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How are Baptist Churches governed?

Who are the decision-makers?

 

  
           
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GOVERNANCE OF BAPTIST CHURCHES:

All the mainstream Christian denominations adhere to a common set of beliefs or dogmas based on the Bible. These are further explained in the great Creeds of Christianity. The major differences between these denominations revolve around the way a church is run, organised, or governed.

In Baptist churches the basic principle is that all the members make up the “Body of Christ” and that when they come together in a deliberate “assembly” (the basic meaning of the word “church”) they can expect God to speak to and through the whole “body” as it seeks the “mind of Christ”. This ‘deliberate assembly’ is usually called a “Church Meeting” (or a Church Members’ or a Church Business’ Meeting). No-one from outside that body can make the church do something it does not believe to be right before God. Each Baptist church is autonomous – self-governing under the headship of Christ.
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One of the things the church can do is to appoint people to leadership responsibilities. Pastors or Ministers are usually “ordained to the Christian Ministry ” and are usually responsible for being the “overseer” or supervisor of the whole church. Others appointed to leadership responsibilities are “deacons” or “elders” or “leaders”. (For a detailed look at key terms such as overseer, deacon, and elder see R. Alastair Campbell’s “The Elders” where he explains that the ‘elders’ were and are an undefined pool of mature Christian disciples from which the church was and is able to draw “overseers” and “deacons”.)

Ministers or Pastors are usually appointed for an indefinite time and are paid a stipend by the church. The sole Pastor or the Senior Pastor is often responsible for the general oversight of the church and is usually the main preacher and teacher of the church.

Deacons (and/or elders) are usually appointed for a three-year term in office and sometimes they are the overseer or supervisor of an aspect of the church’s work. They are lay-leaders who work as volunteers without payment.

The Pastors and Deacons (or elders) work together as a team in the “diaconate”. The diaconate is entrusted with the responsibility of decision-making between Church Meetings but the diaconate is accountable to the Church Meeting which has the authority to rescind any decision taken on it behalf by the diaconate. In practice, the diaconate usually understands the ethos of the church well enough not to make decisions that are contrary to what the church would see as right before God.

No organisation, association, union, convention or non-member has any authority over that local church. The authority and the responsibility to seek and find the ‘mind of Christ’ belongs entirely to that local church alone. These autonomous churches form themselves into associations, unions, etc. to advise and enlighten each other and to pursue common aims and concerns, but authority from God and accountability to God for the local church rests with each congregation or church.

Peter Idris Taylor