A priesthood of believers would have elders-yet they would be elders that have actually been checked off on objective education in Christianity rather than just being older than others. Why call someone a church elder that has been recently converted at age 60?
Church elders can be corrupt without objective standards and with peers participating in objective church roles. There have been serial killers that were church elders (e.g. Rader) or church deacons that were just prosperous and effectively bought influence.
Beginners would be of age infant to 70, intermediates between 18 and death and elders between age 40 and death. One could advance to a higher level quicker with attendance, participation and meeting objective and stadardized educational materials. Objective records in the Christian community would be kept locally and available nationally or even internationally-as would work credit and emergency savings banks. Imagine if graduate schools had no objective standards and one could attend for years and get no credit or too much credit or if only school staff actually could advance and all the students could do was contribute tithes?
A priesthood of believers with objective standards would allow a greater Christian community to act, and with far more participation from Christians instead of retarding Christian growth to mostly spectator status. As it is with Christianity in America based around an anachronistic ecclesiology for people that are not persecuted and are preponderantly comfortable materially there is little provision for persecuted Christians unwelcome by worldly political vicissitudes for whatever reason. American Christians are expected to be materially successful in-the-worldly context and there is no safety net in case the individual Christian is marginalized. It is possible that reformers would be the first marginalized (an example from the secular world would be Verblein and his 'Theory of the Leisure Class'-with a Harvard PhD he had to get shelter in the basement of a professor friend at Berkeley). It is inevitable that world standards and values egress church moral leadership and church leadership. Star Christians like star basketball-player's incomes cannot compensate for the insecurity or poverty of ordinary people- The Church should be brought to life in fact as well as in theory without star Christians substituting for ordinary Christian responsibilities.
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