Rethinking Elders – What Does the Bible Really Say?

In case you’re not aware of this, most of you are Gentiles, and your eldership is Gentile. That is, elders are to make sure that those who bring the law in from the outside don’t devour the church, and those who bring the law in from the inside do not devour the church. That is the strongest single evidence that elders have some control to exercise.

Now, I would like to quote Gene Edwards. I’m going to change one word, because it’s what I meant when I first said it. Without elders and church planters, churches will be destroyed. The kind of churches we have must have elders and church planters, but those men, in my judgment, are there for the most extreme cases—the worst situations, like flagrant immorality in the church where somebody won’t repent, or you’ve got something going on in the church where somebody is bound and determined to destroy.

Otherwise, you have a brotherhood and a sisterhood that must never be done away with, and eldership as you know it today can do that. Eldership of the first century did not. I rest my case. I have this to say to you: your little Bible classes have no right to evolve into eldership that is locally appointed. They involve too much manipulation. Brother, you mistreat God’s people in ways that God’s people have no right to be mistreated. You have no right to mistreat God’s people that way, and your authority is minuscule. Somebody outside ought to be reigning you in, and if there isn’t, I’ll tell you what I suggest everybody who is going to have elders in this day and age do: rotate your elders.

It bothers me that men, for the privilege of being called elders, will do almost anything: it’s proof they are spiritual. And those who manipulate men – and there is this in most of the situations where there are elders – men who manipulate other men by giving them titles. I believe there are elders by the truckloads, so-called elders by the truckloads, for the only reason they have not gotten drunk, stolen, or committed immorality is that they are so attached to the word “eldership.”

I look back on men whom other men thought were elders in churches, and I can tell you that at one time they might have been, but today they are not, because of their personal conduct. Where do you get off believing that eldership is forever? When you establish a group of men as elders in a church, and it’s only them, you have cut off the growth of young people in the church coming up. You have established a hierarchy – a closed club. What you people become as the years roll on becomes a terror or an embarrassment.

A man may look great at 28 or 30 or 32 as an elder. He may look horrendous at 55. Dracula comes to mind. If you are committed to eldership in your church, then rotate it. It’s the safest thing on earth you could do, but to have the John Darby string of verses that put together eldership as it is known today, totally outside the context you just heard it in—you are dealing with dynamite. I remember so well in England, I think three sisters there—there were only a hundred people in that conference, and ten of them were Americans—said to me, “Gene, it was so beautiful, and then we got elders.”

No, ma’am, you did not get elders…and a tyrant by any other name is a tyrant, and a thief of freedom by any other name is still a thief. You do not get elders. Elders don’t take God’s people’s freedom, nor do they lord it over God’s people. Nor do they destroy the living, breathing, active brotherhood. You, sir, are incapable of having that brotherhood in that church, Bible class, or whatever you are. You are utterly incapable of ever knowing or seeing that brotherhood. It’s not there, and it never will be for one simple reason. Does anybody like to say what it is? Do you have any idea where I’m headed? Because you won’t leave. And you’ll never discover eldership until you get up and walk out.

That’s what itinerant church planters do. As long as you stay, you’ve corrupted the equation so much that there can be no eldership. If you believe so strongly in eldership, sir, then plant a church, get up, walk out, come back two years later, and ask the sisters who they think the elders ought to be; then you will have elders. Woe to those brothers who ever try to destroy what they were born into and came out of: the brotherhood of the church.

For some reason, I am going to tell you a story that has got nothing to do with anything. This has got nothing to do with the Scripture or anything else. I just found it terribly amusing. I was told the name of this tribe—I don’t remember what it was—but they were American Indians, and they had chiefs. And the women had no rights in this tribe whatsoever except this: the women chose the chiefs. Was it the Iroquois? Yeah. Okay.

Here’s what I’d like to say to you, brother. Back in the old days of the Baptist, we had an annual call. If you insist on being so unscriptural with your elders, then may I suggest that every year the elders come up to an annual call, a secret vote be taken in which only the sisters vote, and let the sisters decide who the elders are. Then you may have a little safety. Until then, you are a walking menace to Christian society. I propose you’re not an elder.