He also spoke on the accountability of pastors to the Deacons. He rightly said that our "Baptist Tradition" calls for pastors to be challenged by Deacons when they may be in error. Now what is interesting is that he is correct in saying that pastors need accountability. Tradition obviously teaches it. The Bible also plainly teaches Congregationalisam. The question I would like to pose for this post is where does the Bible teach the idea that pastors are accountable to Deacons?
The reason I ask is that church government seems to be something of a free-for-all. The attitude seems to be as if God left His church without sufficient teaching as to how she is to function. Do we really believe this? How much freedom God has given to the church should not so much depend on her structure but the wisdom in which to apply the teachings of Scripture. What think ye?
For a good book to get into this discussion, I recommend Prespectives On Church Government.
4 comments:
Howard,
You said "The Bible also plainly teaches Congregationalisam". Since I am new to your blog, being introduced by Mr. Film, and I am working through Polity right now on my blog, could you unpack what you mean by this statement? IE Is other polity unbiblical?
"IE Is other polity unbiblical?"
I would disagree with other church polity. Calling other polities unbiblical would depend on the position being held.
As for unpacking, uuuuhhhh, I doubt I could. One thing I could say is that the buck stops at the local church. There is no church hierarchy that governs the church.
There are only 2 offices, Pastors/Elders and Deacons.
I happen to believe in a plurality and parity among Elders. Having spoken to Phil Newton personally and having read a review of his book on Plurality of Elders, I would have to agree with Sam Waldron's critique of it. Although Newton's book argues for a plurality, he seems to argue against it at the same time by arguing against the Parity issue. (IE; defending the practice of rotating Elders onto a board. If the Pastor is an Elder, then he ought to rotate too. He would never argue for that though.)
Hope that helps make things muddier.
God Bless
Howard
"One thing I could say is that the buck stops at the local church. There is no church hierarchy that governs the church."
How does that fit in with denominationalism? Each church isn't a denomination, or is it?
Can one local Church teach TULIP, another teach a subset, yet both churches be of the same Church?
"How does that fit in with denominationalism? Each church isn't a denomination, or is it?"
OK, now that we have deviated from the original question, Drive-by has opened up another good question. On the one hand there is not, Biblically speaking, a higher government than the local church. Yet when there is a fellowship of churches forming a denomination, is there a way to be accountable to each other.
A recent example was when the ABC in Liberal pulled out of our denomination because of the issues of authority of the Scriptures and homosexuality.
What if the situation had been different though. What if only one church in the area started denying the Deity of Christ? Could the fellowship of churches reject the membership of the one church.
The situation is not that far off. There was a church that the Liberal church wanted to have removed from fellowship from among the churches, but the pastors of our denomination said that we can not do that for we can not tell a local church what to do.
So a heretical church was allowed to remain in fellowship, a man in a leadership position who would not say clearly that God's law condemns homosexuality was allowed to remain in leadership, which led to Liberal pulling out.
But this all has nothing to do with my original question.
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