To begin with, the amount of study required to get really deep into the Bible can be daunting, and at the very least time consuming. Many preachers have attended seminary, requiring a great deal of commitment on their part. Both of time and finances. To be sure, it is not impossible to preach without attending seminary. However, that degree of education does make it much, much easier to teach people sound doctrine.

It is also easier to answer the questions that come after you have taught. Though many people will never need to hear more then the basic applications they would hear in a normal service, some do have deeper questions. The call to teach requires that you teach these people as well. So you must not only understand the subject matter that you spoke on, you must understand all the things that lead to the discovery of what you just spoke on.

Many things of God seem like a road map. The subjects of sunday sermons are often focused on the destination portions of the map. Some people only need to know what the destination is like, some people want to know how you got there. And that requires a lot of time and study.

Again, I can not say enough that never attending seminary doesn’t mean that you can’t preach or teach. I fear I may come off that way, and that is not my intent. I simply mean to point out that seminary (or rather the knowledge normally gained from it) is incredibly useful to the kingdom of God, and generally makes preaching and teaching an easier thing.

With that in mind, people that attend seminary have to do something with it. Realistically, few people can spend that amount of time and money and then expect to feed a family unless they make use of that investment. This is a fact of life, and a fact of the church body.

Someone has just gone to seminary, they now need to get a job, they only know how to preach. The church has God’s money to distribute, it needs someone to preach and teach for it. It’s a match made in heaven, literally!

This is why many churches only have one preacher. They’re basically hiring someone, and oftentimes the budget doesn’t allow for more than one person. In smaller churches, this is why you’ll often see a minister taking on more responsibilities than simply teaching. He’s hired to teach, and be a leader of the church, and sometimes take care of housekeeping duties during the week. There are small churches out there that have a minister, groundskeeper, janitor, worship leader and greeter…all wrapped up in one person! He has to be, in order to meet the needs of the church and stay under budget.

As for pay, the nail was already hit on the head with the verse about wages. Also, the knowledge the the early church gave to each other as they had need. The minister has already given much of his time, intellect, and heart to simply preparing to teach. Things that money of us don’t have enough of to be able to accomplish the same task. We do (collectively) have enough of God’s money though, to be able to support someone that chooses to do this for us. We give them money so that they can give us time and teaching.

This is an incredibly long comment. I’ll end it now by simply saying that this is the model that works traditionally, but it is not mandated by heaven. What works for your community and your gathering of saints is what you should do.

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Ephesians is not talking about an ‘ordained preacher’, but rather everyone’s personal responsibility within the church. In fact, this group of verses underscores individual responsibility and accountability within the church.

We will no longer be infants, if we become apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, or teachers and build one another up. It is my belief, from experience, that people will not step up to the plate if another person is going to. Especially if it is another person’s ‘job’ to do so. This is why I feel that having a ‘preacher’ might be destructive to the church.

Instead, it is my belief that the elders should hold those in the church who can preach and teach accountable for teaching and preaching. They should not have to find one person willing to do it every Sunday, because anyone able to do it should be willing to do so to build up themselves and the church.

This may just be me, but personally, when I know I am going to preach soon, I always become more involved in my own studies and prayer life. When I know someone else has the wheel for next six months, it seems not so central in my life.

Finally, I just want to reiterate that doing away with the gathering of the saints is not my intention at all. I am just wondering whether employing someone to do most of the work that the Church does is in the best interest of trying to mature and grow members of the Church.

“It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. ”

That pretty much sums it up. It establishes that God has ordained some to be preachers and teachers. It describes their job, to prepare others for works of service. It then goes on to say that the body of Christ, the Church, finds strength in all of its parts and they all work together for the strengthening of each other.

Does this help?