Expert: Rev. Robert Woods - 12/3/2009

Question
QUESTION: I have an issue with the practice of a majority of Baptist churches that solely go on the pastor as the final authority in the church. Understand where I am coming from. I know who is the head of the church. Now I know that the people have a seemingly overrule authority but the matter remains that within the Baptist churches the pastor is viewed as all in all. In my studies I have concluded that the pastor is very seldom mentioned within scripture as anyone person with unique significance as he is portrayed within the Baptist churches of today. Where is the Elder body come into the picture if it is so often noted throughout NT scripture as those who the apostles dictated direction to.

ANSWER: Blessings and thank you for your questions.

In most Baptist Churches, it is the church body, not the Pastor, that has the decision making authority in the church.  In a lot of churches though, the Pastor is the head and makes most of the decisions.  You are right when you say that the Pastor role in Scripture was not the decision maker.  However since most Baptist churches don't use the role of Elder or Overseer, the Pastor has taken on those roles.  In fact, in most Baptist Churches, the deacon board is an elder board in everything but name.  

In my church we have corrected this problem.  We created an elder board with the Pastor being the chief elder among equals.  

Remember that each Baptist church is autonomous, meaning each church is separate and can make its own rules.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I thank you for your reply. And as I suspected you would agree with me (the scripture actually). So with this conduct of the Baptist churches in general then they are for the most part conducting themselves outside the tenents of scripture and since God is no respecter of persons then I see the church (Baptist) can not be blesssed in whole due to these unscriptural practices. I percieve that this conduct is reflective of the same sin that Satan endevored in. The sin of usurping positional power  that was not rightly his.
  With this in mind then the weakness of the predominate number of Baptist, and for that matter, most of the protestant (tongue in cheek) churches are in this state of affair.
  What does one do? I have left the Baptist churches as a whole and as I look around all I see is power hungry men, and for that matter women too. When one has an issue with the "pastor" one should go to the church body but then the body is afraid to confront the issue due to the pastors position.
  A sign of the time that the churches grow cold!!!  

Answer
Blessings.

If a church really wanted to follow a scriptural formula for church government then we would see the 5 fold ministry of apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers and evangelists leading with local overseers, elders and deacons.   It of course begs the question as who those individuals would be, since so many in the church no longer believe that apostles and prophets even exist any longer.  I don't know of a single church that is truly following a pure scriptural form of church government.  Satan has managed to divide the church and to build such a mistrust among us that we automatically distrust anyone "in charge" while many "in charge" have fallen into sin.

I would not go so far as to save that Baptist churches are in sin because of their church government but I believe some of the problems they have stem from their form of government.  It is hard to return to the idea of following a Biblical leader or group of leaders when we live in such an individualistic democratic society where everyone wants to have a voice in decision making.  The church has become like the people of Israel wandering in the desert and grumbling with Moses everytime they are uncomfortable.

May God have mercy on us.  May Christ truly be our Lord and may the Spirit lead us.