The one man pastor system is not Biblical and creates narcissists who think they are above the people, they are the modern day Pharisees.
When we do not allow godly men within the gathering to participate in the teaching and preaching, we are elevating a man with "a degree", ordained by man, to take center stage while godly other men remain in the pews unable to express themselves.
The Biblical model of leadership is an Eldership, more than one man who take care of business, as well as other men in the gathering who preach and teach as led by the Holy Spirit.
Each man getting up to give a word, question the speaker, even correcting a wrong statement of the speaker during the preaching, is the Biblical model. No man is all right, God knows this, that's why His mandate was for all men to participate. When one speaks others openly evaluate and comment in the gathering.
This model is nearly gone now in the modern gatherings. This mandate for all to participate has been abandoned by most gatherings today in favor of a one man pastor who has been educated by an institution, rather than by the Holy Spirit. These educated men place their trust in their schooling rather than in Christ.
God never intended for there to be "underlings" and "superiors" in the church gatherings. Leaders are to lead by example and teaching, not by man made rules and mandates God never commanded. My eyes to the misuse of Scripture as I came out of the Catholic church. Many protestant gatherings are doing the same thing many Catholics do, that is elevate one man above others as though that one man has a special conduit to God more than other believers. This is wrong and not at all God's model of the gathering of believers. There are those in the protestant church who think they are above the Catholics because they don't have a pope, but the do have their form of a pope, that is those who have degrees and have been designated by their parent organization to be the preachers.
Each gathering, according to the Bible is autonomous to every other gathering. The preaches ought to be coming from among the people, not hirelings from outside to be paid a salary. It is one thing to give some money to a traveling preacher to help pay expenses, it is quite another to pay a "salary" to someone to be the leader. God never told us to pay a salary to those who preach in the local gathering.
1 Peter 5:2-3 "…2 Be shepherds of God’s flock that is among you, watching over them not out of compulsion, but because it is God’s will; not out of greed, but out of eagerness; 3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. "
I cringe a little every time I hear someone say, "pastor whoever", in a description of someone who leads. "pastor" is not a title or a position, according to God's word it is a gift and many men in the gathering should have it. When only those who come out of formal schooling are allowed to preach and teach, it is a demonstration of man relying on man rather than man relying on the Holy Spirit. We see no model in the Word of God, of a man attending a college to become a Biblical leader. The prophets of old spent time in God's Word and alone with Him, their marching orders came from God. Just as ours come from Christ Who lives in us.
1 John 2:27
"27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him."
There is an amazing blessing in any gathering when those chosen to lead are one of several and gifted in preaching. They are led by the Holy Spirit and not affected by whether or not they could get fired. There are so many problems created by the one man pastor system that we see today. One of these problems is the tendency for the "pastor" to be careful what he says so he will not lose his job. Another tendency is to seek to find what the people want, entertainment and foolishness to keep the people coming. If this hireling can keep the people coming, he has a guaranteed salary.
Often the one man pastor system tends to cause a sense of superiority in the one who is given so much praise and responsibility. There have been articles written on this very subject, that is 90% of the pastors in the pulpits today are narcissists. They refuse to take correction, they will not change their view when challenged that it is not Biblical and they will even seek to chase away the Biblical believers to maintain their status of superiority.
There are so many problems with this one man pastor system, it could all be written in a book and probably has been.
I reject a system that is not mandated by God, a system that is man's idea to keep the masses controlled and feeling a sense of inferiority to the leaders.
The Holy Spirit dwells in EVERY believer. The men are told to be the leaders, preachers and teachers in the formal gathering, all of the men participate. The woman are allowed to share as long as they are covered but they do not step out of their order in the mandate to be the leaders.
May many who read this go to prayer, asking God to show them. It is very hard to come out of a system in which we have been entrenched for three generations. So many people think it strange when a gathering has no pastor who is over everyone. I left that system behind when I left the Catholic church, that is when the Lord opened my eyes to the false system even in the protestant church.
So many things in the protestant church follow the model of the Catholic church, in the holidays, the one man pastor system and the form of worship. Someone asked me one day if a Catholic can be saved, my response was "can a protestant be saved." I was not saying that Catholics who remain in the church are saved, I was saying that many protestants are not saved any more than the Catholics.
When we become born again we put behind us all those man made traditions that were never mandated or encouraged by Christ. We leave behind many things we were taught in favor of obeying the Bible.
What should we be asking? Here it is; "what does the Bible say about this" and "Lord what do you want."
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