So I fully understand how bright-eyed young men (and an increasing number of young women) go off to seminaries and Bible colleges, study the art of preaching—including both the preparation and delivery of sermons—and take up posts in churches throughout the world to begin their careers as what really amounts to professional Christian speech-writing. Admittedly, while many may prefer the pastoral elements of the job—visiting the sick, comforting the elderly, and counseling—everyone understands the importance of the Sunday sermon. When a “local church” considers calling someone to fill a vacancy as senior pastor, the search committee spends a lot of time listening to sermons, visiting a worship service to hear the prospective pastor preaching in his own pulpit, and then inviting him to “preach in view of a call” if they like what they hear. At least that’s how we do it in Southern Baptist life.

Here’s what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christ-followers who lived in Ephesus:

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. [Eph. 4:11–13, New Living Translation]

There’s no way to ignore this passage of Scripture. God has graced some believers with amazing insights, patience, communication skills, effective persuasion abilities, powers of logic, and penetrating intuition to be employed in their interaction with fellow Christians. Many of us have been taught that this “five-fold ministry” of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers is essential to the wider body of Christ; although many ultra-conservative evangelicals would say that apostles and prophets have passed off the scene and, honestly, they really don’t know what to do with evangelists except invite them around once a year for a four-day “revival meeting” to blast some of the barnacles off the old Gospel ship being piloted exclusively by the pastor-teachers.

Amazing, isn’t it? Jesus lavishly provides five unique gifts for His bride, described here by Paul as “the body of Christ” and what do we do with them? We ignore two gifts altogether, put the third one outside the mainstream church, and we compress the last two into one super-hired-holy-man that we proudly refer to as the “senior pastor” or “the preacher” (say that with a Southern drawl) if you live in the southeastern United States. Instead of viewing them as gifts to the entire body, we have invented special “offices” or “holy orders” or a “calling to full-time ministry” and created career paths complete with salaries and benefit packages and manses/parsonages with neatly manicured lawns.

Paul outlines both the responsibilities and the duration of these multi-faceted gifts to the body of Christ: (1) to equip and build up those who belong to Jesus, and (2) to do so until every believer reaches the standard of unity and maturity that reflects Christ in His fullness. Is there anything in the Ephesians 4 passage that limits these wonderful gifts to one particular group of people? Yet the institutional nature of what we often call “local churches” requires a stifling corporate structure that puts one church in competition with another church in the same community. We no longer view “the body of Christ” as I believe Jesus intended, or even as the Apostle Paul wrote about. We have embraced a historical model of “church” that we unconsciously force upon every passage of Scripture where the word “church” or “body of Christ” appears.

What would happen if every 501(c)3 non-profit corporation (in the USA) or every registered charity (in Britain) or whatever-it’s-called (anywhere else) with the name “church” in its legal description ceased to exist? The pastors and staff of those organizations could get regular jobs like everyone else, blend into the landscape of their local communities, and begin exercising their Spirit-bestowed gifts in the lives of every believer God brings across their path, assuming (of course) that they truly were Christ’s gifts to His body. No more jockeying for power, prestige, recognition, and status…just the free-flowing influence that builds up, encourages, equips, unifies, strengthens, and matures the entire body of Christ in a given community. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we’ll never see it happen, because “there’s too much money in the soul-saving business” according to one disillusioned facebook acquaintance of mine.

So what about the question, “Don’t we need pastors to equip the saints?” The answer is “Yes! We need every single gift that the Lord Jesus has given us as members of His body.” But never assume that someone with “Reverend” or “Pastor” or “Elder” in front of their name is one of those gifts, because you don’t become an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, or teacher by going to Bible college or seminary. The Head of the church, through the work of the Holy Spirit, implants those gifts as He wills in the hearts of His people, wherever they are needed and without fanfare being made over them. They just are! And none need the approval, or credentials, or ordination of man-made religious institutions…they simply function in the gifts God has given them in the strategic places where they already live and serve their King.

Those recruiting posters designed to attract America’s young men into military service could just as easily been an advertisement for God’s own unique brand of service. While I ultimately chose a bivocational approach to ministry—working a full-time secular job while preaching on the weekends—other “real” pastors went to Bible college, then seminary, and eagerly jumped into “serving the Lord” as a vocational calling. And in those cases where a young man felt “called to ministry” after he had already invested his life and training to be a doctor or a successful entrepreneur or a Wall Street investment banker, the rest of us would look with awe and wonder at their extreme sacrifice. They would be held forth as examples to the rest of us, as if to say, “Why aren’t you committed enough to serve the Lord as a minister or a missionary?”

What does God really want from us? He’s our father, right? We’re supposed to be resting in and enjoying His love and grace from day to day? And He loves us with an unconditional, unbreakable, eternal love from which nothing can separate us, right? So then why do we labor under the illusion that He would be more pleased—or even more glorified—with the children who decide to pursue a full-time career in “the ministry”?

Darin Hufford may be right in his diagnosis that many of us believe that God is self-seeking: that the only reason God has taken pains to redeem the human race is because he wants an army of slaves to do His bidding. In his book, The God’s Honest Truth, Hufford states:

This is the reason why so many people go into the ministry. They sincerely believe that their life means nothing unless they are somehow serving Christ. We even define the Christian walk as, “Serving God.” We do this because we think that this is ultimately what God is in this for. We think He wants an entourage of personal slaves and servants. We have been conditioned to think that God wants us to put all our personal desires aside and become His butler. If that’s not self-seeking, I honestly don’t know what is!

Have you ever stopped to think that God’s plan for your life has to do with YOU? His first concern is your happiness and fulfillment. Everything He does is so that you can have life abundant. Every gift He gives you is to enhance your life and bring the most joy possible to you. His kingdom does not benefit one iota until that happens. Understand that God is not looking for servants and messengers; He is looking for sons and daughters! Out of that relationship, you will become the message.

There are many pastors in the world who were created to be math teachers, accountants, ski instructors, and fireman, but because they believed that God’s main concern was finding people to serve Him, they gave up their purpose in life and joined the ministry. This perhaps is the most grievous thing to the Heart of God because it strangles any possibility of real intimacy. Slaves can only respect their masters, but they never eat with them and share their heart.

Could it be that the most “spiritual” thing for a pastor to do is get out of the ministry and find a real job? To recapture the passions of one’s youth. To find that pearl of great price that you would sell anything to possess. To subtract “Reverend” or “Doctor” or “Pastor” from your name and follow your lifelong dreams, aspirations, and unique God-given talents. To release yourself from the servitude of an unbiblical concept of God.

Go ahead, grab the keys, unlock the prison door, and run with the freedom you’ve always owned but didn’t know you could enjoy!

My good friends—many of them evangelical pastors—when asked for a biblical defense of expository preaching (aka exegetical preaching or verse-by-verse preaching), point to the example of Ezra’s public reading of the Law of Moses in Nehemiah 8:1–18. But they fail to acknowledge is:

• The uniqueness of the occasion — It was a time of celebration! The exiles had returned to Jerusalem after 70 years in captivity and most of them had never heard the Law of Moses read in any venue, much less an openly Jewish festival. The walls of Jerusalem had been rebuilt and Ezra gathered the people to celebrate with a word-for-word reading of Moses for the first time in nearly a generation. The public reading by Ezra carried on daily for seven consecutive days.
• The role of the translators — In spite of how much the modern expository preaching would like to paint Ezra as the man who reclaimed and modeled biblical exposition for all generations, the text declares that he simply read the text out loud for five or six hours. The Levites translated as Ezra read from the Hebrew (Neh. 8:7-8), so that the massive crowd (possibly as many as 42,000 people, see Neh. 7:66) could understand it. Obviously, they would have been sprinkled throughout the crowd and could translate the Hebrew for those who might not be fluent in the language.
• The real purpose of the wooden platform — Again, many King James fans ascribe great importance of the physical pulpit from which Ezra read the Law of Moses, as if to justify the use of pulpits today. It’s another example of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. Nowhere else in the KJV can the word “pulpit” be found; and most modern translations give a more accurate rendering of “high wooden platform” to the Hebrew text. Why did Ezra stand on the platform? For purely pragmatic reasons: he wanted to be heard by tens of thousands of people.

Steve Sensenig gave an eloquent and persuasive argument two years ago, entitled “Preaching in the Church — Is Nehemiah 8 the Model?” (Part 1 and Part 2). Interestingly, he critiques a sermon delivered by Steve Lawson at the 2006 Shepherd’s Conference in California, entitled “Bring the Book!” (this link features the same sermon given at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, MA; you can also hear the same message here at the Monergism MP3 site). Sadly, Steve Lawson, senior pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church (Mobile, AL) makes much of Ezra’s posture and his pulpit for that once-in-a-lifetime occasion. Sensenig summarizes the issues well in last two paragraphs of his article (Part 1):

Nehemiah 8 recounts a very moving and powerful story in Israel’s history. It shows the need for the Word of God. It shows the hunger that was deep within the Israelites after seventy years of exile from their land and religious practices. It shows the wonderful way in which their hunger and thirst (spiritually speaking) was quenched by the Word of God. There is a lot to be learned from this passage.

Unfortunately, Dr. Lawson’s applications are not the lessons to be learned. This passage cannot, and should not, be used to justify any particular model of our gatherings together. If anything, the use of this passage to defend the modern practice of preaching in church shows how closely tied the institutional church is to Old Testament models. This represents a severe danger, in my opinion, of underestimating the change that the life of Jesus brought to our relationship with God and with each other. If we believe in the “priesthood of all believers” as something that was brought in by the New Covenant, then we should be very careful to eschew any model which places one person above the rest as the voice of God and His Word to that people.

There simply is no biblical precedent for the homiletical form known as the “expository sermon” or “verse-by-verse exposition.” Jesus didn’t model it, although his life and ministry was a virtual 24/7 outpouring of truth and grace to those who got close enough to hear him. He also did not instruct the Twelve in the finer points of speech-writing for a religious audience; nor did the Apostle Paul, although he did tell Timothy to “Preach the Word!”—a simple exhortation to declare the truth about Jesus—something every follower of Jesus should take seriously. But it doesn’t carry the technical connotations that our clergical friends would like their passive audiences to believe.

So don’t look at the word “preach” in the Bible and assume that it has anything to do with a particular style or form of delivery, or that it can only be done by someone with a seminary degree from a pulpit or platform in front of a large group of people. It just means to “tell it” or “to declare” or “to communicate.” This requires no robes, no vestments, no pulpit, no training, no ordination credentials, and no particular gender!

Obviously, the title of this article is a spoof reflecting on the dire consequences facing professional clergy; however, the current religious industry seems to be completely oblivious, as it churns out newly-minted “masters of divinity” left and right. Many ordained clergy will confess that they have no marketable skills outside their church vocations, having invested four years pursuing an undergraduate degree, three years getting their MDiv, and another two to six years completing either a Doctor of Ministry or a PhD. Others entered their ministerial career later in life, after significant experience in business or industry.

I’m wondering if anyone has really thought about the serious plight of these fellow believers, who simply got caught up in the IC system like so many others with sincere hearts, the purest of motives, and a desire to serve the Lord with their entire being. All my life the message was clear: “full-time ministry” or “full-time missionary service” was the very pinnacle of commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ and His church.

With the deconstruction or collapse of this gigantic religious industry, how will these families be cared for and ministered to? Will they be honored? Or will they be held in contempt like the Wall Street bankers who lined their pockets and then asked for the government to bail them out?

1. God doesn’t intend such a profession to exist. There is simply and unequivocally no biblical mandate or justification for the profession of clergy as we know it. In fact, the New Testament points to a very different way of doing church and pastoral ministry.
2. It crushes “body life.” We can see in the New Testament that God doesn’t intend church to be a formal association to which a rank-and-file membership belongs by virtue of paying dues and attending meetings, an association which is organized, guided, and governed by a professional leader (and, in larger organizations, by an administrative bureaucracy). Yet that is exactly what most churches are.
3. It is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church-a valuable goal. In actuality, however, it accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy become to their congregations like parents whose children never grow up, like therapists whose clients never become healed, like teachers whose students never graduate. The existence of a full-time, professional minister makes it too easy for church members not to take responsibility for the on-going life of the church. And why should they? That’s the job of the pastor (so the thinking goes). But the result is that the laity remain in a state of passive dependence.
4. What it does to the people in that profession. Being a member of the clergy as we know it is difficult. Doing it very well is almost impossible. Yet good-hearted men and women, convinced that they are serving God in this way, admirably pour their lives into this task. What they encounter as professional clergy, however, is stress, frustration, and burn-out.

Through a bit of research, I discovered that the article was published in 1993 as a chapter in a book, Going to the Root: Nine Proposals for Radical Church Renewal. Unfortunately, it’s out of print, but you may be able to find a used copy through AbeBooks or some other source. Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Smith’s closing words of this article:

The problem with clergy, we’ve seen, is not the actual people who are of the clergy-who are typically sincere and committed-but the social role of the profession to which they belong. Ministers often hope to re-shape that role in ways that are more realistic and biblical. But they eventually discover that, for the most part, they can’t reshape the role at will because their congregations and denominations expect the standard things from them. Of course, that’s the nature of social roles: they shape people more than people shape them.

A problem even more basic and serious than the clergy role, however, is that most Christians have completely redefined what a healthy church looks like in the first place. For most church-goers, a solid, healthy church is one which is growing numerically, has a fabulous pastor, and offers many activities and programs. That may be what a vibrant voluntary association-such as the YMCA-looks like. But if the Bible is our authority, those factors are irrelevant when it comes to church.

What’s important in church, according to the Bible, is that each member actively contributes to the good of the whole body through responsible participation and the exercise of their gifts. What’s important in church, according to the Bible, is that believers become strong and mature in their faith through the edification of one another. A biblical church is a “people’s church” with a decentralized ministry.

We have set out on a new adventure, trying to understand “church” as something different. If others want to continue thinking along traditional lines, that’s okay with us. We certainly understand the benefits of being part of something big, especially when children (especially teenagers) are involved. In some respects, it’s like going to the Mall of America. You don’t have to go anywhere else! Everything you need, or think you need, is under one roof.

We’re still part of a large congregation that meets in its own special building on Sundays, but I don’t think it will be for much longer. The sticky problem for me: I am employed by that congregation and, until I can work out a way to replace the income, our family is dependent upon their financial support. We love the people there and we don’t want to cause any hurt or division when we leave; in fact, we would love to remain connected to many of our brothers and sisters there. The ball will be in their court, as far as we’re concerned.

So for now, we have a foot in both worlds. We’re learning about our freedom in Christ and how Father wants us to walk with Him day by day. That’s been a huge adjustment, because I have often felt defined by my role in the local church or even by my wider role in denominational life. And I honestly feel that I had exchanged worship for the living Christ with worship of a book, although one that claims to be His very Word breathed out to men. Yes, I had become a bibliolater! And I was so enamored with “the book” and teaching “the book” and reading “the book” that I didn’t notice that I had virtually no relationship with the Author.

We’ll be “going to church” this morning, as always, but we are looking forward to the future when we can just BE the church, living alongside other believers and those who don’t believe in Jesus.