The One Pastor System-Biblical or Not?

Editors Note:

This is a very challenging article that asks some very good questions. It may make some pastors very uncomfortable, and at first read you may not fully agree with what is written here because of what you have seen and experienced.

Our hope is that this article will simply motivate you to study freshly the topic of leadership in the local church. The questions before us are not about model or method, but more importantly-does the way we lead our churches magnify Christ as the Head and allow for the true practice of the priesthood of all believers? Does the way we view leadership limit the multiplication of disciples and churches?

May we be open to allow God to speak to us freshly.

I firmly believe that the taproot of most of the problems that plague the church in modernity is the clergy system. To put a finer point on it, Protestant Christians are addicted to the modern pastoral office. The pastor is the all-purpose religious professional in the modern Protestant church, both evangelical and mainline.

Please note that my critique is not an attack on pastors as people. Most pastors are gifted Christians who have a heart for the Lord and a genuine love for His people. It is the modern pastoral office and role that I believe is profoundly flawed, and few of us have ever questioned it.

Let me unpack that a bit. My experience in this country and overseas over the last seventeen years has yielded one immovable conclusion: God's people can engage in high-talk about community life, Body functioning, and Body life, but unless the modern pastoral role is utterly abandoned in a given church, God's people will never be unleashed to function in freedom under the Headship of Jesus Christ. I have had pastors vow to me that they were the exception. However, upon visiting their congregations, it was evident that the people did not know the first thing about functioning as a Body on their own. Neither were they given any practical tools on knowing the Lord intimately and living by His life. The reason is that the flaws of the modern pastoral role are actually built into the role itself.

The pastor, by his mere presence, causes an unhealthy dependence upon himself for ministry, direction, and guidance. Thus, as long as he hangs around delivering sermons, the people in the church to which he belongs will never be fully set free to function on their own in a church meeting setting. Further, the pastoral office typically destroys those who populate it. Jesus Christ never intended for anyone to shoulder that kind of enormous responsibility and power.

In the first-century church, there was no single pastor. The Protestant pastor (which includes the evangelical pastor, the mainline pastor, and the non-denominational pastor) evolved out of the Catholic priesthood. The pastor is essentially a reformed priest, and his role has no root in the original vision and story of the people of God.

In Century One, some of the churches had elders who played a shepherding role. But they did not dominate the ministry of the church, nor was the direction of the church exclusively placed into their hands (as is the case with many elder-led churches today like Presbyterians and the Plymouth Brethren). I believe that we are in desperate need to return to these first principles.

Time and space will not permit me to give historical and pragmatic evidence for the above statements, but I have addressed them elsewhere in great detail. I heartily invite my readers to explore both Scripture and church history for themselves and draw their own conclusions. (See my article Where Did the Modern Pastor Come From?  //www.ptmin.org/thepastor.htm along with my books Rethinking the Wineskin //www.ptmin.org/rethink.htm
and Who is Your Covering? //www.ptmin.org/covering.htm.)

Pastors can wax eloquent all day about "facilitating," "mentoring," and "equipping" the saints. But here is the proof of the pudding: Let that pastor leave his congregation on its own without any stated leaders for six months to a year, and he will quickly learn how well he has equipped the church. Will that congregation be able to lead its own songs without a song leader or worship team? Will they be able to have gatherings that are under the Headship of Jesus Christ like the early church did? Will every member of the church be equipped to provide life-giving ministry to one another in those meetings? Will they be able to solve problems and make decisions together as a community?

Perhaps this thought has never occurred to you. But what I have just described is precisely what the church planters of the first century did routinely. They worked themselves out of a job. Not in pious rhetoric, but in reality.

Paul of Tarsus had a deliberate habit of spending anywhere from three months to three years with a church, equipping it to function in his absence. He would always then leave those churches on their own without a clergy. More on this later.

Question: Is it possible that in our efforts to bring renewal and change to the traditional church, we have never seriously taken a biblical, historical, and practical look at the legitimacy of the modern pastoral office? Can we at least experiment with another alternative . . . the ministry paradigm that we find in our New Testaments? For those of us who are inclined to delivering sermons and providing "leadership," do we have the integrity to freshly examine if the modern pastoral role and the giving of sermons week after week is truly equipping God's people to function as members of His Body in a coordinated way?

By Frank Viola

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