Polity Part 2: 

Biblical Leadership- A View from

30,000 feet
7/9/2020

0 COMMENTS
 

Review of last week: 

I am attempting another “multi-week” exploration of some truths which may be “outside

the box” for many of you reading this newsletter.  For many of our churches, this series
of articles may be surprising, offensive, informative, challenging, mind-stretching,
revelatory (in a non-biblical sense), and/or confusing.   The topic which I will be
discussing will be: 
The “Polity” of our local churches.

In these articles, the term “polity” means the system for leading and governing
our local churches.

As you sit and read this material, you may well experience “discomfort” as you read my
words: please allow me to remind you of the fundamental premise of our polity that each
and every one of our churches are an autonomous fellowship which will make its own
decisions about its leadership and governance paradigms.  No one else can instruct a
church on how it must or even should frame its polity—certainly not some “over the hill”,
washed-up, ole-fogey Director of Missions.

However, last week, I did discuss the orbit of polity as possibly being the “Sin of Achan”
for some our churches.  

Now, we need to begin a study of biblical leadership in the Scriptures.

I would like to begin this discussion of “leadership in the Bible” by initially taking a “big
picture” look at the issue of leadership within the Kingdom of God.  Like a view from an
airplane at 30,000 feet, we need to consider the comprehensive perspective on how
God has actually chosen to lead His People to do His work throughout the centuries. 

I am very aware that not all of you reading this part of the discussion on biblical polity
will receive this material well.  In some respects, it may be both confusing and upsetting
to some of you.  

The only thing which I would ask of you is that you go to the Bible to see if what I am
describing for you is correct.  

If we want to get biblical polity correct so that we can repent of any “Sin of Achan” within
our flocks (remember last week’s article), we must go straight to the very Word of God. 
We do not go to our traditions, or our history, or our preferences--we go only to the
Scriptural principles prescribed by the Lord Himself.  

If we draw our lines in the sand without doing serious study of the Bible on the issue of
biblical polity, we may be doomed for our church to continue to take on casualties, to
continue to be stopped in our tracks, and to continue to be walled off from Kingdom
blessings and Kingdom victories.

It is sad, but I do not know of any other theological orbit in Christendom in which bible-
believing saints are more sorely tempted to forsake the biblical precepts than in the orbit
of “polity”.
A Personal Note from Craig on Leadership Before we get to the Bible:
This is probably a “soap box” issue for me.  For my money, America culture has
comprehensively lost all concept of true leadership.  In place of leadership, we have
substituted the concept of “politician”.  The demise of leadership in this country probably
began to emerge sometime between WWI and WWII and the roots of this change
became firmly planted by the time of the hippies (my generation) in the 1960s.  It has
progressed exponentially.

In the orbit of business, company owners are often “hamstrung” in the leadership of
their companies by being “overridden” by HR departments.  In the orbit of the family,
husbands today have no real idea of what it means to be “leader” of the wife and the
home—men have been reduced to being “politicians” whose job is to broker
compromises within the family in order to maintain the peace of the family.  In the
church, it is no better.  With only rare exceptions, gone are the days when the
Overseeing Pastor/Elder actually functions as an overseer (overall manager), a leader
or a visionary.  Rather, he has become a “politician” trying to influence people to see
things his way and agree to a compromise from what they want.  

Even in the orbit of the military (I used to be a Regular Army commissioned Infantry
Lieutenant in the US Army), the clarion call of the Infantry Platoon Leader “Follow Me”
(while still the official battle cry of the Infantry) has been replaced by an insidious
paradigm depicting that the primary function of the Platoon Leader is to keep everybody
happy with their unit and their function.  The Platoon Leader “survives” in the modern
day “peace-time” Army by keeping his men encouraged and inspired to stay in their
unit.  My suspicion is that this paradigm shift in the military does not really work at all
when it comes to battle and actual warfare.

The corollary of this is that we now have a generation of citizens in our country and of
members in our churches who have very little concept of what it means for a man to be
a leader.   As the world has gone so has gone our churches in America.

In my personal opinion, we in America desperately need people who will be:

 godly leaders in our business industries

 godly leaders in our government
 godly leaders in our families
 godly leaders in our churches

Specifically in our churches, we need godly men:

 who know how to lead. 

 who know how to dream, to envision a plan, to design a plan, and to implement &
orchestrate & manage a plan. 
 who know how to apply themselves in a dedicated work ethic to follow God into
His Kingdom victories,
 who know how to gently, humbly, but biblically assert themselves as leaders
called by God to lead our churches

Given this unfortunate reality in our culture and our churches, it is usually a surprise to
many of us when we actually begin to study the Scriptures itself to discover how the
Lord has consistently chosen to raise up “Stable Primary Leaders” in order to lead His
People (in both the Old and New Testaments) toward His Kingdom purposes.
The Word of God in the Old Testament clearly teaches that God chose to do His
Kingdom Work through Stable Primary Leaders:

A.  God raised up Stable Primary Leaders who were called to lead His People

 God breathes vision/calling into the leaders and equips the leader to lead; 
 Consider: Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, the Judges, Kings, David 

   
B. Sometimes, God positions the leaders to lead His People and facilitate them to begin
a new congregation 

 Abraham: called to lead a new People of God (Israel)

C.  Sometimes, God positioned the leaders into an existing “congregation” for the
purpose of leading them:
  Moses: called to lead the pre-existing congregation of the People of God
(Israel)                     

D.  When the People fail to follow the godly leader (or choose to follow ungodly
leaders), God removes the Lamp Stand from the People (Israel & then later Judah)

E.  When the leader fails to lead the People in the Way they should go, God removes
the leader (King Saul)

The Word of God in the New Testament clearly teaches that God chose to do His
Kingdom Work through Stable Primary Leaders:

A.  God (Jesus) raised up twelve men whom He trained to become Stable Primary
Leaders. 
Note:  The Twelve are a not committee who helps the One Stable Primary Leader
(Jesus) to decide how to lead; nor are they a group who in any way votes or has any
kind of authority over how the One Stable Primary Leader leads. (When Peter tried in
Matthew 16: 21-23, it did not go well.)

B.  God (Jesus) then trained/discipled the Twelve to lead His People

C.  God then unleashed the Twelve (minus Judas) upon the People (in 11 different
ministries as primary leaders all who went to the far corners of the earth) to lead His
People into the work of the Kingdom of God.  

D.  Jesus also later raised up James (His half-brother) and Paul to become stable
primary leaders.

E.  The Holy Spirit used these 13+ men to turn the world upside down- with the help of
other AWE People (meaning of this term to be explained later) whom  He raised up (e.g.
Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Silas, etc.) who themselves sometimes later developed into
stable primary leaders.   

In the big picture from 30,000 feet, God’s Word does not depict the Lord utilizing
groups, committees, or congregations to accomplish the leading of His People or the
making of the decisions concerning the Kingdom work which is to be done:

Now, I can almost hear some of you saying:  Wait a minute; we have always done the
significant leadership ministry decisions in our churches via groups, committees, or
congregations.  I always thought that is what made us “congregational”; we vote on
almost everything. 

As those words begin to roll around in your mind and begin to stir your emotions, the
foundational question which I wish to pose for you is this:  Where in the Bible do you
see such leadership and governance by congregations or committees?
As I study the Scriptures, I see man’s attempt to do leadership via groups, committees,
or congregations consistently resulting in poor outcomes which do not seem to be
blessed by the Lord.

A.  Numbers 13: 25-33- Consider the “committee” work of the 12 spies entering the
Promise Land  This “vote” (10-2) was a Kingdom disaster.

B. 1 Samuel 8: 1-22 Consider the disaster of the congregation deciding on what kind of
leader they wanted; like all of the other nations, they insisted on Samuel giving them a
king.

I do realize that some folks want to argue that the NT congregation of 120 elected
Matthias to replace Judas as an Apostle; Exegetically, however, that simply is not the
case.  Please study carefully what happened in Acts 1:15-26:

    Step 1:  The Apostles (leaders) determined the qualifications of the replacement:
        1.  This man must have accompanied them during the entire time of Jesus’ earthly
ministry (Acts 1:21)
        2.  This man must have witnessed not only Jesus’ ministry but also His
resurrection & His ascension (1:22)

    Step 2:  “They” (grammatically uncertain: it could possibly have been the 120
congregants, but most likely it was     the leaders-the11Apostles) identified two possible
candidates who met the qualifications prescribed by the leaders:
                   
    Step 3:  Clearly, the Apostles (not the 120) decided who the replacement would be
by “drawing  lots”, not by vote.
       
Likewise, some folks endeavor to suggest that Acts 6:3 indicates a significant
involvement of the congregation (or a portion of the congregation) by electing the seven
“Ministry Team Leaders” to assist with the ministry to the widows.

However, a close study of the Acts 6 passage reveals that this involvement was not an
election at all but rather a “ratification” that these seven men met the qualifications
prescribed by the leaders (Apostles).  The leaders, not the congregation, are the key
actors here in this event in Acts 6:1-6:

1.  It was the leadership (not the congregation) who determined that a Ministry Team
needed to be formed to help them with ministry tasks

2. It was the leadership (not the congregation) who determined and defined the actual
tasks to be tackled by the Ministry Team 

3. It was the leadership (not the congregation) who determined how many men would
serve on the Ministry Team
4. It was the leadership (not the congregation) who specified the qualifications of the
members of the Ministry Team (6:3): 

 a good reputation
 full of the Holy Spirit
 full of wisdom    

5.  It was the leadership (not the congregation) who summoned the congregation to
meet.

6. It was the leadership (not the congregation) who put the Ministry Team members in
charge of the task by praying and setting them apart for this Ministry Team task.  This
was the only real “action” taken in this passage. 

The seven men were “brought before the Apostles”.  There is no explicit explanation for
the meaning of this phrase, but it is often inferred that the leaders themselves examined
and/or considered the qualifications of these men as     they prepared to pray for them
and to set them apart to serve on this Ministry Team.  Acts 6: 3 makes it clear that     the
Apostles said: “we will put them in charge of this task”.  It is the leadership, not the
congregation, who made     the decision to “call” these men and put them in charge of
the task of the Ministry Team. 

So what was the actual involvement of the congregation in Acts 6:5? 

After being assembled by the leaders of the flock and instructed what to do in the matter
at hand, they looked around their flock and made suggestions to their leaders of seven
men whom they felt met the three qualifications prescribed by the leaders.  No other
considerations (except the qualifications) were to be considered by this group doing the
suggesting. 

    Note that this was not an election per se as we understand an election (I vote for
Stephen, not Fred); rather, the “suggesting group” was tasked by the leaders simply to
search for and to identify seven men whom they felt met these three qualifications
specified by the leaders and to recommend these seven men to the leaders for their
consideration. Thus, the suggesting group was only ratifying their sense that these men
met the qualifications.

The leadership then acted upon the congregation’s ratification of these seven men’s
biblical qualifications.

7.  Conclusions:  The “decision-makers” of Acts 6 are the actual leaders themselves, not
the congregation.
       
   
BOTTOM LINE:  In the Scriptures, committees, “groups of believers”, and
congregations are rarely to never depicted as voting on ministry matters, setting policy,
or making any kind of key decisions concerning Kingdom ministry except for a handful
of biblical matters all of which apply only to congregations:

1. The suggesting/ratifying of potential Pastors who meet the biblical qualifications

for biblical leadership
2. The dismissal of the same Pastors when appropriate
3. The pulling of the “emergency brake” on the leadership when they are leading
the church into sin 
4. The removing of church members via “church discipline” 

As will be discussed in a later article on polity in this newsletter, there may also be a
handful of legal, corporate, and/or fiscal dynamics which may need to fall under the
purview of the congregational responsibilities.

Thus, this should give us pause to question any posture of polity which might encourage
us to conclude that God will lead His People without a stable primary leader to lead His
People and to oversee His Kingdom work .

“Since it is difficult to find any place where God called a committee, I (Paige Patterson,
a congregational polity guru) believe that the pattern in both Testaments is for God to
call individual leaders for his people.  A congregational polity encourages maximum
freedom, participation, and responsibility for every believer-priest. A church should
choose its elders... based on the qualifications set forth in the New Testament under the
leadership of the indwelling Holy Spirit.  One of these should be the primary leader and
preacher-teacher for the flock.”  WRTC, p.152

The Word of God in both Testaments teaches us that the stable primary leader chosen
by the Lord needs A-W-E people.

AWE People Defined:    Obviously, the term “AWE People” is not found in the Bible. 
This is my word. 
But the Scriptures consistently teach that God raises up persons or groups of people
whom He causes to come alongside His Stable Primary Leader to help him in three
general ways:   
They provide Advice to, Work with, and Encouragement  for the Stable Primary
Leaders.

God often raises up AWE People to support & assist the Stable Primary Leader—
consider the OT:

 Moses & Aaron

 Moses & the Elders
 Moses & Joshua
  Elijah & Elisha
 David & Jonathon
 David & Nathan
 Kings & the Prophets
 Leaders & the congregation of the People of God

Note:  It is necessary to note that the function of these AWE People is never to lead;
also, it is never to have authority over the Stable Primary Leader; the functions of these
AWE People seem to be at least as follows:

 to assist the Stable Primary Leader by reducing his workload: Moses & the
Elders
 to assist the Stable Primary Leader by encouraging him: Elijah & Elisha
 to assist the Stable Primary Leader by being a friend to him: David & Jonathon
 to assist the Stable Primary Leader by giving him “God-given” advice: David &
Nathan
 to assist the Stable Primary Leader by pulling the “emergency brake” when the
Leader takes the People down an evil and God-dishonoring path:

  
Examples of the AWE people pulling the “emergency brake” in the OT:

 see the role of the People of God (the congregation) when they correct King Saul
in 
 1 Sam 14: 25-46 (when Saul was going to kill Jonathon because of Saul’s foolish
oath; the congregation said no because the King’s intended action was a biblical
evil) 
 or consider 1Sam 8:1-6 which is the case of the congregation overriding Samuel
on the matter of Samuel’s sons succeeding Samuel because his sons were
assessed to be unworthy leaders.

Note:  The other side of the coin with these AWE People is that often the relationship
with the Stable Primary Leader (e.g. Moses & Joshua// Elijah & Elisha) also serves as a
mentoring or training of the AWE Person to be equipped by the Lord so that the Lord
may then later call the AWE Person to be a Stable Primary Leader himself. 

God often raises up AWE People to support & assist the Stable Primary Leader-
consider the NT:
       
A.  Individuals:      

 Paul & Barnabas -friendship/team/encourager

 Paul & Silas -friendship/team/encourager
 Paul & Timothy -team/mentorship
  Paul & Titus -team/mentorship
 Barnabas & John Mark -team/mentorship
 Peter & John Mark (scribe) -team/mentorship

B.  Groups:  Although not as common as individual AWE support, sometimes God uses
AWE “groups of believers” in a variety of ways to assist the Stable Primary Leader:

 To ratify the call of Stable Primary Leaders: Acts 13:1-3—Barnabas, Simeon

[called Niger], Lucius, Manaen, Saul ratified the call of both Barnabas and Saul to
serve the Lord as missionaries
 To pull the “emergency brake” on the stable primary leader (in the NT):
 consider the NT case of Jesus instructing the Church at Pergamum to repent &
remove the false teachers/preachers (i.e teachers of Balaam & Nicolaitans-in
Rev. 2:14-16); in this illustration, the congregation is called to act to pull the
emergency brake on the leader who is teaching false doctrine.   
 or consider when the congregation (disciples) barred Paul from going into the
angry Ephesus assembly (Acts 19:30); 

Summary:  God, in His wisdom, has structured the “overseeing” leadership over His
People to be invested in a Stable  Primary Leader who is advised, is assisted in the
kingdom work, and is supported through encouragement by a variety of AWE groups
which he himself will create.

Jumping Ahead:  In order to jump ahead and give you a sense of how you might
envision AWE teams in your church, you might think of the following teams to serve and
to assist your Lead Pastor in your church:

 a Team of Pastors/Elders to help the Lead Pastor lead, oversee, manage, and
implement the ministries of the church
 a Team of Deacons to assist the Lead Pastor and Team of Pastors with the
“servant ministries” of the church
 a Team or Council of church ministries to help the Lead Pastor and Team of
Pastors to schedule the church’s ministries
 a Ministry Team created to accomplish specific purposes on the behalf of the
Lead Pastor or Team of Pastors 
 in a broader sense, the congregation as a whole constitutes one big AWE team
to support and to assist the Lead Pastor and Team of Pastors in the ministry of
the church

What’s next in this contemplative series of articles on biblical polity?

Polity Part 3:  A leadership study of the Biblical Role of the Lead Pastor/Elder
Polity Part 4:  A leadership study of the Biblical Role of the Team of Pastors/Elders
Polity Part 5:  A study of the Biblical Role of the Servant Ministers (diaconia)
Polity Part 6:  A study of the Two Aspects of Congregationalism
Polity Part 7:  A study of the Biblical Role of the Congregation
Polity Part 8:  A discussion of how to actually change your “polity” paradigm for your
church