Flippin’ Elders

One of the reasons that churches get biblical leadership so wrong is that we have combined ministry and authority into one thing. The leader of a church might be the vicar, the pastor or some other title, but we usually think of that person as carrying the authority and doing the ministry. We try to select people for full time Christian ministry along the lines of selecting someone to be the leader or chair of a meeting. This has led us to recruit the rare, if not fictitious animal, the omni-talented minister. I believe that it has also led us to great confusion in the roles of men and women in the church throughout the last 2,000 years.

The bible is full of ministry gifts, apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, pastors, administrators, leaders, servants, workers of miracles, those who heal, and on and on. Then there are those with authority whom the bible calls elders. Elders in the bible are mentioned in the Old Testament 127 times and in the New Testament 64 times.

In his booklet “The World Needs More Elders”, P J Smyth says:

“A crucial part of the leadership mix of Israel was groups of men called elders. In the seasons of obvious ‘No 1’ leaders such as Moses, Joshua, Judges, or the Kings, it appears that the elders still held a crucial role in overseeing and governing the people under the leadership of the ‘set-man’ leader. In the absence of No 1 leaders the elders were probably the highest authority.”

By the time of the early church the apostles appointed elders in every city where they planted churches:

And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Acts 14:23

Very clearly elders were city wide leaders metaphorically sitting at the spiritual gates to the city watching over what came in and went out and giving guidance to those who chose to stand on their shoulders. Largely elders weren’t identified because of great ministry gifting, but because of their character, as we see in passages which talk about elders and overseers (Presbyters and Bishops) in 1 Peter 5:1-4, 1 Timothy 3:1-15 and Titus 1 and 2.

In Acts 20:17 Paul asked the Ephesian elders to join him in Miletus, but in verse 28 Luke has Paul describing them as overseers / bishops and shepherds. And in 1 Peter 5 Peter writes to elders, charging them to be overseers / bishops and shepherds. The words ‘presbuteros’ (elder/presbyter) and ‘episkopos’ (bishop/overseer) seem to refer to exactly the same office. The words appear to be used interchangeably in scripture, and biblically it is not possible to make a distinction between the role of an elder and a bishop.

P J Smyth makes the point that, from the book of Acts onwards, ‘elder’ is used at least 25 times more often than any of the others words designating the same office.

Certainly early church history puts more emphasis on bishops of cities rather than the plurality of elders. However, in the first century, it is perfectly reasonable to see any named bishop as the lead elder of a city’s church. Whilst most New Testament apostles seemed to travel from place to place, taking ground by establishing churches, bishops who may well have been apostolic in the ministry gifting, stayed put to oversee the local city church along with other elders.

So elderships had the responsibility to govern the church in a city much like their Old Testament counter parts governed the people of Israel in a city. But now leadership was redefined by Jesus as being a servant of all.