I am a first-class example of the thing that concerns me. I am a full-time salaried minister. I sometimes think congregational and denominational chore-boy would describe my work better. I don’t mean to be facetious in suggesting this. Nor am I blaming the congregation in saying this. I believe the fault lies in the nature of the polity we are following. It is no time for irony and sarcasm. Paul was willing to be all things to all men, but did he mean by this that he was to do all things for all men?

Can members of a brotherhood make decisions that are God’s will for our generation unless they are personally involved in the decision-making process? Will approval of the work of a committee suffice? Do we imply that most church members are such babes in Christ that they cannot be trusted to arrive at a Scriptural solution without seminary training and official installation in a position of responsibility? What is our doctrine of the Holy Spirit? I find no fault with the existence of duly ordained and salaried ministers, but I do have doubts about the growing number of duties and decisions and responsibilities that are either assigned to them or are taken by them. I have no objections to an association of churches in a conference, but in the working of the conference machinery and the time required of some men away from their congregations inclines me to believe that Franklin Clark Fry stated it about right when he said: “The Lord called me into the ministry and the church called me away from it.” When it is reported that a layman answered a brother’s request of him to help at a task in the congregation with the words, “Get the preacher to do that. That’s what we are paying him for!”—my heart sinks within me and I ask myself, “Is that really what the pastor is being paid for?” This may be what that particular brother understands of the minister’s task, but is that the New Testament’s understanding of the minister’s task? How many other people in our congregations think this way?

The King James Version translates Eph 4:11–12 like this: “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” Most people have taken the last verse to give a threefold outline of the pastor’s work. The passage really intends to tell us nothing of the sort. In the first place, it says, pastors and teachers. Furthermore, I believe we must consult other versions to get the more accurate translation of this passage’s real meaning. Paul is saying, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that God gave some to be ministers and teachers “with a view to the equipment of the saints for their (i.e. the saints’) work of ministering.”

Our society is of such a nature today that we need a sprinkling of men throughout the church who are academically trained in certain areas of church work and biblical study just as we need especially trained mechanics and doctors and lawyers to help us at times when it would be practically impossible for us to help ourselves. We cannot all know and experience everything. There are men gifted in this way, and others in that way and I see no New Testament objection in paying them in order that they may have time free in the exercise of their gifts. But this requires a more precise division of responsibility than we have arrived at to date.

What I do object to is the growing gulf between minister and people both in the understanding of many problems and in the outworking of them. We are in danger of asking our congregations to rubber stamp our personal decision or a committee’s decision without giving them the painful privilege of growing with us through the decision-making process.

Furthermore, must we conclude that because the multiple lay ministry has brought us many grievous problems in the past, that it is now time to turn to a single and trained ministry, exclusively? (By lay ministry here I mean an untrained ministry, not an unordained ministry.) Any system of ministry, whether singular or plural, will operate no more smoothly than the spirituality of the congregations involved will allow. We may take a shortcut in arriving at an immediate outcome, but we will never find a shortcut to the coming to “the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect (mature) man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; that we henceforth be no more children” (Eph 4:13–14).

Until recently most, if not all, of our conferences consisted of the ordained brethren only. More recently, a few of the conferences have widened their official membership to include a lay delegate from each congregation. I suppose the members of every constituent congregation have always considered themselves conference members, but they were so only via their ordained leadership. I simply bring this up in order to call to our attention the truth of a statement made by G. A. Jacob in his book entitled The Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament:

Another indication of this may be a tendency in some conferences and congregations to replace deacons with stewards, and an eldership with a church council. I do not mean to dicker about words and titles, but I have to doubt whether this is all the replacement means. The early church ordained elders in every church and deacons were ordained too. I doubt whether any person, no matter how talented or consecrated, can properly fulfill his calling if he is installed into a very circumscribed office and for only a very short term of office.

Mr. Jacob further writes that “the laity in general were in apostolic and following times much consulted and had great influence in church matters, until priestly pretensions and pride had pushed them aside. Lay, or ruling-elders, may . . . still be very useful for preventing or restraining the growth of hierarchical propensities.”2

Surely the singular ministry is especially liable to take us in a hierarchical direction unless something be done to prevent it. What is needed in order to meet the crying wants of the present age is not so much an increase in church officials or an increase in the responsibilities and authority of a few as is the sound and self-denying unofficial ministrations of Christian men and women.

The danger was apparently felt already in apostolic times, for Peter writes that presbyters are not to assume too high an authority by lording it over their people. In some of the Epistles, indeed, churches are addressed and admonished without any notice at all being taken of their ministers, who remain undistinguished in the general body, as in Romans and Galatians. In some, the presence of ministers is acknowledged, but with only a passing allusion, if any, to the nature of their office, as in Ephesians and Philippians. In one, a message is sent to a minister, through the church, bidding him take heed to his ministry, that he fulfills it, as in Colossians. Yet I would not be misunderstood, for it is also clear that churches are expressly bidden to revere and obey their ministers and in the pastoral epistles Timothy and Titus are strongly urged to assert their authority. A careful consideration of what is due from the clergy to the laity, and from the laity to the clergy (if we may use the terms), would not be unprofitable at the present time.

It is perhaps also not out of order to call our attention to another fact indicated by the New Testament which we overlook as we take current practice quite for granted. The New Testament nowhere presents the Christian ministry as necessary on account of certain spiritual functions which could not otherwise have been lawfully discharged. There are positively no sacred rites or acts which it is declared in the New Testament must be administered by men ordained, or in any way separated from the general body of believers. Yet the New Testament does call for the doing of things “decently and in order” (1 Cor 14:40). There was no spiritual act which in itself was of such a nature that it might not have been done by every individual Christian, but the general well-being and healthy action of the whole body suggests that known and responsible persons should be charged with certain religious duties in the midst of it. Presence aptly remarks that the words of Paul to the Corinthians imply that all Christians might break the bread and bless the cup at the Lord’s Supper, and not an officiating minister only; for, he says, “the bread which we break,” and “the cup which we bless” (1 Cor 10:16). It is certainly doubtful that Paul was using the editorial or pastoral plural. Our own church in Switzerland began by the mutual baptizing of each other by those few gathered together in prayer and Bible study. While some organization and agreed-upon assignment of responsibilities is necessary to the orderly life of the church, perhaps we have allowed hierarchical propensities to increase the number of these unduly.

As if to show beyond dispute that official ministerial functions and unofficial popular influence were quite compatible, and ought to be in active, harmonious, and general exercise in the church, the two are united in a remarkable manner in a single utterance by Paul when he writes thus to the Thessalonians: “Wherefore comfort yourselves together (better, exhort yourselves together), and edify one another, even as also ye do. And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves. Now we exhort you, brethren, warn (same word as translated admonish a few lines before when spoken of the ministers) them that are unruly, comfort” (1 Thess 5:11–14).

The various efforts of sociologists attempting to reduce the history of Christian groups to typical patterns seem to place any church before a pair of alternatives. There is the “sect-type” ministry, composed of men called by the church or arising spontaneously from the midst of her membership. Such minis...