastor model. A pastor who reveled in numbers, compromised the Gospel, sought clerical agrandizement, gave shallow messages and long invitations and constantly whipped his members will not fare nearly as well as an elder who served faithfully within a multiplicity of elders.

The angels of Revelation 2 and 3 can shed some light for us. The Greek word angelos is used almost exclusively as an angel in the normal sense of the word. But since the definition is messenger, we can see from the context that this is not always so. It would be hard to fit the heavenly angel in Revelation 2 and 3.