A Faith, Not a Family Business

What is this page about?

Some churches are independent. No bishop and no larger church body is above them. In such a church, the pastor who started it often preaches, leads the board, and controls the money. In practice he also decides who comes after him. Often, the next pastor is his son.

This page argues against both mistakes. It uses only the New Testament and church history. It leaves the Old Testament for another day.

Look for a son in the New Testament

The New Testament tells of many appointments. Jesus chooses the apostles. The church chooses seven helpers in Acts 6. Missionaries are sent. Elders are chosen in town after town. Timothy and Titus are given their work.

In not one of them does a leader appoint his son, or any relative, to follow him.

Three stories come near to it. All three point the other way.

1. A mother asks for her sons. The mother of James and John asked Jesus to give her sons the seats at his right hand and at his left. He said that this “is not mine to give” (Matthew 20:23). And he said: “It shall not be so among you” (Matthew 20:26).

2. Barnabas and his cousin. Barnabas wanted to take his cousin Mark on a mission journey. Paul refused, because Mark had left the work before. The two men separated over it (Acts 15:37-39). Later Mark showed that he was faithful, and Paul was glad to have him (2 Timothy 4:11).

3. The brother of Jesus. James, “the Lord’s brother”, became a leader in Jerusalem. But Jesus did not appoint him. While Jesus was teaching, “even his brothers didn’t believe in him” (John 7:5).

Six appointments

Was a family tie part of it?

What does the New Testament ask for?

The letters to Timothy and Titus list what a church leader must be (1 Timothy 3; Titus 1).

• He can teach.
• He has a good character.
• He does not love money.
• He is not a new believer.
• He has been tested first.
• People outside the church also think well of him.

A person must show every one of these. Other people must be able to see every one of them. A father cannot pass any of them to a son.

Paul’s “sons”

Paul calls Timothy “my true child in faith” (1 Timothy 1:2). He calls Titus “my true child according to a common faith” (Titus 1:4). Neither man was his child. Paul explains the picture in another letter: “in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Good News” (1 Corinthians 4:15).

Look at Timothy.

• His real father was “a Greek” (Acts 16:1). The Bible never gives his name.
• His faith came down through his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5).
• His ministry came through Paul and a group of elders, who laid their hands on him (1 Timothy 4:14). Before that, two churches had spoken well of him (Acts 16:2).

So the New Testament does have a famous case where a father passes his work to a son. But it is a spiritual father and son. The church checked it. And the measure was faithfulness.

Paul’s rule for the next generation says the same:

The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit the same things to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

2 Timothy 2:2 · World English Bible

In simple words: You heard my teaching, and many people heard it with you. Pass it on to faithful people, who will be able to teach others too.

Whose church is it?

It is Christ’s. Jesus said: “I will build my assembly” (Matthew 16:18). (“Assembly” is this Bible’s word for “church”.) Paul speaks of the church of God, “which he purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).

Leaders are stewards. A steward manages a house that belongs to another person. A church leader is “God’s steward” (Titus 1:7). Elders must not act like lords over the people in their care (1 Peter 5:3).

The founder is a planter. Paul started the church at Corinth. He wrote:

I planted. Apollos watered. But God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.

1 Corinthians 3:6–7 · World English Bible

In simple words: I planted the seed. Apollos gave it water. But God made it grow. So the one who plants is nothing, and the one who waters is nothing. Only God matters, because he makes it grow.

The money was handled in the open. The church chose people to manage it (Acts 6). Paul would not carry a gift of money alone. A man travelled with him who was “appointed by the assemblies” (2 Corinthians 8:19). Paul wanted the matter to be honest before God and also before people (2 Corinthians 8:21).

When Paul left the church at Ephesus for the last time, he named nobody to follow him. He said that the Holy Spirit had made the elders the overseers of the church. Then he said:

Now, brothers, I entrust you to God and to the word of his grace

Acts 20:32 · World English Bible

In simple words: Now, brothers, I give you into the care of God and of the message of his grace.

And he added: “I coveted no one’s silver, gold, or clothing.” (Acts 20:33) In simple words: I did not want anyone’s money or clothes.

This is how a founder says goodbye in the New Testament.

What did the early church decide?

The church put this into its rules early, and it repeated the rules many times.

The people must agree. About the year 96, a letter from the church in Rome says that leaders were appointed with the agreement of the whole church. In the 440s, Leo the Great wrote:

He who is to govern all, should be chosen by all.

Leo the Great, 440s

In simple words: The man who will lead everyone should be chosen by everyone.

Nobody appoints the man who follows him. In 341 a church council made a rule. A bishop may not name the next bishop, “even at the close of life”. Such an appointment “shall be void”. In simple words: it does not count.

No heirs. A collection of church rules from the 300s said that a bishop must not make “a brother or a son” a bishop as a favour,

for it is not right to make heirs of the bishopric.

Church rules, 300s

In simple words: because it is not right to treat a bishop’s work as something that a family inherits.

The same rules said that he must not give the church’s property “to his own relations”.

Augustine’s example. Augustine grew old. In 426 he stood in front of the whole church and named the man that he hoped would follow him. Writers put down on paper what the people answered. The man was not made bishop while Augustine lived. And the man was not his relative.

The best argument for the son

It should get a fair hearing.

• Faith often runs in families, and the Bible honours that (2 Timothy 1:5).
• A son who grew up in ministry may be very well prepared.
• The church knows him.
• When a family member follows, the change is often peaceful.
• The early church did accept some family lines. After James, the church in Jerusalem chose Symeon, a cousin of Jesus, as its leader. A bishop of Ephesus in the 100s said that seven of his relatives had been bishops before him. And the first leader of the Armenian church was followed by his sons.

All of that is true. So a pastor’s son should never be kept out because of his birth.

But look at how those family members were chosen. A meeting chose Symeon. The people there agreed “with one consent” that he was “worthy”. The leader before him did not appoint him.

And one church did make family succession a fixed rule, centuries later. In the end it had no heirs who were fit. It named a boy of twelve. Then it split in two.

The best argument shows that a son may be chosen. It never shows that he should be chosen because he is a son. And it never shows that his father may do the choosing.

A test you can use

1. Fit for the work. Would people think of him seriously if he were not the pastor’s son?
2. Examined. By people who are free to say no. Not by his father, and not by a board that his father controls.
3. Chosen freely. By the leaders or the members of the church, with a real choice in front of them.
4. Must answer to others. Someone outside the family can correct him, and can remove him if it is necessary.
5. Open with the money. The building and the accounts belong to the church. The members can see them.

A son who passes all five is a good choice, and he happens to be a son. But if “he is his father’s son” takes the place of any of the five, he is an heir.

Six situations

All six were made up by this page. Is each one fine? Is it favour for a relative? Or can we not say yet?

What does it look like today?

Many people believe that churches often pass from father to son. In most countries nobody has counted.

South Korea is different. Church groups there were against the practice, and they counted. By 2018 they had listed 364 churches that had passed to a pastor’s son or to his daughter’s husband, directly or by another road. Most were not very large churches. The most common size was 100 to 500 members.

Two church bodies in Korea forbade it, in 2012 and 2013. In one of them, the number of family successions rose in the five years after the rule, from 62 to 74. How? Some pastors exchanged places for each other’s sons. Others put in a pastor for a short time and then gave the church to the son. The rule stopped the outside form. It did not stop the thing itself.

In other places, one researcher thinks that about one in ten of the world’s largest churches passes to a family member. A study of independent Pentecostal churches in Africa found that most founders stay in charge “until their last breath”. In simple words: until they die. And the change that follows often brings a fight.

What is really proved?

Check it yourself

1. Read Matthew 20:20-28. Five minutes. A mother asks for places for her sons.
2. Read 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9. Ten minutes. Make a list of what a leader must be. Can any of it be inherited?
3. Read Acts 20:17-38. Ten minutes. How Paul says goodbye to a church that he started.
4. Read 1 Corinthians 3:5-11. Five minutes. Who planted, and who made it grow?
5. Ask about your own church. Who chooses the next pastor? Who owns the building? Can the members see the accounts?