Even though many of the elders were priests or monks, or both, being an elder was not a church office, but rather an informal ministry. Individual supplicants engaged with spiritual elders sometimes with, or sometimes without, the sanction of the institutional church. The reputation of an elder was established “from below” by ordinary believers and an elder’s disciples. Hence, within the Orthodox Church, eldership may be regarded as a more democratic, nonhierarchical form of religious authority, which, until now, has not received sufficient analysis. ….
Many of them had an uneasy relationship with the institutional church.
Spiritual Elders: Chrisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy, 4-5
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a fool and his prayer book 