Leadership Structure of Barabbas Road Church in San Diego

Church polity is the model of leadership and government structure of a church. Churches use various ways to organize and govern themselves. While they are different, we can easily forget that churches do strive to be as biblical as possible when it comes to organizing the church. The main issue is that while most church models are biblical, they do present disadvantages. For example, a familiar model is the bishop system. This model can be found in an episcopal church or an episcopal model of a church. In this model a person called a bishop oversees multiple churches. An advantage to this model is that it does create a sense of unity among the different churches. However, a big disadvantage is that there is no accountability for the bishop. For example, if the bishop becomes heretical then the heresy will spread into the other churches.

From a biblical perspective, the term for bishop, overseer, elder, shepherd and pastor are used interchangeably in the New Testament to describe the same office. For that reason the pastors of Barabbas Road Church in San Diego believe that scripture shows that every church is an autonomous entity; therefore, there should not be any organizing government over an autonomous church. The church should be governed internally and be accountable to the Lord Jesus Christ and scripture.

Another familiar model of church government is the congregational model. This model is typically found in Southern Baptist churches. In this model the church is led by the pastor. The unique part of this model is that the congregation has the freedom to vote on specific matters of the church. The benefit of this model is that it allows everyone to have asay in the decisions of the church. This gives the people in the church a voice and it emphasizes the universal priesthood of believers in the church. Often the two roles you’ll see expressed in the congregational model are the pastor accompanied usually by a deacon board. These two roles are the main governing bodies that run the church. Although, the congregational model is not heretical, there are still some biblical issues with this model. In the congregational model the deacons are acting like elders. The issue with deacons acting like elders is that deacon and elders have much different roles in scripture. In scripture the job of overseeing the church is only given to elders. Also, you never see consensus voting happening in scripture except for on one occasion when it was the apostles voting on whom to replace Judas Iscariot.

Although Barabbas Road Church in San Diego connects and has fellowship with other churches that have different models, the model that the pastors of Barabbas Road Church believe is the most biblical is the elder led church model. This means that Barabbas is not a church that votes. Barabbas is a church that is organized, structured and ran by elders. The benefit of this model is that we see in scripture that the expression of elders is an expression that is in the plural in almost every case. When Paul writes to Timothy and Titus he talks to them about raising up elders in the church. The conviction of the Pastors of Barabbas Road Church is that a healthy church is going to produce elders as they are being discipled. If members of the church are being discipled and raised up as elders then this benefits not only Barabbas Road church, but it benefits churches across the world, as some elders will not stay at Barabbas, but be sent out to continue to make disciples to the glory of God.

Another important aspect of having an elder led church is that elders are not brought in by attending a class or completing any training. An elder of Barabbas Road Church has been a part of the church. The mission at Barabbas Road Church in San Diego is to make disciples “through the personal investment of our lives.” Therefore, the elders of Barabbas Roach Church have been brought up at Barabbas and have had fellowship with the people of Barabbas and most importantly have been discipled at Barabbas. The elders have relationships with the congregation and the congregation knows the elders. This allows for the congregation to support and give an account for the elders.The other church models have advantages and disadvantages, but the leaders of those churches use those models according to their own convictions. The conviction at Barabbas Road Church is that the elder led church model is the most biblical and this is the reason why it is the governing model of Barabbas Road Church in San Diego.