Rethinking Elders – What Does the Bible Really Say?

What else is going on in this madhouse? Oh, you’ve got maybe five, ten, fifteen people standing up in Gaius’s living room talking at the same time. You also have not only five or six or seven or eight or ten people testifying at the same time, but you’ve also got some others standing up at the same moment speaking in tongues. Not one, not two, but many. This is a really nutty church. This church is as bad as some of the churches I have to deal with. This is a wild, woolly place. I hate to bring up this homeopathic thing again – there’s not a verse in First or Second Corinthians, I don’t care how hard you pump, that implies elders in any way.

Now, if you say elders are there for Christ’s ease, my dear brother in the Lord Jesus Christ, I’ll tell you something. Those are the worst elders the church has ever known, because they hadn’t done diddly. Nothing. The church was obviously functioning, over-functioning, and super over-functioning. There was brotherhood there. In fact, there were four brotherhoods—the Jesus people, the Paul people, the Barnabas people, and the Apollos people, and the Peter people. Actually, that’s five, isn’t it? Man, and that takes brotherhood to do that.

Not once does Paul call anybody by name as being the villain, and he never says, “I command you,” except on the things of sex. The rest is, “Brothers, I would suggest… let those…and I speak to you as one who…” but his only commandment has to do with immorality. In the rest, he is oblique and very cautious. He doesn’t read the riot act to them. He starts by telling them they’re holy, blameless, and unindictable. Where are your elders, sir? Where are your vaulted elders? Where are your vaulted elders’ meetings?

Next, we come to Romans. I don’t care how hard you pump that; you won’t find an elder in it. Romans was written not too long after First and Second Corinthians, somewhere between no time at all and maybe a year or a year and a half. Now, we’re running out of epistles. Ephesians has no reference to eldership. “Well, Gene, there are a few things in there you could say might be to elders,” and I’d like to turn around and say yes, and it might be about church planters. I don’t question a church planter’s authority over a church, but he’d better take his model from Paul of Tarsus, and he’s no authoritarian at all. Paul himself confessed how weak he was, and he always struggled with churches not respecting him. Reread it.

Okay, Colossians—not a whisper. Ephesians—virtually nothing. Then we get to the last letter Paul ever wrote to a church. We come to Philippians, and we, for the first and only time, find the word elders. Read it very closely. This, to me, is funny. “To the holy ones in Philippi, including the elders.” Thank God they got included as holy ones. We finally got elders being mentioned in a letter by Paul.

A couple of things I’d like for you to know about the church in Philippi, and these are true. One of them is that the church was 9 years old when the letter was written. Another one: it was a women’s church. Did you know that?  We’ll come back and find that out someday. I’m not implying that’s why they had elders; I’m just telling you it was a women’s church, but they did have elders. I concede it had elders; I give to you that it has elders. How many times, Mike Brody, did you read the word “you,” plural, in the Philippian letter, which is four chapters long? You got 68 times. 68 times in four chapters—a plural “you.” It was a brotherhood. He spoke to a functioning body. I don’t know what those elders did, but whatever it was, it didn’t change the fact that that living organism was highly functioning on all levels long before they got elders.

Alright, now, Gene, we’re going to catch you here. We’ve got First Timothy, and we’ve got Titus, and then we’ve got Second Timothy. You sure do. I’ll tell you what else you’ve got. You’ve got Nero on the throne, who has just blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome, or possibly it has preceded that. He references island communities and says, go to every one of the places where God’s people gather and appoint elders. Boy, Gene, we got you here. No, you don’t.

Do you know who appointed those elders? Who appointed those elders? Church planters – traveling, itinerant church planters whom he had just called to come to Rome. That’s who appointed them. I’m coming back to another simple proposition, brother: unless a traveling church planter has ordained you as an elder, you have no scriptural right to exist. And the rest of the elders are in heaven in Revelation, except in Ephesus. Perhaps it is in Ephesus that we get the impression that we give up all democracy and it is “elders meetings.”

Now, if you’ve never been to a Plymouth Brethren church, you don’t know that Plymouth Brethren have their little meeting of the elders right before the church gathers. When the church gathers, all the elders walk in together and sit down on the front row. Don’t you know that? Have you ever been in the local church? Have you ever seen how they do it? The meeting starts; out in the back, these guys walk in, sit down in the front row. Well, you get that out of Ephesus—the Ephesian thing. I guess you all know this came far later in Paul’s third journey. He has already been prophesied over and warned by everybody that if he goes to Jerusalem, this is the end of it. So, he asks the elders of the church in Ephesus to meet with him.

I admit with all my heart that there were elders in the church in Ephesus, but I also want you to know that Paul of Tarsus had spent four years in Asia Minor and another two had passed. The church was at least six years old, and brotherhood had preceded eldership. Here’s what else you should know: dagger men were going all over the country killing people who did not teach the law of Moses. All of the churches were under threat of their leaders being killed, and especially Paul of Tarsus. Paul assumed he would see those people never again…and that is not all. Somewhere in all of this, this gentleman whom I have given the name Drachma Blastinius seems to have made a vow that he would do everything he could to destroy any church Paul ever raised up, because the strong implications in every letter are that Paul expected that man to come to the other churches just like he had come to Galatia. He was Paul’s thorn in the flesh.

Now, I’m not telling you something that’s just an Edwardian idea. I am telling you that that man who went to Galatia and almost destroyed those churches went to the other churches, and he was Paul’s thorn in the flesh. I don’t care what kind of theories you have ever heard. I am telling you, and telling you dogmatically, that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was a man, because the Greek says he was a man. It’s masculine—he. It is not an “it.” It’s a “he.” It is a human being whom Paul asked three times to get out of his life, and the Lord said, you keep building with gold and silver and precious stone, you arrogant Jew, and you walk out of those churches, and you trust the Holy Spirit. Let him come and see if he can burn down your work. I am too strong, Paul said, too full of revelation, and the Lord has put somebody—a man—in my life to make me weak.

I want to stand up on my hind legs and say I identify with that perfectly. I have known such thorns. I’ll bet you there’s not a one of you…and so, with dagger men around, and with Paul’s thorn in the flesh visiting the churches, there were elders. Thank God there were elders in Ephesus. Paul said, “I’m leaving. There’s a chance I’ll never be back. I promise you wolves will come in.” That was a promise, because those wolves had come in everywhere, and he said wolves would come in from within too. He spoke with wisdom from past experience, and we have the only clear idea of what a Gentile elder was.