The Moses Model for Church Government?
By George “Chip” Hammond
Historically, government in the church has found expression in three models. The earliest of these (admitted even by some Roman Catholic church historians) is presbyterianism in which the church is governed by a body of elders all with equal authority. The second form of church government (the first historically systematized, also quite early) is episcopalianism, which retains an ordained body for leadership, but is organized in a hierarchy so that some have more authority than others. The last historical form of church government is congregationalism, which arose after the Reformation and shared a common root with many of the ideas of the Enlightenment. This form of church government is a democracy in which each individual member of the church, regardless of office, has the same authority for government within the body and church officers serve merely as functionaries to carry out the collective will of the people.
In the latter part of the twentieth century another model of government arose within American Evangelicalism. While the model bears some similarities to an episcopal model, it more closely tracks with the government of nineteenth century aberrant American movements such as the Mormons in which certain leaders were held to be above challenge, correction, or question. This has come to be known as the Moses Model of church leadership. One website which takes a neutral position toward the Moses Model describes it accurately:
“In the theocracy that God established in the Old Testament, Moses was in charge. He listened to God and relayed God’s messages to the people under him. Moses explains his role in Exodus 18:15-16: ‘The people come to me to seek God’s will. Whenever they have a dispute, it is brought to me, and I decide between the parties and inform them of God’s decrees and instructions.’ Moses was the spokesman for God, the teacher of the Law, and the intercessor between the children of Israel and God. The Moses model of church leadership says that pastors should be like Moses in that they speak for God, teach the Word, and intercede on behalf of their people. The pastor listens to Jesus and leads the church accordingly.”
The purpose of the present article is not to compare the historical models of church government but to evaluate the Moses Model’s claim to be more biblical, and therefore an improvement upon the historical models of church government.
Is the Moses Model biblical?
There is no question that Moses’ leadership was biblical; it is found in the Bible. God chose and appointed Moses to be the instrument by which he would deliver His people from bondage in Egypt (Exodus 3). God made Moses his spokesman to the unbelieving Egyptians and gave him extraordinary authority and ability to compel them (Exodus 7 and following). Moses alone was to speak with God “face to face” and to receive his commands for the people (Exodus 19 and 20; Deuteronomy 18). Those who questioned Moses’ leadership were judged, and in some cases destroyed (Numbers 12, 14, 16).
The question is not whether Moses’ leadership was “biblical” in the sense of it being found in the Bible. Nor is the question whether there are principles about church leadership we can learn from Moses’ administration. The question is whether the Mosaic administration is to be used as a model for leadership in the church. Modern American Evangelicalism has a certain credulity toward claims that a thing is “biblical” simply because one finds it in the Bible. Polygamy, slavery, and sexual immorality are also found in the Bible, but it would be foolish to argue that these practices are therefore “biblical” (although some have). We must be more discerning in our approach.
In the Bible Jesus is called “Teacher” (John 13:13) and “Shepherd” (John 10:11). It is evident that his disciplines worshiped him, and he did not rebuke them or refuse their worship (see Matthew 14:13, 28:9, 17). It is also true that Christ’s servants are called “shepherds (pastors) and teachers” (Ephesians 4:11). However, these facts about Jesus do not serve as a model that shepherds and teachers of God’s word are to be worshiped. Jesus in his person, task and role is unique, and does not serve as a model for the disposition of God’s people toward pastors and teachers.
When I worked at a Christian college, I had a student ask me whether the Bible was just a historical text, or whether what it said was applicable to us today. Rather than answer him, I asked him why he had asked the question. He told me that he had been reading and meditating on Genesis 12 through 22, and had come to the conclusion that God was telling him that his descendants would be like the sand of the sea, and that in him and the children he would beget all the nations of the earth would be blessed. In other words, he believed that Abraham was a model for him to follow. He believed also that God had led him to his “Sarah,” but she was resistant to embracing the role “God had established for her” (i.e. she didn’t want to marry him). I explained to him that the call of Abraham and God’s dealing with him was unique in the history of redemption; that God’s promises to Abraham were not a model for him to be a new Abraham, but that those promises were true and applicable for him in as far as he was a true son of Abraham through faith in Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:7, 9, 14). The Scripture was indeed applicable to him, not in that Abraham was a model for him to be the progenitor of a blessed line of descends through whom God would save the world, but as he himself was one of the blessed children of Abraham through faith in Jesus Christ.
Is Moses a Model for Church Leadership?
Moses’ leadership in Israel was monarchical, that is, “rule by one.” The Moses Model of church leadership is thus an ecclesiastical monarchy in which one person is conceived of as speaking for God to the congregation. Any questioning of God’s appointed Moses is seen as rebellion.
In the New Testament no office had more authority than that of the foundational office of apostle. The original twelve were with Jesus in his earthly ministry and were eyewitnesses to his death and resurrection. The apostles and their legates were the direct means of God’s revelation recorded in the canon of the New Testament. Like “one untimely born” (1 Corinthians 15:8), Paul was entrusted with bringing the gospel to the gentiles (see Romans 15, Galatians 2), laboring harder than all the other apostles (1 Corinthians 15:10) in planting an incredible number of churches around the Mediterranean basin, and being God’s means for the revelation of the lion’s share of the New Testament.
If anyone could lay claim to the right of monarchical leadership after a Moses Model, it would have been the apostles, particularly the apostle Paul, over the respective churches they had founded. Yet when we turn to the New Testament, we find a very different model by which they operate.
When Paul’s ministry to the gentiles was questioned, he did not assert a Moses-like authority to act monarchically but took his gospel for evaluation to the apostles in Jerusalem “in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run in vain” (Galatians 2:2). The monumental issue of whether or not it was God’s will that the gentiles were to be included in the amnesty of the gospel was determined, not by Paul monarchically, nor even by the apostles oligarchically, but by the apostles and the elders of the church acting with a plurality and equality of authority (Acts 15:4, 6, 22).
Conclusion
The Moses Model of leadership is “biblical” only in the sense that we find the Mosaic administration in the Bible. It is biblical in the same way the historically unique role of Abraham, or the unique worship of Jesus who is pastor and teacher, is biblical. Using Moses as a model for church leadership ignores his unique place and role within redemptive history.
The apostles themselves do not adopt a Moses Model of leadership. It is not that there is nothing we can learn about leadership and the relationship of God’s people to leadership from the Mosaic administration, but to use it wholesale as a model for New Testament church government is directly contradicted by the apostles themselves. The principles that we observe embraced and employed by the apostles are rightly understood as the biblical model of New Testament church government. These principles differ from, and at several key points contradict, the idea of the modern Moses Model of church government.
