IS THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF HIRING A MAN
 TO BE THE MINISTER OF A CONGREGATION
 HAVING ELDERS IN HARMONY WITH
 THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES?
by Leroy Garrett

The assignment of this question affords me the opportunity of taking a fresh look at a subject that has been prominent in my thinking for 35 years.

I was immersed into Christ by W. L. Oliphant at the old Oak Cliff Church of Christ in Dallas when I was 16 years old. It was three years later that I resolved to be a preacher. Encouraged by brother Oliphant to attend Freed-Hardeman College in Tennessee, I left Texas for the first time on the Texas and Pacific, which was my first train ride.

The next summer, after my first session, at the college, Jack Hawkins, a roommate of mine, and I worked with an evangelist in Louisiana, Elmer Goble, an obscure and simple preacher, a man somewhat older than ourselves, who was content to proclaim the gospel under tents and brush arbors, on front porches and courthouse squares, and even in church buildings, if anyone would let him. This was different from what I had seen in preachers employed by congregations to preach to those who were already saved. I was profoundly impressed by Elmer Goble, not only because of his passion for the souls of men, but also for his love and goodness, and for his knowledge of the scriptures. It was evident that he too could have been serving as a resident minister with a comfortable salary, but he chose to break new ground for Jesus’ sake.

It was from Elmer Goble that I first heard about the pastor system, and I had no difficulty seeing the difference between what he was doing as an evangenst and what I had come to understand to be the work of an evangelist from other preachers. He had a way of inviting the located ministers to join him in the mission field, insisting that he could put 50 preachers to work. It impressed me that he got such little help and that he had to work with such limited resources.

While I was with him that summer he had a debate with a Baptist preacher named Cobb, which left me wondering how anybody could ever be a Baptist, but I left there equally convinced that no one should be a located minister. It was a lasting and fatal influence in my life.

One passage that brother Goble taught me was Ro. 15:19-20: “So that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation.” I hadn’t the slightest notion where Illyricum was and I barely knew that Jerusalem was outside Texas, but I understood that Paul’s aim was to preach to the lost and plant new churches, like brother Goble was doing, and that was good enough for me. So, when my time came to address the Preachers’ Club at Freed-Hardeman, I spoke on “Paul’s Aim,” zeroing in on Ro. 15:20, which proved to be my first installment of a long and turbulent “lover’s quarrel” with the Church of Christ. W. Claude Hall was the club’s sponsor, and it was he who commented, often at length, on our sermons. But he made short shrift of mine: “Leroy is wrong. Never mind why he’s wrong, but he’s wrong,” which ‘proved to be prophetic of what I was to hear from my brethren for the rest of my life: “Leroy Garrett is wrong. Never mind why he’s wrong, but he’s wrong.” And coming from infallible interpreters, how can such a judgment be questioned?

But I was not that easily satisfied. Inheriting a measure of my father’s stubbornness, who actually broke his fist hitting a mule in the nose in a struggle for supremacy, I wanted to know why I was wrong. I forthwith took it up with my fellow students, one by one, for the rest of the year, vindicating my position on Ro. 15:20. They gave it back to me in like kind. They called me “gospel hitchhiker” because I hitchhiked all over Tennessee and Mississippi speaking to country churches and because it happened to have been the topic of another of my talks to the Preacher’s Club. Once I’d return from these excursions they’d taunt me by asking, “Have you been out again building on another man’s foundation?”

Even the visiting preachers did not escape my questioning. When C. L. Wilkerson came to the campus for a meeting, I talked with him about it, but all I could get out of him was, “Our preachers don’t do it that way.” But it was generally conceded that I was sincere, however badly misled, and so I faired rather well. My day came when brother Hardeman asked me to take his place during his absence from the pulpit of the college church, which I did with great effect, giving them one of the very best of McGarvey’s sermons and with no reference to the pastor system. And I redeemed myself with Claude Hall, who was also my English teacher, by calling the king of Judah “Jehahshaphat” instead of Jehoshaphat. I was also given a leading part in the senior play, the role of the villain, opposite James Baird, the hero, who is now president of Oklahoma Christian College. I was so fierce and mean that I excited brother Hardeman’s grandchildren to his delight. As to whether this was ominously prophetic of things to come I’ll leave for you to decide.

The Preacher’s Club also presented a skit about that time, in which we anticipated the day when we would all be old men, looking back upon a lifetime of service for the Lord. As we stood there with canes in hand and our hair grayed with flour, singing “In a land where we’ll never grow old,” the girls in the audience, whom we were supposed to marry, blotted their eyes with their hankies. The longer we sang the more they wept, which was all the reward we could ask for, whether in this world or the world to come.

The class that year was something else. Not only did we have a future college president, but one who is presently a professor at Harding Graduate School of Religion and another at Harding College, along with several who are now ministers in our churches, as well as a few successful business men and a coterie of preacher’s wives. This illustrious class of 1940 had a special 25th anniversary reunion a few years back, with everyone invited but the class villain. They may have figured that he’d have made another one of his talks on Ro. 15:20! But it was an inexcusable omission, for no one in that class or any other has been as signally honored by Freed-Hardeman College as I!

In the years that followed I was to learn that I was not as alone on the minister question as I supposed. G. A. Dunn, Sr., an old warhorse of many a battle, was known among Churches of Christ to oppose the system, and he greatly encouraged me in the years of work we did together. I also began a correspondence with Gilbert O. Nations, who had impressive academic credentials, with both a Ph.D. and a J.D., being a professor of law as well as a judge, and an authority on the Roman Catholic system. In a visit with him on one occasion he confided in me that if he had his life to live over he would spend it opposing the salaried clergy, convinced as he was that the system is the root of many evils. He also helped me in learning the distinction between preaching the gospel and teaching the apostles’ doctrine, a distinction considered vital to the pioneers of our Movement, which I was eventually to learn.

Judge Nations wrote as follows, long before most of us came on the scene: “If one should go before a Bible class and discuss the assigned lesson, it would be said that he is teaching. But the same words spoken from a pulpit would be reported as preaching. In neither case would the speaker be preaching in the scriptural sense. He would be either teaching or exhorting or both. The place where words are spoken does not make the distinction between preaching and teaching. It would be difficult really to preach to a congregation of Christians.”

The judge went on to say that no one in the scriptures preached sermons, but rather the gospel, and always to the lost and never to the church, and then adds: “To keep a man hired to preach for years and years to a congregation of saved Christians is both unauthorized and absurd. The man in the pulpit is not preaching at all . . . The apostles and evangelists did not preach to congregations, and no New Testament church had its preacher.”

Much of my encouragement came from the eminent scholars of the Christian world and from our pioneer preachers. It was reassuring to read from William Barclay of Glasgow that kerussein (preach) means the proclamation of the Christian message as a series of facts, while didaskein (teach) means “not the proclamation of the Christian facts, but the exposition of their meaning and of their significance.” He goes on to observe that preaching is for those who have not heard the gospel before, while teaching is for those who have already entered the Christian fellowship, except in those instances where it may be necessary to “remind” the believers of the facts that they have already accepted. And from J. Y. Campbell, professor of New Testament at Westminster College in Cambridge, England, came this word: “Preaching is proclamation, and in the NT usage nearly always the proclamation of the gospel, to those who have not yet heard it, or not yet accepted it. Teaching is instruction, in the NT usually instruction in the consequences, ethical or theological, of acceptance of the gospel. So teaching is usually addressed to those who have heard and believed the gospel. Most of the sermons of Christian preachers today are therefore ‘teaching’ rather than preaching.”

From our own pioneer scholars came this confirmation from J. W. McGarvey: “Preaching and teaching are here distinguished as they are throughout the book of Acts, the former being addressed to unbelievers and the latter to believers. That he did both shows that both believers and unbelievers were drawn to his lodging.” (Commentary on Acts, p. 288)

Then from Alexander Campbell: “Preaching the gospel and teaching the converts are as distinct and distinguishable as enlisting an army and training it, or as creating a school and teaching it. Unhappily for the church and the world, this distinction, if at all conceded as legitimate, is obliterated or annulled in almost all protestant Christendom.” He goes on to insist that this “is no mere speculative distinction. It was appreciated, fully understood and acted upon, or carried out, in the apostolic ministry” (Popular Lectures and Addresses, p. 536).

One of our pioneer physicians, Dr. Carroll Kendrick, wrote as follows in the Gospel Advocate back in 1890, part of which explains the meaning of Acts 20:7, which indicates, according to the King James Version, that Paul “preached” to the church at Troas.

The ancient disciples met “to break bread,” etc. What we now call preaching was no part of their purpose or practice in the observance of the Lord’s day. They never met to be preached to, and they never were preached to in our modern sense—not even once. In Acts 20:7-9, where the common version says: “Paul preached to them,” the revision rightly says: “Paul discoursed with them.” Luke does not use the word for preach. His speech was social discourse, conversational. There is absolutely neither precept nor precedent for preaching to the church. Preaching the gospel is for the world. Teaching is for the church, and is to be done by a plurality of bishops in each congregation. Those of us who would be consistent should change our practice, or our motto and banner. (p. 373)

One response that we received from all this: “Get up here and preach five minutes and teach five minutes, show us the difference and tell us when you change gears.”

Along the way I learned that the minister system is a comparatively recent development in our Movement, one borrowed from our religious neighbors and promoted by Bible schools and Christian colleges. Out’ pioneers sought to return the Bible to the people in an intelligible translation, free of creedalism and clerical deductions, and to restore a mutual ministry in the assemblies of the saints. Campbell once reported on the several churches in his part of Virginia, pleased that there was not an employed minister in any pulpit, but that with their seniors the saints could edify themselves and share in sending out an evangelist.

The pastor system was so rare among us even as late as 1885 when Isaac Errett in the Christian Standard suggested its adoption on an emergency basis due to the paltry condition of the churches following the Civil War, that both David Lipscomb and James Harding rejected the idea as an innovation that would serve only as “a fungus growth upon the church, dwarfing its growth and preventing the development of its members.” (Gospel Advocate, May 20, 1885)

It also reassured me to learn that we have scores, if not hundreds, of churches in this country and abroad that have performed their ministry for generations on a mutual basis, apart from any hired functionary. In 1952 I met Carl Ketcherside and Hershell Ottwell, who, along with others, introduced me to numerous congregations of this type, including this one at Hartford, that I hardly knew existed. This congregation at Hartford flourishes as an example of how the Body of Christ can under its elders realize the objective Paul points to in Eph. 4:16: “Bonded and knit together by every constituent joint, the whole frame grows through the due activity of each part, and builds itself up in love.”

I was heartened to read John Straiton’s report on the ministry of our British churches. In a lecture at Abilene he first tells of how they call their buildings such names as “Hope Chapel” or “West Street Hall” instead of “Church of Christ,” and of how no announcement makes mention of “the minister” since they recognize no such office. Emphasis is given to the reading of the Word, both Old and New Covenant scriptures, with the New Covenant scriptures read through every five years, with every capable reader in the assembly given his turn. The elders preside as the assembly sings, reads, exhorts, and breaks bread. He quotes the Bible Advocate, a British paper, as saying: “The principle of mutual teaching is clearly a New Testament one; a constitutional law in the Church of Christ. The church is so constituted that unless the means for its edification are carried into practice its spiritual life will suffer . . . We contend that it is the right and privilege of all male members of the church, duly qualified, to share in the exhortation and teaching of the church.”

Brother Straiton told the Abilene audience that this plan has worked well in the British churches. “It has developed into useful workers many members, and made congregations strong which would have been weak and sickly if they had had to depend on the ministration of a paid professional preacher,” he said.

In the final analysis it is, of course, a matter of what the scriptures teach, and my study through the years has convinced me that this system is not only unscriptural (i. e., not authorized), but anti-scriptural (i. e., opposed to what is authorized) on several counts.

1. It supplants the work that God has given to the elders, who are the duly appointed pastors in the congregation. They are told by the Spirit to “nourish the flock” (Acts 20:28) and to be “apt teachers” (I Tim.. 3:2). They are further described as “able both to move his hearers with wholesome teaching and to confute objectors” (Titus 1:9).

2. It interferes with the principle of the priesthood of all believers in that it discourages the mutual sharing of all those in the congregation who are capable of such participation. Each believer is instructed to the effect that “Whatever gift each of you may have received, use it in service to one another, like good stewards dispensing the grace of God in its varied forms” (l Pet. 4:10). A hired functionary in the pulpit frustrates such instruction as the apostle outlines in 1 Cor. 14:26: “When you meet for worship, each of you contributes a hymn, some instruction, a revelation, an ecstatic utterance, or the interpretation of such an utterance. All of this must have one aim: to build up the church” (NEB). The Jerusalem Bible puts it: “At all your meetings, let everyone be ready with a psalm, etc.” We all know that in most of our assemblies it would be of no avail for a brother to be ready to have something to say to the congregation, no matter how able he might be or how edifying his words. Talking in our assemblies has become a professional matter, and the pulpit, unknown of course to the early church, is reserved for a distinct class of men, designated by others as the clergy.

3. It creates and fosters a system that militates against the spirit of liberty that should characterize all that we do. “Christ set us free, to be free men,” Gal. 5:1 assures us, and any system that discourages open and free discussion, questioning, reading, thinking, and sharing — the means by which “the body grows until it has built itself up in love” — is anti-scriptural. We all know that the professional minister can never be really free, for he is employed to minister to the very ones to whom he looks for approbation and support. Not only must he watch what he says, but he must be careful about what he thinks, or reads, or the company he keeps. Recent history has confirmed our suspicion that the freer such a man allows himself to be the more likely it is that he will be fired.

But neither is the congregation free. Not only are they not permitted to share in building up the Body, but they are expected to conform to a system that defines the boundaries of much of their thought and behavior.

4. It obstructs true evangelism by supposing that the minister’s work is that of an evangelist. His work is really pastoral, which the elders and others should be doing. He should be sent out as. an itinerant, going from place to place, from house to house. preaching to those who have not heard or obeyed. It might be in the same city, to be sure, or even in the same neighborhood (and in doing such work he might be supported by the same church for a lifetime), but as an evangelist his work would be with unbelievers and with weak congregations that do not yet have proper leadership.

If the resident ministers are indeed evangelists, then we are keeping them from their proper function by means of this system. What would be the effect if our 30,000 or more preachers of the Restoration Movement were turned loose upon our communities in real evangelistic work? No longer bothered with office work, or pastoral calls, or sermonizing, they would go forth as fishers of men, like Jesus, and be busy bringing people to Jesus.

All these years I’ve been diligent to make myself clear as to what I mean by this system and what it is I object to, but only with limited success. I have been understood to be opposed to preaching the gospel, or to a preacher locating, or to his being paid, or to his working with a church having elders. Only recently an elder who is friendly toward my efforts expressed concern as to whether I would be happy in his congregation, referring to the presence of an employed preacher, who happens to be a good friend of mine. I explained to the elder that I had no objection to the preacher being on the payroll, but that he should be used as a servant to the community rather than ministering to the congregation all the time, much of which the elders themselves should be doing. I added that it is utterly ridiculous for one man to be doing all the teaching and exhorting in a congregation that is loaded with talent. The preacher would of course be part of the congregation, and he would, from time to time, speak to the assembly, as would numerous others, but he would not be “the minister,” an office unknown to the New Covenant scriptures.

A congregation might well have a professional staff of some dimension, depending on the opportunities that God has given it. It might support a psychiatrist in his ministry to disturbed souls or workers in the ghetto, among drug addicts, with the retarded, and with the youth, the aged and lonely. Deacons and deaconesses could be maintained among suffering humanity with its myriad of problems. One brother was supported as a dentist-evangelist in the back country of Mexico. All God’s people are to be ministers, and it is but a reflection upon our devotion to the scriptures to speak of hiring anyone as “the minister.” However varied our programs may be, however substantial our working staff may be, we can follow no plan that disturbs the great truth of the priesthood of all believers and mutual sharing in the assembly. A church with a vital mission, with all its members in some service, would find a one-man ministry only in the way. What would be more exciting than to gather in assembly and hear testimonials from different ones as to what God is doing in their lives?

Not only is the pastor system un-scriptural and anti-scriptural, it is also psychologically, pragmatically, economically, socially, and pedagogically ridiculous. A sales force such as Fuller Brush or Avon would soon fold if it depended upon any such lecture plan for its inspiration. Alcoholics Anonymous and other such missions of mercy would lose their power if they turned to some kind of sermonizing program. Any business organization that made no better use of its manpower than do our churches with this system would go into bankruptcy. If our schools used such a plan, the students would know no more about their studies than our members know about their Bibles.

Surely we have to agree with Alexander Campbell: “This everlasting sermonizing! What good is in it? It resembles nothing that is rational in all the compass of thought.” (Christian Baptist. p. 77)

But there are signs of hope in this dismal picture. Preachers themselves are growing weary of a system that has stripped them of their freedom if not their manhood, that treats them more like clerks and caretakers than proclaimers of the Word. We are becoming a freer people in many places, and with that growing freedom comes a disenchantment for a system that treats a person like one more object in a stall. Our folk are daring to think, to read, to question, and to act as never before, all of which is a threat to a system that thrives on keeping people “like dumb driven cattle.” We are becoming more curious about the world around us, better educated, and more concerned for those who suffer from injustice and inequality. The Spirit of God is moving among our people, filling us with his fruit and making us more like Jesus. We are increasingly more open to the fellowship of all God’s people and the unity of his Body. No system that feeds upon ignorance, factionalism, littleness, and traditionalism can for long withstand such maturity.

One of our pioneers, burdened with this very problem, cried out in hope:

“Oh, that the people would read the scriptures and think and act for themselves, and then those who fear God would learn his statutes, walk in his commandments, enjoy an intelligent mind, a comfortable hope, and would grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Then they would shine as lights in the world, they would live as the salt of the earth, and many would be reclaimed from the error of their way.” (Alexander Campbell, Christian Baptist. p. 31)

Let us believe that God is hastening that day in our own time! - Presented at Hartford Forum (Illinois) Dec. 28. 1973.