Table #4 Pastors/ Elders: Chosen from within or out?

Table #4 Pastors/ Elders: Chosen from within or out?

Here is the Link to the site LP gave us with Tables contrasting the Traditional Church and the NT church. As I told Optional, I’d go through the table list him to see if it’s contrasts match up per scripture. If you’d like to join in, check out the table # 4 in the link below.

http://www.solidrock.net/publications/anderson/charts/nt.traditional.chart.html

 

I think the evidence is probably larger than two verses offered in the table that leadership was mostly chosen within the group instead of sought out from the outside in the early NT church. From my admittedly shallow knowledge of church history, it appears (correct me if wrong) that the outside “spiritual leader” became prominent when the Roman Catholic Church became powerful. Some of these positions were filled as political favors and some because the “laity” was basically kept in the dark and relied on outside influence to tell them what to believe and do.

While I do not see it as necessarily wrong to have an outside source come in if needed, I do think it points to a serious lacking of local churches to develop their own leadership. My sending church has been without a pastor for almost a year. The search continues today. It grieves me some that some have been there for many years yet there is no one within the group who can offer spiritual leadership. While I’m not against Colleges or Seminaries, it does seem sad that we need to rely exclusively on them to provide our pastors or elders.

While I’ve not explored the route of “plurality of elders” yet (it’s on the backburner), I’d say one strong point it may have is: the group functioning that way should not have to form a search committee and spend months and months looking and shopping for leadership.