Current Blog Series : Biblical Vision Explanation
“’Baptist’ has always intended to mean ultimately faithful to Scripture.
So the question we must begin with is, not ‘is it Baptist?’, but ‘is it
Biblical?’ Do we find elders in the New Testament?” – Mark Dever Ph.D.
God gifts
churches with elders to
First
and foremost The Pastor of any church should be Christ. He is the ultimate
shepherd of our souls. Depending upon your church tradition the leaders may be
called, Bishop, Elders, or Pastors. My church routes are Baptist, but I have
come under the conviction that the
Bible teaches that each local church should be led by a plurality of godly,
qualified men called elders. In Ephesians 4 we see the following offices are
gifts for the Church; the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and
teachers, all given to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body
of Christ.
In
Numbers 11 we see the people desperate for food, so the Lord through Moses appoints
70 men to share in leadership, Spirit and responsibility for feeding the
people. This one particular instance is a great picture for new testament
Christians sharing the role in feeding the sheep (John 21:17). Through
preaching the Word the elders lead the congregation as the Spirit leads in
their personal lives. Elders are to be men filled with the Spirit and mature so
that they do not take advantage of the congregation (1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9). If there is a plurality of Elders
there is accountability one with another (Acts 14:23, Acts 20:17,
1 Timothy
4:14, 1 Timothy
5:17, and James 5:14).
This
structure is very similar to the "church council" approach to the
democratic congregational structure, but leadership is within the ministerialy
gifted men who follow the leadership of Christ and the Spirit. Often people put
Deacons onto the elders list, but as we will discuss later, deacons are servant
leaders. I believe through Scripture that we see congregation involvement in decision-making.
The Congregation helps in the approval of the church budget, the appointing of
the Elders, and any decision that involves the purchase of property or
construction of buildings or financial indebtedness on the part of the church.
Biblical church
leadership is important because without it, God’s people are sheep without
Spirit empowered shepherds.
