Baptist and Elders part 3

By Mark Dever

part 1
Introduction
1. Elders in the Bible

A. Basic usage
B. The Question of Single vs. Plural]

part 2
2. Elders in History

A. Early Church
B. Reformation Recoveries
C. Baptist Elders in the Past
D. Current Influences in the Revival of Elders in Baptist Churches

part 3
3. Elders in Baptist Life Today

A. Significance of Polity Questions
B. Context of Congregationalism
C. Elder Rule or Elder Leadership?
D. Relationship of Elders to Others
E. Personal Testimony

III. Elders in Baptist Life Today

A. Significance of Polity questions

Now, friends, I realize that there are more important issues than polity. But given that I’m at a conference organized around it, that you have freely chosen to attend, and that I have been asked to speak, I do want to contend that though there are MORE important issues, this issue is not unimportant.

As Americans, we are impatient with anything that is not utterly essential. But, in order to know faithfulness to God’s revelation, we must realize that there are more speeds than either essential or unimportant. There are some issues that are not essential to our salvation, to our Christian identity, but which are nevertheless very important. Our denomination is founded on just such non-salvifically essential distinctives. It therefore particularly behooves us to become more practiced at carefully considering Biblical matters in which no eternal issues are at stake, but which are nevertheless of some significance.[39]

We must realize that polity is significant, in that it is essential, or at least very useful, for protecting the corporate witness of the church. When they’re all healthy, and doing well, the differences between an evangelical Episcopalian church, an evangelical Presbyterian church and a Baptist church can look pretty slight. But let some serious sin occur, and see what happens. The differences immediately begin to come out. Some people have wondered why I published a book entitled Polity when three of the ten chapters within it are taken up entirely with the practice of church discipline. I did it for the same reason doctors study diseases when they’re interested in health—how the body deals with diseases shows us how the body works and how it acts when we’re healthy.

Who has the responsibility to deal with unrepentant sin in the church? The minister or the bishop? The elders? The congregation as a whole? And what is the ultimate court of appeal, under God? The Pope? The Southern Baptist Convention? The General Convention of the Episcopal Church or the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America? These issues matter. And if you have any doubt of that, look at how the Episcopal churches even now are suffering from having exported the responsibilities from their congregations to unbiblical structures above them. Polity matters.

B. Context of Congregationalism

Under God, such responsibility to be the final judicatory authority resides not with a Pope or a Convention, not with a national Assembly or with a pastor, not with a regional association or a state convention, nor with some committee or board, whether paid or unpaid. Such responsibility for the discipline and doctrine of the congregation, under God, lies not with the deacons or the elders, but with the congregation as a whole.

Congregationalism may or may not be attractive, efficient, well understood, well practiced, easy, universally loved, impervious to distortion or corruption, but it is biblical. It is biblical in two senses: first, only the congregation—no outside person or body—is finally accountable to God for its actions in discipline and doctrine. Secondly, the whole congregation is so accountable. This is the picture that we get in the New Testament. I confess that the evidence is slight, the specifics are nearly non-existent, but the picture is consistent, and the implications important.

Jesus taught His followers in Matthew 18 that the final court for matters of disputes between brothers was the congregation. So we read in Matt. 18:15-17 that the final step is to “tell it” he said, not to the elders (as I humorously told one Presbyterian translator I had when preaching one time in Brazil) but to the ekklesia, that’s the church, or the congregation, as Tyndale translated it – the assembly. So when the apostles wanted men to serve in waiting on the needs of some poorer members among the church in Jerusalem, in Acts 6, Luke notes that the proposal the apostles made “pleased the whole group.” Luke proceeds in Acts 6:5 to list the people to fulfill these duties, and the people were chosen by the church.

Paul implicitly taught the Galatians in Galatians 1 that the final court to settle disagreements in matters of doctrine is the congregation. Paul exhorted these young Christians in Galatia, that even if he—an apostle!—should come and preach a different gospel than the one they had already accepted, then they should reject him, or whoever the errant missionary is. It is interesting that Paul said this to young Christians—he wasn’t writing to the elders. And he was writing about the matters of the most theological importance—the gospel itself! And yet, he resided his trust in them. They knew the gospel that had saved them! The cognitive content of the gospel is more significant than even claims to apostolic call, let alone succession! And Paul assumes that that message is perspicuous, even to young believers.

Paul taught the Corinthians in I Corinthians 5 that the final court to settle matters of discipline is the congregation. Paul writes about the scandalous situation in the Corinthian church, and he writes not just to the pastor or leadership, but to the whole congregation! He tells the whole congregation that they are to act, and to continue to act in not associating with this man.

And finally on this point of congregationalism, Paul taught the Corinthians in II Corinthians 2:6-8 that the final court to determine church membership is the congregation. He wrote to them about a repentant sinner whom they had earlier excluded: “The punishment inflicted on him BY THE MAJORITY is sufficient for him. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.” Paul writes to the whole congregation about an action they had taken as a whole, urging them now to take a different course.[40]

Much more could be said about this context of congregationalism, but I hope enough has been said to distinguish biblical elder leadership within a congregational context from unbiblical elder rule which does not recognize the Biblical role of the congregation. So this Biblical elder-led congregationalism is distinct from Presbyterianism, because it will never appeal outside of the congregation to find another final backstop against sin and wrong. The congregation may shirk that responsibility, but it will never lose it. Furthermore, this Biblical elder-led congregationalism is distinct from the kind of elder-rule we see in many independent and Bible churches because it recognizes that finally it must be the congregation as a whole who takes responsibility for its life together—for disputes and doctrine, for discipline and membership. The evidence is slight, but consistent and clear.[41]

C. Elder Rule or Elder Leadership?

So, inside the local congregation, are there to be elders? Yes. The Bible says so. The New Testament evidence is clear. Do they rule? Well, there it depends on what is meant by “rule.” I’ve just given you examples where the congregation as a whole in the New Testament is taught that it bears responsibility. What, then, is the responsibility of the elders. In one sense they must rule. The translators of the King James Version translated the Greek word proestotes in I Timothy 5:17 as “rule”. More modern translations have used “direct” or “govern”. So, certainly elders are to do that. But in our modern context, when most people say “elder rule” they mean as opposed to the congregation having the final authority. And that, we’ve just seen, neither our Lord Jesus, nor Paul seems to envision. Even when there are areas of indisputable elder responsibility—like the orthodoxy of the teaching—even there the congregation is not without its responsibility. So in II Timothy 4, when Paul is warning Timothy of the times of terrible teaching to come, he doesn’t just blame the elders, as one might expect, but he blames those who “gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear,” (II Tim. 4:3). So a better word for summarizing all the elders do would be this word “direct” or, “lead.” The Biblical model is elder-led congregationalism.[42]

D. Relationship of Elders to Others

What then is the relationship of elders to the congregation? By championing congregationalism, I am certainly not saying that the congregation is always right, that it is inerrant, that the Holy Spirit so superintends the workings of each congregation that our actions and conclusions are always in accord with God’s will and that our churches are never wrong. No form of government—whether Papal or congregational or anything in between—in this fallen world is promised infallibility. We know that when Christ returns He will find faith on earth, because He is the one who has determined to build His church, and that the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Nevertheless, the best of congregations—like the best of men—can and do fail. So the congregation that fired Jonathan Edwards had every right to do it, but they were wrong in their decision.

At the same time, the call to Christians to obey their leaders (found in Hebrews 13:17) in no way implies the infallibility of leaders. We as elders and pastors, too, make mistakes. And for those, James 3:1 tells us, we will have to give account to God. Even so, we cannot ignore the call God gives us to lead His church. And so we preach and teach, we study and pray, we evangelize and disciple, we examine and exhort, we deliberate and decide.

Ultimately, elders can only act by teaching and persuading the congregation. All of the duties elders have, all of our responsibilities and obligations have been given us by the congregation we serve. Certainly God must call us; and we would expect an internal witness to this divine call. But that internally sensed call of God must be confirmed by a visible congregation, by a particular flock that would call us to shepherd them, and would follow us when we do. Particularly on matters that are both significant and unclear, elders should normally be trusted. It is for just such careful work they have been recognized.[43]

There are further questions for us to ask on this matter of elders in Baptist churches. One of the most longstanding questions among Baptists (and other Congregationalists) has been, how are these elders to relate to one among them who is commonly called “the pastor”? This was the question that many Baptists were wrestling with in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they considered the role and place of ruling elders. What Baptists finally, largely and rightly—I think—concluded, is that there can be no distinction between ruling and teaching in the eldership. The authority that is to accrue to elders is to come through their ministry in the congregation, and particularly through their teaching and explaining the Word.

The elder that we usually refer to as “the” pastor—the person like me—is, these days, the one who is generally set apart to fill the pulpit on Sunday. He is the one who marries and buries. He will often be paid—either part-time or fully. If the church is larger, he may be the one who hires and fires, and who sets the direction for the church as a whole. In our congregation in Washington, I am recognized as an elder by virtue of my call as the senior pastor of the church. Anyone whom we hire to work in ministry will either be called an assistant, or a pastor. The title pastor is reserved for those whom the congregation recognizes as an elder.

Among these elders, I have only one vote. Because of the leadership responsibility I have as the main public teacher, there is undoubtedly a special degree of authority that attaches to my voice in elders’ meetings, but the other brothers probably have by now a pretty good assessment of where I am most concerned and most helpful, and where I have less to contribute. On an eldership, though formal authority between the members is equal, there will always be those who garner special regard in one area or another. An elder cannot be either installed or removed except by a vote of the congregation.
A related question for Baptist churches today would be, what about the relationship of the elders to the staff? Many churches are large and prosperous enough to have multiple staff members. Are these members of the pastoral staff to be regarded as the elders of the church? Perhaps, but there are some challenges to that position. If all the elders are employees of the church on the one hand, it frees up their schedules so that they can work together more easily. On the other hand it may discourage the development of leadership within the congregation. Employees may be dismissed more easily than a well-developed leadership within the congregation terminated. In our congregation, the staff deliberate over how to carry out the pastoral directions set by the elders.

A couple of more questions about the relationship of the elders to other groups in the church. What about the relationship of the elders to the deacons? Can’t we just recognize the fact that deacons fulfill the role of plural, non-staff leadership in most of our congregations?

We certainly could simply recognize the deacons as elders—whether or not we call them that—but we must note the significant difference in the qualifications that Paul lays out for the two offices. And that difference is essentially that an ability to teach God’s word to others is required for the elders, and it is not for the deacons. This means that men may rightfully serve as deacons who are not qualified to serve as elders. Some distinction must, then, be made between the two offices. Furthermore this difference is particularly important because that aptness to teach almost certainly reflects a greater knowledge of Scripture. Such knowledgeable Christian brothers are exactly the ones that we would and should most naturally acknowledge and trust as leaders in the church.[44] In our own congregation, the deacons work to facilitate various services in the church—from pulling together the budget, to helping to prepare for baptism and the Lord’s Supper, to facilitating our care for those in financial need. The deacons do not act as a kind of second house of the legislature—a kind of house of representatives to the elders’ senate. Their work is to care for the physical and fiscal needs of the church, to create unity in the body and to support the work of the pastors and elders. The deacons are to be the body’s “shock absorbers.”[45]

One last relationship we should notice, and one which I think is one of the reasons we should most care about restoring the Biblical practice of a plural eldership in our churches: the relationship of the elders to the nominating committee? In so many of our churches, nominating committees have for decades led the congregation, directing it in some of the most crucial decisions for the on-going ministry of the church. These committees, though sometimes full of fine Christian men and women, are not bodies required in Scripture. Their members need meet no particular Biblical requirements. Too often, their decisions are motivated by more worldly concerns of not disappointing a long-serving member, keeping a balance of ages or genders or even family connections. Surely the nomination of servants and leaders in our churches is best left to the most mature among us, and to those who meet the basic Biblical qualifications laid down for elders.

E. Personal Testimony

In preparation for this address, one day last week I gave one of our church’s staff members a list of Southern Baptist churches with elders, and I asked him to make some phone calls and see if he could add to my list. Besides the many Baptist churches of other Baptist denominations which have or are moving toward elders, within a couple of days he easily assembled a list of sixty churches. I have little doubt if I gave him the time to continue, that list could double, triple, quadruple or more. The churches are all over the country. They are large and small. They are Calvinistic and not. Some have pastors who are well known, most don’t. The only thing they all had in common was having elders and being Southern Baptist. One other note: Ryan, the staff member who made the phone calls, said that pastors again and again went on and on about the blessing that having elders along side them has been in their work.

The assumption on the part of many about churches with elders is that they are strange, perhaps overly-picky about doctrine, small and statistically unimportant outliers in the world of the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m not so sure about that.

From Hayes Wicker in Naples, Florida to Jeff Noblitt in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, pastors with elders are leading growing churches. Dennis Newkirk, pastor of Henderson Hills Baptist Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, said that they regularly have 2,800 attending, and are about to move into their new $23 million building. And he loves having elders. And speaking of Oklahoma, I understand that Wade Burelson, current president of the Oklahoma Baptist Convention, pastors a church with elders—Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Oklahoma. From David Horner’s Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC, to Buster Brown’s East Cooper Baptist Church in Charleston, SC, there are a growing number of Southern Baptist churches which have both thousands attending and a plural eldership. Of course, many of us who have elders are middle-sized, or are smaller churches. But it seems certain that a move to plural eldership is a current trend within Southern Baptist churches, a trend that seems set to continue.[46]

My own experience would echo that of the pastors Ryan talked to on the phone. I first visited our congregation on Capitol Hill in the summer of 1993. I told the pulpit search committee openly of my belief in the Bible’s teaching on a plural eldership. They were surprised, and a little put off, I think. After teaching on it from time to time for a few years, we finally adopted a new constitution, and our first set of elders in 1998. For the last five years, the brothers that I have been privileged to serve with have given thousands of hours of their time in prayer, discussion, discipling, teaching and shepherding the flock along with me. They have made up for some of my deficiencies, have encouraged and corrected me. They have made what could be a very lonely job, into a joy and delight. And I think in no small part, under God, due to their work, our congregation has flourished.

There are more significant issues for Baptist identity these days. The practice of membership in most of our churches falls woefully short of the Biblical picture. This, in turn, tarnishes our witness to the gospel and hinders our evangelism and discipling. Bloated membership lists, plummeting baptismal ages, irregular attendance and almost entirely absent church discipline mark too many of our churches. The changes needed for us to bear a distinct witness of life and light to our dark and dying day are great. One of the greatest helps I could imagine for faithful pastors and ministers to be given would be groups of godly men—members in the church, but largely not in the pay of it, men meeting the Biblical qualifications of and being recognized as elders.

Friends, we can preach Biblically faithful, culturally unpopular messages on the exclusivity of salvation through Christ alone, on the wrongs of divorce and abortion and of sexual activity outside of marriage, but in most of our churches we wouldn’t even know if we have abortion doctors in the membership. And if they were, I fear too many of our churches wouldn’t know how to work to build a context of meaningful relationships, and even to exclude the person from membership if they didn’t repent. The problem in the Southern Baptist Convention was never most fundamentally in our seminaries—it was and is in our churches.

In order to help Christians in this dark day to turn our soaring sermons and thundering denunciations into more than just a bunch of hot air, but into incarnated corporate witnesses to the glory of Christ, we need help. And one crucial means of help God has given His church we continue to ignore to our peril—the provision of multiple elders to give careful, faithful, courageous servant leadership to our churches in days filled with danger and opportunity.

It works and it’s needed. It’s Biblical and it is Baptist.

[46] The Southern Baptist churches we’ve found after minimal effort in the winter of 2004 are in the following states, followed by the number of SBC churches with elders we’ve found: Alabama (3); California (2); Colorado (2); Connecticut (2); District of Columbia (1); Florida (6); Georgia (3); Illinois (1); Indiana (1); Kansas (2); Kentucky (1); Louisiana (1); Michigan (1); Mississippi (1); New Mexico (1); North Carolina (6); Ohio (2); Oklahoma (7); South Carolina (2); Tennessee (4); Texas (5). For a complete listing, check the 9marks.org website.

Reprinted with permission from 9marks.com