Leadership 3

Ritual Bath (Mikveh)

We’ve been talking a lot about leadership in the church.  And the simple reason for that is that we need to establish some kind of structure in order to be a church.  But for that to work, we need to be in agreement with the Bible’s plan for leadership.  We need to agree with Jesus’ instruction that he alone is the head of the Church, and that all the rest are brothers—all the rest are equal under him.  He alone is our rabbi and leader. 

Jesus taught us that to be great in the Body of Messiah, you must be a servant to everyone else in the Body.  He said, “It will not be this way among you; rather whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you will be your slave” (Matt. 20:26-27).  Why?  Because God’s plan is for us all to submit to each other.  God’s plan is for us all to serve each other.

We’ve also seen that a key part of the structure of the local church is the elders of the church, who are pastors to the others—they help and serve all the others.  But why does the Bible say that elders should be men, and in fact married men (“It is necessary therefore that the overseer [another name for an elder] be above reproach, a husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,” 1 Tim. 3:2)?

Leadership 2

Last week we looked at God’s plan for leadership in the Body of Messiah.  And we saw that Jesus’ ideas about leadership are completely different than the world’s ideas about leadership.  In fact, Jesus’ plan for leadership in the Body of Messiah is just the opposite of the world’s way of leading.  He said that to be a leader in the Body of Messiah, you must be a servant; and to be the first, you must be a slave to all the others.  Since he, the Lord, acted this way, there is none of us that is above being a servant, because none of us is above Jesus. 

We got into this topic by talking about God’s plan for leadership in the local church.  So far, we’ve seen that of the five ministry gifts, pastors and teachers were local ministries, while the others were usually travelling ministries. 

We also saw that there was no single pastor in Bible days like there is in so many churches today.  Rather, the word “pastor” was used to refer to the elders, of which there were several in each church.  These elders were involved in teaching, since one of the requirements for being an elder was being “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2).  But not all the elders were equally involved in teaching and preaching.