Tag Archives: Elders

The leadership of elders

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Van Gogh shepherdWhen you listen to preachers talk, many of them complain about their elders. It’s a bit like men and mother-in-laws, as far as stereotypical relationships. It’s just supposed that preachers and elders will be at odds.

Sometimes that does happen. The church is made up of humans. I think it can be especially hard when the preacher and the elders are from different generations. Then all of the tension that we’ve been talking about this week enters into the equation.

The churches of Christ have typically been an elder-led movement. Some have intentionally sought to change that, wanting to give the preacher a more prominent role.

I don’t buy it. I do agree that elders should take the lead in shepherding, which is one of the reasons I dislike the trend of calling a preacher “pastor.” Elders should be pastoring. The fact that our society expects it to be done by the preacher shouldn’t change that.

Many have wanted to follow the corporate model, with the elders serving as a board of directors that hires the CEO (preacher) and lets him run things as he sees fit, until he loses their confidence. I don’t see that as a healthy model for the church. You can’t parallel an organism like the church with an organization of this world. There are some principles that will overlap, but no corporation is the Spirit-filled body of Christ.

I don’t think elders rule. I don’t think elders dictate. But I do think that elders lead. Or should, at least.

Ignoring the wisdom of generations past

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elderlyWho wants to listen to the old-timers? When is the next generation going to get a chance to take the lead? Who cares about what people said and did 10, 20, or 30 years ago?

Some of these thoughts are stirred by the slight toward my friend Juan Antonio Monroy. This year is a special anniversary, marking a half century since a story that many of us in churches of Christ grew up with: how this man from Spain found the churches of Christ at the New York World’s Fair and learned that they shared the same doctrine. As Juan comes to the States to commemorate that event, there is one congregation that won’t be taking part: the church that supported Juan in ministry for three decades. There was no room on their schedule for someone who is part of their history, but apparently not of their present nor future.

I remember when I was working on my master’s degree in communication. At that time, I could choose to write a thesis or to do a non-thesis degree. I was considering doing a thesis, preferably something related to the two years I had just spent in Argentina.

That’s when two elders from the University Church of Christ asked to meet with me. These two men had been leading the missions committee at UCC, had made numerous trips to Argentina, and were excited at the thought that someone would do research that would be useful to the missionaries. They asked if I would be interested in doing a study in conjunction with the missionaries supported by UCC.

I was thrilled. It was what I had been hoping to do. I had even broached the subject with the missionaries, and they had expressed interest in the study and a willingness to help shape the research.

Then they mentioned, “But we’ve just restructured things at University, and the elders are no longer on the committees. You’ll need to get approval from the missions committee.”

So I went through channels and submitted a request to the missions committee. A few weeks later, the deacon in charge pulled me aside and said, “We’re not going to help you with this study. I don’t know anything that I need to know to do my job. And no one who has been involved with the Argentina thinks it’s a good idea.”

I was stunned. And saddened. And fully aware of how ridiculous this man’s words were, especially the last sentence. Two of the men who had been most involved in the Argentina work had approached me about doing this study. It was obviously that this deacon hadn’t spoken with them or hadn’t given their input any credence.

Sadly, though, I see the same in me. I give little respect to those who have gone before. Like your current plumber criticizing your previous plumber, I can only see the defects in what previous generations did; I can’t appreciate anything positive that they contributed.

History has value. Experience brings wisdom. We don’t have to be tied to the past, but we do well to be informed by it.

Who are the shepherds of the church?

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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.

Elders: How long must we wait?

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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

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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.