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.

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!

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

This recorded prophecy in Jeremiah 31:33-34 outlines several important distinctions of the “New Covenant” that God intended to bring to fulfillment. Our Father in heaven declared through the pen of Jeremiah that:

• He would put His law within His people. Simply put, He would “write it on their hearts,” not ensure that it would be preached from man-made pulpits. Have you seen the iPods being sold where electronic books are pre-loaded on their internal hard drives? God promises, through the enduring word of His eternal covenant, to give us His law in such a way that it does not require any form of media (like paper and ink or digital storage devices) or any sort of delivery system (like highly-trained clergy).
• He would establish a relationship with His people. He’s not just one god of many gods. He is our God and we are His people. As God, He guides, provides, and protects us. The Bible is filled with many promises of how He does this. And we are His people: chosen, called, justified, sanctified, and (eventually) glorified.
• He would make Himself known to His people. What once required tedious, comprehensive teaching by priests and scribes and rabbis would no longer be necessary. God would reveal Himself in amazing ways to people of every walk of life: “from the least of them to the greatest.” No more classes, lectures, and catechisms! When God makes Himself known, He does not require the curriculum writers of denominational publishing agencies, nor does He need alliterated sermon-crafters to make sure we “get it.”
• He would forgive and forget our sin. For some strange reason, the human orators who fill the pulpits of the institutional church prefer using guilt and shame to keep God’s people in line. They continually write religious speeches that condemn us, as if we were still under bondage and still unforgiven, making us beg for God’s mercy week after week and keeping us running down the aisles to repent for last week’s failings. Father says, “You’re forgiven! I remember your sin no more!”

Those who no longer attend traditional church services each week need not feel guilty because they are no longer “sitting under the ministry of the Word.” If you are in Christ, then every provision of the New Covenant has been granted to you! And you have the Holy Spirit resident within you to lead you into all truth (John 16:13).