Note: The following is part one of a three-part journal discussing and critiquing the rise of elder-rule polity in Baptist churches. Read part two here, part three here, or read the entire article here.
Abstract
In recent decades, many Baptist churches have experienced a quiet shift away from historic congregational polity toward centralized elder governance. Often motivated by theological seriousness and a desire for institutional stability, this transition has frequently occurred without formal congregational assent or careful examination of Baptist ecclesiology. This article argues that historic Baptist congregationalism was not a pragmatic preference but a theological conviction grounded in regenerate church membership, the authority of Scripture, and the responsibility of the gathered assembly. By tracing the historical development of Baptist polity, examining the rise of hybrid “presbygational” governance models, and reassessing the biblical arguments commonly advanced in support of elder rule, this study contends that the erosion of congregational authority represents not reform but structural displacement. Recovering Baptist ecclesiology, it concludes, requires renewed clarity regarding authority, office, and accountability within the local church.
Few Baptist churches have voted to abandon congregationalism. There has been no widespread rebellion against historic polity, no formal repudiation of the principles that once distinguished Baptist life. And yet, across much of the evangelical landscape, congregational authority has quietly receded. In many churches, the language remains. Members still “affirm,” churches still hold “votes,” and while “Baptist” may remain on official documents, it has quietly disappeared from many church websites — and from the operational substance of church life itself. Authority has shifted, often gradually and unintentionally, from the gathered congregation to a centralized leadership structure few churches ever explicitly chose.
This transition has not been driven primarily by doctrinal compromise. Many of the churches experiencing it remain confessionally orthodox, committed to the authority of Scripture, and deeply serious about the gospel. Nor has it been the product of malicious intent. In most cases, faithful pastors and elders have sought stability, efficiency, and protection for their churches in an increasingly fractured cultural moment. What has changed is not belief, but architecture — the underlying structure through which authority is exercised and accountability enforced.
Historically, Baptist churches located final earthly authority not in pastors, committees, or councils, but in the gathered body under Christ. Congregational governance was not a concession to democracy, nor a relic of frontier individualism; it was a theological conviction rooted in regenerate church membership and the belief that Christ governs His church through the whole assembly. Pastors were to lead, teach, and shepherd — but the ultimate responsibility to guard doctrine, examine and ordain leaders, and exercise discipline belonged to the church herself.
Over the past two decades, however, many Baptist congregations have adopted a hybrid form of governance often described as “elder-led and congregationally affirmed.” Drawing heavily from Reformed evangelical models, this approach has emphasized plural visible leadership while retaining the vocabulary of congregational authority. The result has been a structure that feels familiar and biblical, yet differs significantly from both historic Baptist congregationalism and classical Presbyterian polity — a system increasingly common, rarely examined, and carrying consequences few anticipated.
What Baptists Historically Meant by Congregationalism
When Baptists speak of congregational governance, we are not describing a mere decision-making process or a preference for democracy over hierarchy. Congregationalism is not an organizational convenience but a theological conviction flowing directly from Baptist beliefs about the nature of the church itself. Because the church is understood to be a regenerate body — composed of professing believers accountable to Christ — authority necessarily resides in the gathered congregation under His lordship.
From the earliest Particular Baptist confessions through the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention, Baptists consistently affirmed that Christ governs His church not through an external hierarchy or a ruling class of clergy, but through the whole assembly acting together in submission to Scripture.1 Pastors were entrusted with teaching, shepherding, and leading the church toward faithfulness, but they did not possess independent governing authority. The final responsibility to guard doctrine, recognize officers, administer discipline, and steward the church’s life rested with the congregation itself.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon articulated this conviction plainly, insisting that “the government of the church is in the hands of the whole body of the members,”2 and rejecting the idea that even godly leaders could rule apart from congregational consent. The church, he argued, remained responsible before Christ for the actions of its officers — not the other way around.
This understanding was not uniquely Baptist. Jonathan Edwards, whose theological influence spans the entire Reformed tradition, likewise affirmed that “the power of discipline is in the church, and not in the elders alone.”3 For Edwards, a local congregation of visible saints united by covenant constituted the highest earthly authority Christ had established within the church. Elders served and led, but authority was exercised corporately through the body.
These convictions shaped Baptist practice in tangible ways. Church members examined and ordained their pastors. Matters of discipline were addressed openly and corporately. Financial decisions were debated and approved by the body. Even when pastoral leadership was strong, it remained accountable to the congregation that called it. Authority was exercised publicly, not privately; deliberation was assumed, not feared.
Over time, this structure proved remarkably resilient. Congregational governance allowed Baptist churches to correct error, remove unfaithful leaders, and recover doctrinal clarity without reliance on external courts or denominational enforcement. While it was sometimes messy and inefficient, it embodied a shared responsibility for faithfulness that prevented authority from concentrating in ways Scripture never intended. Congregationalism was not a barrier to ministry — it was one of the primary means by which Baptist churches sought to preserve it, and fundamental to why Baptist churches held fast to scripture while mainline denominations abandoned it.
How Authority Functioned in Practice
Historic Baptist congregationalism was not merely a statement of belief but a lived ecclesiology that shaped the daily life of the church. Authority was not theoretical, nor was it exercised through abstract documents or distant committees. It functioned concretely through identifiable practices that made responsibility visible and accountability unavoidable.
Pastors were called by the congregation and entrusted with the public ministry of the Word. Their authority was real and substantial — exercised through preaching, teaching, exhortation, and spiritual oversight — yet it was never autonomous. The pulpit was not a platform for personal vision, but the ordinary means by which Christ shepherded His people through Scripture. Because pastoral authority flowed from the Word, it remained accountable to the body that recognized and affirmed that calling.
For this reason, Baptist churches historically understood the elder or pastor to be a preaching office.4 While many within the church might teach in various contexts, the authoritative instruction that bound the conscience of the congregation belonged to those ordained to minister the Word publicly. They carried the doctrinal banner. The elders who led were the elders who taught; responsibility for doctrine could not be separated from responsibility for leadership. Oversight was inseparable from proclamation.
Congregational authority operated not in competition with pastoral leadership, but in cooperation with it. Members did not micromanage sermons or ministries, nor did pastors rule by decree. Instead, authority moved along clear lines of responsibility. The congregation recognized, examined, and ordained its pastors.5 The pastors instructed and led the congregation, equipping them for the ministerial duty of governance (Eph. 4:12). When disputes arose, or discipline was required, the church acted corporately — not as a rubber stamp, but as the final earthly court of appeal under Christ.
This structure fostered clarity rather than confusion. If teaching error entered the pulpit, responsibility rested with the pastors charged to guard it. If discipline was mishandled, the congregation retained authority to correct its leaders. If doctrine drifted, the members possessed both the right and the responsibility to act. Authority was never diffused so widely that no one could be held accountable, nor centralized so narrowly that correction became impossible.
Even administrative matters reflected this logic. While churches appointed treasurers, committees, and deacons to steward resources wisely, financial authority remained with the congregation itself. Budgets were presented transparently, debated openly, and approved corporately. Leaders proposed; the church disposed. Efficiency was valued, but never elevated above accountability.
Such a system was not without friction. Congregationalism required patience, maturity, and spiritual courage. It could be slow. It could be messy. It risked hurt feelings, bruised egos, and interpersonal conflict. Yet it embodied a conviction deeper than pragmatism: that Christ rules His church through the gathered body, and that no leader — however gifted — should bear authority without visibility, or responsibility without answerability.
In this way, Baptist congregationalism created a network of mutual obligation and submission (Eph. 5:21). Pastors were protected from being overworked, being isolated from faithful brothers in the pews, or the perils of unchecked power. Congregations were protected from doctrinal drift and personality-driven leadership. Authority existed — but it was always tethered to office, function, and accountability, not charisma or organizational role.
The loss of congregational authority, however, did not occur through a single decision or theological revolt. It emerged gradually, shaped by historical pressures that few churches anticipated — and by a form of faithfulness that, paradoxically, outpaced formation.
When Faithfulness Outpaced Formation
Part of the present crisis is not the result of compromise, but of conviction. Throughout the twentieth century, Baptist churches held fast to the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture while many mainline denominations surrendered those commitments under the pressures of theological liberalism. As a result, countless Christians left their denominations in search of churches that still believed the Bible. Baptist congregations became theological refuges — places where Scripture was preached plainly, and where the authority of God’s Word was treasured by both ordinary believers and ordained ministers.
Yet many who arrived came with little understanding of why Baptists ordered their churches as they did. Congregational authority was often assumed to be a matter of preference rather than principle — an organizational habit rather than a theological safeguard. In the urgency to reaffirm the truthfulness of Scripture, the ecclesiology that had historically protected Baptist churches from doctrinal drift was rarely taught, examined, or intentionally passed on. Many assumed that Baptist polity was a byproduct of American democracy rather than a theological conviction that long predated it, and therefore regarded alternative models of church governance as more sophisticated or spiritually mature.
In this way, Baptist churches were often treated as a kind of institutional “do-over” — a place to recover confidence in biblical authority while retaining assumptions about church leadership inherited from other traditions. Scripture was rightly affirmed as external, immovable, and sufficient, yet the structures designed to ensure its faithful application within the local church were frequently taken for granted. The result was a growing disconnect between what Baptists believed about the authority of the Bible and how that authority was safeguarded in practice.
Over time, men were brought into leadership who loved the Scriptures deeply but felt little responsibility to steward the Baptist inheritance they had received. Appeals to history or polity were dismissed with well-intentioned but misplaced refrains: “I don’t care what Baptists believe — I care about what the Bible says.” Such statements sounded pious, yet functioned as evasions — as though the question of whether historic Baptist practice reflected biblical conviction could be ignored. They assumed that centuries of Baptist polity emerged as incidental to Scripture rather than in conscious submission to it.
The result has been a kind of ecclesiological amnesia. Baptist churches came to be doctrinally orthodox yet structurally undefined — institutions shaped primarily by confessional minimalism rather than by a coherent theology of the church. Congregationalism, once recognized as a God-given means of accountability and self-correction, was reduced to an optional tradition easily replaced by whichever leadership model appeared most efficient, scalable, or capable of providing institutional stability.
Ironically, many of the structures now dismantled were among the very features that made Baptist churches such safe havens in the first place. Like a wall torn down without first asking why it was built, congregational authority was quietly removed in the name of biblical faithfulness — even though it had long served as one of the primary defenses against doctrinal drift, pastoral excess, and institutional capture.
- The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 26, pars. 7–9; James P. Boyce, Abstract of Principles (1858), art. 8. ↩︎
- Charles H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle: Its History and Work (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1861), 27. ↩︎
- Jonathan Edwards, An Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God, Concerning the Qualifications Requisite to a Complete Standing and Full Communion in the Visible Christian Church (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1749), 84. ↩︎
- John Gill, A Body of Practical Divinity, in The Works of John Gill, vol. 2 (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1819), bk. 3, chap. 6, “Of the Officers of the Church.” ↩︎
- Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987), see esp. pp. 210-212. ↩︎
This article continues in Part II with “The Rise of the Presbygational Church.”
