[Arkansas Toothpick]

I am a Southern Baptist, but I don’t think that we can discount any and all church hierarchy. After all, the New Testament has much to say about elders, deacons and bishops, even. It’s just that if any of them teach anything that contradicts Scripture, then they are not legitimate in their authority.

[Resettozero]

I am a Southern Baptist, but I don’t think that we can discount any and all church hierarchy.

I too was a Southern Baptist until I began dating and driving and then in college. Then I went to whatever church she went to at the time or with my parents on special Sundays.

Later, at 32, I turned the Lord at the last possible moment, just like all Israel will one day in the (near) future, but was in a non-denominational charismatic situation and on vacation away from home.

Nowadays, I gather with believers of like mind at what we call a Bible church. Not too small, but not needing or wanting a hierarchy between us and our Father in Heaven.

I DVR Charles Stanley (In Touch) out of Atlanta each week and consider him my favorite (only) TV teacher. But the churches I have attended since moving to S.C. have been PCA and C&MA while we were homeschooling our children, and now a foreign missions-oriented and church-planting Bible Church.

Southern Baptists, and other associations and conventions, rely way too much on their pastor, associate pastors, and everyone else receiving compensation to keep things running, IMO.

Believe it is best to have necessary leaders (whatever you may call them) who are just like the rest of us of this sheep pen, including the pastor who gets some monetary compensation as needed. (He's worth his hire, and more too.) We assemble somewhat on the order of how the first often-poor and getting-poorer Christians worshipped God and ministered to each other and became exceedingly wealthy in what lasts forever.