Some Additional Thoughts on 1 Peter 5:1-3
Sunday, January 14th, 2007
t’s very rare for me to post twice in one day (and by the time I finished editing and publishing this, it was a couple of minutes after midnight anyway!), but 1 Peter 5:1-3 is something that I have continued to mull over since posting earlier today, and I see several very important things in those verses. Allow me to point some of them out here:
Therefore, I exhort the elders among you,…shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion, but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness; nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock.
- I wonder if the word “among” is significant. The description of elder here is not one who is removed from the rest of the flock, nor one who is above the rest of the flock, nor one who is coming in from the outside, but “among” us.
- Peter exhorts elders plural. He did not say, “I exhort the elder among you” or “I exhort the senior elder” or…you get the picture.
- “not under compulsion” could possibly play into discussions about whether or not pastors should, as a general rule, be salaried employees of a corporation called a church. Why do I say this? Because…
- Peter says this should be “voluntarily…and not for sordid gain”. Now, I realize that one can draw a salary without doing it “for sordid gain”, but I think it’s interesting that Peter seems to be focused quite a bit on the monetary aspect (or lack thereof) of “eldering”.
- Note, too, that he equates the “voluntarily” part (if I’m reading this right) with “the will of God”. Could he be thinking back to Jesus’ instructions about not leading like the Gentiles did, by “lording it over” people? He was there when Jesus said it, ya know
- “proving to be examples to the flock” sounds an awful lot like “living it out” in front of them. This is a whole lot more about how a man lives, than what he teaches or preaches.
Now, most churches I know of and have been in are very good at having “volunteer” elders (well, apart from the “hey, Bob, we need to fill an elder slot for the next year. I know you’d allow us to nominate you, right?”), but does our “one man up top” structure encourage people to look at the lives of the elders? Or does it encourage them to look at the pastor alone for their leadership? And how much are they able to learn from the pastor’s life vs. how much they attempt to learn from his teaching/preaching?
Until next time,
steve 
