Congregational Authority pt 2 of 7

Is Dissent Wrong?

Are changes to worship style, preaching style, or church organization legitimate grounds for dissent from, or removal of, the pastor? All of the above are, to a point, matters of individual taste since no Scripture dictates the specifics of the nearly infinite possibilities of each. That being the case, the question transmogrifies itself into the form of “Does the congregation, or some part of it, have a legitimate right to disagree with, and attempt to redirect, the direction a pastor takes in worship, financial, and/or administrative matters?”

SBC churches operate basically autonomously from each other, each selecting its own pastor, staff, and deacons; each deciding its own worship, preaching, and fellowship styles; each governing itself democratically and by its own bylaws. Those who choose to pastor in Southern Baptist churches then, be default, acknowledge the principles of congregationalism (and the democracy inherent therein) in their ministries: allowing themselves to voted in and out and subordinating themselves to the votes of their congregations. It is no accident that an SBC pastors don’t simply show up at churches and starts preaching. Likewise, it is not without reason that SBC congregations don’t simply cold-call pastors and say, “You are our new leader.” No, both sides understand that each must enter into an agreement with the other. For a pastor this means that he acknowledges the democratic nature of congregational church governance—the church’s right to overrule, and even oust, him. For the congregation, such an agreement means that the congregation recognizes the pastor’s authority, as granted him by God, to watch over itself. There is no Scripture binding a pastor to a church he believes to be out of God’s will for his life, nor is there Scripture binding a church to a pastor whom it believes may not be leading in the best way.

All of this said, Southern Baptist churches, for better or worse, hold themselves to be congregationally governed: practicing democracy and relying on checks and balances. Libraries have been written on church government and the supremacy of one form over the many others. Congregationalism, however, is what Southern Baptists use in the local churches, thus this essay will accept it as a necessary, and at best, predictable evil.

So, if democracy is the rule of the day in the SBC, and both congregation and pastor agree to abide by democracy in some form, it would seem that the majority has the right to rule. This being the case, it also follows that the majority can vote to overrule, or if worse comes to worse, revoke the pastor’s authority. To say otherwise would be a denial of the congregationalism and (non-theological) free-will that SBC churches espouse.