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What I Have Found
My introduction to "brethren" assemblies.*
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1. Elimination of the "clergy" as a separate class of believers.
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In the simplicity of the early Church, as any honest reader of the New Testament will affirm, there was no such thing as a professional "clergy." The thought of an assembly of believers being led by one man, with ministerial "credentials" and professional training, serving for a stipulated salary--all this is utterly foreign to the New Testament. Rather the New Testament pattern is that the church is to be led, from the human standpoint, not by a solitary pastor, but by a group of men, normally designated "elders" or "overseers" in the New Testament. Furthermore, the clear implication is that these elders generally are to be raised up by God within the local bodies, not hired or imported by the churches from without.
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This pattern the assemblies attempt to uphold, and it was this primarily that first attracted me to them. While serving in the traditional role of "pastor" of a denominational church, my study of the New Testament led me to believe that I was occupying essentially a non-Scriptural position. With the New Testament pattern in front of me, I began to see with new eyes some of the tragic results that have come as a result of churches embracing wholesale a non-Scriptural pattern of church leadership. Many local church pastors are godly and dedicated men, but the clerical system--this deplorable division of the saints into "clergy" and "laity"--has wreaked untold havoc on the Church of God.
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