The Augean Stables

Eldership (Acts 20:17)

There are many myths about Hercules, the son of Zeus and a human woman.  One of the most famous stories about him concerns his 12 labors, assigned to him after he went crazy and murdered his family.  None of these labors were believed to be possible for anyone to do.  The god Apollo assigned him these tasks to atone for the murders.  (Wherever you go, whatever religion it is, people naturally think that they are their own atonement.  That’s what we ran into in our interviewing at the Fall Festival.)

One of those Twelve Labors was the cleaning of the Augean Stables.  King Augeas was cheap, and while he was rich enough to own many, many herds of cattle, he had never been willing to pay for the services of someone to clean their mess. Hercules was to do it all in one day.  Impossible.  The mess has become proverbial. (Augean stables is now synonymous with "Herculean task," which is itself the equivalent of saying something is all but humanly impossible.)

Hercules did it by diverting a river to run through the stables and won the day. 

When it comes to the subject of church government, perhaps it’s like cleaning the Augean stables because there is so much tradition, so much history, and so much culture which work into the way our minds work.    

There are many words I don’t like.  Four-letter words are on my list of words I don’t like, but there’s a thirteen-letter word that’s on my list as well. It’s “authoritarian.”  That word, by its very nature, prejudices me against it because it carries the ideas of “demanding,” “controlling,” and “dictatorial.” 

But when you think about it, in everybody’s life, in the decisions we make, in what we do and how we do it, there is an authority which is “authoritarian.”  For some people, they are their own authority and they are authoritarian about their own authority.  Frank Sinatra sang about it in the song, “I Did it My Way” and was applauded for it. 

For others, their authority comes packaged in a cliché: “That’s the way I was raised.”  For example, I was raised that when I’m introduced to a lady, I stand up and only shake hands with her IF she extends her hand first.  And if she does extend her hand first, my grip is not to be as strong as if I’m shaking hands with a man.  What do we call that?  That’s my “tradition.” 

There are other authoritarian authorities out there—the charismatic, strong leader type whose word is law and by the strength of his personality, he leads people to sell their homes and they wind up in Waco with David Koresh in a government-authorized fire or in Africa with Jim Jones drinking Kool-Aide, or breaking into a home with knives where Sharon Tate is and killing everybody, just like their authority, Charles Manson told them to do. 

Slice it any way you want, everybody’s got an authoritarian authority, ranging all the way from “I Did It My Way,” to a middle school peer group, to “here’s how I FEEL.”  

Since everybody is going to have an authoritarian authority, you and I need to make sure we have the right one.  For us, this is a no-brainer, or at least should be.  “Man shall not live by bread alone, but [man should live] by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  There it is.  Jesus settles it for us.  My authoritarian authority is spelled with a capital “A’s” because it’s God’s Word. 

How does this sound: the pastor is at the top of a pyramid, the staff is at the bottom of the pyramid, under that are the elders, the deacons, or maybe just the deacons.  Then comes the congregation somewhere, but by now, the bottom of the pyramid is getting too crowded even for King Tut. 

Or, how does this sound: the “Senior Pastor” (not a biblical term, by the way) sits atop with a committee or a group whose job it is to “assist him.”  In this the pastor is the strong CEO, holding the ultimate authority. 

Or how about this: there’s the Lone Ranger.  He’s separate, different from the rest of us; “isolated” is a good word for him.  He’s not really a part of us.  if we invite the Lone Ranger to a party, it’s not because we want to, it’s because we have to.  But whatever else he is, he’s alone.  We even call him by different names which, although we may not intend to do so, re-enforce his “lone-ness:” he’s THE “Reverend,” he’s THE “cleric,” he’s a “clergyman,” and then there is the one who are especially singled out, he’s THE “Right Reverend.”  

Or how about this one: as Americans, we learn the American business model.  “Look, there goes the CEO, the pastor.”  He’s read all the books on leadership, but the problem is that the books are business model books, and business becomes the authoritarian authority.  The pastor likes these books because they put the power in his hands.  His authoritarian authority becomes, “I Do It My Way.” 

We were raised in the US of A and in the US of A our Congress operates by committees and those committees deal with appropriations, writing the tax laws.  (The qualification for that committee is that you’ve must have been cheating on your taxes for at least four years.)  So, let’s set up a committee to assist the pastor and call it a “board.”  Here’s how one author put it: “Part of pastoral identity is wrapped up in climbing the mountain, looking out over the horizon, charting the course, and collecting people along the way.” 

The strong pull is to copy one of these models.  There’s the pyramid model, there’s the CEO model, there’s the quarterback model, there’s the Lone Ranger model, there’s the committee model.

But, whatever happened to the biblical model?   

You and I are very concerned about the way the Federal Government is headed.  We read the newspapers and watch the news because the care.  But when it comes to the structure of the church, the attitude can become, “Who cares.” 

To God, the church is precious because the church contains blood-brought people—Acts 20:28.  To God, the church is precious because it is the bride of Christ.  To God, the church is precious because His Son is the foundation on which He is building the church.  The church will be a trophy of His grace to be on display for eternity. What His Son bought with His blood and since the church is the bride of His Son, and since the church is being built on His Son, it’s not something to be taken lightly.  We also understand that Christ loves the church and gave Himself for it.  God has therefore given a structure for the church and His church is to function within that framework. 

That biblical structure concerns men in the church called “elders.”  Acts 20:17.  In this sentence, Paul calls the “elders” of the church and the word is “presbuteros,” meaning, “older man.”  The word speaks of the dignity of the office and the maturity required.  Then we go down to verse 28, where he’s speaking to the same group and he calls them “overseers.”  Same group, two different words refer to them.  “Overseer” refers to their function,” not the dignity of their position.  At this point, notice that he didn’t call the “pastors.” 

The elders are episkopoi, the “overseerers.”   The N. Testament does not use the terms, “the minister,” “the reverend,” “the priest” or “the bishop.”  The Bible uses the word, “overseers,” plural. 

The church is to have more than one recognized elder.  Titus 1:5, James 5:14; Acts 14:23.  In these last two verses, we see that elder is plural and church is singular, meaning that each church is to have more than one. 

So, what do we have here—not a business model, not a CEO model, not a Lone Ranger model, but a shared leadership model of the church.  This means that the eldership is not a committee to assist the pastor, the elders are the pastors in the fullest sense of the word.  The elders in a church are the pastors together.

The way God has designed this has great advantages for the church. 

If you were to look with me at my seminary directory and count the number of men who were once pastors but are no longer, you’d be surprised at the number.  Some are no longer pastors for moral reasons (they were paid so little they ran off with the church treasury and a wealthy woman).  But what about those who are no longer in the vineyard because they just couldn’t take it anymore.  The expectations people had of them became too much and today they sit in rest homes because they’ve cracked up, sitting there trying to figure out how to blow up the volleyball.  Or they’ve just burned out trying to do and do and do. 

This all goes back to a faulty concept of expectations.  We expect the pastor to be multi-gifted and certainly multitalented.  Pastors expect themselves to be multigifted.  Here’s how this works: the pastor and the congregation, schooled in their traditions of church and culture, expect the pastor to have all strengths in all areas and no weaknesses in any area.  From their culture, it is inconceivable to them that the pastor is not good at everything. 

They ignore what C. S. Lewis wrote about us—every person, being a sinner, has a “fatal flaw.”  We can easily see this fatal flaw in others, but we can’t see our own.  Each person’s fatal flaw can cripple him and can even destroy him. 

Should we think that God devised the role of pastor for one person to do it with the idea of calling him to a position that is going to wreck his sanity and maybe kill him?  Should we think that God gave each one of us just so much that we can be “good at,” and then decided to set up the church so that one person would be THE MAN who is expected to do everything and do it well? 

It doesn’t look like, from what we’ve seen in Acts and Titus that the one-man leader of the church isn’t the way God set things up.  It looks like our traditions have put men into an impossible situation and is ruthless in so doing.  It sets the pastor up for becoming isolated, alone.

When Barry Switzer was coach of the Oklahoma Sooners, he started winning game after game and had a huge winning streak.  His record at OU was 157-29-4.  He won three national championships while at OU.  His team had been on a tear, compiling a hefty winning streak.  Then they lost a game.  One game.  An irate fan wrote and said, “I knew your lousy coaching would catch up with you.”  Good grief.  But the fact remains, all human beings, even very good pastors have a fatal flaw.  Is there anything that can be done about that flaw this side of heaven? 

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12: “Two people are better than one because they can reap more benefit from their labor.  For if they fall, one will help his companion up, but pity  the person who falls down and has no one to help him up. Furthermore, if two lie down together, they can keep each other warm, but how can one person keep warm by himself? Although an assailant may overpower one person, two can withstand him. Moreover, a three-stranded cord is not quickly broken.”

The plurality of elders covers the bases.  Where one elder is weak, another is strong and fulfills that function.  Where one is strong, he can go 90 miles an hour in his strength.  Where he is weak, he hands the baton off to another elder.

The other side of the coin is that, unfortunately, we pastors are such fatally flawed sinners that we enjoy the “Big Enchilada” concept, just like you do.  We enjoy power.  But all we have to do is to look at Washington D. C. and see that power corrupts.  We wake up one morning to learn that a congressman who is chairman of writing the tax laws, cheats on his taxes and has been doing so for years.  We had a president who became immoral and unfaithful and why?  “Because I can,” was the answer. 

Not accountable.  Had you and I hid money from the IRS, do you think we’d be sitting here or in jail?  I know a pastor who, upon finding a door in the church locked, instead of waiting for someone to bring the key, he just kicked the door down.  Why?  Because he could. 

So, God, knowing that we’re fatally flawed and that we don’t handle power very well, set up a system of multiple pastors in the church to serve as a system of checks and balances with each elder-pastor accountable to the others and with each elder-pastor equal to the others. 

The elders encourage each other, take up the slack for each other, and go out and be pastors to the congregation with each other and to each other.

The business model, the Lone Ranger model, all those are in the stables of our minds; it takes the intake of the waters of the Word to clear out the stables.

Truth To Take Home: A church is to have elderS, functioning as colleagueS in the work of the ministry in a local church.

* = Free Grace Teacher or Ministry