Tag: plurality of elders
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I Will Never be The Pastor Again, Anywhere
I have been thinking for a long time about the legitimacy of the America’s pastorate—not the biblical pastoral office, mind you, but the American use of the pastorate. A church hires a “pastor” to lead or rule the church. Sometimes, the pastor that the local congregation “hires” is a hireling unfree to do ministry as…
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Discipleship: The First-Fruit of the Kingdom
What do you think the first-fruit of the kingdom is? Discipleship is lacking in many churches today. The local church lacks discipleship because people, in large part, are afraid to be wrong. Many pastors don’t start the difficult conversations that Scripture insights because they fear people will lash out at them and/or leave their congregations.…
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The Lead Pastor?
“It is often preferable… for some men in every church to apply themselves full-time to the labors of ministry, especially for those who will be involved in the weekly ministry of proclamation. That seems to be the clear intimation of 1 Timothy 5:17… My own weekly schedule… is filled with the rigorous study of preparing…
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Do churches need Overseers or Bishops? What does that even mean?
Last week, we saw the role of the church elders and what is seen as the basic responsibilities of one who holds the elder position in a church body. The responsibility of the elder is essentially one of doctrinal authority in service to the body. In Elders in the Life of the Church, the authors…
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The Unmet Need In Most Churches According to Scripture- multiple biblical elders
“There were a couple of good, quiet, godly men who usually rallied the group. But few seemed to have the ability to look at God’s Word and heed its instruction for giving shape to the church. Inertia had set in years earlier. Uncertainty about the future had frozen the leaders and the congregation. I was…
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A New Church Polity?
When we look at the majority church in our day and compare that to how the Bible describes the church, we see two organisms that seem to be completely different. This is true even with regard to the polity (governing structure) of the church. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there has been a drastic…