Priestcraft in churches inserts other men where that scriptural chain of command has no gap. YHWH, Christ, man, woman/household.
But there is a place for authority of church elders in the church. Otherwise the church would have no structure. We would have no instructions about how to do church discipline correctly, unless there were people in the church with the authority to discipline members of the church.
Christianity is a project to build a Kingdom, to bring the whole world under the dominion of Christ. But a Kingdom - or any large organisation -cannot exist without officers, commanders / rulers of parts of that Kingdom.
We are instructed to "submit one to another". If the hierarchy is simply "Christ - man", there is nobody other than Christ for any man to submit to, and every man is his own ruler. The instruction to "submit one to another" then only applies to women and children, yet it is clearly addressed to men also. Who are the authorities men must submit to? They must exist.
I know we are all here because to a degree we are loners, we dislike authority, and one way or another have either rejected or been rejected by mainstream churches. Our personal instinct is therefore to only follow Christ under our own understanding and not submit to anybody else. But you cannot build a Kingdom like that. What you end up with is a bunch of individuals squabbling over things - as we often see here - and having no structure that is capable of growing and taking over the world for Christ.
The traditional churches have actually grown and spread in a way this movement never has - and never can in the present form - because in one way or another they have clear structures, clear lines of authority, and can function like military organisations, local governments, or companies do.
Now I know we've all had bad experiences with church elderships, so it's a hard lesson to hear, because all elders are humans and thus flawed. But the harsh reality is that unless we are willing to recognise elders in the church, and submit to their authority (because if we do not submit they were no authority to begin with - and we can't all be elders), we are not truly living a Christian life nor fully carrying out the mission given to us by our King.
