First among equals. In the panoply of church polity, this phrase — derived from the Latin primus inter pares and used to describe a local church’s lead or senior pastor — pokes a tender spot. After all, if someone is first, then we’re certainly not equal. Or are we? It just feels so out of step with our current climate, like lead pastors are going to wake up one morning on the wrong side of history.

But what if I told you that this role reflects a principle that can mark the difference between duty and delight for a church leadership team? For church leadership to flourish, the elder plurality must be led.

Elders Need a Leader

Throughout the Bible, when God chooses to execute his will upon the earth — when he reveals his redemptive purposes, forecasts the future, or frees his people from bondage — he begins with a leader. The Old Testament offers a gallery of names that remind us of God’s regular pattern of using one to influence many — Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, just to name a few.

In New Testament times, we’re told Christ chose the twelve (Luke 6:12–16), but Peter functioned as the leader among them. The early church enjoyed a similar plurality of leadership, yet it appears James exerted a unique role and influence as the key leader of the Jerusalem congregation (Acts 15:13; 21:18; 1 Corinthians 15:7; Galatians 1:19; 2:12). The same is true in the church today. An eldership, as a body, needs a leader.

“For church leadership to flourish, the elder plurality must be led.”

Now, I can almost hear you saying, “Where is there any reference to a lead or senior pastor in the Bible?” You’re right. There is no single, airtight Bible verse that decisively proves that pluralities should assign a lead pastor. But there is a broad pattern of order — a beautiful tapestry of leadership — that appears from the opening pages of Scripture to the final words in Revelation.

The necessity of a first among coequals in human economies is resonant with (though not equivalent to) the way the Son submits to his Father in the incarnation (Philippians 2:5–11), as well as in the order God ordains in the home (Ephesians 5:21–33). Leadership is not a consequence of the fall, but represents God’s good design for human flourishing in a well-ordered world.

Nineteenth-Century Perspective

Back in the mid-nineteenth century, Southern Baptist professor William Williams (1804–1885) offered a short historical survey on how the “first among equals” role developed (with quotes from historian Edward Gibbon):

“The want of united action among the different presbyters [elders] of the same church when they were all of equal authority,” and the order of public deliberations requiring that there should be someone “invested at least with the authority of collecting the sentiments and executing the resolutions” . . . of the church, led to the appointment of one of their number a permanent president or moderator. The title bishop, which was applied to all the elders, came after a while to be applied exclusively to the president — elder, as Justin in the middle of the second century still calls him, merely to distinguish him from his equal co-elders. He was not superior to them, but only “first among equals.” (Polity, 532; emphasis mine)

Williams gives us several gems in this little paragraph. He tells us both what a primus inter pares (“first among equals”) is not, and what it is.

He is not a command-and-control guy.

These days, Christian leaders often draw their model of leadership from sources outside of the Bible. Don’t get me wrong — it’s good to read broadly. You must read to lead. But church leadership literature and practice often draws heavily from the business world, which in turn borrows freely from the military.

In the military, particularly during warfare, command and control are a necessity. It’s never good to stop and question your commander when you’re taking fire. My son had six deployments in the Army, several of them in hot zones. When he was there, I wouldn’t have wanted his superior officer to stop and convene the group for some mid-assault collaboration. When you’re taking a hill, having a top-down, centralized authority structure is necessary. In wartime, you need a commander who compels compliance and disciplines anything less than complete obedience. Pity the poor platoon with a leader just “collecting the sentiments and executing the resolutions” of the group.

But we can’t import a command-and-control leadership model into a local church eldership, where the culture (as well as the means of doing ministry) should be defined by Scripture and the fruit of the Spirit. Whatever “first among equals” means, it does not mean absolute ruler over the team. As Williams says, “he was not superior to them.”

“Whatever ‘first among equals’ means, it does not mean absolute ruler over the team.”

In fact, it’s hazardous when pastors organize their vision of leadership around the word first in “first among equals” — when the lead pastor’s opinion is first, his preferences first, his sensitivities first, his entitlements first. A primus-driven team culture often incubates celebrity entitlements and leadership ecosystems grounded in power and authority. For the plurality, the church staff, or the congregation, this plays like a karaoke machine at a funeral — seriously misguided and hopelessly out of place.

Primus-driven leaders can be tempted to relegate godly character and humble service to the margins, sentencing fellow team members to a fear-based and unsafe culture. When that happens, guys know they serve at the pleasure of the senior leader, whose agenda defines direction and whose perspective dictates reality. No wonder staff turnover is common; team members leave because the senior leadership is no longer tolerable. Or worse, no longer respected.

He is not merely a moderator.

In our cynical culture, plurality is much easier to support than the guy who feels called to lead one. People love the democracy, co-equality, interchangeableness, and accountability implied in plurality. This pares-driven model feels extremely enlightened, remarkably fair. Suspicions are stirred by the misguided man who feels a distinct call to exercise the gift of leadership (Romans 12:8). It feels like a power-grabbing conspiracy against the laity. To center preaching and leadership in one is to diminish the strength of all.

I’ve known churches where the elderships were unadorned with senior leaders. Where you see this model working well, it’s typically due to some remarkably humble elders seeking to uphold a principled vision. But I believe it works against an order outlined in Scripture and applied throughout church history and human civilization. Where the leaderless-equals model seems to be working, chances are that someone is, in fact, the consistent initiator and buckstopper, the collector of sentiments, and the executor of the group’s resolutions. It’s just undercover — influence without a title.

For most elder teams, however, it actually prevents confusion and helps avoid misuses of authority to identify the real sources of leadership and power. And honestly, in many cases, the absence of this order brings the presence of chaos as conflicting visions, the want of elder care, and alignment complexities consistently tempt the unity of elder teams. In fact, Williams tells us that the “first among equals” role arose because of “want of united action.” At the end of the day, disunited action often has a dividing effect.

He is a leader from among.

These two errors — the error of overbearing primus-driven ministry and the error of egalitarian pares-driven ministry — highlight the truth that to be healthy, both the eldership and the senior leader must operate within a humility-empowered tension.

On the one side, the lead pastor advocates for the opinions and involvement of the team as a whole. As Williams observes, he must “collect the sentiments” of the elders, which requires listening well as he solicits their counsel, understands their thinking, and leans on their gifts.

On the other side, the plurality of elders creates space for the senior role to actually use his gifts to lead. Once again Williams is clear. He tells us that the “first among equals” is invested with authority to “execute the resolutions of the church.” This means the elders grant the senior leader latitude and followership to order and direct their efforts.

But don’t think battalion commander or CEO. As Andy Crouch once said, “Think of a symphony conductor!” The senior pastor’s leadership does not coerce toward action, but directs skillful people whose gifts need to be organized, prioritized, and united to produce magnificent music. The result is a beautiful blending of leadership and teamwork, where the elders remain jealous to be conducted by the senior leader, and the lead pastor knows he needs the gifts and unity of the whole team for the church to flourish. Why is this so crucial? For church leadership to flourish, the elder plurality must be led.

Call for Gospel Guts

A healthy plurality led by a humble leader is not accidental. It happens where men have the guts to apply the gospel. In a self-emptying display of humility (Philippians 2:5–11), the elders subordinate themselves and appoint a leader as “first among equals.” Through self-crucifying displays of love, the lead pastor embodies Christ’s application of “first” — among them as one who serves (Matthew 20:26–27). And within the exquisite torture of this tension between “first” and “equals,” the gospel grows more precious, and the humble leadership of one enhances the ministry joy for many.

Jesus saved me thirty-seven years ago. A janitor at my college used his breaks to preach the gospel. I eventually repented and believed, and Jesus rescued me from the tragedy of not knowing God.

God gave me a ravishing hunger to know him. So I read and reread my Bible, I prayed, and I prayed more, and I plunged headfirst into the church. As I grew, I was exposed to Reformed teaching about the sovereignty of God and learned that he works his purposes in my life and in all things for his glory and for the good of those who love him. Pursuing God became the passion of my life.

I spent most of my time in college in campus ministry, and then pursued training in seminary. When I finished, God blessed me with a wonderful wife. Then he called me to pastor a church one city block north of the epicenter of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. God was moving. And while he was rescuing sinners and maturing them as his followers, he also was growing my family with children, one every two years until we had six.

I could see God sovereignly working in me and through me. My life could not have been happier. But God wanted to deepen my relationship with him, so he brought suffering.

Our Girl Has Cancer

One day my 8-year-old daughter came home from a friend’s sleepover with a stiff neck. The problem progressively grew worse over three weeks, and each week we took her to the doctor, but nothing took her pain away. Then one evening my wife came home without her.

Our daughter had said she wasn’t feeling well during a visit to Grandma’s house, so my wife let her stay there overnight. My concern grew. I had prayed earlier that day, “God, please show us what’s wrong with our daughter.” God answered my prayer. Our phone rang at two o’clock in the morning. It was Grandma. She said our daughter had tried to go to the bathroom but couldn’t stand up. So we rushed her to the emergency room, and I carried her in my arms into the hospital.

My wife and I waited for hours in a cold, dim room. Then our doctor came and told us that our daughter had cancer. After they ran more tests the next day, her oncologist told us that she had a potentially terminal form of cancer. He said our lives might not ever be the same. Because of our daughter’s age, my wife and I alternated days and nights living in the pediatric ICU and isolation rooms while my daughter underwent treatment.

ICU and Unanswered Prayer

Every day I saw children suffering excruciating pain, and at night I heard their unanswered cries for help. My wife and I bonded with and ministered to four other families who were hoping against hope that their loved ones would be healed. We prayed for each of them, and four times God said no. The harsh reality that death doesn’t spare beautiful bald-headed little girls crashed down upon us. I felt like I was living in a nightmare, and I was terrified of how it might end.

I cried every day, but not in front of anyone — not in front of my wife, not in front of my daughter. I didn’t want to discourage anyone from clinging to hope.

When our doctors told us they had done all that they could, but our daughter’s condition continued to get worse, I called my mom. My parents lived in Virginia. I told her that she and my dad should come soon because it didn’t appear that our little girl had much more time left. As I spoke with my mom, standing in a hospital overpass, I broke down and wept uncontrollably.

Then I had a conversation with my daughter that I pray you will never have to have with yours. I told her, “Honey, you might die soon and go to see Jesus, so make sure you are trusting in him.”

Not My Will

The excruciating pain I felt drove me closer and closer to God. I prayed more fervently than I have ever prayed. One day I was convicted that I didn’t pray like my Lord, who in his passion prayed three times in the garden of Gethsemane. And each time he surrendered to the Father, “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:32–42).

“God pried my hand open so that I would release my daughter into his infinitely stronger and loving hands.”

As God convicted me, a massive struggle began in my heart. I found myself refusing to pray for anything but my will, which was for God to heal my daughter. So with his fatherly hand, God pried my hand open so that I would release my daughter into his infinitely stronger and loving hands. In seminary, I was taught that when you see two IV stands during hospital visits, it normally indicates that the person is very sick. My daughter had three and an additional direct line into her arm.

To remove the excessive fluids in her body, they had to perform a procedure that required me to hold my daughter down. As I did, she looked at me and screamed, “Daddy, help me! Daddy, help me!” I held on until the doctors were done. Then I staggered into the hallway and surrendered my daughter to God. I wrestled with God and he won.

With tears streaming down my face, I prayed, “Not my will, but your will, be done. She was always yours and never mine. You always loved her more and are her best protector.”

God Does All He Pleases

In the end, God taught me by experience what he had taught me theologically a long time before. God always does what he pleases, and what he pleases is best.

“God always does what he pleases, and what he pleases is best.”

Space won’t permit me to share how God miraculously healed my daughter. What God did was so amazing that if Hollywood made our story into a movie, viewers would call it cheesy and unrealistic. People prayed for us from all over the world and rejoiced with us when my daughter walked out of the hospital cancer free (2 Corinthians 1:10–11). My God-fearing wife says if she could, she would choose to go through this all over again because of what she learned about God. I learned the peace and joy that comes from knowing that God is good even when we suffer — that it is good that he always does as he pleases.

In April of this year, God gave me the pleasure of walking my now-grown miracle down the aisle to give her away a second time, this time in marriage.

God Shouts in Our Pain

C.S. Lewis once wrote of suffering in The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (91). God directed his megaphone at me seventeen years ago, and nothing I’ve experienced has so profoundly affected my life and ministry.

Through suffering, God teaches us to be persistent in prayer. He reveals to us that he is way too big for our finite minds to comprehend, and yet his mercies are far too great for him not to hear our cries for help. He invites us to wrestle with him because he wants us to know that the outcome he brings is best. We can rest then, knowing that he has heard, that he cares, and that he will use his answer for our ultimate good and his glory, even if he doesn’t remove the trial but answers instead, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

This article would be misleading if I didn’t confess that as a husband, a father, and a pastor, I still waver in the face of suffering. But I am so thankful that God reteaches me from his word, his past work in my life, and the testimonies of the saints, that what he ordains is best.

In fact, I can hear Mother Simmons now, a dear saint in our church who has suffered as much like Job as anyone I know. I can hear her say, “Pastor, where God puts a period, we can’t change it to a comma,” and then quote, “God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.” Yes, all the time — even during our darkest trials.

“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb . . . ” These words from a breathless Mary Magdalene were the first breaking of the news that Sunday morning. “. . . and we do not know where they have laid him” (John 20:2).

Just as Mary herself had run to inform Peter and “the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved,” they then ran together to check for themselves. That Jesus’s body was gone, they now believed. But somehow, even with Jesus’s words to them, on multiple occasions, about his coming death and resurrection (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34), they, like Mary, “did not understand” (Mark 9:32).

On this world-changing Sunday morning, Jesus’s closest disciples first assumed his body had been taken and laid elsewhere. “As yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (John 20:9). Must rise. In Jesus’s mind, and in the courts of heaven, and in the pages of holy Scripture, the suffering and subsequent resurrection of the Messiah were not just possibilities or likelihoods. These were not options. They were musts. Jesus had said it before, and later that day he would explain it again — that it was necessary, that it must have happened this way.

O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? (Luke 24:25–26)

Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. . . . that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. (Luke 24:44–25)

But when Peter and John first looked into the empty tomb, that necessity had not yet struck them. Fresh off the devastating grief of the previous two days — doubtless the two worst days of their lives — they still were coming to terms with his death, and assumed with Mary that he was still dead and “they” — some undefined group — had moved the body. Having seen the empty tomb, John reports, “the disciples went back to their homes” (John 20:10).

Only Mary stayed behind, and soon found Jesus alive. Then, with his commission, she “went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’” (John 20:18).

Christ Must Rise

However slow his disciples had been to understand the necessity of his suffering and rising, they soon became convinced — not just that he did rise (that was indisputable) but that he had to rise. It was necessary. It must have happened this way.

“Death could not hold him, restrain him, keep him. It was not possible. Christ, the Son, had to rise.”

Just fifty days later, when Pentecost came, Peter would preach this in public — not just the resurrection but its necessity. At the height of his sermon, Peter declares about his Lord — “this Jesus,” who was “crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” — “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:23–24). Death could not hold him, restrain him, keep him. It was not possible. Christ, the Son, had to rise.

Why, we might ask on this Resurrection Sunday, was it necessary? Why did Jesus have to rise? Acts 2, together with other New Testament texts, give us at least five reasons why the Son had to rise again.

1. To Make Good on God’s Word

First, the word of the living God was at stake. Through his prophets, God had long promised to send his people a climactically Anointed One, the Messiah, heir to David’s throne and rallying hope of Israel. And essential to that Messianic promise was an eternal reign (2 Samuel 7:13, 16). Not only would David’s line continue one generation after another, but one great heir was coming who would reign without end (Psalm 45:6–7; 102; 25–27; 110:1–4).

Even in his own lifetime, David himself had spoken of God not abandoning his soul to Sheol — and not letting his “holy one see corruption” (Psalm 16:10), which Christians, including Peter, came to see as one of many old-covenant anticipations of the coming Messiah’s resurrection. Which is how Peter argues in that first Spirit-anointed sermon (Acts 2:29–32).

God’s anointed king would fulfill the promise of God’s word. Jesus was, and is, that Christ. Therefore, it was impossible for him to be kept from that eternal reign. Not even the last enemy could keep him from it. Strong as the power of death may seem, it was, and is, no match for the omnipotent God working for his Messiah.

2. To Vindicate His Sinless Life

Jesus’s life was without sin. He was utterly innocent, and rising again vindicated his perfect human life. Death and Satan had no claim on him because Jesus had no “record of debt that stood against [him] with its legal demands” (Colossians 2:14). With respect to Jesus, Satan and his minions never had been armed; they had no hooks in him because he had no sin or guilt. Rather, in dying, Jesus gave himself, nailing to the cross our record of debt, because of our trespasses, and disarming the demons against us (Colossians 2:13, 15).

Luke sounds the note of Christ’s innocence again and again — three times in the mouth of Pilate, then again by the thief crucified next to him, and finally by the centurion who saw him breathe his last (Luke 23:4; 14–15; 22; 41, 47). Jesus’s innocence — that he did “nothing deserving death,” before man and before God — would be, as Paul celebrates, “vindicated by the Spirit” in Christ’s resurrection (1 Timothy 3:16).

3. To Confirm the Work of His Death

The resurrection also confirmed that Jesus’s death on the cross worked. It counted. It was effective. His dying declaration, “It is finished” (John 19:30), was shown to be true by his resurrection. Had he stayed dead, what confidence would we have that his sacrifice worked, that it was sufficient for us and all who believe? What firm hope would we have that he indeed was not only innocent of his own sin but that his death could count for us, in our place?

“The resurrection confirms that his death on the cross worked. It counted. It was effective.”

Paul writes in Romans 4:25 that Jesus “was delivered up” to death “for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” The resurrection shows that his work was effective — not only in covering our sins with his death, but in rising to be our righteousness — our justification — before the holy God. Which leads to another distinct but inseparable reason.

4. To Give Us Access to His Work

Not only did our sins require a reckoning — by Christ, outside of us — but we also needed to have access to his work, to have it applied to us. Potential salvation is not enough. We need actual rescue, which comes through the instrument called faith which unites us to a resurrected, living Lord.

However sufficient his self-sacrifice might have been to cover our sins, we have no access to that rescue if he is not alive that we might be united to him. But he is alive. As he says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). There is no great salvation for us if we are not united by faith to a living Lord to have the benefits of his work applied to us.

5. To Be Our Living Lord and Treasure

One final must or necessity is the final necessity: Jesus is alive to know and enjoy forever.

There is no final good news if our Treasure and Pearl of Great Price is dead. Even if our sins could be paid for, righteousness provided and applied to us, and heaven secured, but Jesus were still dead, there would be no great salvation in the end — not if our Savior and Groom is dead. At the very center of the Easter triumph is not what he saves us from, but what he saves us to — better, who he saves us to: himself.

Our restless souls will not find eternal, and ever-increasing, rest and joy in a Christ-less new earth, no matter how stunning. Streets of gold, reunions with loved ones, and sinless living may thrill us at first — but they will not ultimately satisfy, not for eternity, not on their own. We were made for Jesus. He is at the center of true life now, and he will be forever. If there is no living Christ, there is no final satisfying eternity. But he is alive indeed — to know and enjoy forever.