Episode 7: Plurality of Elders

The Rural Church Podcast, two-point-up. Just a couple of pastors discussing life, ministry, theology, and the gospel from a local church perspective. Eddie, what's it time for? The Rural Church Podcast.

Shepherding Sheep Who Keep Falling Back Into the Ditch

The Rural Church Podcast, episode seven. I'm your co-host, Allen Nelson, Perryville Second Baptist Church. With me is my co-laborer in the gospel, good buddy and fellow pastor, Eddie Ragsdale. Say hello, Eddie.

Hello, everybody. How are you doing, Quatro?

Well, I'm doing pretty good. There's a, I don't know what you'd call it. It's not a meme. It's a little video, and it's like, I don't even know where it's at, but the sheep, they're like pulling the sheep out of the ditch, and the sheep runs like, well, you've seen it, it runs like 20 yards to jump the ditch, falls back in the ditch.

It's so hilarious. I'm like, if that doesn't describe.

Pastoral ministry, I don't know what does. It's funny that you posted that earlier today, because just this last Sunday, I was preaching from Acts 20 and preaching on really about elders, about pastors, and about the need for pastors in the church, and really, you know, in that passage, Paul is speaking to the elders of the church in Ephesus, and I referenced that same video in my sermon because just talking about the work of ministry and the need to shepherd the flock and to protect the flock, and I said, I said, you know, we often think about protecting the flock of God from wolves because Paul mentions wolves in that passage in Acts 20, but I said, sometimes the sheep have to be protected from themselves.

It's so true. Isn't there many times,.

And of course, we're not above this as pastors, or that's maybe it's better a video of Christ and His shepherding of us, but there's many times that we tell people a certain thing or help them with a certain thing and give them godly counsel, and you feel good, and maybe you feel accomplished, and you feel like, okay, they get it now, and then two weeks later, they jump right back into the.

Ditch. And I know this wasn't exactly what you and I were going to talk about, but since you mentioned that, you know, like you said, we're not above this, and that's the reason why it's a blessing to have pastors together in ministry in a local church because then we can do that for one another.

You know, here I am in Marshall, and there you are in Perryville, and of course, we want to be a blessing to one another, but I don't know what's happening in Perryville Second Baptist Church, even if you tell me something or someone else there tells me something.

I'm not in that church. You don't know what's going on in Marshall First Baptist Church the way that other brothers and sisters in this church would, so when you have multiple pastors in a single local church, they're able to know the state of that church well, and sometimes they're able to help if one of those pastors is erring or maybe just needs help.

They're able to come alongside him in that because, like you said, just like any of the members of the church might jump right back into the ditch, the same thing could happen for you or I. And God's good wisdom, He has designed every.

Christian to need a pastor. That's right. And how's that fulfilled in the pastor? Now, I know some people would say, well, you've got friends and you can network and all that, and there is some truth to that.

Like you said, we're really grateful. We have a pretty strong network of solid brothers in Arkansas that we can communicate with and talk with, and there's much encouragement, and I wouldn't want to trade that for anything, but all around the world, this is not true, and in the history of the church, this has not always been true, and so one of the ways that a pastor's need for having a pastor is fulfilled is a plurality of pastors in the local church.

That's right. Well, listen, I shift topics a little bit. I'll just share with you a verse I read this morning, reading through Isaiah, Isaiah 62, 12, and listen to this. It says,. And they shall be called the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, and you shall be called sought out, a city not forsaken.

I read that today, and I was just encouraged about the Lord's, really, I consider that a prophecy of the church and the fulfillment of all that God is doing in redemptive history, and we're a holy people redeemed of the Lord, and I love it.

You shall be called sought out. Wow. If not for the Lord's effectual seeking of His lost sheep, none would be saved. We're going to be talking about that some this Sunday. We're talking about the Holy Spirit and salvation, really, so you got any thoughts about that?

That's just encouraging to me as I was reading through, and sometimes you're just reading through, and a verse just kind of jumps off the page, and that really was an encouragement to me in my Bible reading this morning.

Yeah, it's.

Amazing that you mentioned that, because what you've read it, but the blog post that I've got coming out this Friday for our church is really dealing with the issue of sovereign election, but it's dealing with that same idea that it's the Lord who has called us to Himself, who sought us.

We're not saved because we came, and we chose Him, and we found Him, and it's that He came, and He sought us, and He chose us, and He's made us to be believers.

In the Lord Jesus Christ. What you're saying is there's absolutely no reason you and I should be doing this podcast right now. We should be dead in the ditch somewhere, right? That's right. God in His sovereign mercy called us out by name, and we responded in repentance and faith.

Amen, amen, amen. Well, a couple weeks ago, I made a joke. You, let's see, what episode was this on? You'd had a baptism, and you did it in a pool, and I joked. I said, is it a kiddie pool? And you're like, no, it's a glorious in-ground pool, and I was like, well, are you promoting transgenderism then?

That's right. We kind of laughed and joked and moved on, but today, we're going to talk about that a little bit. I think you had some comments on it, so why don't you get us started on why we made that joke?

What's the context of that? I'm sure most people probably know, but what's the context of that, and then what are some things that you.

Are wanting to say about that? Yeah, I know we're a few weeks out from this, and in our modern world of high-paced news cycle that maybe everybody forgot this happened three weeks or a month ago or whenever it was, but on the CrossPolitik podcast, I think the brother's name was Farley.

I think his last name was Farley, and they were just discussing transgenderism, if I can speak, and one of the tags in there, the things that they go on about a lot, I think, in their podcasts, I don't listen regularly to the podcast, but they often talk about how culture is downstream from theology, downstream from what's happening in the church, and so with that idea, they included that Baptist theology, credo Baptist theology, the idea of believers, baptism, people coming to believe in Christ and then coming to be baptized, not being baptized as infants, and then being included in the covenant people, even though they're not yet born again.

So they concluded that that had led to this kind of human autonomy, this kind of radical human autonomy that we see in the secular culture, where people are choosing to be, you know, trying to say that they can choose to be a woman if they're biologically male, or that they can be a male if they're biologically female, or that they can make up their own gender, and one of the things that I wanted to mention on this is that they were really asserting that Baptist theology leads to this kind of free will or this kind of understanding of this absolute radical autonomy.

However, the thing that really stood out to me, when you think about our modern American, and I think American is key to this, culture of that kind of autonomy inside of the church, if you follow that back to its root historically, that root goes back to Charles Finney, and the reason that that really stood out to me is because Charles Finney was a Presbyterian, and I was like, now, of course, we would agree with those brothers that Charles Finney is not representative of believing Presbyterians, and his theology wasn't, but neither was his theology, and more important, his practical applications any more a picture of what you and I believe than what our Pato Baptist brothers believe, and so the idea that Credo Baptist theology is what's led to this kind of radical autonomy, it's just not true.

It's just not legitimate. Well, we wouldn't really say that it was.

Presbyterianism or whatever. I mean, where did this start? Really, where did it start? Genesis 3. That's right. I'm going to do what I want. Here's what God has said, but I'm going to do what I want. In no way does Baptist theology, in no way does it foster an area where this kind of stuff can flourish, not truly any more than what people would say complementarianism or patriarchy fosters an area of abuse.

Well, that's not true. People don't abuse because of a system. People abuse because they are sinners, and they have a wicked and rebellious heart, and it's interesting, isn't it, to me? This is what's interesting to me, Eddie, and that is we want to reject things like CRT because it blames the system, and I do.

I agree, but then I see that on cross-politics, but now on one side of the map, they want to say systems don't matter, and on another side, they want to say, no, systems do matter, and I'm just like, I found it inaccurate, and obviously, as a reformed Baptist, pretty distasteful, but I think that you're, I mean, we're both in agreement there that at the end of the day in our churches, in our local churches, these things, baptism by immersion is biblical, and it doesn't create a pathway for transgenderism, and then I want to also add this to the whole controversy.

That is one thing that I'm trying to be better at, and that is to remember our priority in all these sort of controversies and online controversies and even SPC controversies, and you've been very good at helping me with this, too.

Our priority, whether you're in a rural church, urban church, whatever, our priority is the local church.

Right. Our local church. Our local church. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we can be distracted.

On good controversies, the Aquinas stuff going on right now, or whatever. We can be distracted, and I'm not saying that the controversies aren't important. They are important, but they can kind of pull us away from our priority of pastoring and shepherding the local church.

That is our responsibility, our foremost responsibility in ministry. Obviously, as pastors, we have other responsibilities that are more important in pastoring if we're married and have children, but as far as ministry goes, we don't have a higher pastoral priority than our own local church.

And when we think about that, the priority that we put on that pastoral calling, that role that God has called us to, we think about, you know, this is one of the things that we talked about in our church this week, you know, the Lord calls us as pastors to provide for the flock, right?

We're supposed to feed the sheep. And then the Lord also calls us as pastors, as under shepherds serving Christ to protect the flock. And if we're not providing for and protecting the flock, then we're not really doing what pastors are called to do.

We're not giving the kind of oversight that overseers or bishops in the Bible are called to do, and we're not giving the kind of leadership that elders, that those people given that presiding office role in the church, which is what we as elders in the church are called to do, are supposed to do according to what we see in the New Testament scriptures.

Let's go back to that video. It's kind of like.

You're standing over, you're standing over the ditch. There's the sheep down in the ditch, but down the street, you notice that someone has a flat tire. There's a group of people standing around kind of looking at the flat tire and you know how to change a flat tire.

Well, what are you going to do? You're going to leave that sheep and go over there and mess with the guy's flat tire. Oh, that's right. Or are you going to take care of the sheep? And not that you can't be involved in that, but it's like the first thing you better do is take care of the sheep.

So that's why Peter says,. 1 Peter 5 says, shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

That's right. And so I think that's pertinent. That's my text for this coming Sunday.

Why a Plurality of Elders Fits the New Testament Pattern

Really? Yeah. Okay. So explain more what you're going through teaching about elders.

Yeah. So I'm outside of a book right now. Normally I'm preaching through a book of the Bible, but we finished up a book back in July, and actually I've been taking this opportunity to preach on some topical things.

And so I'm doing a little series through some of the texts that deal with elders. I've preached through the book of Titus a few years ago in our church. And then a couple of years ago, I preached through Paul's trustworthy sayings statements.

And so those gave me the opportunity to preach through what Paul said to both Timothy and Titus about pastors and elders. But we have had a lot of new people come into our church since I preached those messages.

And honestly, and our church knows this, so I can say this publicly, we're at the point where this is the next thing that needs to happen in our church. We need to see God raise up some godly men, and we need some more elders, some more pastors in our local church.

And so what I'm doing is taking the other texts, so Acts 20, 1 Peter 5, Hebrews 13, some of those texts, and walking through those over kind of a little short series, just looking at some of those key texts dealing with leaders, elders, pastors in the church.

Yeah, we're dealing with some of the same things. And one of the things that I brought up, and I'm kind of going to hang out on this for a while as I talk with people about this, but in the typical Baptist church, we have one pastor and multiple deacons.

We don't see a problem at all with the plurality of deacons. And let me just say this, I don't see a problem with the plurality of deacons. The question that I have, though, is how do you defend a plurality of deacons in today's churches but are in opposition to a plurality of elders?

And someone might say, well, we're not a big church. We're a smaller church. Okay. Why do we have a plurality of deacons? Well, at the end of the day, you don't have a biblical argument for why you have a plurality of deacons, which I'm in favor of, but not a plurality of elders.

The biblical argument is there ought to be a plurality of both. We're not saying that there has to be a certain amount. I think the amount of deacons, I think the amount of deacons and elders, I actually would say this, is less about need and more about qualification.

That makes sense? That's right. That's right. So if you have men, and we could talk about this too, one of the only differences in an elder and a deacon really is an elder is gifted to teach, whereas a deacon may not have that gifting, although a deacon could be gifted to teach, but he doesn't really desire, and he doesn't really feel called, and the church doesn't really see him as called to to fulfill that role of being an elder, but they're both called to be godly men.

What I share with our church, this is an oversimplification, but to see it in general, the deacons are responsible to help with the physical needs of the church, and the elders are responsible for overseeing the spiritual needs of the church.

Of course, there's some overlap there, obviously, but it's just simplistic. So you can't say I affirm a plurality of deacons, but I don't affirm a plurality of elders. That comes solely from tradition, not from the scriptures.

Yeah, and even your illustration from earlier, they're changing the tire, and you've got this sheep that needs help. Well, a deacon, if that were taking place in the local church, the deacons could be helping with the tire while you're taking care of the spiritual need of the sheep.

I mean, that's a good example in some ways of how that even we see in the book of Acts. The apostles said, we're going to set apart these men full of the Holy Spirit, who can take care of making sure the distribution of food to these widows is happening properly so that we can be devoted to the preaching of the Word of God and to prayer.

And so I think that's the way that that relationship between the two ought to be. But just like you said, you know, we think about Philippians 1 .1, and Paul says it's addressed to the elders or the overseers and the deacons of the church of Philippi.

So clearly, Paul knew that the church would have both plurality or multiple pastors and multiple deacons. So I've heard the argument,.

It's like, well, but maybe it's such a big church or they're in multiple houses or something like that. So that's why they had to have multiple overseers. Okay. If I grant that argument, then why do you still have multiple deacons, right?

Right. It would be the same, right? Yeah, it would be the same, but we just don't think about those things. We have kind of tradition in that, and we misunderstand the roles. A lot of times a deacon's role in a typical kind of setting ends up kind of being an overseer, like he has the authority of an overseer, but he doesn't have the gifting of an overseer.

And I think authority and gifting needs to go together. That's why things are messed up. It's kind of like a situation in judges, for example, like when Deborah's a judge or whatever, and I don't think the scriptures fault Deborah, and you don't necessarily fault some of these men.

It's just still wrong though, and it needs to be corrected. I love it when people are like, oh yeah, women can be pastors. Look at Deborah in the book of.

Judges. And you're like, have you read the book of judges? That was a judgment. Right. Everyone's doing what is... She was a godly woman, but that was judgment. But everyone's doing what is right.

In their own eyes. So it needs to change. So even if you have godly deacons that end up functioning in the role of elders, what needs to happen is either A, they need to be an elder because they have the gifting to teach and they're qualified, or B, there needs to be that clear distinction in the roles.

And here's the thing I've been thinking about more and more, Eddie. How beautiful is the local church, and what a great plan that God has, and what a great blessing God has for believers in healthy local churches.

And I think so often, I'm even guilty of it. So often we don't see that big plan, and we don't want to do the hard things because we don't trust that plan. And so many people I've seen, when they think local church, they've seen it in one way.

And they're afraid to press further, even as they see the scriptures, because tradition is their blanket that they go to sleep with at night. And it makes us feel secure, and it makes us feel safe. And it makes us feel like, well, we've always done it this way.

And so I'm just been thinking more and more about in leading in reformation and revitalization, if you want to say that, whatever, in the local church. We have to remember God's goodness and for the saints in a healthy, strong, faithful local church.

Why the Church Needs Multiple Godly Men, Not a Hired Gun

Yeah. And I think what you were alluding to earlier with the fact that sometimes deacons end up almost de facto filling the role of elder, what's happened in so many churches, and this is especially true because of short pastorates.

Listen, I know there's all kinds of reasons why a man may only be at a church for a short amount of time, but that shouldn't be the norm. That should not be the norm. The norm should be men rooted in a community, pastoring faithfully over the long haul.

And I say that because so often what has happened in our churches is that you have this group that we call deacons, but they function as a hybrid of deacon and elders, deacon and pastors. And then they hire kind of a hired gun guy to come in and do the speaking on Sunday morning that they call the pastor.

But his job is really just to do that while the real shepherding leading of the congregation, even ruling maybe of the congregation happens among this group that we call deacons, but they don't function that way.

Very good observation. I've.

Said for years, but most Baptist churches want a preacher, but not a pastor. That's right. They want someone, as you said, to fill the pulpit. They know you're supposed to do that. But as far as the major decisions, and you can, hey, you've got a little bit of leeway.

You can do a little things here or there, but if you're going to make big decisions, then you have to get the approval of the church. And look, we are congregational for sure. That's right. But what I'm trying to say is in the Bible, submission, biblical submission is not the same as agreement.

Agreement is agreement. Submission is sometimes I need to do something in a marriage, a wife and her husband. Wife says, I disagree with my husband. Okay. But is it sin? Right. Is it sin? You might think it's foolish, but is it sin?

Is it clearly sin? If it's not sin, you make this decision, not that decision, then you're called to, a wife is called to, okay, submit, not agree. Agreement and submission, two different things. So submitting, even when it's like, well, maybe I don't agree with that.

When it comes to pastoring in the church, sometimes a congregation is called to obey its leaders. I'm not talking about a major decision or something like that, that the church needs to vote on, but pastors need to pastor and not just preach.

Now, you can't, let me just say this real quick. You can't pastor without preaching. But I'm saying.

Pastoring is not only preaching. That's right. That's right. And think about it from the from that perspective. And I agree with what you just said. But from that perspective, that's all the more reason why you ought to want a group of godly men.

Exactly. Because, listen, no matter how godly, I mean, you and I both want to pastor well in our churches. We want to do what's best for our churches. And we want to be as biblical as we can possibly be in serving our churches.

But we are still frail men. We still have our own biases and weakness. A group of godly men is going to negate each individual's weaknesses and bias for the betterment of the whole body. The church should be able to submit even better when they have a group of godly men.

In that leadership role. That's right. You want, you have certain gifts, Eddie. I have certain gifts. And mine, your gifts even are different. And the idea is that a plurality of elders, whether it's two guys, just depending on gifting and size of the church, or if it's five guys or whatever it may be, the idea is that they are able to complement one another in their gifts and their abilities.

And you and I might disagree on this. I'm not sure. I've been persuaded in the last few years more and more that I think the main guy, and I talk about this from gifting, like I don't have a problem with there being a John MacArthur type guy.

I don't have that issue. I don't think that you have to go through 52 Sundays and say, okay, we need to make sure everybody is preaching the same amount. I get that from 1 Timothy 5, 17, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

So I think that some people are just more gifted, I almost said naturally gifted, but I mean to say gifted by the Lord. Some are just more gifted by the Lord in their preaching and teaching, and they have the time and the ability to do that.

And so they're going to take the mainstay. But these others are still preaching, teaching, and they're helping in decisions, and they're praying, and all these things. So it's very interesting, Eddie, that we still... I guess we didn't really have a clue what we're going to talk about today.

We thought about the transgenderism and baptism thing, but we've really ended up talking more about shepherding in the local church. You got any more thoughts in that vein?

A couple of things I'd like to mention. I agree with that. I do think that there needs to be parity in the pastoral team or the group of elders, whatever terminology we'd want to use. I think there has to be parity.

There can't be hierarchy. You've got to have parity among the group. But then I think we ought to expect any group of men is going to have differing gifts, and instead of saying, no, we have to have... everybody gets exactly the same number of Sundays behind the pulpit.

That doesn't make sense. It makes sense that you would develop within your pastoral team what fits the brothers that God has brought into your church, what is best for the church body, and you're going to use the giftings of all those men in the best way possible.

And honestly, like you said, if we would get outside of what we think the church meeting should look like, and maybe go back to what has the Bible taught us, there's probably more for all the elders to do in the Lord's Day meeting, because there's more than just... in our church, there's more than just the sermon that another elder could be helping with.

We take the Lord's Supper weekly. I'm not saying everybody has to, but we do. And so there's just different ways that a plurality of brothers could all be participating, even in the weekly Lord's Day gathering, without them all having to necessarily preach the same number of Sundays.

There's one other thing I would really like to mention on this before we wrap up the podcast today. I'm convinced, and I know that you are too, Alan, that the New Testament heavily favors the idea of plurality of pastors in the local church, if not completely favors it, heavily favors it.

But for just a moment, let's assume that the Bible just said you could do either one—single pastor, plurality of pastor, whatever you want to do. The thing that I keep coming back to is why would we not want multiple godly men leading in our churches?

If the Lord said you can do it either way, and that's completely fine, why would we not want it? It just seems so much better for the church to have a group of godly men over one fallible man in that role.

Let's go back to the video. You're going to be the sheep.

I'm going to fall into a ditch. Do I want one guy coming and helping me, or do I want a team, right? And it's better for the pastors and the church members. Do I want one pastor praying for me, or three?

Do I want one pastor checking on me when I'm going to the hospital, or three? Do I want one pastor caring for my soul, or do I want three? Do I want to be taught from the perspective of one man only, or do I want him to have faithful brothers alongside him?

And then the flip side, and because there might be pastors that reject it because of pride or whatever, but do I want to carry the burden of a church, a local church alone, or do I want brothers and sisters to help me?

Do I want to be encouraged and challenged and have people to, you know, accountability and all these blessed things that come from a group, or do I want to carry it alone? Like you said, brother, I mean, I think you're exactly right.

It just makes sense. It just seems biblically prudent, even if the evidence wasn't clearly there. You know, like Acts 14 .23, they appointed elders in every church, elders, plural, church, singular. Even if the evidence wasn't there, you would think, boy, this seems prudent.

It's kind of like what we're going through right now. We're going through Exodus, and in Exodus 18, Jethro reprimands Moses. It's not the same one-to-one correlation, but there's a parallel here. He says, Moses, you're going to wear yourself out.

You need godly, god-fearing men, literally what it says, I think, Exodus 18 .21, men who fear God and give some other qualifications, I think, are similar to elders, by the way, and you need to share the workload.

Well, that's just biblical prudence. Even if the New Testament wasn't so clear, you'd think, man, there's biblical prudence in this. Well, and even back to, we keep.

Going back to that video. You're going to have to post that video somehow in the description of this or something, but we keep referring to that, but as the one pastor is helping that sheep that's in trouble, the rest of the pastors are also able to keep an eye on the rest of the flock.

Amen. I really think that one of, we don't have time to get into reckless love, but one of the problems with the idea of leaving the 99 for the one is that so often people think just abandons the 99, and I would say the right reading of that parable, especially the way that Luke records it in Luke 15, is that the 99 are left in the safe place.

They're left in a safe place while the Lord goes after the one. Well, as pastors, we're able to go after erring sheep when we know that the other sheep are safe.

Yeah, or you're out of the pulpit for sickness or for a mission trip or even vacation. Do you want some guy to come? I mean, and we have faithful brothers that preach, and I'm grateful, and I'll still use that, but do you want some guy that doesn't know what's going on, or do you want to be able to say, hey, we got this guy here?

And also, some of these guys, we may end up raising up and shooting out like an arrow, as it were, a young guy, and then they ended up, we sent them out to plant a church. So many good benefits. We got to wrap it up, brother.

Any.

Raising Up Men Who Can Lead the Church Long Term

Final words? The last thing I'd like to say, when I came to Marshall, so I've been here, I'm going on seven years now. I'm finishing up my sixth year. I told them early on, I said, I would like to be the last pastor that you ever have to send out a search committee for, because could you imagine if a church just was raising up godly men within the church, and like you said, not everybody's going to be on staff, not everybody's the weekly preacher, but if you were just regularly raising up godly men, you could have a healthy church that never had to go search for a pastor again, because men are being raised up through the ministry of the local church.

But brother, I appreciate the opportunity each week to talk with you over these things, and I hope that our listeners are.

Blessed by the content as well. Amen. The Lord has a grand vision for churches, doesn't He? Amen. Amen. All right, we'll catch you guys next week on the Rural Church Podcast. Say goodbye, Eddie.

See you guys later.