With the institutional church mindset, people assume that if an elder or anyone else cannot stand before an audience and deliver a public speech, the elders should then choose a professional preacher or the church should hire a “pastor” who can do so while they sit and listen. So, a hireling is brought in who knows nothing of the people, their past weaknesses, and present tendencies and often lack the wisdom that elders are expected to possess. The reason he’s brought in is that he can speak, organize materials for a speech, and touch our hearts for a moment. Needless to say, the fact that people like it goes a long way toward the practice. We can easily recall the people’s choice for a king in 1 Samuel 8 where the ancient Israelites demanded by popular vote that they get a king. Our priority is not to put into practice what the people want but what God wants of us.
We have emphasized on this blog that the gifted men of Ephesians 4 were God’s choice. They didn’t all congregate into one local church. Nor did they join a membership into an institution. The last gift is arguably the shepherds/teachers who were the leaders of saints appointed by the evangelists. This doesn’t work in an institutional organization, but remember that these evangelists were not like the New Testament evangelists. These men were sent to towns to appoint such shepherds because they were well qualified by the Spirit to accomplish what they were sent to do. While this was a part of their work, they did what the shepherds, whom they appointed, were to do when they left. Paul is not painting a picture of a hierarchy or describing church officials that were given authority over local churches. Instead, they were all teachers that were set in place to equip the saints for service. These human agents of the Spirit could not be several places at one time. Thus, they filled the need for such teaching with the appointment of the shepherds.
Today, however, we have churches under the oversight of a board of directors (deacons), or eldership who would hire out their job to a hired preacher. Today’s churches have differences in their organizational structure but they fit the institutional model. The model has local leaders who envision themselves as the overseer of the local organization, watch on the periphery of the coral, assert themselves as they want, or simply call on some near-by preacher to address any problem that they can’t handle. Most often these leaders oversee nothing in the spiritual realm except to see that the preacher is doing his job or should I say, “whether the hired preacher is doing their job”. Also, they see their role as overseeing the morale of the congregation, assessing the pulse of the group, and keeping everyone happy and coming. This is not the case of the New Testament directors/leaders. They did not hire out their responsibility to teach to a public speaker. Today’s church leaders have relinquished their teaching obligation for the sake of satisfying the desire of the membership for a polished speaker. After all, that’s what is going to keep people coming.
In our entertainment-crazed society, we have assemblies who expect to hear a “good” pulpit preacher. Of course, what’s good to one is not to another and so they are rated in their conversations. Local church members, also, rate “their preacher.” Some are pleased with the hireling while others are not satisfied with his preaching, mannerism, lack of visitation, or some other man-made job description.
Furthermore, a host of problems may easily develop between the preacher and the overseers. It is similar to the Patriarchal problems surrounding the power struggles of two wives or between a wife and a concubine because both are trying to assert their leadership and create prideful problems with competitiveness, jealousy, and other such things that occur when two different officers perform the same role. According to popular practice, the preacher/pastor is placed in a more visible role of leadership than the overseeing shepherds because he’s the public professional who stands before the flock as their teacher. Often, the membership prefers going to the preacher for spiritual help rather than the overseers. The conscientious preacher knows he is perceived as the “go-to” man for biblical questions and spiritual guidance, but he is also aware that there are boundaries that he must respect. If he’s a good politician, he’ll learn when to jump in and when to jump out, when to speak up and when to be quiet. In other cases, the elders are so laid back that they prefer the preacher to take charge of all spiritual matters while they oversee the business affairs of the church. In those cases, an elder may at some future point feel the loss of control and start asserting himself unexpectedly, sometimes without cause, and over the most insignificant matters. Even the membership is torn over who they should go to for counsel. Power struggles such as these would never exist if preachers were not placed in that role. Finding one to blame is as futile and unproductive as determining whether the man or the woman is to blame for their role reversals in our society.
Once vested in the organization, it is exceedingly difficult for the hireling to give up their position and pay. This does not impugn all preachers with the motive of “filthy lucre” or describe them as being power-hungry. Many sincere men never see these things. All they have ever known is employment in this organization. If an honest servant of God sees any of the things we have presented in these pages, they will struggle with how they can provide for their families when all they have known was preaching from church to church. Some feel trapped with no certain way out. Others defend their work and their place among brethren, attacking straw men to justify their right to continue preaching for churches.
It seems obvious that the modern church system does not follow the biblical model. But, we should be asking, “Are we expected to follow that model. Was the biblical model of leadership for us or them. Surely, we can see that we can’t possibly recreate their same context or fulfill the same purpose given by the Holy Spirit. Yet, to follow the Bible, churches invariably pull out first-century arrangements and apply them today. Granted, they don’t all choose the same practices to carry over to our time, but they all make this same fundamental error. Some choose miraculous healings, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or spiritual gifts. Others choose to apply apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds or some combination of them to our time. Of course, the student of the Bible must admit that none of these match up with the same power, ability, role, and purpose. So, they must tweak it and select a model of their own making that identifies their uniqueness as a church, their wants as individuals, or their inherited theology. Whether we want to admit it or not, we can neither duplicate the same New Testament pattern nor are we intended to do so. They were under a different time, context, and purpose.