As stated in the initial post, my personal background would definitely have me on the full-time staff side of the fence, but I have seen just as positive things happen in the alternate model as well. The real question, then, is whether there are generalizations possible or whether it is strictly situational.

A lot of issues around the professional option seem to center on what the local mandate explicitly is and how it is carried out. In that case I think that the issue of transparent and obvious accountability becomes paramount. That has never been well addressed in most church frameworks, likely at least partially due to the historical patriarchal nature of the hierarchy that you mention.

Lastly is the issue you raise about service provided to non-church people. Although I did not mention this, it is definitely a contentious issue for some congregants, particularly in light of the limited pastoral time and resources that can be expected from employed staff. An interesting side issue.

First, we live in a time of specialization. While I could repair my car, I don’t, because there are those who can find & repair problems faster & cheaper than can I. Given this culture, it is not a shock that our churchs tend to aligh to that model.

Second, Biblical leadership styles tend not to translate well to 21st century North America - we no longer treat patriarchs as being the final authority for everything, and we don’t expect or even really want that in our church leadership. For what it is worthy, much of the participatory nature of our democratic political systems (such as it is) goes back to training “lay” people used to receive by going church and see how things were done there.

Third, we tend to expect our pastors / priests to do more than “just” preach - they are often the lead councilors / mediators for the flock, plus anyone walking in off the street. This is more than most people are really keen on either doing on the side or having it done as a side line.

Forth, and perhaps the weakest point here, my personal experiance has been that when the churchs I’ve been a part of lacked vocational staff persons beyond the office admin (a very vital function!), things tended to decay and sometimes completely fall apart. Re-introduce someone whose job description includes thinking & guiding those decaying things, and suddenly stuff works / happens again.

But then again, I have barely attended Brethern assemblies, much less tried to see how they work.

As I said in the posts, I don’t think that either model is superior overall. I would have been incredulous in the past at the suggestion that a non-professional situation could work as well as the mainline one. However, from what I have seen, it frequently can and does.

I also agree about having a position that acts as central ministry focus. Correctly implemented, that has many benefits. However, for that to have legitimacy transparent accountability is very important.

I don’t know the objective answer to that question, but I know I personally like having someone there to do that job full time. I like having someone there who’s job it is to study the Word. I couldn’t imagine doing a full time job, then doing the required studying.

I think comparisons to the early church should be done with caution. It’s generally a good thing to ask ourselves “What did the early church believe about this or that?” is good. But asking “What did the early church practice” is an entirely different question. What makes the first question a good one is also what makes the second question almost irrelevant.

The people who ran the early church were there. Many of them were direct disciples of Jesus. Many of those things that couldn’t have been written down because they’d fill every book on earth were witnessed by those people.

They also didn’t have to look through a cultural lens, or try to interpret writings from a 2000 year old dead language. Most of the New Testament writings were in Greek because it was the common language in the Mediterranean world, but Jesus and his disciples would have spoken Aramaic.

Back in the day churches were house churches and led by lay persons. To that I say “So what?” I’m not sure how you’d define a lay person from a non-lay person. They didn’t have Christian seminaries back then. Furthermore, today they do everything they can to keep God out of schools. In that culture, the scriptures were the basis for most education. Science, literature, etc. was done through a scriptural lens. Jews started out being a lot more familiar with scripture than modern day Christians. However, today we have the luxury of seminaries.

(In fact, if you want to look at how they did church in those days, the Catholic church’s hierarchical structure is closer to the original church model than our is, or even Bretheren’s structure.)

Nowadays, in Canada, we’re so far removed from that culture. The languages are completely different. The nuances are different. That was a culture with a large shame component. In 21st century western civilization we ask “Shame? What’s that mean? Oh, that’s like when Sean Connery tries to say the word ‘Same,’ right?”

So today, we need someone who can study these sorts of things so they can have a better chance of proper interpretation of scripture. Having a full time pastor or elder allows for someone to do this, and more. Frankly, I feel much much much better about learning about the word from someone who, not only has the credentials, but the time to look at passages in the original Greek, and to read other books to get an understanding of what others are saying about certain issues, etc. than I feel about someone who does those things in his spare time.

Living with a full time pastor for a couple of years I can see how busy they are. Frankly, I’d hate to imagine him working a full time job and trying to, even just do a sermon only half as often.

But some places do it. I have not regularly attended one of these churches, so I can’t really accurately judge.