hello and welcome to Pastor well I'm Herschel York dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville Kentucky I'm also pastor of The Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort Pastor well is a podcast dedicated to helping Servants of the Lord be faithful in Ministry especially those called into pastoral Ministry we do that by talking about subjects that are relevant to the way we lead and today I mentioned a question I've been asked a lot what is more biblical a pastor-led model of church polity or an elder-led model well this is
a great question and there's a lot of discussion about this remember I'm a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Baptists are convictionally congregational therefore we're not answering the question about Elder rule Elder rule is not a Baptist model because Baptists are congregational we believe that churches are congregational in their government but what's the best way to lead a congregational governed church is it through a single Pastor or a group of pastors called elders well the answer is really not as simple as you might suppose first of all let's just look at what the New
Testament says Baptists have always seen the three titles for the pastorate in the New Testament that is uh poeming which is the word for pastor or Shepherd episcopos which is the word for translated bishop or overseer and presbyteros usually translated Elder as one office so whether we're talking about a pastor a an overseer or an elder we really are talking about one office and so to say that there's either a pastor LED or an elder-led Church really in one sense is the same thing because they're the same office it gets down to whether or not
you believe in a single Pastor who is leading maybe other pastors and the congregation or do you see a group of pastors a group of Elders all with an equal voice before I answer the question you need to also to know that I am convictional uh I don't compromise my convictions for uh convenience sake but within my convictions I'm a pragmatist in other words I I'm always saying if you have what the Bible says and about what the Bible says is clear in certain ways but then within that framework of scriptural truth you've got you've
got some room to move then I'm going to ask the question well what works best and I really do believe the church polity church governance comes into that category there's clearly doctrinal teaching scriptural teaching but that it also leaves a little bit of wiggle room for instance uh I believe that what is clear is that the churches in the New Testament have a leader and sometimes more than one leader but you see clearly one dominant I'm going to say leader for instance in the Church of Jerusalem when the council at Jerusalem takes place there's a
lot of them discussing things but then James seems to be the leader and James speaks and says now here's the end of the matter write down this and the word goes out from James think about when Paul writes to the young Timothy he's writing Timothy how to lead the Church of God he's not writing that to a group of Elders he's writing it to one the same thing with the book of Titus even though Paul tells Titus to appoint Elders in every city the fact that he's telling Titus to do it means that he's invested
this one man with certain authority to appoint others so though there is clearly a plurality you see the word Elders used plurally for instance when Paul talks to the Ephesian Elders in Acts chapter 20. it's not just one guy there's a group of men from the church at Ephesus that come to see him on his journey and he addresses them as elders Peter in First Peter 5 says I who am a fellow Elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that will be revealed to you I write to you elders to
Shepherd the flock of God which is among you exercising oversight in that passage Peter uses some form of all three of those words for the office of Pastor he's writing to a plural group group of Elders but that doesn't really solve the issue because it's a group of churches if you read the beginning of the epistle Peter's writing to a group of churches scattered throughout that part of the world because of the persecution and so we don't know that he's writing to a plural group of Elders for each church or just all the different Elders
of the different churches it's not real clear in the Book of Revelation however when you have Jesus addressing the letters to the seven churches through the Apostle John he speaks to the seven churches which are the seven uh lampstands but then he holds also in his hand the Seven Stars of the seven churches which he says are the the Angels or messengers of those churches and the traditional most accepted view there is that those are the pastors of those seven churches and in that case you would have one key man serving as the pastor the
angel if you would the messenger of that church so frankly I believe that what works best in a congregational government is that you've got one key leader who is responsible as the pastor teacher to open the word and proclaim the word now I don't think it's wrong for there to be a church where you have multiple men who share that Duty I don't think that's it's a matter of right and wrong I do think it's a matter of pragmatism I grew up frankly in the model in which a single man served as a pastor and
maybe he had other pastors around him that served as staff and additional pastors but he served as the key leader he served as the one who who was the pastor teacher and the understanding is that he would stand before the Lord and answer for the direction of the church the spiritual leadership of that church in a way greater than the others would and just to be candid I would say that's the model that I've served with and in in the churches I've pastored and at Buck Run we have a plurality of of pastors all of
them are I have I think seven pastors but there's no question I'm the key leader how does that work how does that function a lot of times people ask the other guys well who holds Dr York accountable and the answer to that question is everybody I meet with our deacons monthly and I give a report to them they're not my bosses but they're definitely key men in the church and I've learned to trust them as they trust me I run stuff by them as I have with our other pastors and uh you know I'm I'm
the spiritual leader but frankly I don't do anything autocratically if I can't build a consensus with my other pastors I don't think I would move forward with that with anything there's no scenario in which my other pastors say oh we don't think that's a good idea and I would say well I don't care here's what we're going to do that that just doesn't happen and I think it's a good model it's not to say that a plurality of Elders in which each of them have an equal say is a bad model I again my personal
both preference and belief is that what is most pragmatic what works best is when you have a key leader that influences others and has a significant amount of authority but not autocratic Authority now sometimes people object they say well it's just easy for in that kind of apology for a pastor to fail morally or it doesn't have accountability I'm just going to say I've been doing this a long time and I don't think there are any shortcuts around depravity I think I see failures in churches that have plurality of Elders at about the same rate
I see failures in churches where you have a key leader kind of Pastor we all need accountability we all need to be able to explain ourselves and why we make the decisions we make but I do think what you see in scripture is that key leader the pastor teacher the the the star in the hand of Jesus if you will the messenger of the church as you see in the Book of Revelation and that he has such a key role I think frankly when people start coming to a church uh it's harder for them to
identify with multiple voices in the Pulpit than it is one key leader and in the churches that I see that do even elder-led a model of polity well I still think you see one key leader I as a very young preacher I'm going to say I was about 28 29. I was in the room one time when Adrian Rogers and John McArthur were having this debate friendly debate between the two of them Adrian representing the key leader model and John MacArthur representing an elder-led model and John McArthur was trying to convince Adrian that he should
have uh plurality of Elders Adrian argued that he did that all of the pastors on his staff were Elders they all met the qualifications of Pastor and MacArthur pushed a little bit he said yeah but that's not the same and Adrian said now John are you telling me that there's something in that church that you want to do and it does not happen and MacArthur just sort of granted that uh it was a Telly moment because what you saw there what I observed was two very very strong leaders both of them claiming to be in
a little bit different kind of polity and yet both of them clearly the leaders in their churches and so this is really what I'm saying is I think that a man of God who lives according to the biblical qualifications and that he is transparent in his leadership he's certainly not afraid to share his reasoning and the the basis of his leadership with other pastors but he is the person who weekend and week out stands before the congregation with the Bible open teaching them the word of God I think he's going to have just more trust
and clout I don't care how many Elders you put around him people are listening to that Shepherd's voice that under Shepherd's voice and they're following him so I think it's healthy for there to be transparency for there to be accountability but I think whoever is opening the word of God and teaching the word of God is the person who's going to have the leadership credibility in that church I will say this uh I I think that whoever you put in that role if you call a person an elder or a pastor I think they should
meet all the qualifications of being an elder or a pastor that means the moral ones the ones the qualifications of being a fit teacher the qualifications of their home being what it ought to be whether it's the person standing up there in front of the congregation or anyone else if you use the title they should have the function they should meet the qualifications and the requirements and I think we've got a lot of a lot of leeway frankly in the New Testament there's no one model uh that we have to follow and I do think
some of this is cultural but it has to be biblical what do we actually see in the Bible and we want to emulate that we want to be accountable and we certainly want to be Godly in all of our fulfillment of it it's a real challenge but whatever our role whether we're the teaching Pastor or in some other role in the church if we're called a pastor we need to meet all the qualifications and we need to do it uh with under the anointing and power of the Holy Spirit and when we do that we
will Pastor well [Music]
