Truth Magazine

By Larry Ray Hafley

QUESTION:

From Alabama: “The church I attend has been in existence for nearly 30 years. We don’t have elders and have never had them. This bothers me. Shouldn’t a church have elders after 30 years?”

REPLY:

It is not the purpose of this column to pronounce judgment on local situations. It is difficult for an “insider” to know all the facts and circumstances. An “outsider” like myself cannot be expected to accurately and correctly diagnose and deal with a specific point of reference. However, a few general thoughts may be helpful.

What The New Testament Teaches

The New Testament teaches that churches should have elders (Acts 14:23; 20:17, 28; Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:5; 1 Pet. 5:2). God’s order is for a plurality of scripturally qualified men to feed, lead, watch, and warn souls in each local church (Acts 20:28; 1 Tim. 5:17; Heb. 13:17; 1 Pet. 5:2, 3). The work charged to elders reveals that no flock of God can be perfect or complete until it has elders or overseers (Titus 1:5). Therefore, no church of God should be satisfied without elders whether it be 30 months old or 30 years of age.

No Qualified Men

The New Testament clearly teaches that only a certain class of men can be bishops or elders (1 Tim. 3; Titus 1). Qualifications necessarily make it impossible for every church to appoint men as elders. God does not place standards in operation and expect that each church will always be capable of meeting them. For example, there must be two or more men willing to serve (1 Tim. 3:1, 2; Acts 14:23). These facts eliminate some small churches. As only qualified men should serve, it follows that a church should not appoint men when they have none who meet the scriptural specifications.

Excuses Or Extenuating Circumstances?

After an indefinite period of time, it appears a church should grow and develop men as elders. Surely, after 30 years a church might be expected to have elders, but there may be various reasons and excuses. Some are justifiable while others are suspect at best.

First, some churches have a high population “turnover” rate. The membership is not the same for very long due to families moving in and out every few years. Second, divisions, both the necessary and the unnecessary kind, may be instrumental in stripping a church of potential eldership timber. Third, some congregations never seriously consider the need for elders. Unappointed “leaders” become old and feeble. Meanwhile, young people are marrying and moving away. Now, most all that are left are a few sweet elderly widows and several failing and feeble older couples. The younger couples who do remain are wondering, “Why have we never had any elders here?” The truth is that the church just did not seek the New Testament pattern with respect to elders. Fourth, no teaching is ever done to encourage a man to become an elder. Is it a sin to urge a young, faithful man to consider the office or work of a bishop? Waiting until a man is 45 years old before asking him to “consider being an elder” is foolish and wasteful. We guide men to equip themselves as preachers, so why not as elders? Fifth, some churches can find no men who desire the work of elders. Why is it that able and generally faithful men to not aspire to preach or be elders? Does the fault lie within me? Often men may be discouraged because of the abuses they see heaped on elders by tyrannical preachers and mean members of the church.

Four Classes

Essentially, there are four classes or kinds of church organization. A church may be:

1) Scripturally Unorganized: This condition exists where there are no men qualified to serve and none are serving. This was the early state of the churches mentioned in Acts 14:21-23. At first, the new converts were likely not in accord with the qualifications of elders. Upon Paul’s return, certain ones were appointed, but prior to this time they (the churches) were scripturally unorganized.

2) Scripturally Organized: A church is scripturally organized when it has qualified men who desire to serve and who are appointed. This was the status of the Philippian church (Phil. 1:1). This level of development is no accident. It is the result of purposeful and prayerful teaching and living. Not every church that has men called “elders” and “deacons” is scripturally organized. They have men who are merely going through the motions, but who are not watching for souls. Their elders are elders in name only. They wear a title, but they do no work. As it takes more than the name “church of God” to make a church of God, so it takes more than “elders and deacons” to have a scripturally organized congregation.

3) Unscripturally Organized: A church is unscripturally organized when it has no men qualified to take the oversight but who are doing so nonetheless. This was the sad plight of the church where Diotrephes ruled and reigned (3Jn. 9). That church was unscripturally organized. This is why many churches have no elders. A dictator or a clique runs the church, or else the church has always relied on a pastor-preacher to be chairman of the board. This is a sad situation. It restrains many churches from progressing to scriptural organization.

4) Unscripturally Unorganized: A church may be termed unscripturally unorganized when it has men who are qualified to serve but who are not appointed and laboring. Jealousy, envy, and apathy are often the causes of a church’s being unscripturally unorganized. When men are not submissive to the leadership of elders, when they fear the subjection that is required, they will see to it that a church remains unscripturally unorganized by dictatorially forbidding the appointment of elders. This they do through party-power politics.

Conclusion

Scriptural congregational organization should characterize every church. But even after 30 years do not appoint men hastily. If you think a church without elders is bad and unscriptural, just appoint unqualified, half-hearted servants. Two wrongs do not make a right. Churches suffer without qualified elders, but they are doubly pained if they select men just for the sake of saying, “Well, now we have elders.” Further, remember that it is a work, not a political office, that you are appointing men unto. It is an awesome task and should be approached with reverence and godly fear.

Truth Magazine XX: 33, pp. 524-525
August 19, 1976

By Raymond E. Harris

In Ezekiel 34, God calls the leaders of Israel to account for their contribution to the sin and ruination of His people. The shepherds of the flock of God have been negligent. Their unskillfulness, unfaithfulness, inefficiency and treachery is exposed and rebuked.

The shepherds of the Master’s flocks have the great responsibility to “feed the flocks.” However, in this text Jehovah charges that the shepherds had rather feed themselves. The shepherds have drunk the milk (1 Cor. 9:7), eaten the flesh and clothed themselves with the wool of the very sheep they were to care for. They selfishly had advanced and enriched themselves at the expense of God’s own. They had indulged and gratified their own appetites while completely ignoring the needs of the sheep. They were so ignorant, lazy, slothful and unfaithful, that God’s sheep were scattered and became as those that had no shepherd. God’s sheep became “the prey of all the beasts of the field” and “they wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill.”

Further, the Lord God charged that the shepherds had not bothered to strengthen the diseased, heal the sick, or bind up that which was broken. They had not “brought again that which was driven away,” or sought that which was lost. But rather he says that they had 11 with force and cruelty” ruled them.

In this dispensation it is the will of God that every flock (local congregation) have its own shepherds (Acts 14:23). In spiritual Israel shepherds (elders) are to feed the church of God (Acts 20:28). Their responsibility is to “all the flock” over which they have been made overseers (Acts 20:28). They are to “feed the flock of God which is among” them (1 Pet. 5:2). And this feeding is to be garnished with unselfishness, willingness to serve the Great Shepherd and a Christlike example in life.

We believe some parallels can be drawn between the failures of shepherds in Ezekiel’s day and the failures of shepherds in many congregations today.

(1) To begin with, over the past 20 years shepherds in many places have selfishly led the sheep to barren pastures and empty wells by allowing the pulpit to become a circus ring rather than a horn of spiritual nourishment. Theology, psychology and institutional ideology replaced the green pastures of speaking as the “oracles of God.” College presidents, editors of papers and silver-tongued promoters became the sources of authority rather than Peter, Paul and John. Hence, countless numbers will cry out eternally in the torments of hell. They will charge indifferent shepherds with allowing the flocks’ very souls to decay and rot as a result of a constant diet of syrupy sermons, honey coated appeals and frosted promotions. Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

(2) Meanwhile many shepherds have drunk the milk, eaten the flesh and worn the wool of the sheep. By inviting the promoters for meetings, giving God’s money to the institutions of men and by glorifying the pseudointellectuals in Zion, they enhanced their own stature. Payments were promptly received. Elders who had previously been unheard of and unknown were invited to sit on panels at college lectureships. They were introduced before large audiences at orphan homes and heralded as giants for the cause of Christ in national papers. But why all the attention? The answer is simple: They had put the Herald of Truth, the orphan home and the college in the church budget! Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

(3) Meanwhile back at the sheepfold, the flocks began to deteriorate spiritually. In a short time many became diseased with Pentecostalism, sick with Calvinism and broken with Modernism. The unfaithful shepherds were reveling in their new found popularity and brotherhood prominence. They had neither the time, knowledge or inclination to “strengthen,” to “heal” and to bind up.

By this time shepherds had turned the flocks over to professional “hirelings.” They had really lost control and pride prohibited them from reversing their course. One false word and they would have been stamped with that incomparable stigma “Anti!” Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

(4) Hence, the die was cast! For most of these unfaithful shepherds there was no turning back. They were enslaved and chained by brotherhood pressure, popular preachers, powerful institutions and their own weakness.

They have not brought back that faithful remnant that was driven away. They have not sought that which is lost. Rather, many shepherds, skillfully manipulated by forces behind the scene, have crudely ruled “with force and with cruelty.” Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

(5) Therefore, in many quarters God’s flock is scattered spiritually and doctrinally as sheep without a shepherd. They with anxiety and bewilderment wander through the mountains and high hills of the vicissitudes of life. They have become a prey to the beasts of the field as their starvation diets over the past years have left them weak and unable to discern, much less ward off, the false doctrines of men. Woe be to the shepherds of Israel!

Truth Magazine XX: 33, pp. 522-523
August 19, 1976

By Wallace H. Little

Not long ago, with another Christian, I stood at the bedside of a man dying of cancer in a hospital. He knew he had not long to live, and had accepted the fact of his soon-coming death. He was completely paralyzed and without sensation from the waist down. The loathsome disease had progressed to the point of softening his bones. As careful as the attendants were, and I verified this carefulness by my observation, they had accidentally broken one of his legs a week or so before. He was in considerable pain, and knew he had no chance of recovery, and his only hope for release from his physical agony was death.

But he was disturbed for reasons other than his cancer. A long time prior to this, he had been taught the first principles of the oracles of God. While recognizing truth and its application to him, he put off obedience. It was “not convenient”; besides, he was enjoying things he knew he would have to give up to become a Christian. Now he fully knew he was about to die, and that he was not prepared to do so. This, not his physical condition, was the cause of his mental anguish.

We talked for a few minutes, if the sounds he made could be called “talk.” He wanted to hear again Christ’s call for sinners to come to Him. In ten minutes or so, he urgently requested I baptize him.

It was not easy. His condition was so bad we were convinced to move him from the hospital to the nearest place suitable for immersion would cause him much pain and possibly kill him too. One of the nurses suggested trying a large tub in the hospital. The attending doctor gave his permission, so we carefully shifted him from his bed to a stretcher, and from there to the tub, which by this time was filled with water. Getting him into it was not easy. After baptizing him, getting him back out, onto the stretcher again and then returning him to bed was even more difficult. I know we hurt him, for several times he was unable to keep from groaning.

But now he was no longer troubled in heart. He was completely relaxed and content. Why he waited as long as he did, coming as close to death as he did before being baptized, I do not know. It is doubtful he really knew either. But God in His compassion extended this man mercy: our new brother in Christ lived just short of eight days after being immersed.

I stood in the presence of death . . . then in the presence of life powerful enough to overcome death. Our brother “squeaked through.” But we all stand in the presence of death daily. Oh, not necessarily physical death, but surely separation from God (Isa. 59:1, 2). And unlike this man, most of these will pass through physical death in their present condition, unprepared. The only hope of these lost ones is those of us who know the gospel of Christ and are willing to take it to them.

Without this gospel and ourselves as God’s messengers in bringing it to the lost, we will all continue to stand in the presence of death daily . . . and one day, we will stand in the presence of our own death for having failed to do as God would have us do (Jas. 4:17), not having tried to bring life to the lost, as was brought to our dying brother.

Will you stand in the presence of your own spiritual death?

Truth Magazine XX: 33, p. 522
August 19, 1976

By Roy E. Cogdill

My brethren have preached through the years that “There is one body.” They still profess to preach and believe it, but a close investigation reveals that many of them no longer believe it to the point that they are willing to practice it. If we are not willing to carry out every function of the Lord’s church in and through the “one body” or one organization found in the Scriptures, we are hypocrites when we preach and profess to believe in the “one body” of Ephesians 4. The practical application of this divine truth is not confined to denominations but is just as applicable to New Testament Christians everywhere. We have no right preaching that some are bound by it when we are not willing to be confined to the principle ourselves.

More than a hundred years ago, all through this land there was the disposition to cling to the “old paths” in theory but not in practice. Brethren became dissatisfied with divine arrangements yet professed to be believers in divine truth. They preached then, “We will speak where the Bible speaks and we will be silent where the Bible is silent.” This was more than a slogan. It is a Bible principle. “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 4:11). These brethren then professed to continue to “speak as the oracles of God,” indeed they still do make that profession, but they were not willing to minister (serve) of the “strength which God supplieth.” They demonstrated that “speaking where the Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent” was to them just a slogan and not a divine principle at all. They went about organizing whatever they wished in the way of human institutions and societies to accomplish the work that God had designated as the work of the church. When once they had accepted the principle of the “missionary society” they were plunged into dozens of others and a multitude of other departures both in worship and doctrine. It is amazing to hear these brethren who “went out from us because they were not of us” and have formed themselves into the denomination known commonly as “The Christian Church” or as “The Disciples” and -even sometimes yet as “Churches of Christ” but a denomination none-the-less, still talk about “speaking where the Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent.”

It is even more amazing to hear the modern defectors from truth among our brethren profess to disallow what those then did but who now themselves “doest the same things” (Romans 2:1). The brethren who have accepted the principle of being at “liberty” to affect whatever organizations they deem expedient or necessary to carry out the function of the Lord’s church, still would make one who does not know what is going on among them think that they believe in “speaking where the Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent.” They still talk about the “sufficiency of the church to do what God gave it to do” and all of the time they preach and contend that it is necessary to build human organizations to do it.

In the Birmingham debate and at Newberne, Tennessee, in the discussions with Guy N. Woods, Gospel Advocate staff writer, he contended that the Lord had commanded the church to do the work of benevolence and then contended that the church could not actually do this work but could finance it. He along with all of the Gospel Advocate disciples argue that the work of benevolence which God has given the church to do necessitates (not just as expedient) the forming of another organization (body), a benevolent society under a board of directors with a president, vice president, secretary and treasurer. Still they would have you think they believe in “but one body.” We deny that they do. They no more believe in “speaking as the oracles of God” than the digressive brethren of the Christian Churches. They talk about it but they are not willing to “serve out of the strength which God giveth.” In fact, they say that God has not given us the means in the Scriptures of carrying out the very thing which God has commanded us to do.

There are others, like the Firm Foundation disciples, who insist that the work of benevolence should be under the elders of the local church. They form their giant combinations like Tipton Home to care for the indigent, put it into the farming business, livestock business, school business, and a dozen others, and then stick that giant institution, board of directors and all, under the eldership of the local church at Tipton. The elders at Tipton say that the work of this institution is under their supervision. Do they have the Bible classes in the real estate business, insurance business, secular educational business, etc.? Do they have these Bible classes set under a board of directors with the same kind of legal arrangement, incorporation, as they have the “home”? If not, why not? The fact is that their claim is not so. They have a separate organization from the church and it is professedly doing the work of the church. Why not this same arrangement for missionary work? There is no scriptural authority for either and both invade the sacred realm of God’s authority and are rebellious against His will.

These same brethren try to justify a perversion of the organization of God’s church, the local congregation, by making it serve as a brotherhood agency. They have a brotherhood eldership, brotherhood treasury, brotherhood work organized as the “Herald of Truth.” It is a sinful perversion of the nature and function of God’s organization and has divided churches of Christ all over the world and disrupted the fellowship of God’s people. When those who go along with it and support it claim to “speak where the Bible speaks and be silent where the Bible is silent,” they are making a false claim. God has supplied no such human arrangements and the “service” they perform is not by the “strength which God has supplied.”

Paul said, “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God” (Col. 2:18-19). These liberal and institutional brethten may not “worship angels” but they definitely “intrude into those things which (they) have not seen” and are “vainly puffed up by (their) fleshly minds.” Moreover they are “not holding the Head, from which all the body (has) nourishment ministered . . . and (is) knit together, and increaseth with the increase of God.”

Those who are led astray by such deceptive means while professing a form of godliness have denied the power thereof.” They “say and do not.” They do not respect the divine truth: “there is one body.”

They do not preach what they practice. Then there are those who do not practice what they preach. Sometimes churches say, “We do not contribute to these human societies.” Yet they give them their endorsement and encouragement and will not allow the truth which condemns them to be taught from the pulpit or in the Bible classes. They are even more inexcusable and are “accessories” to the fact whether they contribute their money or not. There is no neutral ground when Bible truth is involved.

Christ is not the head of human arrangements and organizations and has not supplied nourishment unto them in any sense. Neither is God giving the increase. It is not the increase of God (Col. 2:18-19).

Truth Magazine XX: 33, pp. 520-521
August 19, 1976