Theopedia

Elder

Therefore, I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.

— 1 Peter 5:1-2

Definition

An elder (Greek presbyteros) is one of the two offices Christ has appointed for the local church, alongside deacon, charged with shepherding, teaching, and ruling the congregation.1 The New Testament also calls this same office overseer (episkopos) and shepherd, or pastor (poimen): three names for one office rather than a hierarchy of ranks, with elder stressing the man’s maturity and standing, overseer his function of oversight.2 Scripture consistently sets a plurality of elders, not a single ruler, over each congregation (Acts 14:23; 20:17; Titus 1:5).3

Confessional Witness

The 1689 confession names elder as one of the two offices Christ has appointed for a particular church. Such a church, “gathered and completely organized according to the mind of Christ, consists of officers and members,” and the officers Christ has appointed for it “are bishops or elders, and deacons.”1 It then states how a man comes to hold that office: “the way appointed by Christ for the calling of any person, fitted and gifted by the Holy Spirit, unto the office of bishop or elder in a church, is, that he be chosen thereunto by the common suffrage of the church itself,” then set apart “by fasting and prayer, with imposition of hands of the eldership of the church, if there be any before constituted therein.”4 That last phrase already assumes a plurality: a man is ordained by the “eldership” of his church, not by a single presiding officer. The confession names preaching “by way of office” as a duty belonging to “the bishops or pastors of the churches,” the same office under a third name.5

Biblical Basis

Qualifications

Paul gives the office’s qualifications twice, to Timothy at Ephesus and to Titus in Crete, in nearly identical terms:

Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders.

1 Timothy 3:2-7

Titus 1:6-9 repeats the same shape and adds that an elder must be “holding firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.” Strauch reads the two lists as protecting both the office and the church: “the church needs to be certain that only qualified men of good character assume the role of overseer/elder.”6 Two qualifications carry particular weight. “The husband of one wife” requires marital faithfulness rather than merely permitting marriage, Strauch reading the phrase as “a one-wife kind of man” describing a husband’s whole manner of life with his wife, not a bare count of marriages.7 “Able to teach” is the one qualification that sets an elder’s list apart from a deacon’s: 1 Timothy 3:8-13’s parallel list for deacons requires no comparable teaching competence.8 Paul restricts the office to qualified men (1 Tim. 2:8-3:13), a restriction complementarian and egalitarian interpreters continue to dispute.9

The mandate for a plurality of elders

The New Testament nowhere sets a single ruler over a local church. Paul and Barnabas, retracing their steps through the churches of Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, “appointed elders for them in every church” (Acts 14:23). J. B. Lightfoot read this as the pattern for all of Paul’s church plants, not a one-off: “the same rule was doubtless carried out in all the brotherhoods founded later; but it is mentioned here and here only, because the mode of procedure on this occasion would suffice as a type of the apostles’ dealings elsewhere.”10 Later, summoning “the elders of the church” at Ephesus, Paul charges them together to “care for the church of God” as its overseers (Acts 20:17, 28), and Paul’s greeting to Philippi names “the overseers,” plural, alongside the deacons, with no single bishop named over them (Phil. 1:1). Writing to Titus, Paul directs him to “appoint elders in every town” on Crete “as I directed you” (Titus 1:5), the same plural pattern he had already established in Asia Minor.

Duties

Peter, addressing “the elders among you” as “a fellow elder” rather than an officer set over them, charges elders to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight… not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:1-3). The writer of Hebrews calls the congregation to “obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Heb. 13:17), naming both the elder’s authority and its limit: an elder answers to Christ for how he leads. Paul instructs Titus that an elder must “hold firm to the trustworthy word… to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9), a duty Strauch summarizes under three headings: elders “feed the flock a rich diet of God-breathed Scripture,” “protect the flock from wolf-like false teachers,” and “lead the flock through the storms of life,” alongside practical care for the congregation’s needs.11

Historical Development

Elders in the Old Testament and the first churches

Government by a council of elders was one of Israel’s oldest institutions, familiar to every reader of the Old Testament: Israel’s elders appear roughly a hundred times, joined with the priests to teach God’s law to the people and serve as the community’s recognized counselors.12 The first Christians, all Jewish disciples in Jerusalem, needed no explanation of what a council of elders was; Luke could simply record that famine relief for Judea was sent “to the elders” without introducing the office (Acts 11:27-30). Strauch notes one deliberate point of contrast with the Jewish synagogue, however: “the chief presiding official of the synagogue was called ‘the ruler of the synagogue,’ but Christian congregations never adopted this practice. The Christian churches were led by a plurality of elders, not by a chief ruler.”13 When the Jerusalem church faced the circumcision controversy, “the apostles and the elders” together judged the question and issued the church’s decision (Acts 15:2, 6, 22-23). As the gospel spread to Gentile territory, Paul and Barnabas carried the same structure with them, appointing elders “in every church” they planted (Acts 14:23), a policy Strauch calls “a deliberate policy on Paul’s part,” not a cultural accommodation he might have set aside.14

This plurality did not remain unbroken. Within a few generations, one elder in each city began to preside over his fellow elders, the process by which bishop separated from a name for the whole plural eldership into a title for one man presiding over it.

Opposing Views

A single ordained minister, or a plurality of elders?

Reformed Baptist and other plural-elder churches hold that Christ set a council of equals, not one sacralized minister, over each congregation. Strauch names the alternative “the three-office view: the ordained minister (clergy) distinct from both the lay ruling elders and serving deacons,” a structure that in his judgment “focuses all its attention on one sacred person” rather than the New Testament’s own plural pattern.15 Against this, he argues that shared eldership provides the accountability a single leader cannot give himself: “only when there is accountability between equals in leadership is there any hope for curbing the pastoral abuse of authority that plagues many churches worldwide.”16

Are all elders equal in office, or does Scripture distinguish ruling elders from teaching elders?

The Reformed confessional tradition more broadly distinguishes two functions of the eldership by office, not merely by gift. Bavinck writes that the church’s “two activities of pastoring and teaching, of ruling and laboring in the Word and in doctrine, have been separated, and each of them has obtained its own organ (Eph. 4:11; 1 Tim. 5:17),” so that the ordained minister of the Word “has been distinguished from the ruling elder, who is especially charged with feeding the flock.”17 On this reading, 1 Timothy 5:17’s “elders who direct the affairs of the church well… especially those whose work is preaching and teaching” names two classes of elder, teaching and ruling, holding one office at two distinct ranks.

Strauch reads the same verse as functional diversity within a single office, not two ranks. Elders who “lead well” and are worthy of “double honor” are still elders among elders: “they are not treated (as in some churches) as lay elders of some lesser status or relegated to a limited term of service.”18 The distinction 1 Timothy 5:17 draws, on this view, tracks gifting and time devoted to the work, not two grades of ordination.

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t a single, gifted pastor lead a congregation more effectively than a council of equals? Strauch answers that the New Testament’s own case for plurality is not efficiency but protection from the abuse that concentrated authority invites: shared leadership among qualified men gives the congregation “genuine accountability,” the very thing “a single leader” answerable to no peer cannot supply himself.19 The New Testament nowhere sets a single ruling elder over a congregation as its ordinary pattern; a single “presiding” bishop emerging within decades of the apostolic era is a later development, not the apostolic norm itself.

If 1 Timothy 5:17 sets apart elders “who labor in preaching and teaching” for double honor, doesn’t that make preaching elders a higher-ranked office than the rest? Strauch answers that the honor Paul commands is for elders who lead well, not for elders who alone may teach: “all elders are to be able to teach and protect the gospel message,” and the distinction Paul draws is one of gifting, effort, and time devoted to the work, not a status the other elders lack.20 The same verb Paul uses of elders “who direct” the church well (proistēmi, 1 Tim. 5:17) already describes potential elders back in 1 Thessalonians 5:12, before any teaching/ruling distinction is in view.21

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 26, “Of the Church,” para. 8. ↩ ↩2

  2. Alexander Strauch, Biblical Eldership: Restoring the Eldership to Its Rightful Place in the Local Church, 4th ed. (Littleton, CO: Lewis and Roth Publishers, 2017), chap. 11, “Philippians 1:1: Overseers and Deacons in the Church at Philippi,” 123-130: “The term elder signifies maturity, experience, dignity, and wisdom as a community leader. The term overseer stresses the function of official oversight, guardianship, and supervision.” ↩

  3. Strauch, chap. 30, “Summary Points,” 317-322: “Just as there is a plurality of elders, there is a plurality of overseers; in fact, the terms are used interchangeably (Phil. 1:1).” ↩

  4. Second London Baptist Confession, chap. 26, para. 9. ↩

  5. Second London Baptist Confession, chap. 26, para. 11. ↩

  6. Strauch, chap. 4, “Qualified Leadership,” 61-68. ↩

  7. Strauch, chap. 12, “1 Timothy 3:1-2: Above Reproach and the Husband of One Wife,” 131-140. ↩

  8. Strauch, chap. 11, 123-130. ↩

  9. Strauch, chap. 5, “An All-Male Eldership,” 69-78. ↩

  10. J. B. Lightfoot, quoted in Strauch, chap. 7, “Acts 14:23: Appointing Elders in Every Church,” 89-96. ↩

  11. Strauch, chap. 30, “Summary Points,” 317-322. ↩

  12. Strauch, chap. 6, “Acts 11:30: First Jewish Christian Elders,” 79-88. ↩

  13. Strauch, chap. 6, 79-88. ↩

  14. Strauch, chap. 7, 89-96. ↩

  15. Strauch, chap. 3, “Shared Leadership,” 43-60. ↩

  16. Strauch, chap. 3, 43-60. ↩

  17. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩

  18. Strauch, chap. 16, “1 Timothy 5:17-18: Worthy of Double Honor: Elders Who Lead Well,” 167-176. ↩

  19. Strauch, chap. 3, 43-60. ↩

  20. Strauch, chap. 16, 167-176. ↩

  21. Strauch, chap. 16, 167-176. ↩