Should You Seek to Become a Lay Elder?
“But what about my aspiration to pastor? Was that something I’d have to give up on? No, far from it! In fact, in God’s kindness, the fits and starts of my journey made my pastoral aspirations even more clear. My aspiration was to be a lay elder.” - 9 Marks
There is no such thing as a “lay elder.” Either you are a pastor, or you are not. But, we like to make things more complicated than they really are …
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
He seems to mean bi-vocational pastor or perhaps in his case, an unpaid pastor. But ‘lay elder’ is confusing.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Perhaps the term should just be changed to something more direct, though that’s not the way most of us learned to speak. One thing I have learned to appreciate about the German language (my 2nd language) is its directness. Whereas English tends toward euphemistic terms, Germans tend to use words that are more directly descriptive of what they are. It certainly helps a lot when learning new vocabulary words. I suspect that changing lay elder to “unpaid elder,” while more direct and accurate, would also be considered graceless or inelegant to many English speakers.
I’m not sure if it’s an “area of the country” thing or not, but where I live, lay elder is commonly understood to be someone qualified and serving as an elder in the local church, but unpaid for that work, so either bi-vocational or retired. I’ve seen that both in churches that are too small to have a full-time pastor, as well as my own where we have three paid pastors on staff, and several lay elders. So I have never seen that usage as confusing at all. But perhaps I have just never traveled in circles where that term would be misunderstood as “acting like a pastor, but not really being one or being qualified to serve as one.”
Dave Barnhart
I did get the impression from the article that the author was assuming everybody knew what a ‘lay elder’ is. So it’s apparently a common term in his circles. Where I grew up “laity” is like the opposite of “clergy,” pretty much. They were mutually exclusive categories. So “lay elder” is “lay clergy” which is an oxymoron.
But I’ve never really believed in laity and clergy as real things anyway, from a NT perspective.
You just have a particular role or you don’t.
But I know different denominations/traditions have different lingo. I have a few presbyterian friends who want to call me “Pastor Blumer” whenever we cross paths, even though I told them repeatedly I am no longer serving in a pastoral role. But to them, it’s apparently a thing you just are, regardless of what you are doing?
So in some circles, “lay” doesn’t mean “laity” it means something like “unpaid.” Simple enough when you have enough context.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
It is interesting the way certain parts of the meaning of words affect local usage. I am also aware of the RC clergy/laity distinction. I think that distinction affects both ways the word is used in the context we are discussing.
Clergy are thought of as professional pastors, and in churches where they actually call the pastors “clergy,” I believe all or most of them are full-time supported by the church. Since the laity is everyone else and are not paid by the church, it may be that the idea of “lay” when describing elder vs. clergy rather than being an oxymoron, deals more with the fact that many of the men acting as elders/pastors in the church today don’t do that in a paid, professional sense. I’ve certainly not heard anyone in our circles call elders “clergy,” but I suppose they might be described that way by someone from a church tradition where that division is held (e.g. RC).
Dave Barnhart
There are a lot of churches out there violating Scripure because they think 1 Timothy 5:17-18 describes two classes of elders, the paid and the unpaid.
At our church, we refer to staff pastors and non-staff pastors. The difference is between those who earn their living as a pastor versus those who are either retired or work another job.
We used to pay all of our elders a stipend, but we agreed to eliminate the stipend for non-staff pastors to bring on another staff member.
The people of our church are generous and bless all of our pastors throughout the year whether they are on staff or not.
As for whether someone should aspire to be a "lay elder," I'd say they should first examine themselves to honestly assess whether they meet the character qualifications. They should be regularly serving in their local church so that others can evaluate and affirm their giftedness and aspirations. And, they should already be engaged in shepherding others without the official recognition or title.
So, for example, when I look for men in our church who could qualify as elder candidates, I look for men who are faithfully serving our church and who are already discipling others. I look for men who appear to have a good grasp of Scripture, are teachable, and are able to teach. I look for men who appear to meet the character qualifications set out in Scripture. If they are married, I interact with their wives to learn whether they have their wife's support to become an elder.
In two cases, we had men who seemed to fit what we were looking for but their wives asked us not proceed. One was because of a publicly unknown character issue; the other was because the wife didn't feel her husband should commit the time required due to having many young children at home and his involvement in another ministry.
pvawter:
There are a lot of churches out there violating Scripure because they think 1 Timothy 5:17-18 describes two classes of elders, the paid and the unpaid.
Do you see the the passage as requiring that all elders be paid? I’m just interested in different views of the passage on the topic of compensation I guess. I don’t see two classes there, unless they would be “elders who rule well” and “elders who do not rule well.” The latter is kind of implied by the former, I suppose. But it’s a bit vague what should be done with them.
Well, arguably “especially those who labor in preaching and teaching” also implies the category “those who do not labor in…” So, I’ll rollback what I said part way: I can see how people would get two categories out of the passage. The problem with that, though, is reading it in the context of other passages on the topic. All elders are supposed to be ‘apt to teach.’ (1 Tim 3.2, 2 Tim 2.24), given that elders=bishops=pastors.
So probably 1 Tim 5:17-18 isn’t intended to validate elders who do not rule well and elders who do not teach as categories. It certainly indicates they exist at least theoretically, but doesn’t say they should exist.
But in defense of those on the other side of that debate, it’s certainly reasonable to ask why does Paul specify “those who rule well” and “those who labor in preaching and teaching” then? One good answer is probably that he is really stacking up reasons for paying them. They work hard and do a good job. So, technically the descriptors imply categories, but he is really only talking about one category as an argument for compensation. (i.e., ‘category A’ they deserve to be paid; ‘category B’ no comment).
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
The short answer is yes, I think the Scriptures teach that all elders should be paid. There may be some situations which are outliers, but they would be exceptions that prove the rule, imo. At any rate, I do not see any teaching in the Bible that justifies a category of elders who are intentionally not financially compensated.
Featured Resource
Discussion