Yesterday I mentioned in passing that I do not agree with the present idea of the "non-staff elder." That escalated quickly. :-) Here's an explainer thread.
First of all, @JonathanLeeman is a friend, and it's just frustrating and unpleasant that a tweet I meant for good (patting him on the back for a great article that I wanted to affirm) wound up only generating conversation about this area in which we disagree.
He and I know that we disagree about this. We've discussed it quite a bit with one another. We're stronger friends afterward than we were before. I think we would both say that we'd rather be talking about the areas in which we agree.
A few things I'm not saying.
I'm not against bivocational ministry. Every bivocational pastor I know is (a) a staff elder, because he is (b) paid at least something for serving.
I'm not against any elder's choice to serve without pay. Here's what that looks like: The church decides to pay the elder and sets a salary. The elder declines to take it, but remains a staff elder. The church is amazed at and grateful for the elder's generosity.
But there's a huge difference between (a) our church believes that every elder is a workman worthy of his hire and we therefore have a system by which we expect to pay every elder, but here's this elder who declines and is an exception, versus…
…(b) by design, the heart of our system finds it to be very, very important that we have elders whom the church has determined from the outset never to pay anything at all.
I'm not saying that every elder has to earn a full-time salary. I'm fine with there being part-time staff elders.
Now, having said what I am NOT saying, here's what I actually AM saying.
It intrigues me that a movement that so beautifully went to scripture to point us toward having multiple elders so immediately goes to pragmatics to point us toward having multiple KINDS of elders. I'm hoping to point you all back to the New Testament.
I summarized the New Testament case in my recent sermon in @MBTS chapel. mbts.edu/2019/03/chapel…
But here's a Twitter summary of the New Testament case: (1) The only example of a New Testament person serving without any salary is Paul. But there are a few problems with invoking Paul as the founder of the non-staff elder paradigm.
First, we cannot conclude that there was any moment in which Paul was actually not being paid for his ministry. It is true that the Corinthians did not pay Paul while he served in Corinth, but Philippians is a thank-you note for the support he received from Phillipi at that time.
Acts 18 makes this perfectly clear. Paul worked in tentmaking for a little while in Corinth while waiting for Silas and Timothy to arrive with a gift from Macedonia. After that, he occupied himself with his ministry. But he still wasn't paid by the Corinthians.
This looks nothing like a non-staff elder. Rather, it looks like a bivocational church planter being partially supported by a planting church, taking no salary from the new church while it is getting started, and partially supporting himself by his own labors.
Second, Paul made it clear that his not taking a salary from the Corinthians was of Paul's own choosing and was anomalous. If it were important to the health of a New Testament church to have non-staff elders, this would be the perfect point for Paul to make it.
But rather than giving us any case for unpaid, non-staff elders (which we also can find nowhere else in the New Testament), Paul instead does the opposite in two separate epistles to two different churches: He says that in spite of what he has done churches should pay elders.
Third, we never read that Paul ever served as an non-staff elder in the company of staff elders. When Paul was unpaid, as far as we know, all of the elders were unpaid by the fledgling congregation. Paul appears to be the LEAD elder (if an elder at all).
So, to summarize the first point, the only New Testament example anyone can give for this notion of a "non-staff elder" never served in any scenario that looks at all like an IT director in the local school district who is also a volunteer elder at his local church.
(2) Paul's case for the payment of all elders was (a) exegetical in nature, from Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7, (b) repeated in two different epistles to two different churches, and (c) quite forceful in 1 Corinthians 9. Paul cared about this.
He taught us that the payment of elders can be unequal and should be based upon their ruling well and their showing diligence in preaching and teaching (1 Tim 5:17) and that financial support is the elder's right (1 Cor 9:12).
So, alongside the above-demonstrated fact that Paul never served in any way that looks like a present-day non-staff elder, we also find that Paul took every opportunity in his teaching to teach the principle of paying elders and never taught any church not to pay its elders.
A final note: If your church is going through a tough financial time, I'm not trying to pile on. God bless you. I am not writing against CIRCUMSTANTIAL non-payment of elders.
But if you think that the only way to have a healthy church is to make sure that you have some elders in your congregation who are paid staff members and then some other elders who are volunteer and non-staff, then I'm just saying that's not in the Bible and I'm against it.
