Savedthroughfaith.com

Tweet I’m one of the elders among our church. (You can use the term “pastor” if you prefer it. We don’t have a separate group of pastors and elders.) However, I’m not employed by the church. None of our elders are employed by the church. In fact, we don’t pay any kind of staff at all. The absence of the employee/employer relationship simplifies and clarifies many relational aspects of the church. For...

TweetShareI’ve written several posts about elders (pastors, if you prefer) before, but I also like to link to other posts that people write on the subject. In the last few days, a couple of people have written about the importance of church recognizing/appointing multiple elders/pastors. (By the way, if one person is the “head elder” or “senior pastor” such that all others “answer” to him, then I would no...

My friend Eric at “A Pilgrim’s Progress” has gone off the deep end with his post “What Do I Think of the Senior Pastor.” If you remember, Eric is the former vocational pastor (but continuing “pastor”) who voluntarily left his paid church position and is now working in manufacturing. But, has Eric had a change of heart? I mean, over the last few months he has been writing about “house church.” ...

Felicity at “Simply Church” continues writing about leadership from a simple/organic church perspective in her post “What about elders and deacons?” Given our recent discussions on my blog (specifically my post “Ministers in Scripture“), I thought my readers might be interested in Felicity’s post as well. She begins with this: The problem with words is that they change in meaning over the years. I would ...

My good friend Eric at “A Pilgrim’s Progress” continues his string of excellent blog posts with one called “Should Churches Have Pastors? Why?” It’s a short post, and it primarily consists of Eric asking the two questions from the title: 1) Should churches have pastors? and 2) Why? I told Eric in the comments that I thought this was a very good pair of questions and that I wanted to think about them before I an...

Andy at “aBowden Blog” wrote a very good article called “Brothers, We Are Not Apostles.” In the post, Andy examines a common, modern (and perhaps even old) hermeneutic: assigning functions and characteristics of apostles in Scripture to elders/pastors today? Is this is a valid way to interpret Scripture? Andy writes: Perhaps, then, we are wrong in assuming Apostolic functions are transferred to pastors and elders. What wo...

Chris at “The Amplified Life” (Isn’t that a great blog title?) has written a very good article called “Neil Cole on Dysfunctional Leadership.” He quotes from Cole’s book Organic Leadership, and the quote is very good. But, I also appreciate Chris’ comments on the quote. Chris writes: According to Cole leaders have enabled this and now we wonder how we got here. We can blame the culture, and many leaders o...

Arthur at “The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia” has a problem. You see, in his latest post “Be Like Bob,” Arthur describes a church leader named Bob who helps a church begin serve God and serve others for themselves. According to Arthur, the church begins to take part in living the gospel (that’s what it is, by the way), that soon Bob doesn’t do everything anymore, and he can work and support his family and...

As many of my regular readers know, I do not believe that it is scriptural to pay a salary to a pastor/elder (or other localized Christian) because of their position in the church. (I do believe that sharing or honoring in response to anyone’s teaching, leading, or service is appropriate at times.) When I wrote a series of posts on this topic, someone asked about a particular phrase in Acts 20. I wrote the post “By working like this&#...

Felicity at “Simply Church” is working through a series on leaders.The series has been very good so far. She is asking good questions that believers/churches should consider as they seek to recognize/appoint/follow leaders. One of her posts asks “What do we expect of our leaders?” Since Rick recently requested (in a comment) that I continue writing about my understanding of leadership among the church (and the implications...