“Well-funded dysfunction” may seem like an odd way to describe a church. But in my experience, methodologically speaking, it accurately captures what Adventism of the West has steadily charted a course toward for most of the past century.
To be fair, the past 100 years have also seen much that Western Adventists can be legitimately proud of. Hundreds of thousands have been baptized. Dozens of large hospitals, sprawling universities, and other fine institutions dot the Western landscape. Adventists are often respected as citizens and leaders in their communities. And given that the West is generally more financially affluent than the average member in other parts of the world, Western Adventism has for generations been the financial breadbasket of the global church. While we always seem to need more money for our own local ministries, we in the West are undeniably well funded when compared to the rest of the planet.
And we are also thoroughly dysfunctional in that we are utterly addicted to settled pastors.[1] As I asserted in Part 1 and reiterate here, it is my deeply held belief that Western Adventism’s dependence on settled pastors is harming its witness. True, the clergy who lead our local churches are, as a rule, dedicated to Christ and to serving others. But the settled pastor role they are being asked to fill has largely robbed the laity of their vigor and purpose, catastrophically diminished the practice of church planting, and, particularly during the past 50 years, reduced the flow of new disciples of Christ into our local churches to a fraction of what it otherwise could be. We are indeed well funded, and we are indeed dysfunctional.
But Did You Know That . . .
We were not always this way! Instead, there was an extended period in Western Adventism’s early days duringwhich we were passionately effective for Christ. We struck fear in the heart of hell every time one of us got out of bed in the morning. Our churches regularly reached new people for Christ. Our pastors were effective in their public evangelistic efforts. Though often we wished for more, our tithe and offering base was sufficient to launch our message into the far-flung corners of the world. We had our problems, to be sure. But we were also, on the whole, energized for Jesus and His end-time mission, becoming in the first 60-70 years of our existence the fastest growing Protestant movement the world had ever seen.[2]
And note carefully: We did that with essentially zero settled pastors—a situation that sounds stupendously implausible to most twenty-first-century Western Adventist ears. “How is such a thing possible?” we wonder aloud. Life without settled pastors truly does seem like a different planet compared to how we in the West live and minister today. Yet what ought to be obvious to all is that what we in the West are currently doing isn’t working anywhere near well enough to finish the gospel work in our portion of the world.
True, there are bright spots in our ministry: a successful community engagement program here; a baptism or two there; a notice in the local paper for some good deed an Adventist church has done; etc.—all good things. Yet the severe anonymity that the witness of most Western Adventists wallow in, our decidedly lukewarm accession rates, and the spiritual tepidness of far too many of our congregations scream at the top of their lungs that a substantive change is long, long overdue. We do not need a Band-Aid. Instead, something fundamental, something core in the methodological machinery of how we do ministry, is broken. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is indeed our greatest spiritual need. But as far as our ministry methods go, it is my firm conviction that if we in the West are ever to finish the work of spreading the gospel in the three angels’ messages, we must find a way to wean off from settled pastors and get back onto a firm New Testament ministry footing.
How We Got Into This Mess[3]
Having heard now of my decided opposition to settled pastorates, some may be surprised to learn that the role of the settled pastor is firmly based in Scripture. “Well, hold on, then!” you might be saying. “If the role is biblical, then what’s the problem?” The problem is that settled pastorates are indeed based in the Bible, but only in the Old Testament, and was summarily swept away by the crucifixion of Christ. In other words (as I shall soon demonstrate), Jesus in the first century died in part to do away with something that the Western church in the twenty-first century has literally built its ministry upon. To see how this is so, we need look no further than the striking similarities between the role of settled pastors today and the role of the temple priest in the Old Testament.
Old Testament priests had at least six characteristics. First, their role was to intercede for the people of God. Second, they were also to instruct the people in the ways of God. So far, so good, right? But notice now that third, beginning at Mount Sinai (see Ex. 20-40), the priesthood was very clearly restricted to but a handful of people (namely, to the male descendants of Aaron), and that fourth, the priests’ ministry was nearly always geographically confined to one place (the sanctuary itself, Jerusalem, etc.). This meant that intercession between God and His people, as well as instruction in the ways of God, were isolated roles entrusted to only a few who rarely left their home regions to share God with others.
During the centuries a fifth and thoroughly negative characteristic developed: Old Testament priests came to be seen as spiritually elite. In other words, they were viewed by the Jewish populace as being innately spiritually superior to the common person. Sadly, by the days of Christ this had led to corruption in the priesthood in general, as hero worship by the masses led priests to an inflated sense of their own power and importance. Worst of all, it also led to the abdication of personal spiritual responsibility on the part of the average Jew. After all, why strive to grow deeper and deeper into one’s spiritual growth in and service to God when a supposedly much-more-favored-of-God priest could intercede for you instead?
Sixth and last, as the millennia rolled by, the Old Testament priesthood became distressingly expensive. Old Testament-era priests were financially supported through the tithe (see Num. 18:8-32; Deut. 14:22-29, etc.). Because these priests were localized and generally did no missionary work, the pool of people available to support the priesthood was determined purely by the number of tithe-paying Jews already present in their area. Little to no thought was given to increasing the number of tithe returners through evangelism. Given that (a) by the first century, there were an estimated 7,200 priests and 9,600 Levites;[4] (b) the expense of stocking of the temple and maintaining it and its supporting facilities was substantial; and (c) the political and thus financial situation of the nation at that time was thoroughly precarious, it is clear that the fiscal resources required to support the priesthood were alarming and burdensome.
It is my firm conviction that if we in the West are ever to finish the work of spreading the gospel in the three angels’ messages, we must find a way to wean off from settled pastors and get back onto a firm New Testament ministry footing.
The similarities of the roles of later Old Testament priests and settled pastors of today are thus striking. Both roles began ostensibly with worthy spiritual purposes to carry out among God’s people (intercession and instruction). But sadly, like the Old Testament priest, the settled pastor today is located firmly in one geographical place, doing little if any wider evangelism, because of the demands of established church members for their attention.
Settled pastors furthermore comprise only a narrow minority of God’s people. This unintentionally but very effectively limits the number of people who “feel called” to witness for God, and thus dramatically restricts outreach to the wider world. Additionally, much like their Old Testament counterparts, modern settled pastors are considered by many members to be spiritually superior to other believers, enticing church members to fall prey to hero worship and tempting pastors to accept it. This leads members to abdicate their personal responsibility for outreach and spiritual growth, since surely a superior pastor can do better at all ministry tasks than they can.
And last, like their Old Testament forebears, today’s settled pastors are alarmingly expensive, particularly when a “one church, one pastor” philosophy pervades a local conference. The tithe system was never designed to support such a philosophy, and is creaking precariously under the combined weight of so many settled pastors’ salaries and benefits.
The New Testament Revolution
Small wonder, then, that the New Testament brought with it a new order that destroyed and/or replaced nearly all the Old Testament priesthood! True, the priestly roles of intercession and instruction remained. But now, instead of being isolated to a genetic subset of God’s people, anyone who has accepted redemption through the blood of Jesus is a priest of God. Instead of being tied to one geographical location, these new priests are now granted global agility and are called to make disciples of Christ in all nations, not merely in Palestine. Instead of being a role only for spiritually elite people, the Christian priesthood is open to all believers in Jesus Christ, again stratospherically increasing the number of witnesses for God’s kingdom. And last, far from requiring crippling salaries to maintain a geographically located priesthood who does little evangelistic work, New Testament Christians, when functioning within their general duties as priests, require no salary whatsoever. Filled by the power of the Holy Spirit, this New Testament priesthood was so effective that the apostle Paul could proclaim during his lifetime that the gospel had been “preached to every creature under heaven” (Col. 1:23).
And notice carefully: All of this was done without a single settled pastor in sight. Settled pastorates simply did not exist in the new order that Christ established in His New Testament church. And therefore today the role of the settled pastor, given its unsettling resemblance to the Old Testament priesthood, remains at best a pre-Christian construct and at worst a non-Christian one that Christ died to eliminate.
Early Adventism: The Revolution Continues
Because of this reality, it is not surprising that when the nineteenth-century pioneers of the Adventist Church were determining how best to structure their work, they too excluded settled pastors. They instead decided that, in keeping with the New Testament order, established churches would be run by local elders while reserving most salaries for clergy who were starting new churches in new areas—that is, for clergy fulfilling an apostolic/church-planting function. So pervasive was this policy that, as late as 1908, the Adventist Church was still organized on a global scale without settled pastors.[5]
Ellen White was one of the most outspoken critics of settled pastorates. Her objections to them reflect a clear understanding of the dangers of returning to an Old Testament-style priesthood. For instance, in a January 27, 1890, article in the magazine Signs of the Times she stated:
“The success of a church does not depend on the efforts and labor of the living preacher, but it depends upon the piety of the individual members. When the members depend upon the minister as their source of power and efficiency, they will be utterly powerless. They will imbibe his impulses, and be stimulated by his ideas, but when he leaves them, they will find themselves in a more hopeless condition than before they had his labors. I hope that none of the churches in our land will depend upon a minister for support in spiritual things; for this is dangerous. . . . Just as soon as the members of a church call for the labors of a certain minister, and feel that he must remain with them, it is time that he was removed to another field, that they may learn to exercise the ability which God has given them.”[6]
Mrs. White here clearly recognizes the dangers of the spiritually elite, located leadership in the church. Members were not to abdicate responsibility for the quality of their relationship with God to a supposedly spiritually superior leader who remained over their congregation. To do so would result in spiritual immaturity, a phenomenon similar to what the ancient Jews ultimately experienced under the Old Testament priesthood.
Not Even to Save a Church
Ellen White’s abhorrence of settled pastorates held firm even when a local church was facing difficult circumstances. For instance, as the Adventist work grew in the nineteenth century, not all churches that were planted thrived. Some had substantial internal disagreements and consequently asked for a settled pastor to come and attempt to rectify their situation. Mrs. White’s reply in 1902 was firm:
“God has not given His ministers the work of setting the churches right. No sooner is this work done, apparently, than it has to be done over again. Church members that are thus looked after and labored for become religious weaklings. If nine tenths of the effort that has been put forth for those who know the truth had been put forth for those who have never heard the truth, how much greater would have been the advancement made!”[7]
Here again, Mrs. White clearly defines the dangers of depending on settled pastors. Such dependency not only stifles evangelism in the church but also makes the dependent members spiritually immature—yet again eerily reminiscent of the immaturity that led to the rejection of Christ in the first century.
The strongest statements from Ellen White about the negative impact of depending on settled pastors came in reply to local churches that were nearly ceasing operation. To them, Mrs. White noted flatly in 1901 that indeed some of “the churches are dying, and they want a minister to preach to them. They should be taught [instead] to bring a faithful tithe to God, that He may strengthen and bless them. They should be brought into working order, that the breath of God may come to them. They should be taught that unless they can stand alone, without a minister, they need to be converted anew, and baptized anew. They need to be born again.”[8]
Astonishing! Mrs. White here clearly argues that the need for a settled pastor—a located, supposedly spiritually elite clergyperson who intercedes over time in significant ways for his or her established members—is a sign, not of good health, but of apostasy, the only cure for which is a rebirth in Christ. This appears to be similar to the dynamic that Paul fought against when he said that exalting a spiritually stratified class of church leadership would result in “the cross of Christ [being] emptied of its power” (1 Cor. 1:17, NIV). Even in the first century, Old Testament habits died hard.
An Ominous Prediction Comes True
In 1912 came one of the strongest public denunciations of having settled pastors over Adventist churches. It did not come from Ellen White, but instead from then-General Conference president Arthur G. Daniells. He and White were two of the strongest opponents to settled pastors at that time. In a ministerial institute address in Los Angeles, Daniells’ response to the growing movement to settle pastors over churches was stark:
“We have not settled our ministers over churches as pastors to any large extent. In some of the very large churches we have elected pastors, but as a rule we have held ourselves ready for field service, evangelical work, and our brethren and sisters have held themselves ready to maintain their church services and carry forward their church work without settled pastors. And I hope this will never cease to be the order of affairs in this denomination; for when we cease our forward movement work, and begin to settle over our churches, to stay by them, and do their thinking and their praying and their work that is to be done, then our churches will begin to weaken, and to lose their life and spirit, and become paralyzed and fossilized, and our work will be on a retreat.”[9]
Despite such predictions, a shift in practice did eventually come. In 1915 Ellen White died. In 1922 Daniells was not reelected to the General Conference presidency. Within the decade settled pastorates began to be implemented on a gradual yet broad scale in the United States. And the results? Just as Daniells had feared, Adventist disciple-making rates dropped sharply. As Russell Burrill points out:
“In the 1920s and onward, the church moved toward settled pastorates and the [resulting] growth rate [was] only one third to one fourth of what it was when the church operated without settled pastors. Clearly, the move to settled pastors has not accentuated the growth of the Adventist Church.”[10]
Moreover, many of the problems predicted to accompany the adoption of settled pastorates became reality: reduced spiritual growth of members; the handing over of spiritual responsibility of members to the settled clergy (whom they often perceived as spiritually superior to themselves); and dramatic increases in the costs of pastoral ministry because of the mushrooming number of pastors on the church payroll.[11] Like Israel of old, Western Adventism had gotten the “kings” she so desperately wanted, indeed making her like the other denominations around her, which today are facing nearly mirror-image decline. We adopted their Old Testament ways of doing church, and now we have their problems.
So What Can Be Done?
Before we tackle that question, it is important to note that while the problem of settled pastors is primarily within Western Adventism, it is also beginning to spread to other portions of the world field. Many portions of the world in central Africa, South America, and Central America, for instance, have been blessed with great evangelistic success. Consequently, in many places there are a large number of believers, often with comparatively larger financial resources. This has led to the construction of numerous large church buildings . . . and the establishment of settled pastorates. I have personally heard a number of the pastors assigned to these churches saying with joy how they now have a church “like those in America.” Understandably, this is a joy I do not share.
But such occurrences add more urgency to the inevitable question: What is to be done about the proliferation of settled pastorates both in the West and increasingly outside of it?
This is clearly the right question to ask! Settled pastors historically lead to less growth (both spiritually and numerically), not more! And if the Advent movement is to finish the work it is called by Christ Himself to do, we must deal decisively with this issue. How to best deal with it will be the subject of Part 3 in the next online issue of the Adventist Review.
Until then, please join me in praying that God will help us to rectify the well-funded but dysfunctional situation we have placed ourselves in. Great and global things are still to come for God’s church! And with some key changes in how we do ministry in the West, we can become passionately effective for God and His cause once again.
[1] For a definition of settled pastors, please see Part 1 of this series of articles (hyperlink to first in the series).
[2] Russell Burrill, “Evangelism and Church Growth” (unpublished class lecture, SDA Theological Seminary, Jan.-Mar. 1998); for additional background and data from Burrill’s research, see Burrill’s Recovering an Adventist Approach to the Life and Mission of the Local Church (Fallbrook, Calif.: Hart Research Center, 1998).
[3] Because this article is for a popular audience, citations for sources are kept at a minimum for ease of reading. For a more full and technical discussion of the history of settled pastors in Scripture and Adventist history, see Shane Anderson, “Reducing Pastor Dependency in the New Market Seventh-day Adventist Church Through Self-Managed Ministry Teams” (2017), https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/dmin/305/ or https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/dmin/305.
[4] W. C. Kaiser and D. Garrett, “The Jewish Priesthood and Religious Life in the First Century A.D.,” in W. C. Kaiser and D. Garrett, eds., NIV Archaeological Study Bible: An Illustrated Walk Through Biblical History and Culture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005), p. 1704.
[5] See Seventh-day Baptist Sabbath Recorder, Dec. 28, 1909, reported in Review and Herald, Jan. 14, 1909.
[6] Ellen G. White, in Signs of the Times, Jan. 27, 1890.
[7] Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1902), vol. 7, p. 18.
[8] Ellen G. White, Evangelism (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1946), p. 381.
[9] A. G. Daniells, ministerial institute address, Los Angeles, California, March 1912, reported in Pacific Union Recorder, Apr. 4, 1912. (Emphasis supplied.)
[10] Burrill, Recovering an Adventist Approach, p. 188.
[11] Ibid., pp. 224, 225.
