Interesting idea. Is there a standard calories-burned-per-X formula? Or maybe just a second axis showing calories burned over time?

The problem with having a ‘preacher’ is that he provides an excuse to not do the jobs that could be done by everyone else, which allows us not to do it. John is right in that we have to make sure to stay faithful children, but, I wonder, why are we tempting fate?

Why would we make it easy to put this type of thing off by paying someone to do most, if not all the work? This seems counter-productive, if our mission is to develop and grow the body… we are only watering the mouth!

It is these kinds of problems that made me start to consider that early churches very well probably had no ‘preacher’. They were groups of families, coming together to praise and worship God. No one was designated preacher. There were elders. There were deacons. And amazingly enough, there were people who spoke well. These people shared ideas and revelations they had. People who dealt with people well would evangelize. Those who had great amounts of compassion and patience cared for the sick and visited those in prison.

This is my vision of what the Church should be like. everything directed by the elders and managed by the deacons. When there isn’t a person whose job is ‘Church’, everyone gains ownership. Suddenly we aren’t following Paul, or Apollos, but Christ!

A text note: in the Eph 4:11 passage you cite earlier, the word translated “pastor” is an elder, not a preacher. The word translated “evangelist” is the word we want to focus on. It means “a bringer of good news” (according to the UBS lexicon). We need to keep the distinction clear. While the elders are required to be able to teach (and therefore need to demonstrate that ability periodically in the congregation), they are not the same as evangelists.

The word translated “evangelist”/”teacher” is only used 3 times in the N.T.: here in Ephesians, once in 2 Timothy 4:5 (where Timothy is charged to “be sober in all things, endure hardship, do an evangelist’s work, fulfill your ministry.”) and in Acts 21:8 (where the narrator enters “the house of Philip the evangelist”). We aren’t all evangelists, as we aren’t all teachers or pastors, but wanting to be one is good (just as Timothy was instructed that being an overseer (another word for pastor) “is a fine work he desires to do” (1 Timothy 3:1)).

As @dancethespears says, it takes a “great deal of commitment on [the soon to be preacher's] part” to go to school to preach.And @SmacksOfSarcasm rightly says that teaching is often (always?) more valuable for the teacher than the student(s). But I can honestly say that, with a full-time job, commuting, etc, making Bible study (much less class preparation) is a significant investment and often seems impossible. Raising a family, too, takes time. But, if it’s an investment the individual is willing to make, it needs to become the practical means of sustenance. Some congregations have one preacher some have multiple.

There’s nothing wrong with paying a preacher. @SmacksOfSarcasm’s concern, from what’s written here, is the two-fold concern that: a) the preacher can divide the congregation; and b) paying a preacher may result in some of us not taking our charge seriously.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a silver bullet for either problem. It’s up to each one of us, as individuals, to take up our responsibilities and execute them seriously. I can’t do that for you and you can’t for me. We can (and should!!) help each other. If we are serious about believing the truth and being a good steward of what we’ve been given, we should feel compelled to pick up His Word, meditate on it, and make it a part of us, of our daily actions.

Finally, with our experiences, we become uniquely qualified to help others in times of trouble. I’ve been through a split in a congregation. It isn’t pretty. But now, I’m more able to take what I saw there and, if I see the same precursors happening, step up to help prevent the problem. That’s my responsibility as a faithful child of God.

To begin with, the amount of study required to get really deep into the Bible can be daunting, and at the very least time consuming. Many preachers have attended seminary, requiring a great deal of commitment on their part. Both of time and finances. To be sure, it is not impossible to preach without attending seminary. However, that degree of education does make it much, much easier to teach people sound doctrine.

It is also easier to answer the questions that come after you have taught. Though many people will never need to hear more then the basic applications they would hear in a normal service, some do have deeper questions. The call to teach requires that you teach these people as well. So you must not only understand the subject matter that you spoke on, you must understand all the things that lead to the discovery of what you just spoke on.

Many things of God seem like a road map. The subjects of sunday sermons are often focused on the destination portions of the map. Some people only need to know what the destination is like, some people want to know how you got there. And that requires a lot of time and study.

Again, I can not say enough that never attending seminary doesn’t mean that you can’t preach or teach. I fear I may come off that way, and that is not my intent. I simply mean to point out that seminary (or rather the knowledge normally gained from it) is incredibly useful to the kingdom of God, and generally makes preaching and teaching an easier thing.

With that in mind, people that attend seminary have to do something with it. Realistically, few people can spend that amount of time and money and then expect to feed a family unless they make use of that investment. This is a fact of life, and a fact of the church body.

Someone has just gone to seminary, they now need to get a job, they only know how to preach. The church has God’s money to distribute, it needs someone to preach and teach for it. It’s a match made in heaven, literally!

This is why many churches only have one preacher. They’re basically hiring someone, and oftentimes the budget doesn’t allow for more than one person. In smaller churches, this is why you’ll often see a minister taking on more responsibilities than simply teaching. He’s hired to teach, and be a leader of the church, and sometimes take care of housekeeping duties during the week. There are small churches out there that have a minister, groundskeeper, janitor, worship leader and greeter…all wrapped up in one person! He has to be, in order to meet the needs of the church and stay under budget.

As for pay, the nail was already hit on the head with the verse about wages. Also, the knowledge the the early church gave to each other as they had need. The minister has already given much of his time, intellect, and heart to simply preparing to teach. Things that money of us don’t have enough of to be able to accomplish the same task. We do (collectively) have enough of God’s money though, to be able to support someone that chooses to do this for us. We give them money so that they can give us time and teaching.

This is an incredibly long comment. I’ll end it now by simply saying that this is the model that works traditionally, but it is not mandated by heaven. What works for your community and your gathering of saints is what you should do.

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Ephesians is not talking about an ‘ordained preacher’, but rather everyone’s personal responsibility within the church. In fact, this group of verses underscores individual responsibility and accountability within the church.

We will no longer be infants, if we become apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, or teachers and build one another up. It is my belief, from experience, that people will not step up to the plate if another person is going to. Especially if it is another person’s ‘job’ to do so. This is why I feel that having a ‘preacher’ might be destructive to the church.

Instead, it is my belief that the elders should hold those in the church who can preach and teach accountable for teaching and preaching. They should not have to find one person willing to do it every Sunday, because anyone able to do it should be willing to do so to build up themselves and the church.

This may just be me, but personally, when I know I am going to preach soon, I always become more involved in my own studies and prayer life. When I know someone else has the wheel for next six months, it seems not so central in my life.

Finally, I just want to reiterate that doing away with the gathering of the saints is not my intention at all. I am just wondering whether employing someone to do most of the work that the Church does is in the best interest of trying to mature and grow members of the Church.