Category Archives: Elders

Who are the shepherds of the church?

67 Replies

Since several of my readers are preachers (or have played one on TV), I feel the need to speak to the role preachers play in people leaving a given congregation. Preachers have always had an influential role in our brotherhood; there has been a conscious effort over the last few decades to give them even more power. For the record, I’m against it.

It reminds me a bit of the situation of Israel in the days of Samuel. “We want a king like all the nations around us.” We want to make our preachers pastors, senior pastors! This will help us to be like the churches around us. Just as it was a terrible idea back then, it’s a terrible idea today.

It’s interesting to me that about the time the business world moved away from the “Lone Ranger at the top” model, churches decided that was the way to go. Businesses moved to collaborative leadership; churches moved away.

I support the elder model, where the elders lead. Ideally, the ministers provide biblical teaching, helping the pastors to feed the flock. But the elders remain the ones responsible for the congregation.

A big reason for this has to do with tenure. Preachers come and go. There are exceptions, but by and large, preachers are at a congregation for a relatively short amount of time in the history of that congregation. A healthy congregation will have continuity in the eldership, consistently raising up new men to serve alongside those who are already there.

I remember one congregation that I love that went through a rough time back in the 1980s. A minister came in (associate minister) and pushed for the congregation to create a detailed vision statement. This led to months of committee meetings, with almost everyone in the congregation stating their opinion as to where the church should be going. Discussions became heated and hard feelings were created. Finally, a vision statement was created. I don’t know that the ink was dry on that statement before the minister that started the whole process had taken another job. What he left behind was the heartache and strained relationships.

I’ll say a bit more tomorrow about the role of preachers in congregational dissatisfaction. But for now, I’d like to hear your thoughts on elder-led congregations versus minister-led congregations.

J.W. McGarvey on elder qualifications

22 Replies

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some information about the appointment of elders. I happened to look at J.W. McGarvey’s commentary on Acts, and read the following in his comments on Acts 14:

A full exhibition of the duties of the elder’s office, and of the moral and intellectual qualifications requisite to an appointment thereto, belongs to a commentary on the First Epistle to Timothy, rather than on Acts of Apostles. We will not, therefore, consider them here, further than to observe that the duties were such as can not be safely dispensed with in any congregation; while the qualifications were such as were then, and are now, but seldom combined in a single individual. Indeed, it can not be supposed that Paul found in the young congregations of Lystra, Iconium, Antioch, and every other planted during this tour, men who could fill up the measure of the qualifications which he prescribes for this office. [1 Timothy 3:1-7.] But he appointed elders in every Church, hence he must have selected those who came nearest the standard. It is not an admissible objection to this argument, that inspiration may have supplied the defects of certain brethren in each congregation, so as to fully qualify them; for moral excellencies, which are the principal of these qualifications, are not supplied by inspiration.… Common sense and Scripture authority both unite in demanding that we should rather follow Paul’s example, and appoint elders in every Church from the best material which the Church affords.

So McGarvey says that Paul isn’t saying that each elder should have these qualifications, but that the eldership as a whole needs these qualifications. He also argues that churches choose the best men they have, even if they lack one or more of these qualities. (I’ve about decided that most of the respected leaders from the past wouldn’t make it in today’s church. Can you imagine someone writing such things today? What would he be called? Liberal… change agent… digressive…)

Any thoughts on brother J.W.’s ideas?

Elders: How long must we wait?

6 Replies

2886243391_de8448f30fIn many mission areas, there is a severe lack of congregations with elders. I’ve spent most of my time in Latin America, so I can speak most knowledgeably about that area. What I’ve observed are churches that have existed for decades, yet aren’t even close to having elders leading their congregation. Besides some doctrinal issues, like the one I discussed yesterday, there are some practical causes to this:

  • Churches from the States have given financial support to preachers overseas. That’s a situation full of potential for problems, from the difficulties in determining the level of support to the impracticality of overseeing a worker long distance. But one of the biggest problems is the creation of preacher-dominated churches. With no sense of accountability to the local church, no motivation to surrender control of congregational affairs, and a model of preachers doing elders’ jobs, the preacher can continue to say, “This congregation just isn’t ready.”  
  • We’ve established preacher training schools around the world. Where are the elder training schools? What are we communicating to our brethren by emphasizing ministers rather than shepherds?
  • When teaching about elders, we’ve focused on the qualifications of elders and taught little about what elders actually do. Steve Ridgell, my supervisor at Herald of Truth, did eldership training in Africa last summer. The leaders commented, “We’ve never been taught any of this. All we ever heard was who could be an elder, not what they were supposed to do.”

We’ve historically taught that our churches were lead by the pastors, the elders of the church. In practice, we’ve too often followed a preacher-led model. Especially in our mission efforts. In the New Testament, elders were named very soon after the establishment of each congregation; we’ll know that we have a healthy model when we see the same thing today.

Elders: Children that believe

9 Replies

eldersAs churches in mission areas move toward naming elders there is typically one big stumbling block. 1 Timothy 3 says that an elders children should “obey him with all respect.” Titus however says that his children must “believe” or be “faithful.” We’ve traditionally interpreted that to mean that an elder’s children must be Christians. This, frankly, is much more difficult in a mission situation. Most of the men that you are going to consider as elders have adult children. A lot of times, they aren’t converted when their parents are.

Some scholars, like Carroll Osburn in our brotherhood, feel that the faithful or believing children in Titus are like the obedient children in 1 Timothy 3. If this expression refers to them being Christians, it’s a rather unusual way to express it.

If we consider what was seen in the last post, it may very well be that there was something special in the situation in Crete that called for “believing children” (like what we see in Titus 1:12-13). Paul didn’t ask the same of the church in Ephesus, and that was a church that had been around for decades. If it were about children being Christians, wouldn’t it make sense that would be asked of the Ephesian church? I’m convinced that elders need to have raised a family that respects him and lives according to the values he taught them. But I’m not sure that we haven’t created an unnecessary stumbling block to the naming of elders.

In the Bible, elders were named within months of the planting of congregations. We have many churches around the world that have gone years without naming elders. Something is wrong with this picture. I think part of it is our misapplication of this phrase from Titus.

Elders: Checklist or guidelines?

4 Replies

checklistI grew up with a pretty consistent exercise going on when our congregation was about to select elders. At some point, someone would pass around a list of “qualifications of elders,” compiled from 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Any man wanting to be an elder had to meet all the qualifications on that list.

At that time, I knew amazingly little about what the Bible was. Such an exercise made perfect sense to me. It doesn’t anymore. When you’re holding a bound Bible in your hands, it seems logical to grab a verse from here, one from there, and a couple from there to address a subject. But the Bible didn’t exist in that form for years.

In all likelihood, Timothy didn’t have a copy of Titus. And Titus didn’t have a copy of 1 Timothy. If they needed to use both lists to have a complete list of elders’ qualifications, well, they were in trouble.

The lists are so similar that it almost seems a moot point. But let me give you one concrete example: when writing to Timothy, who was working with the church in Ephesus, Paul included the phrase “must not be a recent convert.” That made sense in Ephesus, where the church had been established decades before. But on Crete, where the congregations were fairly new, such a phrase would make no sense. And wasn’t included, when Paul wrote Titus. Different situations. Different needs.

So what do you think? Were we meant to cut and paste these lists together? Is it possible that churches in different places should look for different qualities in their leaders? What’s the best way to consider Paul’s words to these two men?