s we discussed in my recent post and comments, there sometimes is a point where we have to look for what might be standing in the way of following biblical patterns. One can tell from the comments that there is disagreement as to what models and patterns even exist in the New Testament for us to follow.
Some believe that we must be very careful in applying Paul’s instructions across the board because they were written to specific churches in a specific culture at a specific time. Others believe that, because certain gifts allegedly no longer exist, some specific instructions might not necessarily apply. 
This is all fine and good, and readers of my blog know that I don’t really have a problem not finding complete agreement on these issues. I have tremendous respect for all of my regular commenters here, and have no desire to debate endlessly on things that could end up dividing us if we aren’t careful.
However, since this is my blog…
No, seriously. This morning, Dave Black linked to an article he had written back in 2003 entitled “There’s Only One ‘Senior Pastor’ and It’s Not Us!“. How’s that for a provocative title?! In this article, Dave challenges the status quo of leadership styles in our churches.
First of all, if you are not familiar with Dave Black, allow me to introduce him to you:
Known for his love for New Testament Greek and passion for teaching, Dave Black is a husband, father, professor, author, preacher, lecturer, web journalist, and (above all) a sinner saved by God’s sovereign grace….
Dave is currently Professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. He has also taught courses at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Lancaster Bible College, Fuller Theological Seminary, Talbot School of Theology, Simon Greenleaf University, Criswell College, Freie Hochschule für Mission (Germany), Tyndale Theological Seminary (Holland), Bibelschule Walzenhausen (Switzerland), IEM Bible College (India), Chong Shin Theological Seminary (Korea), Faith Theological Seminary (Korea), Cosin Theological Seminary (Korea), Evangelical Theological College (Ethiopia), Meserete Kristos College (Ethiopia), and at other institutions.
In addition, he has lectured at the Complutensian University in Spain, the Areopagus in Timisoara, Romania, and the Universities of Oxford and Leeds in England.
Dave has published over 100 scholarly articles and book reviews in such journals as Novum Testamentum, New Testament Studies, Bible Translator, Journal of Biblical Literature, Biblica, Westminster Theological Journal, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, and Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society.
(By the way, Dave and his wife are leaving today for three weeks in Ethiopia. If you wouldn’t mind, keep them in your prayers today and over the next few weeks.)
In the article that I linked to above, Dave talks pretty frankly about our traditional structure of leadership and how it departs from the New Testament experience. For example, he describes the lowly, servant-style approach that Jesus exhorted his disciples to use, and then contrasts it with this statement:
Someday, I hope, the plain truth of the matter will no longer be a subject of debate and confusion among God’s people. The whole traditional concept of one “pastor†of a local congregation is a practice that is absolutely foreign to Scripture.
I tried to post some questions in my previous post to spark some thinking about what changes might be needed in our view of church, if we accept the New Testament record as one showing some principles that are timeless and a-cultural. Dave puts it a bit more bluntly:
The time has come to bring our local church practices under the scrutiny of God’s Word. If there are practices in our tradition that are in conflict with the New Testament revelation, then we have only one option, and that is to correct our practices. The Bible clearly rejects our clergy-laity divide. All members of the local church are to function in the body according to the grace given unto them (Rom 12:1-8). The church is a temple in which every Christian is a “priest†who offers spiritual “sacrifices†to God (1 Pet 2:5, 9). According to the New Testament, all Christians do the work of ministry through the exercise of spiritual gifts. Whatever legitimate distinction can be made between leaders and led (e.g., 1 Thess 5:12-13) does not negate the fundamental truth of the priesthood of all believers. (emphasis mine)
I’ve emphasized one sentence in bold, because I think it illustrates the kind of radical thinking I continue to push for on this blog. I don’t think that, ultimately, it’s good enough for us to sit back and think about how different things should be. If we know something should be done differently, I think we have a responsibility to pursue that.
Now, please note that I am not saying anything specifically about how things should be changed. I’m learning to be humble enough not to think that I actually have answers to all of these questions for everyone else’s situation! But I do want to continually encourage each of my readers to act on any truth that has been revealed to them, and trust God to lead them into whatever changes might be necessary. For some, the changes might happen fast and radically. For others, it could take years.
When I started to question my own involvement in leadership and the conventional system of doing church as a whole, it was not an immediate change for me. In fact, it took almost a year for us to work through some of the concerns Christy and I had about heading in a new direction. For some, it could be even longer.
Ultimately, when a body of believers is involved, any changes need to involve the whole body. This might mean that some are ready to change long before changes actually take place. Or some may be a bit slower to adopt changes that take place. But the mutual respect and edification that results in treating each member of the body as vital to the life of the body would, in my opinion, be very beneficial to the maturity of the church.
Let me illustrate a little bit by quoting a comment Alan Knox left on my recent post. Maybe I can talk Alan into sharing a bit more about the journey that his fellowship is on. In writing about the introduction of open, participatory elements into their gathering, Alan wrote:
I’ve talked with many people who recognize that scripturally any believer should have opportunity to use their gifts (speaking or serving) to edify the church. However, they do not know how to implement this in their current context and with the current expectations of the church.
We started by discussing this with the church. Has everyone caught on? No, many still believe it is the “preacher’s†responsibility to speak to the church on behalf of God. However, there are some who are beginning to understand that God may desire to speak through them. So, some are beginning to take their responsibility seriously.
It’s a process. But one which we should not prevent our fellow believers from experiencing, if we sense that God is leading us toward a different expression of the body. If God is the author of the change, then we don’t need to try to figure out how to make it happen, or how to make sure people are prepared for it. We must trust Him to be the “Senior Pastor” of His sheep, and follow Him ourselves as an example to others.
Until next time,
steve 
Good post, Steve. Ultimately, we must remember whose church it really is.
As a pastor, I can honestly say that I would love to have some other pastors with which to share the ministry of our church.
When you look at the situation of the church, particularly in North America, you see thousands of churches without a pastor. To me, this is an indication that either we have some churches that were started outside the leading of God, or else there are some men who are not answering God’s call to the ministry.
I cannot believe that God would create such a disparity of opportunities to preach/teach and people to fill the positions. This is undoubtedly man’s mess.
Gordon, thanks for your response here. I so appreciate your heart, and continue to be amazed at how close we are in our passion for the body of Christ. You are a blessing!
As a pastor, I can honestly say that I would love to have some other pastors with which to share the ministry of our church.
So, when we come to visit this weekend, should we come in a moving truck?
hehe
Steve,
This is a very important topic for the church. I talked about this same topic with some friends today over lunch. I think one of the questions that we needs to answer is this: Do we start with our traditions and practices and then justify them from Scripture, or do we start from Scritpure (with as little presupposition as possible) and build our practices from that. Most books on the church that I read do the first: start with practices and justify them.
Gordon,
You say, When you look at the situation of the church, particularly in North America, you see thousands of churches without a pastor. To me, this is an indication that either we have some churches that were started outside the leading of God, or else there are some men who are not answering God’s call to the ministry.
Could another option be that God has already placed leaders in those churches, but the church does not recognize them because of unscriptural expectations?
Just a thought…
-Alan
Alan, I would say that there are undoubtedly those within most congregations that are probably called/gifted for pastor/teacher that are not fulfilling that function.
Perhaps the reason for this is misconstrued expectations (I’m not sure I would say unscriptural, maybe extra-biblical). Or perhaps it is because those members have either a) failed to recognize and appropriate God’s gift to them, or b) decided to remain as they are and be content to place the responsibility of feeding the sheep on one man.
Steve, you would be welcome to join the pastoral ministry of our church just as soon as I finish pre-screening everything you believe or would ever intend to say. hehe
Gordon, you’re too funny!
I have some thoughts on this great discussion between you two guys, Gordon and Alan, but they’ll have to wait. I’ve got to be gone for a few hours.
Talk amongst yourselves. (Alan, that shouldn’t be too hard for you…)
Gordon,
I think I understand the distinction that you are making between extra-biblical and un-biblical. Either way, if God does not expect certain things from leaders (i.e., a seminary education), then we should not expect this either.
Steve,
haha… very funny!
Alan,
Ignore him…
- Alan
Alan, we are in agreement.
Steve,
In the original post, you asked for more information concerning the journey that my fellowship is taking. I’ll start with my own journey. I was a very traditional Baptist… and a very happy Baptist.
I took a required seminary class called “The Ministry of Worship.” Something surprising happened when I began to study what Scripture says about worship, specifically in regard to what I normally called “worship.” I think that was the beginning of my journey to find out what Scripture says about the church; specifically what church is, how the church should act, what the church does when it gets together.
As I learned, I talked about this with others, and it seemd that many people around me were considered the same things. We’ve encouraged and pushed one another to continue examine Scripture apart from the “institutional lens.”
I hope this is a good start…
-Alan
Bravo,
I love listening to you guys! The conclusion, that Alan and Gordon just agreed upon is so “organic”!
In response to Rod, I wonder if “rebellious children” is an elder qualification that isn’t “normative” for today. This is the problem with saying something is “cultural” as an explanation for why we don’t do it. Philemon doesn’t condemn slavery, yet I don’t keep slaves, and my wife doesn’t wear a head covering, though 1 Cor. 11 clearly says she should. I see those two practices as cultural.
Yet, isn’t a man’s relationship to his children and his ability to bring them to an understanding of life in the spirit a measure of what he understands about love?
I know the flip side of the discussion is that children must live their own lives, find and express their own faith and make their own mistakes without blaming the parents.
“Normative” and “cultural” are useful but difficult terms.
Rebellious children not a measure of the man? I go with scripture on that one!
Alan, you wrote: Do we start with our traditions and practices and then justify them from Scripture, or do we start from Scritpure (with as little presupposition as possible) and build our practices from that.
In my own journey, I did the second. I took everything off the drawing board, and started with Scripture, trying to reduce the amount of presuppositions as much as I could consciously do so, and this is where I’m at.
What’s interesting about that is that I often say, “I don’t recommend that everyone do this” when talking about that, but I’m starting to wonder if I should change that perspective. Maybe I should encourage more people to do it.
The reasons why I usually put that disclaimer are sort of like this:
1. It will throw you for a loop if you’re not ready for some radical changes in thinking. In other words, I think it could, depending on the person, cause a crisis of faith. I know it really shook me for a little bit of time.
2. If, in any way, you derive either your income or self-worth from working in a church, it could be very frightening to consider a situation where your whole vocation could change.
For me, this second one was a bit easier because, at the time I chose to rethink everything “from the ground up”, I was only part-time on a church staff. I was not the senior pastor, nor was I intimately involved in the actual “running” of the church.
However, it still ended up being a huge deal for me because right about the time I started thinking through all of this, I got laid off from my $65/hr job writing software for the US Dept of Labor and ended up only finding a $15/hr job working for a small computer firm. So, instead of just being a little extra cash, the money I was making from the church suddenly seemed real crucial.
It was about a month after that layoff that I started feeling convicted about salaried positions. I told the Lord, “If you ever let me pastor a church again, I will not take a salary for it, but will trust you to provide through other means.” And the Lord said to me (I am not kidding here), “That’s great. But what about the salary you’re taking now?” Ouch!
The next week, I told the treasurer to stop cutting my paycheck, and not to tell anyone. To this day, I have no idea if the pastor of that church even knows that I stopped taking a paycheck. He never asked, and I never brought it up. But I can tell you that the last three or four months I worked at that church before moving here to NC were the most freeing months of ministry I had ever experienced to that point. I felt like I truly was working for God and God alone, and not for anyone else.
I’m very hesitant to even share that story here, because I do not want to appear to be boasting. This was completely a God thing, and He gets all of the glory for it. But I share it here in this context because I want to make sure that people understand this is not completely theoretical for me.
While it is true that I didn’t have to wrestle through these thoughts while being “the pastor” of a church, it still was a process of wrestling that took place, with very real consequences in my life. And my goal at the time was to try to find a church (or plant a church) to pastor, so I still had to work through my own dreams for the future.
Having said that, I would not trade any of that for the biggest, highest-paid pastoral position in the world. And that is largely the passion that drives this blog.
steve
This is a great discussion, as usual Steve
Sorry that I have nothing to add other than “I couldn’t agree more”.
I started to write more, but erased it all as I am still struggling in this area — see, my husband is one of the pastor’s in our very-non-traditional-yet-still-traditional church (LOL).
Thanks for always challenging the staus quo with Biblical insight. And I appreciate everyone’s thoughts as well …
Keep up the good work and do not grow weary in well-doing!
Blessings!!
Heather,
I am also part of a “very-non-traditional-yet-still-traditional church”. It is interesting to see people grow and change and question and return and squirm and disagree and understand… but, thank God, his Spirit has maintained peace and unity in our fellowship. Unity with disagreement? Yep. Isn’t grace wonderful?
-Alan
steve,
Been enjoying the discussions resulting from these two topics and Dave Black’s article,though in some ways, for me it’s “deja vu all over again.” I am a
“Campbellite”–i grew up in the group that started in the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s, which has produced the liberal Disciples of Christ, the non-instrument Church of Christ, and the Christian Church (Church of Christ) that I grew up in. I graduated from one of their Bible colleges in 1972. Unfortunately for my career prospects, while in college I found and read some of the writings of Alexander Campbell himself, and realized how far the self-titled “Restoration Movement” had fallen back from their beginnings. Campbell himself was strongly opposed to what in his day was called the “located ministry”–a paid pastor serving a local church. He was an elder in his own home congregation, but he and many of his fellow leaders in the RM of that day supported themselves and drew no salary from the church. Most of them had farms; Campbell also wrote and taught in a small college.
When I first stumbled on the modern house church movement on the Internet 3 years ago, I was struck by the similarities between what the HC people were saying and what the RM people were saying about 1809-1850. Unfortunately, the second and third generations of the RM got the idea that they HAD restored the New Testament church and drifted back into a lot of the old habits, including professional ministers (they don’t use “Reverend” and until lately didn’t call them pastors, but the title “Brother” is used in the same way–and not used for anyone else outside the church service. And to me, it it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck)
So what’s my point? I think this idea of going back to Scripture to see what it says about how we should “do church” is important enough to God that He brings it up again from time to time. Really, that’s what the Reformation of the 1500s started with, as well. 1517, 1809, 2000 (or thereabouts)–and each time it was not merely one man, but a coming together of various people beginning to think along the same lines until someone–Luther, Campbell, (I won’t try to pick a single HC spokesman)stands up, says in public what others are thinking in private, and stuff happens. And I think the tendency of the second and third generations to slip back into the old ways shows us something about fallen human nature–it doesn’t disprove the principle the first generation was trying to apply.
For the traditionalists among us, you need to make sure you don’t come under the same criticism Jesus said of the Pharisees–”…you invalidated the word of God for the sake of your tradition.” (Matt.15:6, NASB) And remember also that Jesus’ words in Matt. 7:21-23 “depart from me, I never knew you” were not directed to unbelievers, but to people who thought they amounted to something in the Kingdom of God.
I’d better close this for now–if I keep getting this windy, I may have to get my own blog.
Phil Hawkins