Note: The following is part three of a three-part journal discussing and critiquing the rise of elder-rule polity in Baptist churches. Read part one here, part two here, or read the entire article here.
Rethinking the Scriptural Case for Elder Rule
The modern defense of elder rule typically begins with the assertion that Scripture assigns governing authority to elders rather than to the congregation. Central to this claim is the interpretation of a small number of New Testament texts — particularly 1 Timothy 5:17 — which are said to establish a class of elders whose primary function is governance rather than teaching.
Yet this conclusion depends upon an interpretive move the text itself does not require.
When Paul writes, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching,” the argument for two distinct categories of elder turns on the word especially. Elder-rule proponents commonly read the phrase as delineating a subgroup — ruling elders who govern, and teaching elders who preach.
The Greek term translated “especially” (μάλιστα, malista), however, does not function as a divider but as an intensifier. It highlights a subset within a single group based on degree of labor, not difference of office. Paul is not distinguishing between elders who teach and those who do not, but emphasizing those whose work in preaching and teaching is particularly demanding and therefore deserving of recognition in the form of material provision.
Read plainly, the verse affirms that elders who lead faithfully are worthy of honor — with special attention given to those whose vocational labor in the Word is most extensive. Nothing in the grammar requires or even suggests a second, non-teaching class of elder. The distinction is one of effort and emphasis, not authority. As Robert Wring notes, the Greek term μάλιστα “adds energy to the assertion” and denotes “a distinction of service and not one of rank.”1
This reading accords with historical Baptist practice2 and the broader witness of the New Testament. In every passage where elders are described, doctrinal competence is essential. Elders must be “apt to teach,” able to exhort in sound doctrine, and capable of refuting error. No provision exists for elders whose authority lies primarily in administration, management, or organizational oversight apart from teaching.
The nature of elder “rule” must therefore be understood accordingly. Scripture does not present elders as executives directing institutional affairs, but as stewards of doctrinal fidelity. Their authority is exercised through discernment — judging what conforms to the Word of God and guarding the church against false teaching. Elders rule in the same way a judge rules on law, or a referee rules on conformity to the rules of the game: by applying an external standard, not by generating authority from office alone.
For this reason, the elder office is inseparable from the public ministry of the Word. While many believers may teach in various settings, the teaching that binds the conscience of the church occurs in the gathered assembly.3 It is this corporate instruction — preaching and authoritative exposition — that Scripture associates uniquely with eldership. Teaching divorced from the pulpit is insufficient to define the office; ordination recognizes responsibility for the church’s doctrine as a whole.
When churches therefore ordain men whose primary responsibilities are administrative or operational, the office itself is distorted. Roles such as financial oversight, organizational management, or facilities supervision may be vital to the health of a congregation, but they carry no uniquely doctrinal burden. They do not require ordination, because they do not entail responsibility for guarding the faith once delivered to the saints.
The consequences of such expansion are significant. When eldership is detached from preaching, doctrinal accountability becomes diffused. Teaching authority no longer corresponds to teaching responsibility. The congregation cannot easily discern who bears final responsibility for theological instruction, and the elder office becomes a status marker rather than a defined stewardship.
The New Testament presents a more coherent vision. Elders are pastors. Pastors are teachers. Their authority flows from the Word they proclaim, and their oversight consists in ensuring that the life of the church conforms to that Word. Governance arises not from institutional control but from doctrinal clarity exercised openly before the congregation.
In this light, the question confronting Baptist churches is not merely whether elders should rule, but whether eldership itself has been redefined. When ordination is severed from the public ministry of teaching, the church does not gain protection — it loses the very means by which Christ governs His people.
Even proponents of elder governance have at times articulated a more restrained understanding of pastoral authority. John MacArthur, when asked what authority a pastor holds over the lives of congregants, answered simply: “None. No authority.”4 His point was not to deny leadership, but to locate authority exclusively in the Word of God faithfully taught. A pastor possesses no intrinsic power to bind conscience; his authority exists only insofar as Scripture speaks through him.
Yet if pastoral authority — as Bavnick argued — is truly ministerial rather than magisterial,5 it cannot become something different by crossing an institutional threshold. The church is not an entity separate from its members, nor does Scripture recognize distinct spheres of obedience within the Christian life. The same Word governs believers privately and corporately alike. What changes in the gathered church is not the nature of authority, but the weight of accountability borne by those who teach.
When pastoral authority is reconceived as institutional power rather than declarative truth, it ceases to be Protestant — and begins to resemble the very clericalism the Reformation rejected.
Why This Model Feels Biblical
The persistence of elder-led governance in Baptist churches cannot be explained merely by institutional momentum or cultural drift. For many pastors and congregations, the model feels deeply biblical. Scripture speaks frequently of elders. The language of shepherding, oversight, and submission resonates with believers who rightly desire leadership marked by seriousness and clarity.
Moreover, the model promises stability in an age of volatility. As Western culture grows increasingly hostile to Christian conviction, concentrated leadership appears safer than shared authority. Trained pastors seem better equipped to withstand cultural pressure than congregations perceived as theologically uneven or emotionally reactive. In this context, elder-led structures are often embraced not as power grabs, but as safeguards.
The language used to describe the model further reinforces its plausibility. Terms such as elder plurality, shared leadership, and biblical oversight evoke images of humility rather than hierarchy. In practice, however, these phrases often conceal an important shift: authority is no longer exercised publicly through the congregation, but privately through leadership consensus.
The appeal is understandable. Congregationalism requires patience, catechesis, and trust in the Spirit’s work among ordinary believers. Elder governance offers speed, efficiency, and decisiveness. Yet what feels orderly is not always what Scripture prescribes — and what feels protective may quietly displace responsibility rather than preserve it.
What Happens When Guardrails Disappear
When congregational authority erodes, the effects are rarely immediate. Churches often continue to function smoothly for years. Teaching may remain sound. Attendance may grow. Ministries may flourish. The danger lies not in chaos, but in quiet redefinition.
Without defined congregational authority, accountability becomes internalized. Leaders increasingly answer primarily to one another, and disagreement is managed relationally rather than adjudicated ecclesially. Over time, governance shifts from shared discernment to professional consensus.
This shift becomes most visible in how church discipline is understood and taught. In many contemporary catechisms, membership materials, and discipleship curricula, Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 18 is subtly altered. Where Scripture commands, “tell it to the church,” the language is frequently rephrased — either overtly or by implication — as, “take it to the elders.”6
The change is often presented as practical or pastoral, yet its implications are profound. Christ did not assign final disciplinary authority to a group of leaders, but to the assembled congregation itself. The term He uses — ekklesia — refers not to an office or committee, but to the gathered body.
The New Testament confirms this reading. When Paul applies Jesus’ teaching in 1 Corinthians 5, he does not instruct the elders to act on behalf of the church. Instead, he addresses the congregation directly: “When you are assembled… remove the wicked man from among you” (1 Cor. 5:4). Paul’s second letter makes it clear that discipline of the wicked man was the decision of “the majority” (2 Cor. 2:6). Discipline is portrayed not as a private ruling issued by leadership, but as a corporate act of obedience carried out under Christ’s authority.
To replace “the church” with “the elders” is therefore not a neutral paraphrase. It relocates authority, alters responsibility, and transforms congregational discipline into elder adjudication. What Scripture assigns to the whole body becomes the exclusive domain of leadership.
The consequences extend beyond discipline itself. When such matters are resolved privately among leaders, the congregation is denied the opportunity to witness repentance, confirm obstinacy, or learn through shared obedience. Accountability becomes invisible, restoration becomes procedural, and one of the church’s most formative practices is quietly lost.
In this way, congregational authority rarely disappears through formal decision. It erodes through catechesis. What the church is taught to do — and not do — gradually reshapes what it believes itself to be.
The Problem of Self-Authorization
One of the more troubling features of this transition is the logic by which it often occurs. Pastors may come to believe that Scripture assigns governing authority to elders and then proceed to exercise that authority in order to restructure the church accordingly. Yet this creates a fundamental problem: authority is being exercised before it has been granted.
In congregational churches, final earthly authority resides with the gathered body under Christ. Leaders, therefore, cannot unilaterally redefine governance — formally or in practice — without contradicting the very structure under which they were called. To act as though elder authority already exists in order to compel the church to formally recognize it is not reform, but self-authorization.
The argument becomes circular. Authority is claimed because Scripture is said to grant it, and Scripture is interpreted as granting it because the authority is already being exercised. In effect, leaders appeal to an authority they do not yet possess in order to require the congregation to bestow it upon them.
This logic would be impermissible in any other sphere. Civil officials cannot rewrite constitutions by invoking powers not yet granted. Corporate boards cannot expand their jurisdiction by executive decree. Neither can pastors restructure the locus of church authority by acting as though the outcome were already settled.
Whatever one concludes about elder governance as a theological question, it cannot be established through unilateral action. Authority in Christ’s church is not seized, assumed, or retroactively justified. It is recognized — by the Body to whom Christ has entrusted it.
Plurality Is Not Accountability
The most common response to concerns about self-authorization is the appeal to plurality. Pastors insist that authority is not being exercised unilaterally because decisions are made together. Elders, it is said, hold one another accountable.
Yet mutual agreement is not the same thing as accountability. Accountability requires the possibility of correction by someone who does not share the same authority. A group cannot meaningfully hold itself accountable if every question of legitimacy is resolved internally.
Plurality may restrain excess, but it cannot generate authority. Ten men cannot confer upon themselves what one man lacks. Authority does not arise from consensus among leaders, but from recognition by those they are called to serve.
When elders derive authority from one another, the system becomes closed. There is no external court of appeal, no mechanism by which the church may correct its leaders, and no practical distinction between accountability and mutual affirmation. What is described as shared oversight is, in fact, collective self-authorization.
Scripture does not present church authority as circulating horizontally among leaders. It flows downward from Christ through His Word and is recognized by the congregation that submits to it. Elders lead by teaching and persuasion; the church governs by discernment and obedience.
For this reason, plurality without congregational authority does not solve the problem of unilateral rule — it merely distributes it. Authority remains unaccountable not because it is concentrated in one man, but because it is no longer answerable to the body Christ has charged with final earthly responsibility.
When Calling Replaces Recognition
Closely related to this problem is the way pastoral “calling” is sometimes invoked to justify authority apart from congregational recognition. Elders may speak confidently of having prayed together and discerning that “God has called this man to be an elder here.” While such language is often sincere, it introduces a dangerous shift in how authority is established.
In Scripture, calling is never self-authenticating. A man may be inwardly compelled toward ministry, but that calling becomes authoritative only when it is recognized by the church.7 Spiritual conviction alone does not confer office. Authority arises not from private certainty, but from public confirmation. This is not to deny the reality of internal calling, but to insist that calling alone cannot establish corporate authority.
When leaders appeal to their shared sense of divine leading as justification for ordination or governance, the congregation is placed in an impossible position. The claim cannot be examined, weighed, or corrected. To disagree appears not merely administrative, but spiritual — a resistance not to men, but to God Himself.
This epistemology mirrors the very logic Protestants have long rejected in charismatic and authoritarian movements: unfalsifiable spiritual impressions invoked as binding authority. The vocabulary differs, but the mechanism is the same. What cannot be tested cannot be governed.
The New Testament offers a different pattern. God’s will for His church is revealed through visible means — Scripture proclaimed, qualifications examined, character observed, and leaders recognized openly by the body. Where recognition is replaced by revelation, authority ceases to be accountable. And where authority is no longer accountable, it no longer resembles the governance Christ ordained for His church.
The Coming Identity Crisis
Baptist churches now face a question they can no longer postpone: What does it mean to be Baptist?
If congregational authority is optional, if ordination is detached from teaching, and if governance is functionally indistinguishable from elder-rule traditions, the term ceases to describe a theological identity and becomes merely historical branding.
This ambiguity cannot endure indefinitely. Churches will either recover the convictions that once defined their polity — calling Spirit-filled sons and daughters of God to do the work of ministry under the equipping of ordained brothers — or gradually abandon the distinctives that once shaped their common life. What cannot continue is a posture of inherited identity without inherited practice, at least not if spiritual maturity and shared responsibility are expected to flourish.
The issue is not denominational loyalty, but theological honesty. Churches must eventually decide whether congregationalism is a conviction worth preserving or an inconvenience to be managed.
A Call for Honesty, Not Uniformity
This argument is not a plea for uniform structures across Christ’s church. Faithful congregations have long differed in polity while remaining united in the gospel. Presbyterian churches need not become Baptist, nor must Baptists adopt episcopal forms.
What Scripture does require is truthfulness.
Pastors should speak plainly about what they believe regarding authority before accepting a call. Congregations should know whether their leaders intend to steward inherited convictions or to propose change. When structural reform becomes necessary, it must occur openly — through patient instruction, transparent deliberation, and the informed consent of the church — not gradually, quietly, or by default.
Churches must not find themselves living in contradiction to their stated convictions. Faithfulness is not measured by whether procedures can be amended after the fact, but by whether belief and practice remain aligned in the present. Integrity requires that leaders submit themselves to the church’s confessed commitments even as they seek to persuade the church concerning them.
The future health of Christ’s church does not depend upon efficiency, influence, or innovation, but upon clarity. Christ governs His people not through ambiguity, but through truth. Churches need not fear disagreement when it is handled honestly, nor decline when authority is exercised visibly and accountably.
The path forward is not nostalgia, reaction, or institutional preservation for its own sake. It is faithfulness — expressed through structures that align conviction with practice and words with deeds.
If Baptist churches are to remain Baptist, they must once again believe that congregational authority is not a liability to be contained, but a gift entrusted by Christ Himself to His gathered people.
- Robert A. Wring, “Elder Rule and Southern Baptist Church Polity,” Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 3, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 195–196. ↩︎
- J. L. Dagg, Manual of Church Order (Charleston: Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1858), 95–101. ↩︎
- James Bannerman, The Church of Christ, 2 vols. (1868; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2015), 1:322–326. ↩︎
- John MacArthur, “John MacArthur on a Pastor’s Authority,” Grace to You, August 29, 2017, video, 00:23, posted by Grace to You, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X65vspiZLLA. ↩︎
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 353–355. ↩︎
- Leeman, Church Discipline, 44–45. ↩︎
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 4.3.10. ↩︎
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David Morrill is a writer and editor whose work focuses on ecclesiology, church governance, and contemporary evangelical movements. He is the founder and publisher of the Protestia Network and editor of Reformation Journal. A U.S. Army veteran with twenty-five years of service, he is currently completing a Master of Arts in Worship Music at Liberty University. He lives in Colorado with his wife and two sons and is a member of a Southern Baptist church.
