Every Christian is a priest.

PRIEST prist noun. An ordained minister of the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, or Church of England, having authority to perform certain rites and administer certain sacraments.

2. A person who performs the religious ceremonies and duties of a religion.

3. A mallet used to kill the fish one catches when angling.

[Priestlike 'pris(t).laɪk adjective, priestly 'pris(t).li adjective.]

I pulled this definition out of the dictionary. I hadn’t heard definition #3 before; I included it ’cause it amuses me.

Y’notice it either says a priest is an ordained minister of a liturgical church, or implies it’s some person who does the rituals in some other religion. But definition #2 in fact applies to Christianity too. If you perform religious ceremonies, duties, rituals, or whatever else in your church, you’re being a priest.

Yes, you. ’Cause you’re a priest. Every Christian is.

It was after all God’s intention to create a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. Ex 19.6, 1Pe 2.9 So Jesus made his followers—us Christians—his priests. A kingdom of priests to our God. Rv 1.6, 5.10 Every Christian can minister to fellow Christians; therefore every Christian is a priest.

Yeah okay, elders in particular tend to get called to do these duties. Rightly so, because they generally know what they’re doing. They’re mature enough to perform priestly functions correctly. They can preach, prophesy, lead us in worship, perform baptisms, anoint sick people, distribute communion, lay hands on people for dedication or commission or anointing, intercede for others in prayer, and perform weddings. (Although the state tends to get picky about who can do that last one, separation of church and state regardless.)

Because the ancient Christians’ elders were usually the ones doing these priestly duties, over time the Greek word for elder, πρεσβύτερος/presvýteros, came to mean “priest” in those churches. (Technically that’s inaccurate; the ancient Greek word for priest is ἱερεύς/yereýs.) The rest of us just translate it “elder” or “presbyter.” So yeah, when liturgical churches read the bible, they read the qualifications for elders just a bit differently than we do; they’re looking for the critieria for priests.

But again: Every Christian is a priest. A new believer can anoint and heal a sick person, same as any elder. God can use anybody, y’know.

Still, whenever we’re sick, and want a fellow Christian to pray for us, whom do we usually go to? Right you are: An elder. A mature Christian. Not some newbie, who doesn’t yet have the hang of hearing the Holy Spirit; not some longtimer who lacks spiritual maturity. We want someone whom we know can minister properly. Some Christians won’t permit anybody to minister to ’em but an elder; and in many cases they only want the senior pastor of their church, ’cause they’re sure that guy knows God. (Hopefully so!)

That’s why, when a newbie comes running to the front of the church, hoping to preach a little something, they’re not automatically gonna get the microphone. We tend to keep priestly functions in the elders’ hands. We permit newbies to do it only under an elder’s supervision and training.

Or, of course, when there’s absolutely no one else available. Or, let’s be honest, when they’re the pastors’ kids. Or when nobody else knows how to play the piano so well. Or when they’re interns who’ve been really good at hiding their hypocrisy whenever the grown-ups are around. Let’s be honest; we’ve got a few cracks in the system. But generally we’ve screened people before they minister as priests.

Oh yeah: I should mention many of the same Christians who claim presvýteros means “priest,” never ever translate πρεσβυτέρας/presvytéras, “elder women,” 1Ti 5.2 as “priestesses.” Relax. I’ll get to that.

“Elders” who ought not be elders.

ELDER 'ɛld.ər adjective. Of a greater or advanced age.

2. [noun] A person of greater or advanced age.

3. [noun] A spiritually mature Christian, usually consulted as part of a church’s leadership, often entrusted with ministerial or priestly responsibility.

[Eldership 'ɛl.dər.ʃɪp noun.]

I remind you of the definition of “elder” because you notice the word has three meanings: An adjective describing something old; an older person, and a mature Christian. Don’t mix up the definitions! But of course some do.

Years ago, at a previous church I attended, we had an older person whom I’m gonna call Salwa. She wanted everybody in the church to call her “Grandma,” and think of her as the go-to person whenever we wanted prayer, or spiritual advice.

One evening one of our prayer meetings, she told us the story of how she came to Jesus. She grew up Christian, but never took it seriously; she spent many years living as a pagan; she dabbled in “spiritual” stuff and “spiritual” authors, but found all that stuff unsatisfactory; her neighbor invited her to church and she responded to the altar call, said the sinner’s prayer, and now she’s Christian.

How long ago had Salwa said the sinner’s prayer? Oh, three years ago!

That, I figured, explained everything. The serious lapses in Salwa’s bible knowledge meant she really needed to read more bible, and her many misinterpretations meant she was out of practice with basic reading comprehension. Her inappropriately-intense reactions to anything she found offensive, meant she needed some work on gentleness. Her sheer terror of anything which might lead people astray, meant she needed to learn more about grace.

She had some growing up to do! Same with every newbie.

The problem—as you mighta deduced from how she wanted folks to call her “Grandma”—is Salwa was older than average. In her 70s, I think. And she’d been Christian for three whole years, and had a Christian childhood, and read lots of “spiritual” stuff; therefore she considered herself an elder. Really. One of our “church mothers”—or grandmas, to her way of thinking.

She was awfully fond of this passage:

1 Timothy 5.1-2 NIV

1Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, 2older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

Paul’s advice to Timothy is about treating fellow Christians as family, not underlings. But Salwa didn’t care about its context, and insisted it made her a “church mother,” who should be honored, respected, obeyed, and treated as in charge of things—same as one’s actual mother.

Um… no. You don’t put newbies in charge of anything. Especially one who won’t listen to anybody. Our head pastor wisely never let Salwa take charge of anything… no matter how often she nominated herself. “No no; that’s okay; we got somebody for that.” Even when we didn’t, and he was gonna have to do it—but he knew Salwa wasn’t qualified to handle authority, so he never gave her any.

Eventually Salwa stopped attending. No doubt she went to another church, looking for the power she coveted, hoping that church would overlook her many red flags and consider her an elder simply because she was elder.

The fivefold ministry. Or is it fourfold? Sevenfold?

FIVEFOLD MINISTRY 'faɪv.foʊld 'mɪn.ɪs.tri noun. A form of church leadership in which an individual congregation is led by five leaders, with duties corresponding to the five gifts Christ granted to build up his body. Ep 4.11

Christians have come up with a number of different ways to run Christ Jesus’s chruches. Initially the church was led by the Twelve, although that proved impractical as it grew, and as the Twelve spread out to other provinces and countries, or died off. The model we see in Paul’s pastoral letters suggests they ultimately borrowed the setup of Pharisee synagogues: An ἐπίσκοπος/epískopos, “supervisor” (which evolved into the English word “bishop”) who oversees the various spiritually mature Christians put in charge of all the other duties and ministries. Among the Orthodox and Catholic churches this evolved into archbishops and priests, but you’ll likewise see it in some Protestant churches which have pastors and presbyters.

But other Protestant churches have experimented with all sorts of leadership models. I was once a member of a church with a pastoral team: Five pastors who shared the job, took turns preaching the sermons, and handling various duties. I’ve been part of a church which claimed to have no leadership, and that they were entirely led by the Holy Spirit. (In practice, certain folks just happened to “hear the Spirit” way more than others, and wound up leading by default.) I’ve also been in congregationalist churches, which are basically run by direct democracy: The church members meet every month, and vote on every item of business. In meetings which can go on for hours.

Are those leadership models in the bible? Nah. Is that a problem? Not really. Because regardless of which leadership setup you choose, the important factor which makes it work is the people and leaders follow Jesus. If they do, the leadership setup actually doesn’t matter, because Jesus is gonna rule. And if they don’t, it doesn’t matter how “biblical” your setup is: The church is always gonna go wrong. Guaranteed.

At some other point I’ll list all the different models. But today I’m obviously gonna rant write about the fivefold ministry model.

It’s a relatively new leadership structure. Invented in the 1970s, and adopted by a lot of churches in the charismatic “apostolic movement.” These church are meant to be run by either five elders, or five teams of elders. (Since each of these teams tends to have a supervisor in charge of it… functionally it’s still five elders.) And each of these elders holds a different office, or has different job duties, which correspond to one of Christ Jesus’s five ministry gifts, listed by Paul in Ephesians.

Ephesians 4.11-12 KJV

11And [Christ] gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 12for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

In short, the five leaders of a fivefold church are designated as an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher.

Now. Historically Christians haven’t taught these are five jobs, but five gifts. They’re different abilities to minister. Different aptitudes. I have a knack for teaching; another’s gonna have a knack for evangelism. Another for prophecy, another for pastoral care.

But, I should point out, while I have a knack for teaching, I sometimes do all the other things. Because I’ve been in Christian leadership long enough to know how to do all of ’em. I can evangelize. I can prophesy. I can pastor. I can even function as an apostle if the Holy Spirit gives me a certain task to accomplish.

’Cause in practice, the Holy Spirit grants all these gifts to various Christian leaders on an ad hoc basis. Not just one and only one gift to one person. Jesus is an obvious example of someone who simultaneously had all five gifts:

• APOSTLE: Jesus was sent by God. He 3.1
• PROPHET: Jesus shares God’s word. Mt 21.11
• EVANGELIST: Jesus shares the good news of his kingdom. Mk 1.14
• PASTOR: Jesus is our good shepherd, Jn 10.11 our leader.
• TEACHER: Jesus is a rabbi, Jn 13.13 and our only rabbi. Mt 23.10

“Well of course Jesus could do ’em all,” various Christians reply, ”because he’s Jesus!” Yep, that’s everybody’s favorite excuse for not doing as Jesus does: He’s exceptional. And to be fair, he is. But not in this are—’cause loads of his apostles also simultaneously had all five gifts. You see ’em in Peter, John, Philip, Paul, James; and you’ll notice most churches regularly expect their head pastor to have these abilities whenever necessary. Apostles in that God called ’em into ministry. Prophets in that they can recognize God’s voice and authoritatively talk about God’s will. Evangelists ’cause they lead people to Jesus. Pastors ’cause they shepherd the people of their churches. And teachers ’cause they gotta teach us everything Jesus taught.

Fivefold ministry advocates point out this is an awful lot of work to put upon just one person. They’re not wrong! It’s why the mature Christians of a church need to step up and help their pastor. But the fivefold folks claim the list in Ephesians is a jobs list: The Holy Spirit divvied up these jobs, just like he scattered his supernatural gifts among different Christians. 1Co 12.7 Therefore each church shouldn’t only have a pastor in charge, but have five leaders. A pastor of course. And also an apostle, prophet, evangelist, and teacher.

Bishops: The head leaders in a church.

BISHOP 'bɪʃ.əp noun. A senior member of the Christian clergy. Usually in charge of multiple churches, like a district or diocese; usually empowered to appoint other clergy.

2. A chess piece. Each player gets two, and they only move diagonally; one on white squares, and one on black.

[Episcopal ə'pɪs.kə.pəl adjective.]

When Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus about church leaders, one particular word he used was ἐπίσκοπον/epískopon, “supervisor.” The King James Version translates this word as “overseer” Ac 20.28 KJV and “bishop.” 1Pe 2.25 KJV We actually got the latter word “bishop” from epískopon; you just have to drop the -on ending and swap the epí- for bi-, and soften the k sound. Language evolves like that.

Every church has supervisors of one form or another. But not all of ’em use the word “bishop” for them; not all of ’em are comfortable with that word, ’cause they think of it as a Catholic thing. So they use other words, like “pastor” or “minister” or “overseer” or “superintendent” or “president.” Varies from church to church.

Now, some of the reason people don’t wanna use “bishop” to translate epískopon is because of what “bishop” means nowadays: A person who supervises multiple churches, or multiple campuses of a really big church. (Although some pastors just want a more important-sounding title, so they use “bishop” regardless. Watch out for those guys. But back to my point.) They figure Paul was writing about the head leader in one particular church, so to their minds epíksopon means “pastor,” and that’s how they interpret it.

And they’re right. It is equivalent to what we mean by “pastor”—the person who supervises and shepherds a flock of Christians. Like Jesus. 1Pe 2.25 But you gotta remember in the first century, churches met in homes, and frequently and necessarily multiple homes. The person supervising one group, quickly found himself supervising multiple groups. Multiple campuses of the same church. Like bishops do nowadays. And over time, when churches moved into church buildings, bishops would be in charge of the church for the whole city, but they weren’t able to be in multiple places at once to run the services. So each individual service had a presbyter (who became what we now call “priests”) run things. Again, kinda like multi-campus churches today.

But we don’t have to call the head leader a bishop. Doesn’t matter what you call them: Pastor (senior pastor, head pastor, lead pastor, teaching pastor, pastor emeritus), priest, vicar, minister, reverend, apostle, prophet, chairman, president, senior elder, chief deacon. Wherever the buck stops, that’s who Paul meant. That’s your bishop.

For the sake of churches which get nervous about that title, I’ll just say “supervisor” from here on out.

Presbyters: The grownups who run a church.

PRESBYTER 'prɛz.bə.dər, 'prɛs.bə.dər noun. An elder in a Christian church.

2. The formal title of a minister or priest, in certain Christian denominations.

[Presbyteral prɛz'bə.dər.əl adjective, presbyterial prɛz.bə'tɪ.ri.əl adjective, presbyterian prɛz.bə'tɪ.ri.ən adjective.]

You likely know the word presbyterian because there are presbyterian churches, and a few presbyterian denominations. The word’s in their names. Y’might not know what it means: It indicates these particular churches aren’t run by the head pastor, nor run from afar by a bishop, nor are they a democracy where all the members get a vote. They’re run by a limited number of qualified mature Christians. They’re run by elders.

The New Testament word which we translate “elder” is πρεσβύτερος/presvýteros, and in the Latin bible this became presbyter. So yeah, it’s a Latin word. Still means “elder.”

The ancient church was run by elders for a few centuries, but it gradually evolved into something more hierarchical: Presbyters became the priests who run the church services; bishops were the supervisors who oversaw all the churches in town; archbishops oversaw all the bishops in the province; patriarchs oversaw all the bishops in the country. Western churches got it into their heads their patriarch oversaw all the bishops in the world, including other patriarchs… and that’s one of the ways the Roman Catholic Church grew distant and distinct from the Orthodox Church, causing the universal church to officially split in 1054. But both those churches still think of presbyter and priest as the same thing—and an elder as something entirely different.

After the Protestant movement began, churches still largely ran the same way, with archbishops and bishops and priests. But once the Church of Scotland went Protestant, they started to rethink the whole church leadership idea. Top-down leadership wasn’t working for them… and not everybody in the church was spiritually mature enough to responsibly vote for things. So who should lead? Their solution, which they’re pretty sure comes from bible: Elders.

Titus 1.5-9 ESV

5 This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— 6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7 For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, 8 but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. 9 He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

True, lots of Christians like to make a distinction between elder and overseer (Greek ἐπίσκοπον/epískopon, “supervisor”; KJV “bishop”) as two different titles and offices in a church. But the way Paul of Tarsus phrased it to Titus of Crete, he treated the terms as interchangeable. Elders supervise. (And there’s still a little bit of hierarchy: Titus was to appoint these elders, and supervise them. Whether you’re fine with hierarchical churches or not, every Christian answers to every other Christian, y’know.)

How presbyterian churches oughta work, is presbyters get selected from the congregation: Somebody in leadership recognizes you’re mature enough to be included in the leadership, and invites you to join in. And now you’re contributing to how the church is run. You have a say. Your voice gets heard. And the presbyters actually do run stuff.

Yeah, the church has a head pastor, because somebody needs to be the executive around there, but the pastor doesn’t run everything; the presbyters do. The pastor doesn’t do all the work—and no church’s pastor should do all the work!—but presbyters do. And the pastor doesn’t decide everything, like the church’s mission statement or policies or goals or faith statement: Presbyters do.

How presbyterian churches actually do work, varies.

Christian leadership and age discrimination.

If your church lacks young people in leadership, it’s gonna lose all its young people. Just you wait.

Arguably Timothy of Lystra first met Paul of Tarsus when he was a teenager; old enough to come along with the apostles on their travels, but young enough for Paul to think of him as a son. Pp 2.22 When Timothy became the leader of a church in Ephesus in the 60s of the Christian era, Paul would’ve been in his 50s and Timothy in his 30s—certainly old enough to lead, but certainly not the oldest guy in that church. Quite possibly not even the one who’d been Christian longest, since Paul had evangelized Ephesus years before he ever met up with Timothy.

In any case being in your thirties meant it was necessary for Paul to make this comment in his first letter to Timothy:

1 Timothy 4.12 KWL

Nobody gets to look down upon your youth!

Instead become the faithful Christians’ example in word, lifestyle, love, faith, and purity.

Because people will look down on your youth.

I know from experience. When I was in my thirties, I was asked to run the church’s preservice bible study. Our head pastor felt I was up to it. Others not so much, ’cause they wanted to run it. Yep, all the participants were older than me. But I had three advantages over them:

1. I became a Christian in my childhood. The rest became Christians as adults. So set our physical ages aside: I’d been Christian about 10 years longer than most. There was only one fella who’d become Christian in 1975, same as me. Of course you can be spiritually mature at any age… but when you get so worked up over something as minor as the youngster leading the bible study, y’ain’t showing any such maturity.
2. Trust me: When you’re leading a bible study, it helps when you can actually do bible study. I’d been to seminary, so I knew how. The others knew how to do bad word studies, and quote popular Christian authors. For all the good that does.
3. Our pastor did after all ask me to lead the group.

Admittedly, I didn’t let their hangup bother me any. I figured if it bothered them badly enough, they’d quit the group. They didn’t, and stuck with me for a year and a half. So no, don’t get the idea I was wringing my hands over their disapproval, and constantly meditating upon 1 Timothy 4.12 to keep my spirits up. My spirits were fine. Studying to prepare the lessons was teaching me all sorts of useful stuff. Hopefully teaching them this stuff too.

But as Paul stated elsewhere in his pastoral letters, the main qualification for Christian leadership is good character. They gotta be trustworthy people. Hence his advice to Timothy: Become an example in word, lifestyle, love, faith, and purity. Be a solid Christian. Be of good character. If you’ve got that, age won’t matter to anybody but people who lack good character.

Yeah, I know. Lots of Christians lack good character. That’s why young people aren’t often put in charge of things. Either they themselves lack character, or they have plenty but the other leaders don’t.

Deacons: Those who serve the church.

As described in the scriptures, the church’s workers—whether we give ’em the title or not.

DEACON /'di.kən/ n. Minister. Might be the leader of a particular ministry, but not the leader of a church: Deacons are nearly always subordinate to the pastor or priest.

[Diaconal /di'ak.(ə.)nəl/ adj., less properly deaconal /di'kən.əl/ adj.]

The word diákonos/“deacon” originally meant “runner,” like someone who runs errands. You know, someone we’d nowadays call a gofer—as in “go fer coffee,” or run any other errands. Deacon first shows up in the bible when Jesus said if we wanna become great, we need to be everyone’s servant. Mk 10.43 Or when he said if anyone serves him, the Father values them. Jn 12.26

Deacon is used to describe the folks appointed to run the early church’s food ministry. Ac 6.1-6 The Twelve didn’t give them any more responsibility than that. But they picked mature Christians, and as a result people recognized these servants as leaders in their own right. Stephen and Philip did some very notable things in Acts.

A deacon means any minister in your church who’s officially or formally in charge of something. Not the volunteers who pitch in from time to time, who run one fundraiser, taught one Sunday school class once, or pitched in on the church’s work day. Deacons are actually in charge of stuff and people. They run the small groups. Lead the evangelism team. Lead the prayer team. Greet visitors weekly. Serve as ushers during the services. Handle the bookkeeping. Clean the building. Answer phones. Teach the classes. Run the kitchen. Preach sermons. Lead the singing. Run the website. Anything and everything: Deacons have duties.

True, many churches have made “deacon” an official title—and the only “deacons” are on the church’s board of directors. Yeah, board members do fit the scriptures’ definition of deacons. But in the scriptures, deacon is hardly limited to board members. Nor is it interchangeable with elders, even though deacons had better be mature Christians. Elders aren’t necessarily put in charge of things. Deacons are.

Touch not the Lord’s anointed.

1 Chronicles 16.22, Psalm 105.15.

Today’s out-of-context scripture is found in two places in the bible, ’cause either Chronicles is quoting Psalms or vice-versa. (Hard to tell, since they were written round the same time.) To get the full effect, you gotta quote it in the King James Version.

1 Chronicles 16.22, Psalm 105.15 KJV

Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.

The way it’s typically quoted is in the third-person form of “Touch not the LORD’s anointed!” But it doesn’t take that form in the bible.

I’ve seldom heard preachers quote it. More often I’ve heard it from people in church leadership, or people who are defending church leadership. Usually it’s to discourage us from questioning, critiquing, condemning, or otherwise interfering with those leaders. ’Cause they were anointed by the LORD—and look, it says right there in the bible you’re not to touch the LORD’s anointed.

It was written by King David ben Jesse, and you remember how he could’ve totally killed the insane King Saul ben Kish time and again? But he wouldn’t dare, ’cause Saul was the LORD’s anointed?

I should remind you the word which gets translated “anointed” is mešíakh/“Messiah”—one of the king’s titles, so I translated it appropriately. (I would hope you’re not using the title Messiah for anyone in your church leadership but Jesus.)

1 Samuel 24.4-7 KWL

4 David’s men told him, “Look, it’s the day the LORD told you of!—

‘Look, I put your enemy into your hand. Do whatever pleases your eye.’ ”

So David rose up and secretly cut the corner of Saul’s robe off.

5 Afterward, David’s heart struck him over this—that he cut off a corner of something of Saul.

6 He told his men, “By the LORD, I should never have done this thing to my master, the LORD’s Messiah;

to raise my hand to him, because he’s the LORD’s Messiah.”

7 David persuaded his men with such words and didn’t let them confront Saul.

Saul rose from the cave and walked to the road.

Yeah, it’s totally weird thinking of Saul as a Messiah, huh? Just goes to show you how much Jesus has redeemed that title.

David wouldn’t dare another time:

1 Samuel 26.8-9 KWL

8 Avišai told David, “God placed your enemy in your fist today! Now please—

I can smite him to the ground with a spear in one heartbeat. I needn’t repeat it.”

9 David told Avišai, “Don’t destroy him.

Who can raise their hand to the LORD’s Messiah and be clean?”

Get the point? Even though Saul was an absolute beast of a man towards the innocent David, he was still God’s anointed king. David had no business killing him—or even overthrowing him, or doing anything other than remaining in exile to await his king’s death. Beast or not, Saul was still Messiah, and David was never gonna depose God’s anointed king. (Now, Saul’s successor Ishbaal was another deal; David never recognized him as Messiah.)

But once we incorrectly apply the idea of an anointed king to Christian leaders, you might notice it gives ’em a free pass to be just as bad as Saul. ’Cause “touch not the LORD’s anointed.”

Now way before I ever get to the proper context, I should point out how absolutely insane it is to use Saul as an example. For Saul was insane.

The scriptures describe Saul as plagued by evil spirits. We’d nowadays call the guy demonized. The critters were only driven away when other anointed ministers worked on him, like David with his music. 1Sa 16.23 So “Touch not the LORD’s anointed, ’cause Saul,” is effectively saying, “Even if Pastor’s possessed by Satan itself, he’s anointed, so leave him be!” It’s probably the stupidest defense in Christendom.

Who runs the church?

How’s the leadership of your church structured? ’Cause it matters.

Short answer: Jesus.

Way longer answer: When Christians are asked who runs our individual churches, sometimes we describe the leadership structure of their church or denomination. But everybody can potentially give the answer “Jesus.” It is his church after all. He is the king over God’s kingdom.

But since his kingdom isn’t yet of this world, Jn 18.36 the day-to-day duties of running Jesus’s churches on earth fall to vicars. Vicar is the Christianese word for “deputy,” and means the very same thing: Lieutenants who answer to the guy who’s really in charge, and that’d be Jesus. Hopefully we truly are working on his behalf, and not for ourselves… though I leave it to you as to how well we’re doing.

Now, if you were to ask your average pagan who’s in charge, most of ’em assume the pastor is. (Or the minister, priest, father, sister, bishop, apostle, prophet—whatever you call the top dog.) Pastor says “Jump” and everyone responds, “How high?” Depending on how cynical this pagan is about organized religion, pastors range from benevolent dictators, to selfish cult leaders. To their minds, every church is some form of top-down tyranny.

And to be fair, a lot of churches do practice a top-down model. It’s the most common church leadership structure there is. Arguably it’s the first structure: Jesus in charge, and his students not. And once Jesus ascended to his Father, it was followed by the apostles in charge, and everyone else below them.

Of course I say “arguably” because some Christians argue this top-down structure isn’t Jesus’s intent. They’ll advocate for their own favorite structure—namely the structure we find in their churches. Yes, they have proof texts. If you think church oughta be a democracy, you’ve likely got verses which prove God thinks so too. Top-down, bottom-up, middle-out, nobody-in-charge-but-the-Holy-Spirit, or even benevolent anarchy, people will point to verses which they’re pretty sure back their view. Regardless of those views, I’m gonna point out the top-down model is all over Christendom because it’s consistently found all over the scriptures, all over antiquity, and all over church history. Valid or not, it’s everywhere because top-down is humanity’s default setting: Left to their own devices, humans create kingdoms, not democracies. Even in democracies we fight to be on top.

Regardless, everybody pays lip service to the idea Jesus runs our churches. Hopefully he does.