One man show?

[Bro Blue]

A lot of churches have the system of pastor, deacons, and congregation. But does the bible teach a plurality of elders per local church? If bishop, elder, and overseer are interchangeable terms, then could deacons be classed as elders? I know that bigger churches have assistant and associate pastors, but smaller churches may have just a pastor and a few deacons. And the bigger churches could say that they have multiple elders, but the assistant pastors usually only get to preach when the pastor is at another engagement.
In Acts 20:17 Paul sent for the ELDERS of the church at Ephesus. In vs 28 he told them that the Holy Ghost had made them overseers to the flock that was given them. Did that mean that one of them was the main guy while the others sat on the platform all the time, or did they all share the regular preaching duties?

 

[Just me]

A lot of churches have the system of pastor, deacons, and congregation. But does the bible teach a plurality of elders per local church? If bishop, elder, and overseer are interchangeable terms, then could deacons be classed as elders? I know that bigger churches have assistant and associate pastors, but smaller churches may have just a pastor and a few deacons. And the bigger churches could say that they have multiple elders, but the assistant pastors usually only get to preach when the pastor is at another engagement.
In Acts 20:17 Paul sent for the ELDERS of the church at Ephesus. In vs 28 he told them that the Holy Ghost had made them overseers to the flock that was given them. Did that mean that one of them was the main guy while the others sat on the platform all the time, or did they all share the regular preaching duties?

Well the IFBx system I came out of was a one man show.  Every thing about it was designed to center around or show case that one man.  Everyone else in the system were lapdogs fighting to see how close to the top dog they could maneuver and when they could no longer take playing second or third fiddle they moved on to become the "one man show" of their own and build their own kingdom with their own lapdogs.  And somehow they always had a verse to back it all up.

 

[HeDied4U]

Here's a pretty good article from John MacArthur concerning elders and the plurality of Godly leadership...

http://www.gty.org/media/pdf/Biblical_Eldership.pdf

I used to have a 6 tape series concerning Church Leadership done by MacArthur. As I was reading through the above referenced article, a lot of what I read sounded familiar, so I'm guessing it probably came from that series.

 

[brianb]

A lot of churches have the system of pastor, deacons, and congregation. But does the bible teach a plurality of elders per local church? If bishop, elder, and overseer are interchangeable terms, then could deacons be classed as elders? I know that bigger churches have assistant and associate pastors, but smaller churches may have just a pastor and a few deacons. And the bigger churches could say that they have multiple elders, but the assistant pastors usually only get to preach when the pastor is at another engagement.
In Acts 20:17 Paul sent for the ELDERS of the church at Ephesus. In vs 28 he told them that the Holy Ghost had made them overseers to the flock that was given them. Did that mean that one of them was the main guy while the others sat on the platform all the time, or did they all share the regular preaching duties?

Since churches met in houses my question would be "What is meant by the church at Ephesus?". Was this a small church that met in one house? Or was this a church that split up and met in separate houses where each house had at least one elder. Also let's not forget that Timothy was an elder of the church at Ephesus and he has two epistles named after him - obviously he wasn't just another elder.

 

[Tarheel Baptist]

I really respect JM and use his material on a regular basis.
However, it's pretty obvious to anyone who's ever attended his Shepherd's Conference or many of his services that, in their 'equal elder rule', JM is much 'more equal' that the other elders.
And, there's nothing wrong with that, IMHO.

 

[Ransom]

brianb asked:

Since churches met in houses my question would be "What is meant by the church at Ephesus?". Was this a small church that met in one house? Or was this a church that split up and met in separate houses where each house had at least one elder.

In some cities, they would have had to split up: in Jerusalem, for example, there were thousands of Christians.  Even if the numbers were smaller, in, say, Ephesus, it probably wouldn't have been practical to meet in a single home.  I envision the structure of the church as something like what we'd call "cell groups" today - decentralized meetings, but overseen by an elder or elders who would have been known to them.

That said, it actually wasn't long before Christians started using dedicated buildings. There is archaeological evidence of row houses in Roman cities that retained their exterior appearance but had had their interior walls removed, and they're thought to be Christian meeting houses, large enough to accommodate a substantial number of people.