The question, plainly
In an independent church there is usually no bishop or denomination above the congregation. The founding pastor often holds the pulpit, chairs the board and controls the money, and in practice he decides who comes next. Often, the one who comes next is his son.
What this page tests
The New Testament hands on faith and ministry through faithful, tested, accountable people. It gives no one a right to inherit a church’s pulpit, control or property. A son may succeed his father, but only if he is qualified in his own right, examined by others, freely chosen by the church, and still answerable afterwards, with the church’s money kept the church’s.
There are two ways to get this wrong. One says the founder’s son is the natural heir. The other says a pastor’s son should never succeed him. This page argues against both. The evidence used is the New Testament and church history only; the Old Testament is left for another day.
Look for a son in the New Testament
The New Testament records many appointments: the apostles, the Seven in Acts 6, missionaries, elders in town after town, Timothy, Titus. In none of them does a leader appoint his son, or any relative, to succeed him.
Three scenes come close, and all three point the other way.
A mother asks for her sons. The mother of James and John asked Jesus to seat her sons at his right and left hand. He said it was “not mine to give,” and “it shall not be so among you” (Matthew 20:20–28).
Barnabas and his cousin. Barnabas wanted to take his cousin Mark on a mission. Paul refused, because Mark had left the work before, and the two men parted over it (Acts 15:37–39). Mark later proved himself, and Paul was glad of him (2 Timothy 4:11).
Jesus’ brother. James, “the Lord’s brother,” became a leader in Jerusalem. But Jesus did not appoint him; during Jesus’ ministry his brothers did not even believe in him (John 7:5).
Try it: six appointments
For each, was a family tie involved?
What the New Testament asks for
The letters to Timothy and Titus list what a church leader must be (1 Timothy 3; Titus 1). Able to teach. Of good character. Not a lover of money. Not a new convert. Tested first. Well thought of, even by outsiders. Every one of those is something a person has to show, and something other people have to be able to see. None of them can be inherited.
A leader’s children are mentioned, but only as a test of the father: “if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?” They are never mentioned as his successors.
Paul’s “sons”
Paul calls Timothy “my own son in the faith” and Titus “mine own son after the common faith.” Neither was his child. Paul explains: “in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15).
Timothy’s real father was “a Greek” who is never named (Acts 16:1). 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 hands on him (1 Timothy 4:14), after two churches had spoken well of him (Acts 16:2).
So the New Testament does have a father-to-son handover, and it is a famous one. It is spiritual, it is checked by the church, and it is measured by faithfulness. Paul’s instruction for the next generation says the same: pass on what you have heard “to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2).
Whose church is it?
Christ’s. “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). “The church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).
Leaders are stewards, managing someone else’s household (Titus 1:7). Elders must not be “lords over God’s heritage” (1 Peter 5:3).
The founder is a planter. Paul founded the church in Corinth, and wrote: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing” (1 Corinthians 3:6–7).
The money was handled in the open. The church chose people to manage it (Acts 6). Paul would not carry a collection without a companion “chosen of the churches,” so that it was honest “in the sight of men” as well as God (2 Corinthians 8:19–21).
When Paul left the church at Ephesus for the last time, he named no successor. He said the Holy Spirit had made its elders overseers, commended them “to God, and to the word of his grace,” and told them: “I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold” (Acts 20:28–33). That is what a founder’s farewell looks like in the New Testament.
What the early church ruled
The church put this into its rules early, and kept repeating it.
The people must agree. Around AD 96, leaders were appointed “with the consent of the whole church” (1 Clement 44). In the 440s Leo the Great wrote, “He who is to govern all, should be chosen by all.”
No one appoints his own successor. In 341 a church council ruled that a bishop may not name his successor “even at the close of life,” and that such an appointment “shall be void.”
No heirs. A fourth-century collection of church rules said a bishop must not ordain “a brother or a son” out of favour, “for it is not right to make heirs of the bishopric.” It also said he must not give the church’s property “to his own relations.”
When Augustine grew old in 426, he named the man he hoped would succeed him in front of the whole congregation, had clerks write down the people’s response, and did not have him made bishop while he lived. The man was not his relative.
The best case for the son
It deserves a fair hearing. Faith often runs in families, and the Bible honours that (2 Timothy 1:5). A son raised in ministry may be very well prepared. The congregation knows him. Family successions often go smoothly. And the early church did accept some family lines: after James, the church in Jerusalem chose Jesus’ cousin Symeon as its leader; a second-century bishop of Ephesus said seven of his relatives had been bishops before him; and the first leader of the Armenian church was succeeded by his sons.
All of that is true, and it is why a pastor’s son should never be ruled out because of his birth. But look at how those family members were chosen. Symeon was chosen by an assembly that “with one consent” judged him “worthy.” His predecessor did not appoint him. The one church that made family succession a fixed rule, centuries later, ran out of suitable heirs, named a twelve-year-old, and split in two.
The best case shows that a son may be chosen. It never shows that he should be chosen because he is a son, or that his father may do the choosing.
A test you can use
- QualifiedWould he be a serious candidate if he were not the pastor’s son?
- ExaminedBy people who are free to say no: not his father, and not a board his father controls.
- Chosen freelyBy the church’s leaders or members, with a real choice in front of them.
- AnswerableSomeone outside the family can correct him, or remove him if necessary.
- Open with the moneyThe building and the accounts belong to the church, and members can see them.
A son who passes all five is a good successor who happens to be a son. If being his father’s son stands in for any of the five, he is an heir.
Try it: six situations
All are made up. Is each fine, nepotism, or can’t tell yet?
What it looks like today
Many people have the impression that church successions are often father to son. In most countries nobody has counted. South Korea is the exception. There, church groups opposed to the practice tracked it, and by 2018 they had listed 364 churches that had passed to a pastor’s son or son-in-law, directly or indirectly. Most were not megachurches: the most common size was 100 to 500 members.
Two denominations banned it, in 2012 and 2013. In one of them, family successions actually rose in the five years after the ban, from 62 to 74, as pastors swapped posts for each other’s sons or put in a short-term pastor before handing over. The rule stopped the form, not the substance.
Elsewhere, one researcher estimates 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,” and that the succession which follows is often contentious.
Try it: what is actually proven?
Four claims. Rate each, then see what the evidence supports.
The point, one more time
No one in the New Testament hands a church to his son. Every appointment it records depends on character, teaching, testing and other people.
The church belongs to Christ. Its leaders are stewards, and its founder planted what God grew. Nobody in that picture owns anything he could leave to his children.
A son may succeed, and should not be ruled out. But only when he is qualified, examined by others, freely chosen, still answerable, and the money stays the church’s. The founder planted, and God gave the increase. What God gave, the founder cannot bequeath.