Common Misconceptions of Church: How did we get here?

Another topic for which I feel the need to write. I've been reading a good deal about the early church, how it grew, functioned, and was ultimately institutionalized, and then how the American church has propagated itself over the last few decades. So here we go!

Leadership. It's all something we say we need, we want someone to lead us, we say we need someone to lead us in our studies, in our churches, in our gatherings. Everywhere we go as christians we call out to be led somewhere by another person. It's an epidemic in unwillingness to take responsibility for what Christ has called the individual believer to attain to. It's amazing that people can think that leadership in the church is not for them, that they will simply be a good person, and go to heaven when they die. It's equally appalling to think that leaders are only concerned with the number of people they save or have attending their church. It basically goes back to Israel, who cried out for a King to be like the other nations. They rejected God, asking for a King so they could both be like the other nations, and also so they could be led by someone. In the same way the Instutional Church has cried out for leaders, and they have burdened the people. I want to break the idea that a church is supposed to be run by a board of elders, with a paid pastor and many co-pastors, or teachers. This is not what we see in scripture and in fact more closely resembles a business model. The church has basically turned into a business that sells religious goods and services. It takes away the peoples responsibilities to fulfill the great commission, instead pushing it off to the pastors and teachers who they pay with their tithe. Church has changed into an exchange of commodities. A pastor goes to school, learns a whole bunch of knowledge about God, and then is planted into a church and expected to make it thrive. In fact, the pastor need not have any godly experience at all. He need not have been through any life changing experience, or encounter with God. When the leaders are chosen not based on their willingness to serve and share the love of Christ, but based on how well they can knowledge their way through a doctrine, there is something wrong with our churches.
I am confronted by scriptures that suggest the only people who are to be paid from the churches funds are those in desperate need, the poor, especially the widows. In fact the only instances of ministers getting paid, are those being sent to other churches. Apostles moving to other churches to expand God's kingdom or to new areas in the world where they would not be able to provide for themselves. We don't see deacons or pastors of churches getting paid. This would be a burden on the people and would be taking from the good of others. It boggles me that we would think that because they help us have a better relationship with God, then we should give them money for their services. It's all backwards, and upside down.
This separates the church into two different people-groups. The leadership, or those who are paid. And the laity, or those who are not paid. As I said before we have a model of church which pushes all the responsibility of religion onto the paid leadership, in contrast the scriptures show that all believers are responsible for extending the gospel, and the role of leadership is to serve and enable this to happen. Leadership has become the leaders because they've already gone out and served people, and shown them Christ. They are leaders because people follow their example. A leader is inherently so, you can't give someone a paycheck and magically think they will be a leader. They must go through the experience of life and attain character to be able to lead. Likewise the laity, or the rest of church is called to go forth and make disciples, to spread the good news to any, and in doing so grow in Christ.
What gets me is how this can be such a touchy subject. Would a pastor charge someone if he blessed them on the side of the road as he walked by? Would he charge for a prayer when he wasn't in a church for reimbursement? Then why do we think it's a good idea to pay a pastor for running a church? It's exactly the same thing just on a larger scale. The idea is prettied up and made okay because well he wont have enough time for everyone if he had a real job. But that's just it, he's not supposed to have time for everyone to begin with. Leadership is designed to function just as Jesus did with his apostles. On a small scale. It doesn't work in large scale because you can't commit enough time to everyone. Churches become leader starved as a result, having 2 or 3 pastors for a congregation in the hundreds, yet they are expected to be able to provide meaningful impact to all who come in the church doors.
Rather there needs to be many leaders in a setting like this, not one of which is paid. Again why would you charge someone for spiritual needs? It also brings us to another point, paying leaders in a church creates divisions and strife. How much do they get paid? What do they purchase with their money? What he bought an expensive car? OH my, he gets paid too much! These are things that are said, and it creates a hazardous environment in the church. It also creates competition between laity and paid leadership. For risk of losing his job the leader will squelch the growth of the church or ministry so that he can stay stable. It's a conflict of interest and bringing money into the equation only pollutes the topic. Money can, and does grip people, even the strongest.

We haven't changed much from indulgences in the Roman Catholic Church, it seems we do the same things, just prettied up with better names and more comfortably subversive. Instead simply asking for a tithe, and then listening to a motivational religious speaker who makes us feel good. Only to go home for another week thinking that we are safe because we heard preacher Larry tell us how much Jesus loves us. The times and ways may have changed, but the church is still selling the same thing.