On Being Baptist…The Necessity of Installing a Plurality of Elders (Pastors)

– January 26, 2017

In an effort to keep our current sermon called Church Matters series from extending beyond 4 weeks, I’m choosing to blog on some aspects of Elders and Deacons.  In this post, I want to deal with the question, “WHY ELDERS?”  When I ask this question, I have in mind the training and deploying of a team of brothers who lead the church.

I suspect that many reading this blog really don’t question why we need to have a plurality of elders in the church.  But some who come from a single “Senior Pastor” model so prevalent in our Southern Baptist tradition may bristle at the idea of multiple equal elder/pastors leading the local church.  (Note: The words elder, pastor and Overseer are all different words for the same office, so don’t get hung up on the usage of the world elder.  Pastor and elders are the same thing.)  Thus, we are choosing to answer that question via a blog post instead of devoting a sermon to this question.  Nonetheless, it is an important question to consider and if you are unclear on the issue, I want to begin the journey for you.  Just a reminder if you are a Grace Church member or attender, we are giving out 2 free resources where this topic is covered with more detail.

So why is a plurality of elders important in the life of the local church?…5 Reasons

  1.  Historical Foundation for the Plurality of Elders: It was virtually universally practiced across all protestant denominations in some way or the other.  Whether Presbyterian, Lutheran or Congregationalist, this practice of a team of overseers leading the local church has strong support in the church history. Among Baptists, the practice of having multiple elders leading the congregation has significant historical precedent.  In fact, during the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention, many Southern Baptist Churches were led by a plurality of elders.  Of course, this practice was not universally held because of the diverse streams that flow into Baptist history.  Nonetheless Mark Dever writes,

    “Elders could be found in Baptist churches in America throughout the 18th century and into the 19th century, (e.g.,Robertson’s Life of Broadus,p. 34;O. L.Hailey, J. R.Graves, p. 40). W. B. Johnson, the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote a book on church life in which he strongly advocated the idea of a plurality of elders in one local church.” 

    It was also not uncommon for the topic of recovering the practice of elder plurality to be discussed in Baptist news outlets even up until the 1930’s.  In fact, there were then and are now virtually no publications supporting the practice of Single Elder Led churches even though this has been the mostly widely practiced position among Southern Baptist Churches for the past 100 years.  There are many reason why this is the case.  First, Southern Baptist Churches rapidly multiplied in the late 19th and early 20th Century.  Many believe that this exponential growth prevented churches from properly forming and developing good lay pastoral leadership.  Couple this with the relative short tenure of most pastors during that time, it’s not hard to see how many churches leaned on their deacons to lead and govern the church.  But this practice was purely pragmatic and lacks significant biblical foundation.

  2. Healthier Churches are Led by a Plurality of Elders: Sheep need a shepherd.  Churches that distribute the work of the ministry among a qualified team of elders tend to be healthier and stay on the task of mission.  When the church learns to lean on one personality for its pastoral leadership, naturally there will be deficiencies because one man cannot be all a congregation needs in pastoral leadership. Another reason is when a there is a pastoral transition, the church has no pastoral structure to lean on for these times.   Additionally, the membership learns to venerate one personality as well as lean on individuality for their spiritual care.  There is nothing wrong with taking personal responsibility for one’s spiritual growth, in fact Scripture teaches it.  The problem comes when a pastor cannot know his sheep well thus his ability to speak personally and authoritatively into their lives is significantly limited.  Pastors are not only called to make home visits to the sick and homebound, pastors are to be involved in the active discipleship of every member charged to their care.  A single elder cannot do this work adequately.  Sheep tend to wander when the shepherd is distracted, in the same way, church members get distracted from the commands of Scripture on their lives without good pastoral leadership.  The reality is, elders are gifts from God to his people to guide, teach, protect and counsel them.
  3. Churches Led By a Plurality of Elders Better Display and Execute Spiritual Gifting. Many Baptist churches depend on one man to do the whole of the pastoral work of the church.  The diversity of pastoral work and responsibility is simply not possible with one man.  This why some churches are better at growing big ministry systems/programs than pastoral care or why one church is better at evangelism than discipleship and training in the church.  Churches are not meant to be this diverse.  The marks of Gospel preaching, discipleship, evangelism, and pastoral care should be evident in every church.  When you train and deploy a team of elders who lead equally, you help the church grow up to it fullest potential of declaring a clear Gospel, caring for the the members well, growing the structure of the church, as well as reaching and serving the community well in the process.  Pastoral/Elder teams that better display the diversity of ministry gifting outlined in Ephesians 4:11-14 can only help the church, not hurt it.
  4. A Plurality of Elders Better Protects the Integrity of Sound Doctrine and Wards off False Gospels.  When Titus was instructed to lead the Gospel effort in Crete, Paul writes to his young trainee and tells him to appoint “elders” (plural) in every “church” (singular).  Once of their tasks was to protect the doctrine of the church (Titus 1:9) by instructing the congregation in it.  The church is better served and protected by the effects of the world when it has a well trained team of elders installed to keep guard over their souls and keep watch for impending threats.
  5. A Plurality of Elders Better Prevents the Sin of Power Mongering.  It is easy for us to fall into sin and in no place are we are more susceptible to this than in the area of unrestricted power.  A single pastor can develop an attitude that believes the congregation exists for him and his agenda.  A team of elders keeps this in check.  A plurality of elders can better prevent the congregation from experiencing pastoral failure.  Of course, it doesn’t guarantee it and recently history proves that no church is immune to pastoral failure.  Nonetheless, a team of elders/pastors is better equipped to be on guard for these challenges.  If such a pastoral failure were to occur, the foundation of faithful pastoral leadership is already in place to care for the congregation and lead it forward in it’s mission.

There is more I can say, but I think these represent the most important aspects of why elders are important to the local congregation.