Note: The following is part two of a three-part journal discussing and critiquing the rise of elder-rule polity in Baptist churches. Read part one here, part three here, or read the entire article here.
The Rise of the Presbygational Church
The erosion of congregational authority did not occur in a vacuum. It was shaped by a broader movement within evangelicalism that sought greater seriousness, theological depth, and biblical clarity in church leadership. In many respects, this movement arose as a corrective — a reaction against the excesses of seeker-sensitive pragmatism, celebrity-driven ministry, and the managerial church-growth model that dominated the late twentieth century.
During the 1970s and 1980s, a renewed interest in the New Testament language of elders, overseers, and shepherds prompted many evangelicals to reexamine long-standing assumptions about pastoral leadership. Influential works such as Alexander Strauch’s Biblical Eldership argued persuasively that Scripture envisioned a plurality of elders rather than a solitary pastor exercising unchecked authority.1 For many churches weary of personality-driven leadership and pastoral isolation, the call to shared oversight seemed not only biblical but urgently needed.
At the same time, prominent evangelical ministries operating within elder-rule structures demonstrated remarkable doctrinal stability and long-term faithfulness. John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church, perhaps the most influential example, modeled a robust commitment to expository preaching, biblical inerrancy, church discipline, and theological seriousness within an autonomous local-church framework governed by elders. For many Baptists, the visible fruit of such ministries suggested that elder governance was not merely compatible with conservative theology, but perhaps even conducive to it.
These influences converged in the late 1990s and early 2000s alongside the rise of the so-called Young, Restless, and Reformed movement. Conferences, publishing platforms, and church-planting networks — including Acts 29 — emphasized elder plurality, strong pastoral leadership, and a renewed focus on ecclesiology shaped by Reformed theology.2 A generation of pastors was trained to see congregationalism as a historical artifact and elder-led governance as a biblical recovery.3
Alongside these developments, ministries such as 9Marks sought to recover ecclesiological seriousness within broadly Baptist contexts. Unlike many contemporary networks, 9Marks has consistently affirmed congregational authority, famously summarizing its position with the dictum, “Elders lead; congregations rule.” Its emphasis on regenerate church membership, meaningful discipline, and pastoral plurality represented a genuine attempt to restore biblical church order rather than replace it.4
At the same time, 9Marks’ advocacy of congregational authority struggled to carry persuasive weight among more conservative proponents of elder governance. As broader evangelical discourse became increasingly shaped by the language of racial reconciliation and related cultural frameworks, some prominent congregational churches appeared — fairly or not — to many observers to be susceptible to the ideological pressures of the moment. For critics already wary of congregational decision-making, this reinforced the perception that authority vested in the Body left churches vulnerable to cultural influence.
In this environment, elder rule came to be viewed not merely as a theological preference, but as a form of insulation — a means of protecting institutional stability by concentrating authority in trained leaders rather than in congregations perceived as easily swayed. Whether that diagnosis was accurate is a separate question. What matters is that the association of congregationalism with cultural accommodation, however tenuous, further diminished its credibility within conservative Reformed circles and accelerated the turn toward centralized governance.
While organizations like 9Marks defended congregational authority clearly in principle, the practical mechanics of congregational governance often received less attention. In churches already weakened by decades of minimal polity formation, the renewed focus on elder plurality and pastoral leadership was sometimes adopted more readily than the slower, more demanding work of congregational catechesis. As a result, structures emphasizing leadership visibility often advanced more quickly than those preserving congregational authority.
As Baptist churches absorbed these various influences, a crucial distinction was frequently overlooked. Presbyterian churches that practiced elder rule did so within systems of graded courts, external accountability, and formal processes of appeal. Elder authority was never absolute, nor confined to the local session alone. By contrast, Baptist churches adopting elder governance retained their historic autonomy while importing only the internal authority structure of presbyterian polity.
The result was a hybrid model — neither fully Baptist nor truly Presbyterian — in which local elders exercised final authority without external oversight and without meaningful congregational governance. Plurality replaced accountability, and dispositional affirmation replaced palpable authority. What emerged was not classical elder rule, but something new: a centralized leadership structure operating within an autonomous congregation, bounded neither by congregational checks nor by presbyterian courts.
This “presbygational” model proved attractive precisely because it appeared to offer the best of both worlds. It promised shared leadership without denominational control, theological seriousness without congregational conflict, and stability without the inefficiencies of democratic process. In practice, however, it subtly redefined the nature of authority within the local church. Governance became internal, self-perpetuating, and increasingly disconnected from the gathered body Christ had charged with final responsibility. And sadly, it left leaving the church as the only means by which Spirit-filled believers could reliably adjudicate their concerns.
Importantly, this shift was not driven by ill intent. Many pastors embraced elder-led structures out of sincere desire for faithfulness, protection, and clarity. But good intentions cannot substitute for careful ecclesiology. As Baptist churches adopted the language and assumptions of elder governance without its historic guardrails, they unknowingly exchanged one set of risks for another — trading congregational disorder for centralized authority without meaningful appeal.
The Privatization of Ecclesial Disagreement
Alongside these structural changes has emerged a subtle but consequential shift in how disagreement is handled within the church. Where Baptist congregationalism once assumed defined, open processes by which members could raise concerns and the body could deliberate together, many churches now rely almost exclusively on informal pastoral reassurance. Members are told that they “have a voice,” that leadership is “always listening,” and that questions or objections are welcomed — yet the means by which those concerns are addressed has quietly changed.
Increasingly, disagreement is redirected away from the gathered church and into private conversation. Concerns that once would have been examined openly are now met with a familiar refrain: “Let’s talk about it over coffee.” While often well-intentioned, this practice functions to remove the matter from congregational visibility. The discussion becomes relational rather than ecclesial, personal rather than corporate, and the rest of the body is excluded from witnessing either correction or clarification.
The consequence is not merely procedural but formative. When disagreements are resolved privately, the congregation is denied the opportunity to be instructed — whether by seeing leaders persuaded and adjust, or by watching faithful shepherds patiently explain why a concern is misplaced. In either case, the body is deprived of edification. Over time, this pattern produces a church in which accountability exists only in theory, and authority is never meaningfully tested in public.
Such dynamics also create an environment in which pastoral fallibility is affirmed rhetorically but never demonstrated visibly. Leaders may speak openly of their imperfections, yet the structures of church life provide no occasion for public repentance, correction, or reconsideration. In practice, the pastor is never wrong — not because he is infallible, but because the mechanisms by which error could be acknowledged have been removed. What remains is not transparency, but reputation management; not shepherding through truth, but the careful containment of dissent. And sadly, congregations too often learn of metastasizing issues within their church after they’ve passed the point of no return and their pastor has resigned.
Private Counsel and Public Responsibility
Appeals to private reconciliation are often raised in defense of these practices, most commonly by reference to Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 18. Yet the passage itself does not envision perpetual privacy. Private confrontation is the first step of accountability, not its terminus. When matters bear upon the doctrine, direction, or governance of the church, the error is not merely a personal sin (Matt. 18:15), and the biblical pattern assumes eventual visibility — not to shame individuals, but to preserve truth and communal responsibility.
Matthew 18 addresses personal sin between brothers; it does not provide a framework for resolving questions of teaching, leadership, or institutional authority behind closed doors. To apply it indiscriminately to every disagreement is to collapse moral categories Scripture itself keeps distinct. What begins as private counsel must not become a mechanism by which the church is prevented from knowing, discerning, and learning together.
Nor can appeals to church size resolve the issue. Growth may require delegation of process, but it cannot nullify the congregation’s responsibility to govern.5 If a church becomes too large to exercise meaningful congregational authority, the problem is not size but structure. Biblical responsibility does not diminish with attendance; it demands careful preservation.
When concerns that affect the whole body are consistently resolved away from the body, congregational authority exists only as an abstraction. The church may be assured that it has a voice, but it no longer possesses a forum. Over time, authority migrates from the gathered congregation to the private discretion of leaders — not by declaration, but by default.
Reformed Theology and Unexamined Ecclesiology
The spread of elder-led governance within Baptist churches also coincided with a renewed interest in Reformed theology among younger pastors. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, many congregations rediscovered the doctrines of grace as an antidote to theological shallowness, pragmatism, and revivalistic excess. This recovery represented not a departure from Baptist tradition, but a return to it. Historically, many of the earliest Baptists were unapologetically Reformed in their soteriology while remaining firmly congregational in church polity.6 7 8 9
Yet while theological depth was recovered intentionally, ecclesiology was often assumed rather than examined. For many pastors shaped within broadly evangelical and Reformed-leaning institutions — including Dallas Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell, The Master’s Seminary, and others — formal instruction in Baptist polity was minimal. Questions of church governance were frequently treated as secondary matters of wisdom or context rather than as theological convictions requiring careful stewardship.
At the same time, influential ministry networks and publishing platforms such as Acts 29, The Gospel Coalition, and Redeemer City to City fostered a shared Reformed evangelical culture that transcended denominational lines. These spaces prioritized doctrinal fidelity, expositional preaching, and missional engagement — all laudable aims — but rarely distinguished between Reformed theology as a system of belief and Presbyterian polity as a system of governance. As a result, elder plurality was often received as part of the broader Reformed ministerial imagination rather than as a distinct ecclesiological commitment requiring congregational assent.
In this environment, many Baptist churches became more theologically Reformed without becoming more ecclesiologically Baptist. The doctrines of grace were embraced with clarity, while the congregational structures historically designed to protect those doctrines were left underdeveloped or quietly reconfigured. What emerged was not a rejection of Baptist identity, but an incomplete recovery of it — one in which soteriology was taught carefully, and polity was inherited casually.
This convergence helps explain why elder governance came to feel not merely permissible, but natural. Authority structures were adopted not through theological argument so much as familiarity, shaped by the dominant voices within the Reformed evangelical ecosystem. Congregationalism, where acknowledged at all, was often viewed as procedural rather than principled — a remnant of history rather than a theological safeguard bound to the very doctrines being recovered.
Ecclesiastical Integrity
Beneath these structural developments lies a more fundamental ethical question — one that cannot be resolved merely by appeals to efficiency or effectiveness. Scripture requires truthfulness not only in speech, but in intent. “Let your ‘yes’ be yes,” Christ commands, “and your ‘no’ be no.” That standard applies with particular weight to those entrusted with spiritual authority.
It is therefore difficult to reconcile pastoral integrity with the practice of accepting leadership positions in churches whose governing convictions one fundamentally rejects. Disagreement with Baptist polity is not sinful; many faithful churches operate under different structures. What is troubling is the willingness to assume office within a congregation while privately believing its defining commitments to be misguided, temporary, or in need of quiet transformation.
When pastors enter Baptist churches intending to reshape their polity rather than steward it, the result is not reformation but displacement. Congregations believe they are calling men to lead within a shared framework, while leaders operate with a different understanding altogether. Such arrangements depend upon ambiguity and, ironically, congregational ignorance of their own church’s commitments. The combination of ecclesiastic ambiguity and congregational ignorance is a disqualifyingly unstable foundation on which to build the pastoral role of congregational enlightenment.
Ecclesiology is not incidental to pastoral ministry. It defines where authority resides, how correction occurs, and who ultimately bears responsibility before Christ. To accept a call while withholding honest agreement on these matters is not theological flexibility; it is a failure of candor. Churches deserve shepherds who will say plainly what they believe — and pastors deserve congregations that know exactly what they are affirming.
In this respect, this quiet transformation of church polity has mirrored the preceding rise of the church growth movement, in which pragmatic marketing methods were introduced under the banner of renewal but functioned instead to standardize churches according to external models. When theological commitments are treated as malleable branding rather than binding convictions, local churches cease to be shepherded and begin to be managed.
- Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Church, rev. ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 1995). ↩︎
- See Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Church (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth, 1995); John F. MacArthur Jr., The Master’s Plan for the Church (Chicago: Moody Press, 1991); Acts 29 Network, “Doctrinal Distinctives,” https://www.acts29.com/about-us/distinctives/; Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005). ↩︎
- Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman, Rediscover Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 145–152. ↩︎
- Mark Dever, Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 138–141. ↩︎
- Jonathan Leeman, Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 44–45. ↩︎
- Gordon L. Belyea, “Origins of the Particular Baptists,” Themelios 32, no. 3 (2007): see abstract and discussion describing them as “independent Calvinistic believers” and “rather more Congregationalist.” ↩︎
- The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 26, pars. 7–9, especially the statements that each gathered church has “all that power and authority” needful for worship and discipline, that officers are “chosen and set apart by the church,” and that elders are chosen by the “common suffrage of the church itself.” ↩︎
- Thomas J. Nettles, By His Grace and for His Glory (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986), 51–60. ↩︎
- James Leo Garrett Jr., Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 321–326. ↩︎
This article continues in Part III with “Rethinking the Scriptural Case for Elder Rule.”
