Elders and pastors

The post that follows started life as an email I was drafting last summer. I never finished it, so I never got around to sending it. The thoughts here are rough, but I submit them for your comment anyway.

I've been thinking about the whole subject of elders that we were talking about the other day, and I came up with a few random thoughts.

• There's nothing inherent in the NT about the elders of a church being the church staff. By analogy, the U.S. government does not put ultimate power into the hands of any one man, or even any one branch of government. A church may be free to implement that, but it is a questionable choice, since a staff might become insulated from the members it's supposed to be leading. Which means …
• Having "lay elders" in addition to the ones on the pastoral staff might be a good idea. (Scripturally, this is a position I am not qualified for, BTW.)
• Traditionally, Baptists have taken one of two equally wrong tacks:
  • Pastor as the only elder
  • Deacons as defacto elders
• Not having the organizational structure written and knowingly agreed to means some people will become disgruntled. This used to be done via a church covenant and bylaws members understood and agreed to abide by. If there are bylaws they should be published to the members. If the bylaws don't express the way things are done, one or the other should be changed. I.e., yes, leaders are accountable to God, but they are also accountable to the congregation.
• Baptists have always been congregational in their government. As one pastor put it, all churches that are not cults are ultimately congregational: When they aren't given a vote otherwise, people will still vote with their feet and their checkbooks. I think we have seen the truth of that.
• Regardless of elder structures, there is a great danger in leading people spiritually the way Jennie's dad used to lead Jennie and her mom through airports. His attitude was, "I'm going, and God help anyone who can't keep up." That's NOT leadership. So …
• Before great changes are made, the congregation needs to be convinced of the change, not merely told where the church is going, the people being expected to follow. That is, the pastor is a shepard, not a commander. This is because …
• There is a priesthood of all believers (not a priesthood of the individual, BTW).
• The senior pastor is not just another elder, he is the chief among equals, setting the direction for the staff and persuading the people to follow. After all, if where the elders lead is scriptural, old, ingrained patterns may need to be overcome. This takes time. You persuade a friend by showing him the truth from Scripture, not by clonking him with a 2x4. (The 2x4 is for people who are in wilfull sin. But I digress.) But …
• The senior pastor and the other elders, in order to be able to lead, must first learn to listen, learn, and love.

Got any thoughts?

The search for a new pastor

I have some trepidation in posting this. I am an outsider, i.e., though I am a church member, I'm not in the leadership structure anywhere. As such, I have no real credibility. But this is what I'm thinking.

When my pastor resigned to start a new church in another city, one of the obligations the church inherited was that of finding a new pastor. A search committee has been constituted, and to get a feeling for how to find a pastor the church will embrace, the committee has distributed a survey. While I am slightly unnerved by survey as a method, I guess it maximizes efficiency so the committee can get to work sooner.

The survey starts with some standard questions about who's answering it (church membership, gender, age, household composition, etc.), then starts in on the questions about our preferences for the new pastor:

• Minimum education level
• Prior ministry experience
• Acceptable age range
• Acceptable family situation
• Ministry priorities

This little essay is about the last one. The survey asks us to select the top five priorities for a new pastor, ranking from 1 (most important) to 5 (least important of the top five). The selections follow; I have numbered them for easy reference later.

1. A gifted teacher who enables persons to learn and understand deep spiritual truths
2. An administrator of the church office, giving attention to bulletins, correspondence, newsletter, etc.
3. A person active in associational, state-convention [sic], and denominational life
4. A community volunteer who cooperates in community and denominational activities/programs
5. An effective communicator of well-prepared sermons
6. A skilled counselor available to assist with personal and spiritual problems
7. A person who emphasizes evangelism and the importance of lifestyle witnessing
8. A person who emphasizes discipleship and spiritual growth
9. A person with leadership vision and a wll-developed vision for the the future of the church
10. A person who uses praise songs and/or drama in worship (contemporary worship)
11. A person who prefers to feature hymns, gospel songs, prayers, and preaching in worship (traditional worship)
12. A nurturing leader who grows personally and helps others grow
13. A person who communicates well with youth
14. A person who communicates well with preschoolers and children
15. A person who understands and communicates well with senior adults
16. A person who understands and communicates well with single adults
17. A person who emphasizes the importance of strong families

Looking at this list, nothing here is bad. I have a few preferences among them, but only a few.

But, with due respect, this is the wrong list.

Here are my personal top priorities for the new pastor. I will list the priorities as such and offer a few comments as I go. The order is flexible as long as #1 is #1.

1. A person who preaches Christ as Savior from the whole Bible. Does not preach about himself or this year's fad.

   Christ as Savior is the Bible's primary “deep spiritual truth” (from survey item 1), and it is therefore God's primary deep spiritual truth. I have a list of fads, but I'm certain you would be mad at me for naming at least one of them. (To be fair, I'd probably get mad about something on your list, too.)

2. A person who leads by communication, persuasion and example, not by command or slogan.

   This includes items 3, 4, 5, but goes beyond them. When the leadership has simply announced a new direction, most folks didn't “buy in”. The new thing was just announced with the expectation that everyone would follow. Examples: Community groups, the auditorium upgrade, dissolution of Sunday night worship. None of these things was bad as such, but the congregation didn't unite behind them. I believe the congregation's not following has been a source of frustration to the leadership.

3. A person who will change and publicize the church's bylaws to reflect the way things are actually done.

   Even elders are under authority, and are not a law unto themselves. I believe the congregation will unite behind a leader (or leaders). But we need to know what limitations are in place. I'm not sure this touches any of the survey items.

   To be a little provocative, leadership by fiat can be used in a work setting where the participants are employees. However, a church is inherently congregational, regardless of how the organization is nominally structured: If all else fails, people vote with their checkbooks and their feet. (HT: Mark Dever)

4. A person who knows content is more important than style in worship.

   This touches items 10 and 11, obviously. I admit I have preferences about style, but my preferences are not important. I can participate wherever the Jesus revealed in Scripture is being worshiped as Lord and Christ. I'm not being critical of how things are done now, but elevating style over substance would be a mistake.

5. A person who understands that “You can do better” is not the Gospel.

   “You were forgiven at the cross and you are now free” is the message of the Bible for Christians. Binding people under the bondage of “go do better” will burn them out.

   Someplace I recently heard about someone going through the New Testament letters finding out what the responses are to all the problems in the early church. In every case, the apostle (whether Paul, Peter, or John) said that the reason the church was having problems was because they failed to believe the Gospel.

Leadership and decisions

Okay here's a quote that's too long to be one of my email signatures. Enjoy and comment:

Our polity, that is, how we structure making decisions, whose authority we recognize, reflects our theology. If you have a higher view, a deeper view, of the falleness of man, you will tend to want more diffusion of authority. You will not trust authority being so concentrated in the hands of a sinner, regardless of whose parents that sinner may be, or how rich or educated that sinner may be. On the other hand, if you tend to have a lower view of the depravity, don't think the fall affected mankind that badly, think people are basically kind of good, you'll probably feel more more comfortable with power being more concentrated in peoples' hands, believing that they can do better. You see this in politics; you also see it in the Church.

— Mark Dever