Leadership titles and clarity
A good friend of mine is a church leader, and we were talking about the various difficulties churches have regarding leadership. He made a great statement. He said, “Most of our problems happen because we’re sloppy in the language we use for biblical leadership!”
In particular, we were talking about the words “pastor” and “pastoring.” When those words are said, they can be understood in multiple ways:
The paid staff of a church. (Title: The pastors at my church)
A singular person who is the most visible leader in a church. (Role: The pastor at a church)
The gift of caring for people. (Gift: That person has a pastoral gift)
Which is it? Depends on who you ask. And that’s the problem! Not all persons on a church staff are pastors, and not every leader is very pastoral. Elders are pastors, but some elders are not pastoral. I think you get the point.
This is why we need to do a better job with the language we use for leadership in the church. I know there are various opinions on this, and there are people who I love and respect who don’t agree with what I’m going to say next, but I believe we should stop using the word “pastor” as a title or to describe a role. I think we should use the word “pastor” to describe a posture toward people. Someone with a pastoral heart has a deep desire to love, care for, and protect others.
I recommend that we use the term “elder” for the title and role of those who serve by being the “first followers” in a church family.
Elders in the New Testament
While there are other roles mentioned in the New Testament, such as deacons and deaconesses, any time a group of leaders responsible for the health of a church was addressed, they were primarily called elders.
In Acts 14:23 we’re told, “And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.”
Acts 15:2 shows Paul and Barnabas going to Jerusalem to talk to the apostles and elders about a issue in the early church.
In Titus 1:5 Paul says, “This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you—". He goes on to describe what kind of person an elder should be.
Peter, in his letter to the scattered and persecuted church, tells younger people to submit to their leaders. He says, “Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ “ (1 Peter 5:5)
It’s very clear that those who practiced primary leadership in the church were called elders. One of the first major steps in helping bring clarity to leadership in a church has to do with the language we use to describe those God has called to lead.
Unpaid elders and paid elders
As we look at the early church, we see that those who were leaders and who were given the responsibility of loving, caring for, protecting, and guiding the family of God, were primarily unpaid members of a church.
The early church didn’t have a staff. Everyone in the church was staff. They didn’t hire ministers because they were all ministers. However, there were always certain leaders who devoted a significant amount of preparation time each week in order to be able to teach the people about God’s word and how to live it out. There were certain leaders who were devoting a lot of time to caring for people and training them. They were effectively doing two jobs, their regular job and the job of teaching the church.
Oxen, muzzles, and money
This issue is where 1 Corinthians 9:9-11 and Timothy 5:17-18 help bring some clarity. In writing to the Christians in the city of Corinth, Paul says, “For it is written in the Law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.’ Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you?”
Paul is saying that he and Barnabas have devoted themselves to making sure that the people hear the word of God and are transformed by it. God knew that people would have a tendency to put animals to work and then deprive them of the fruits of their labor. If God wouldn’t let people take advantage of animals, why would it be okay to take advantage of those who work so hard to help God’s people?
Earlier in the book Paul says that soldiers don’t worry about paying themselves. They’re paid for the work because the work they do doesn’t allow them to earn a wage any other way. Ultimately, Paul is telling the family of God that those who devote themselves to the spiritual lives of others should be supported materially by those who receive from them.
Later in Corinthians Paul goes on and compares what they are doing to what the priests in the temple used to do in the Old Testament. The priests devoted themselves to the spiritual work of the temple, but yet had their material needs met by the sacrifices that people brought. Paul is saying that there are those who are serving the new temple of God, his people, and should be supported by them for the work they have done for the family of God
Paul later writes to a pastor named Timothy and tells him, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.’ “
Double honor means the honor of serving God’s people as an elder, plus the honor of being compensated for that service. And who are the ones who are compensated for their service?
Some elders who devote themselves to serving the family of God are to be paid!
That’s right! The very first people paid in the early church were elders. They were not then changed to be called “pastors” or “staff” the moment they got paid. They remained elders who just happened to be paid for the service they were doing. This also didn’t mean that the other elders began to manage that elder and tell them how they were to best serve. No, the unpaid elders continued to serve the congregation as they had been doing previously.
The model we see in the early church is that the church was led by both paid and unpaid elders.
Practical issues
So when we look at the landscape of leadership in the church today, we have a very different picture. Most churches have anywhere from one person to multiple people being paid for their service to the church family. Some of these people are included as elders, some are not. Some think that they should be considered part of the eldership, and others have no desire to be included. Here’s my suggestion based on my study of scripture.
The primary preacher/teacher of the flock should be an elder.
Depending on your church background, your church may or may not consider the person who does the majority of the preaching and teaching to be an elder. There may be a number of reasons for that. Some churches do not include the main preacher/teacher as an elder out of a fear that a paid staff person may exercise too much power and authority over a church. By not including them as an elder, they are better able to keep that person in check. Unfortunately, this tends to create an “us verses them” dynamic in the leadership of a church. On the other hand, an overbearing leader can almost always find a way to intimidate or bypass the eldership. If the primary paid teacher is doing the work of an elder and has the character of an elder, they should be part of the eldership.
What if the primary teacher is newly hired from outside the church community? While the ideal would be for churches for raise up their own teachers, the reality is that most paid teachers come from outside the church community. When bringing in a new preacher/teacher, it’s hard to tell whether they have the character of an elder or whether they will live out the responsibilities of what is required to be an elder. Under those circumstances, I would recommend that a church’s elders have a policy that two years after they are hired, if the paid leader has fulfilled the qualifications to be an elder, that they should be formally recognized as an elder before the whole church.
Titles in the eldership
Since we are trying to be careful here with language and definitions, it’s good practice to avoid using the language of business for the members of the eldership. This includes any titles of hierarchy like chairman, president, secretary, etc. That doesn’t mean that each elder may not have a primary administrative area that they oversee, but it just keeps things cleaner from subtle power dynamics. I know that some churches have founding documents and by-laws that use that language, but it should be specifically stated that those titles are simply for legal purposes and not to govern the structure of the leadership.
Now, with all of this said, only those who meet the biblical qualifications of who should be an elder should actually be in eldership. So I encourage you to check out the Biblical Eldership Course to continue to explore what God expects of those who lead in his church. The first few articles cover some of the ground we’ve addressed here, but it gives a much deeper dive into the responsibilities and character requirements of a biblical elder.
