Testing Tradition

Note: This is the second of a two-part series.  You can read part one  here .  Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Hebrews 13:17 There are at least two related ideas that are taught in many modern churches today  primarily  on the basis of this single verse: Within the church, elders/pastors have a unique authority that other believers don't have and believers are commanded to obey the elders/pastors in their church. God intends for a believer to enter into covenant membership in a specific church and it is those believers who are members of the church that elders/pastors in a church are accountable for. I would like to challenge both of these ideas and make the case that these ideas are more the product of ideas we read  into  the text than what the text itself says and mean...

Note: This is the first of a two-part series.  You can read part two here .  Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Hebrews 13:17 There are at least two related ideas that are taught in many modern churches today primarily on the basis of this single verse: Within the church, elders/pastors have a unique authority that other believers don't have and believers are commanded to obey the elders/pastors in their church. God intends for a believer to enter into covenant membership in a specific church and it is those believers who are members of the church that elders/pastors in a church are accountable for. I would like to challenge both of these ideas and make the case that these ideas are more the product of ideas we read into the text than what the text itself says and means. First, Hebrews 13:17 does ...

Last week, Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever published a podcast in which they discuss the biblical validity of paying pastors in the local church: https://www.9marks.org/interview/episode-76-on-pastoral-pay/ I consider these men not only sincere brothers; I look up to them as men who have taught me much and whom I greatly admire. But, having listened to this recording twice and re-listened to a couple of segments in particular, I don't believe the biblical texts they mentioned can validly be used as a basis for paying local pastors/elders in the church. So in this post I want to offer a brotherly/friendly rejoinder by briefly looking at each passage Leeman and Dever mentioned and pushing back on its applicability to paying local pastors/elders in the church.  I do so in the spirit of Acts 17:11 and my prayerful desire is that we all who bow to Jesus Christ as Lord would do the same. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eag...