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Pastoral Hierarchy: Is there a prescriptive or descriptive case for an order among elders/pastors?
Ever heard the terms senior pastor, youth pastor, assistant pastor, college and career pastor? If you have heard of these terms, were they of equal pay and authority? Was one of them over the others?
How about among those who have some form of lay/paid elders in their local church. Are they all of equal authority? Are some more authoritative than others or do they all get one equal vote when decisions are made? Ever wondered why?
Before covering some of the basic scriptural texts addressing this issue so comments are needed.
First, some use the above terms simply in a pragmatic way. Allow me to elaborate. A church may reach a size where either the one pastor or the congregation feels that more help is needed. They therefore "call" another individual to fill/serve in another "pastoral" position. Well, you can't just call them both pastor. So one becomes the senior pastor and the next what is called his assistant. If given an age category perhaps youth, college/career or senior citizen pastor.
So in essence, they actually have a "plurality" of elders within their local church, however in this case they both are normally "on staff" or "paid" elders as opposed to a "lay" elder who has a full/part-time job to help pay the bills (it must be noted that in some churches even the senior pastor is technically a "lay" pastor since he works a full/part-time job to meet his family's financial needs). Normally, but not always the second or third pastors are also ordained by the local church (but not always). Or add in another variable his wife works a full/part-time job so that he can pastor a local church (I'm sure there is a broad array of views on this one, including paying the "hubbies" way through seminary).
Second, some use the above terms as part of a church hierarchy. This means that some church leaders are actually in a position above other church leaders not part of their local congregation. This means that leaders outside of that local church (or a group of them) can make decisions that are then placed upon other local churches. This is no small matter. Sometimes the group outside of the local church actually owns the building the people are meeting. Think of the consequences of this. If the local church does not submit to or obey the rules/laws/decrees of the higher governing body they can and have actually lose their church (sometimes pastor/elders have been removed from their pulpits). We will have to address the one main text for this concept in a later thread (just for a hint: try reading Acts 15 and think in prescriptive/descriptive terms for local churches today). Many entire denominations function within this structure (note your KJV still retains the church structure of "bishops" and "elders").
Third, some simply have a combination of the above two positions, But is there any biblical precedent either descriptively or prescriptively to have some church leaders more authoritative than others, both of which are identified as "elders" or "pastors."
There are mainly two ways in which this question is answered. You decide whether the texts are actually teaching the relationship of pastors to other pastors in the same local church. Or on the other hand, are we looking for any hierarchy found in scripture and using it for justification? Is this being descriptive, prescriptive or neither one?
First, is the relationship among the twelve apostles. From this concept, two items are extrapolated. Peter always appears first in the listing of the twelve. This is determined to mean he is more authoritative creating an ecclesiastical hierarchy. Within this grouping Peter, Andrew, James, and John appear together at the top of the list (Mt 10). Acts 1 keeps the top four but changes around the order "Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew." Unfortunately, the listing breaks down for the mount of transfiguration (Mt 17), Andrew is nowhere to be found. So this position has to rely entirely upon the listing of the twelve exclusively or simply that Peter appears first each time or that he answers first on a regular basis (Mt 16). If I'm not mistaken, didn't Rome do this already with him?
Second, as has been discussed in an earlier thread in this series 1 Timothy 5:17-18 is a key text in this issue. Do some elders teach and other elders rule? Do all elders rule and some teach? Or is it the same elders doing the ruling and teaching? Is it the grammar of the passage that actually produces a pastoral hierarchy or are there outside factors? You make the decision.
Comments encouraged. Hope this helps anyone in these areas.
I have tried to accurately represent each position through probably not every possible caveat.
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