Rethinking Elders – What Does the Bible Really Say?

See what happened after Barnabas and Paul ordained these men who had been part of this breathing, living, churning, powerful church brotherhood. Everybody shut up; everybody sit down; and the men they ordained took absolute control of everyone’s life. You could hear them saying, “Submit to those whom God has put over you” …and that’s not what happened.

I cannot tell you what happened, but I can tell you one thing: that brotherhood of those saints… just like I’ve been telling you folks in Denver, this is a point I’ve made in two meetings with you. Everybody thought corporately. The church thought corporately, and the church planter thought corporately. He didn’t think eldership. He thought God’s people, because the church belonged to God’s people, and it was God’s people who were carrying that church, who were that church. They were that girl.

By the way, I might as well say this right now. When somebody says, “Do you submit to those whom God has put over you?” there’s one little word in there that you need to take a really good look at. Well, does anyone want to guess what that word might be? God. Just because a group of Christians starts meeting in a living room or any place else on this earth and they start talking about elders doesn’t mean that God’s within a hundred miles of you. You can make it out of the Scripture, but you can’t say God is in it.

Church planters— itinerant, extra-local, non-local, trans-local church planters—ordained elders. Do you understand that? And not long—two years later—a gentleman by the name of Blastinius Drach Rockmar—that’s a fictitious name I have given him, but boy, he existed—came to those four churches with his knife, and he circumcised some of those Gentiles. He got away with it until Timothy probably stopped him in at least two churches. We don’t know what happened in the other two.

Brothers and sisters, Paul of Tarsus sat down to write a letter to those four churches who had been devastated by a circumcision knife, and there was all sorts of confusion. Paul started by saying to the elders in the churches in Galatia… (not true).  Now, I don’t know what in the world you’re going to do to leap over this, but my brother, listen: not one reference was made to those elders. Not one implication was made to those elders. Abraham Lincoln said, “Your argument has less weight to it than the shadow of a homeopathic remedy.” You don’t have an argument that even has the shadow of a homeopathic remedy. There isn’t one verse you can twist, turn, or do anything else with in the book of Galatians that implies elders were thought of in that great tragedy in Galatia.

Now, brother, read it and weep. I want to propose there’s a possibility you’re not an elder. Or, if you are so, you are functioning in a way that is utterly, totally, absolutely unscriptural…and will you please give me the name of the itinerant church planter who chose you?

All right, are you with me? We come to 1 Thessalonians. First and Second Thessalonians—go look it up. Look into any chronological study of how long Paul and Silas were in Thessalonica. By the way, this only happened probably no more than three to four months after he wrote the book of Galatians. You knew that, didn’t you? You all knew that. The church is just barely a church. Paul gets run out of town. He’s arrived in Corinth, and somebody sends word that they’re having problems in our very little, new, young church. I don’t know anyone who has ever proposed that the church in Thessalonica was over six months old when they asked Paul all the questions they asked him—a six-month-old church.

Now, brother, you can quote Thessalonians all you want, and you can point to something in there as a reference to elders. Still, when you put that book in its total context, when you put it in the story, you are left with not even the shadow of a homeopathic remedy. There’s a verse in 1 Thessalonians that says you should respect, listen to, and obey those whom God… submit to those whom God has put over you…that’s elders! I submit to them. You would never convince me that a church six months old has already got men who, six months ago, had never heard the name of Jesus Christ and were blood-drinking heathens. You would never convince me that those men have already taken up eldership and that Paul is telling them to submit to them. I’m sorry. That reference is not to elders.

That reference is to Silas and himself, and that’s all it is, and the word elders doesn’t come up there, and you don’t have that scripture, brother. I don’t know of any place on this earth where anybody has walked into a situation like Thessalonica and, at the end of three months, has elders whom you would dare say, “whom God has put over you,” and you submit to them and their authority or anything else like that.

Now we come to the Corinthian letters. Your first impression is that Paul was in Thessalonica, then went to Athens, then went to Corinth, and stayed eighteen months. He must have written a letter shortly after that. That’s not true. Let me show this to you.

First trip: two years. Four churches in Galatia were raised up. Second trip: two years. He’s in Philippi for a few weeks. He’s in Thessalonica for a few weeks. He’s in Berea for a few weeks, and then he gets to Corinth. He stays eighteen months. He comes home to Antioch. He goes on his third trip, which lasts four, four and a half years. From the time Corinth is founded until Paul writes First Corinthians, at least six or seven years have passed since that church was born. My brothers and sisters, a church seven years old ought to have elders. Did the church in Corinth have elders when, at about seven years old, Paul wrote First Corinthians? This church was seven years old. Did it have elders? Did it have elders? Anybody know? We don’t know. My guess is they didn’t.

Now, brother, if you want to hold to your teachings about eldership, then you’ve got one of two things to say. Either they had elders, and they were the laziest men who ever lived, or they had elders and eldership doesn’t mean what you think it does, because if there was ever a church that needed elders to step in and do something, it was Corinth. You have incest in the church. People get drunk at the Lord’s Supper. People steal food from one another during the Lord’s Supper. You’ve got people drinking and passing out at the Lord’s Supper and becoming gluttons, while others sit there and don’t get a bite of food. You’ve got vegetarians fighting with carnivores. You have questions about women’s head covering that still haven’t been answered.