Today, some may call people evangelists and shepherds, but they have to modify their roles to fit their local church structure but still justify their existence by appealing to their presence in the first century. Consider the results of this mistake.
(1) Role Confusion
One resulting problem among at least one tradition of which I’m very familiar is the ever-present confusion in the roles of hired preachers and the local leadership. Local preachers in this organization often supplant the local leaders and their role. This is not an indictment of intent as only God can measure personal motivation. The point is that we can predict problems where God has not authored an arrangement. One problem is that even though the biblical shepherds were spiritual leaders and teachers, they were living in an age of miraculous provision in their teaching. When applying this today in the setting of a “church service,” we acknowledge that the majority of leaders are not pulpit preachers. Since the conditioning of the majority membership require that the teaching comes from pulpit preaching, a hired professional must come in to do this specialized work of preaching the Word. In other words, the local leaders can relinquish the work for which they should be qualified by contracting the work to others who have the gift of speech and rhetoric. This leaves the local leaders to figure out their place. If you limit the context of their work to be fulfilled in a local church organization, it is a natural fit that they fulfill an administrative role in the organization. Biblically, this becomes a new job description of maintaining control of the organization’s work, making decisions for the organizations that involve rating the hirelings’ performance, and keeping tabs on the morale of the congregation.