Eldership or Senior Pastor? What is the Biblical church government model?

So I have had some discussions recently with an associate pastor and have been studying a book called Biblical Eldership by Alexander Strauch. This gave me the desire to right a blog about this situation. In christian churches today you see two basic models, the more popular is a pyramid model with a senior pastor as the head and associate pastors ect under him. I will briefly touch on this.

The pyramid model so to speak is actually a model used in the business world. Where you have a head guy and the others in leadership branch off underneath him. There is actually mention of the would pastor only once in the Bible and it is used as a part of the office of elder. The truth is there should not be a head of the church, the senior pastor so to speak. God is to be the head of the church and the church government is supposed to be working in unison to pursue the will of God. The benefit of this system is it allows more decisions to be made in a shorter time frame as there is a leader that has the final say. It also gives the illusion of a man in charge, the face of the church. It forgets though that God is the head of the church and no one man should be in that position, it takes a worldly business model and tries to force it on the church taking the role of pastor, which is supposed to be part of the eldership and creating an entirely new and non Biblical role for the pastor. This has become a largely used system as it is easier to implement than and eldership working in unison for God's glory.

The eldership is the Biblical government the Bible has given to us. Everytime church leadership is discussed it is in the plural not a singular leader overseeing everything. The eldership is setup with God as our "senior pastor" so to speak. It is used as a group of men to make decisions in constant prayer, arriving at the point they believe God is leading them. It can fall into chaos when the men in it are more worried about getting their way then they are finding where God is shepherding the church. But just because that chaos is a possibility does not mean we should find a new way to run church government, that is other then what the Bible has taught us. "It is not enough merely to have an eldership; the eldership must be actively functioning, competent, and spiritually alive" that quote is taken from the book Biblical Eldership. I would like to quote a couple paragraphs from that book which can be found on page 115:

"Because the apostles knew that Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, was uniquely present with them as Ruler, Head, Lord, Pastor, Master, Overseer, High Priest, and King, they chose a form of government that reflected this distinctive, fundamental, Christian truth. This concept was no theoretical idea to the early Christians-it was reality. The first churches were truly Christ-centered, Christ-dependent churches. Christ alone provided all they needed to be in full fellowship with God and one another. Christ's person and work was so infinitely great, final, and complete, that nothing-even in appearance-was to diminish the centrality of His presence among and sufficiency for His people.
So in the first century, no Christian would dare take the position or title of sole ruler, overseer, or pastor of the church. We Christians today, however, are so accustomed to speaking of "the pastor" that we do not stop to realize that the New Testament does not. This fact is profoundly significant, and we must not permit our customary practice to shield our minds from this important truth. There is only one flock and one Pastor(John 10:16), one body and one Head(Col. 1:18), one holy priesthood and one great High Priest(Rom. 8:29), one building and one Cornerstone(1 Peter 2:5ff.), one Mediator, one Lord. Jesus Christ is "Senior Pastor," and all others are His undershepherds(1 Peter 5:4).
To symbolize the reality of Christ's leadership and presence over the local church and its leaders, one church that I know of places an empty chair at the table next to the chairman during all elders' meetings. This is a visual reminder to the elders of Christ's presence and lordship, of their position as His undershepherds, and of their dependence on Him through prayer and the Word"

So there you have it, Christ is our "Senior Pastor". We are to follow Him and Him alone. No human was meant to be the leader of the church, that job falls on Christ and Christ alone. I hope we can all put aside what we are used to and have grown up with to really take a good hard look on the Biblical model the Bible has given us for church government.


Tim Shrout

It Is Well With My Soul

So tonight I really wanted to share a story with you guys that has meant a ton to me lately. It is the story behind the song "It Is Well With My Soul".

"It Is Well with My Soul" is a very influential hymn penned by hymnist Horatio Spafford and composed by Philip Bliss.

This hymn was written after several traumatic events in Spafford’s life. The first was the death of his only son in 1871 at the age of four, shortly followed by the great Chicago Fire which ruined him financially (he had been a successful lawyer). Then in 1873, he had planned to travel to Europe with his family on the SS Ville du Havre, but sent the family ahead while he was delayed on business concerning zoning problems following the Great Chicago Fire. While crossing the Atlantic, the ship sank rapidly after a collision with a sailing ship, the Loch Earn, and all four of Spafford's daughters died. His wife Anna survived and sent him the now famous telegram, "Saved alone." Shortly afterwards, as Spafford traveled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write these words as his ship passed near where his daughters had died.

I should mention that I got the article off wikipedia. But back to the story, Spafford, in a two year period, lost everything he had finacially and then all five of his children. This would kill most people. But Spafford understood where to turn and produced this song as he passed by the spot his daughters drowned.

It Is Well With My Soul

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Refrain:
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life,
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.

But Lord, 'tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait,
The sky, not the grave, is our goal;
Oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord!
Blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

This is an incredible song written by a Godly man who had just lost everything. Yet no matter what happened to him, God gave him the strength to say, it is well with my soul. This is very convicting to me, with all the petty problems I deal with that seem so big they are nothing compared to Spaffords suffering. Or for that matter, the apostle Pauls suffering. Yet they both were fully satisfied in God. He gave them the comfort and peace they needed, yet so often I do not turn to Him in my time of need. I would like to leave you with my favorite verse of the song:

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Tim Shrout

In My Place Condemned He Stood

We are back! The blog is officially back up and running!

For training purposes I have been reading a book called "In my place condemned He stood" which is on penal substitutionary atonement. I wanted to share a couple of passages from the book which struck me.

"The incarnational principle is that when the Son took Himself all the powers and capacities for experience that belong to human nature and began to live through His human body, mind, and identity, His sense of being the Father's Son was unaffected, and He knew and did His Father's will, aided by the Spirit, at all times. It was with His own will and His own love mirroring the Father's, therefore, that He took the place of human sinners exposed to divine judgment" and here is the good part... "and laid down His life as a sacrifice for them, entering fully into the state and experience of death that was due to them. Then He rose from death to reign by the Father's appointment in the kingdom of God and from His throne to send the Spirit to induce faith in Himself and in the saving work He had done, to communicate forgiveness and pardon, justification and adoption to the penitent, and to unite all believers to Himself to share His risen life in foretaste of the full life of heaven that is to come."

This is powerful stuff, very clearly stating what Jesus did for us in His incarnation. What He offered us, He offered us our lives if we were willing to die to the things of this world, not our temporary, earthly lives but our eternal, perfect lives. After all the sins we commit, after all the times we have turned our backs towards Him, He still "laid down His life as a sacrifice for them" a sacrifice for us!

The other text I wanted to share was written by J.I Packer(as was the previous) in which he offers us nine insights basic to our personal relationship with God that are directly related to penal substitutionary atonement. These are points I would encouraged you to reflect on and be edified because of them.

1. God, in Denney's phrase, "condones nothing," but judges all sin as it deserves: which Scripture affirms, and my conscience confirms, to be right.

2. My sins merit ultimate penal suffering and rejection from God's presence (conscience also confirms this), and nothing I do can blot them out.

3. The penalty due to me for my sins, whatever it was, was paid for me by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in His death on the cross.

4. Because this is so, I through faith in Him am made "the righteousness of God in Him," i.e., I am justified; pardon, acceptance, and sonship [to God] become mine.

5. Christ's death for me is my sole ground of hope before God. "If He fulfilled not justice, I must; if He underwent not wrath, I must to eternity" (John Owen)

6. My faith in Christ is God's own gift to me, given in virtue of Christ's death for me: i.e., the cross procured it.

7. Christ's death for me guarantees my preservation to glory.

8. Christ's death for me is the measure and pledge of the love of the Father and the Son to me.

9. Christ's death for me calls and constrains me to trust, to worship, to love, and to serve.

Those are powerful! I hope you guys enjoyed them as much as I did!

Tim Shrout

Moving

Hey guys, sorry its been away after I said it would be regular! I have had a lot of stuff going on lately culminating with me moving soon. I am also working on getting a group of people posting on here, it hasn't picked up yet, in the mean time please be patient, we will get this up and running!

A Story Of Redemption

So tonight I was watching a movie and while I was watching it, something struck me. 90% of the movies made not labeled action movies have a very common theme. Part way through the movie the main character loses his way, something goes wrong and his life seems to fall apart, he feels lost. But the movies always end the same way, redemption. He(or she) earns back the trust of those they have wronged, and are redeemed, people love them again and everything ends well. This shows me how much of the world longs for redemption. We all feel lost at times, we all need to be redeemed. That is why you see this plot over and over again. It is something built inside of us as humans, we all feel the need to be redeemed and sometimes we see these needs through unusual mediums(such as film). The truth is, we all need to be redeemed, thats why we feel those needs, thats why we connect with movies in that way. But unlike those films, the real story of redemption is much sweeter, we don't have to earn the redemption because we can't earn it. It is a gift freely offered to us. The real story of redemption comes with real happiness, nothing fake or temporary. So maybe tomorrow night, instead of watching a movie or a tv show that might give you a fake story of redemption, try picking up the book about the one, true and lasting story of redemption that we all need.

Tim

Feeling overwhelmed? Try adding a little righteousness to your life.

So, I was reading my Bible last night, and I stumbled upon Psalm 18. This Psalm is awesome, because it talks about God rescuing us from our enemies, giving us strength for victory, and the like. That's something I definitely needed to hear, since I've been having a pretty busy, stressful, and challenging time at work lately. For those of you who don't know me, I'm currently in flight school for the Navy in southern Texas, and have been working 12+ hour days pretty regularly. But I digress.
Anyways, one verse particularly stuck out in my mind as I was reading this Psalm. "So the LORD has rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight." (Psalm 18:24). What really struck me about this verse, is that the reason God protected David, the reason God gave his strength and victory, was because David was righteous.
And I thought righteousness was only good for keeping you from getting into trouble.
Nope, apparently a good reason to be righteous is so that when people are trying to chase you down and kill you, God can step in and give you an unnatural power to rout your enemies. Or, at least, that's what he did for David.

Side note:
I don't know about you guys, but I have a hard time being righteous. It's a good thing God can make us righteous by faith, because it's a lot easier for me to have faith than to be perfect! I find that when I'm looking to do what God wants, he's able to make it happen in spite of me and my, well, how do we say, "humanity".

Idolatry, The Man Made Prison

Today I started reading Romans, and something in the first chapter of Romans spoke to me as it has been effecting my life quite a bit lately so I wanted to share my thoughts on the issue. The issue is that of idolatry, idolatry is the foundation of every single bit of sin in our life. And in the first chapter of Romans Paul tells us why this is in a frightening look at not only what happens when we choose other things over God in this life, but at the same time it offers us a glimpse of what an eternity separated from God would look like.

Paul starts us off by taking away any excuse we might have of not knowing God. He does this because of an argument that is quite commonly asked in our day and my assumption would be his day as well, "well what about people who have never heard of God? How can He hold them responsible?". So to address this Paul says in verses 19-21:

"because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse".

He is telling us that God planted evidence of His existence in our nature by way of reason and moral law. He is also telling us that by just looking at the world around us we are able to understand the creator and sustainer of such a universe must be a being of awesome, divine power thus no one has an excuse to put anything above God(idolatry).

So now that Paul has taken away any excuse for placing anything above God, he goes on in verses 22-25:

"Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."

This shows us the start of what we have done by choosing the created over God. There are many examples of idolatry that are easy to pull up are things such as evolution, choose to believe in mans "wisdom" instead of admitting that the creation and sustaining of this universe is beyond anything thing man can comprehend. But one that I find especially shocking that has effected me tremendously is a Christian who knows and believes in God, yet still puts himself and his worldly desires in front of God. Shouldn't we of all people, who have experienced a closeness and intimacy with God that others cannot imagine be able to put God above all, first and foremost in our lives? So here is the scary thing, this idolatry which we all fall prey to at times(for most of us, way to much of the time) it is a man made prison, we created this situation. Paul tells us that because WE exchanged God for anything else that could give us instant gratification, God gave us over to what WE chose, separation from God. Wether in some cases its a temporary separation, more of a wedge between us and God(for those of us who do believe in Him) or for others, what would be a permanent separation unless we come to believe and receive God into our hearts. Either way, it's what we wanted, we fought for it and God gave it to us.

It strikes me as odd that people say all the time, if God were real, He wouldn't have allowed this to happen! If God is real, He must be a cruel God to allow the world to be in this state! When the truth is God gave us what we wanted, we wanted a world without God at the top, and that is what He has given us. When you take God out of the equation, all sorts of evil comes out. Which is what Paul speaks to in verses 28-31:

"And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God and longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful"

That is the world we live in, the world Paul just described, filled with all sorts of sin and despair. And the groundwork of all of it was idolatry, because we wanted something else at the top of our personal mountains instead of God. It really is a man made prison.

The scariest part about this is what it means for each and every one of us after this fleeting moment we call life on earth is over. Where are we headed? If we have chosen to gamble on putting anything and everything in front of God in our lives, choosing to ignore His calling then we are headed to a place far worse then this earth. You see in this chapter Paul gives us a glimpse of what hell is like, the very definition of hell is eternal separation from God. We have seen in these verse what an earthly separation from God has brought to us, but no matter how bad this earth gets, God will always be present on and in it, so we will never be fully separated from God while we inhabit this earth. But in hell, not only will God turn His back on everyone in it, no part of God is in hell, none of His goodness, none of His divine attributes that weather we believe in God or not, are still present on this earth. Meaning no kindness, no joy, no love, no relief at all will be found there, just depraved human minds, full all kinds of hate and wickedness with none of the Godly attributes we have on this earth to take any of the sting and horror out of being separated from God. The truth that I cling to though is that as one of God's children, no matter how much I put other things in front of God in my life, I will return to Him. It is a gift so reassuring and comforting that no misery I might experience on this earth while feeling separation from Him can ever keep me down for long.

In closing I wanted to offer this as an encouragement for myself, and anyone else who might read this. The more we put God as the number one thing in our lives, the closer we will be to Him. The closer we are to Him, the more His divine attributes will be revealed to us and experienced by us in our lives. This means the closer we are to Him, the more joy and satisfaction we will get out of this life. I am not promising riches, health or tons of friends but what I am promising is the deep joy and satisfaction only God offers us. Those of you who have a personal relationship know exactly what I am talking about, even if you feel distant from God right now, you can remember that joy and satisfaction from when you felt close to Him. Those of you that don't have that relationship with God can't imagine what this feels like, I pray each and every one of you will get to experience it someday. As for me? I am tired of feeling separate, I long for the closeness and intimacy God offers. He is and always will be the only thing I worship in this life, at this time the song lyrics "I'm coming back to the heart of Jesus, and its all about You, its all about You" mean so much to me. I want to encourage all of you who are struggling in the man made prison of idolatry to work hard to return to the heart of Jesus, its where we belong, and its the only place we will ever be truly joyful and satisfied.

Tim