Leading Churches

 Acts 14:23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting ^cthey committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

23 χειροτονήσαντες δὲ αὐτοῖς κατ᾽ ἐκκλησίαν πρεσβυτέρους, προσευξάμενοι μετὰ νηστειῶν παρέθεντο αὐτοὺς τῷ κυρίῳ εἰς ὃν πεπιστεύκεισαν.

One of the problems I have with blogging through Acts is that I am not always struck by devotional moments to write about. But even when I don't have one of those I can speak to what I believe is a strong doctrinal matter. 

There is of course disagreement about whether Acts should be read descriptively, prescriptively, or both. The more strongly charismatic see Acts as being both throughout. Of course, we can debate the matters of the sign gifts like prophecy and tongues. However, I think that this passage pretty clearly shows us how Paul meant for church leadership to work.


He appointed πρεσβυτέρους at the churches. Note that this is plural. He did not appoint pastors to be kings at the churches like bishops. He appointed multiple elders at the churches.


What does this mean? We should follow his model. We do not want to go down the road of the pastor as the king. Instead, we want to follow with having a plurality of elders to run the churches. For more information, this is a great resource.