I read your email through my phone, but haven’t been able to respond on my computer due to internet troubles. Let me say a few things:

First, thank you very much for your gracious approach to what I wrote. I suspect that we agree more on the principle of this issue and that most of our disagreement is over what is meant by “autonomous church.”

I attended an SBC seminary for my undergraduate degree and have been raised SBC. In fact, my hope is to head to a different SBC seminary in the Spring. With that said, I was taught by two different professors that an autonomous church is one that is free of elders; in fact, these two professors mocked the elder system.

Now, I don’t say that to say, “My SBC seminary disagrees with you, therefore…” Instead, I bring it up to point out that it’s possible that I have been mislead on what the autonomous church means. Both of these professors see the “elder movement” (as they labeled it) as a Reformed movement within the SBC, so this could explain their disdain for having elders since this same school I went to is becoming quite infamous for its anti-Reformed teaching (if you keep up with SBC seminaries, I’m quite sure you’re able to guess which one I attended).

If you take an autonomous church to mean one that simply has no hierarchy that it answers to, but where the pastor is still held accountable, then I would agree with such a model. However, I still find a model similar to what the Eastern Orthodox use to be better than most evangelical models, even with elders.

However, such a model (the Orthodox) is not tenable for many Evangelicals for various reasons. With that in mind, I think an elder-lead church is optimal. The church I currently attend is elder run and that has worked quite well.

I think you saw through what I was writing and exposed my main concern; pastors who have no accountability. I have seen some churches where the elders are nothing more than “yes men” or where the pastor is still supreme; the elders act merely as a committee. This is the type of church I was speaking out against and, as I have been led to believe by professors at an SBC seminary, that is what is meant by an autonomous church.

Regardless, I think we would still disagree somewhat, but it wouldn’t be a major disagreement or something to fight about, but more a matter of opinion. I still think having a hierarchy of sorts is preferable to a church standing on her own even with elders. While such a church isn’t doomed to failure, I do think that it faces more challenges than a church following a proper hierarchal form. But even so, an elder led church is not doomed to failure, but I would advocate that a church run on the Pastor/CEO model will always fail unless God intervenes.

Good thoughts and I took no disrespect to you posting this on your site. I think I had the comments turned off, but regardless if you were able to use my post to help your own congregation grow, then it works out for the better.

I hope all remains well and it’s nice to find someone who can disagree in a respectable manner. That has been hard to come by as of late.