Essentials of Eldership

We decided tonight that we're going to just move right into things because we have an awful lot to talk about. And rather than use the time, as we normally might to do some sharing and singing, we'll use the whole time to address ourselves to the word and to the subject of eldership before us. And we'll have dialoguing back and forth. I want to right away, let's see, I want to post a guard in the back. Paul Sherman yes, it would be much to people's advantage to shed the fears of the front rows and come up and sit up here because the print gets smaller as we go down the outline and I can already see some people who can't see my face, let alone the print in the back. So we've got 20 chairs up here already empty. No, I'm not asking you to come up. I'm asking you to send people up. You can come up when you're done. Anyone else that wanders in, we want to get them up here up in the front. Now, this is not going to be an informal discussion of eldership. It's not going to be your ideas and our ideas, and let's hope we come up with the right idea. It's going to be, as much as I can make it a biblical expression of what we believe is a revealed pattern of scripture. It's going to be a chance for you to interject your own observations and perhaps add some of your own comments. I want to encourage you, if you don't have paper and pencil, let's share all that we can. And here's the Let me tell you in advance, I have a complete outline up here of what we're going to be talking about tonight and next week. But it's not full. I say complete outline. It's not a full outline. It's complete, but it does not have a lot of scripture references on it. It does not have a lot of the illustrations and other points I'm going to make. I'm going to get this duplicated. I just couldn't see running off all of them on the copier. And I also have a list of the qualifications that look something about this size. And I'm going to have that duplicated for you by Sunday. So you don't need to write them all down unless you want to. But you probably will want to take some notes and add to what outlines we have. Now if you have trouble hearing, we're going to experiment with this a little bit and Guy has a lapel mic. If I begin to feel constrained to this thing. And I'm going to probably stay behind the podium more than usual because I have a lot of detailed kind of things that I want to be sure I touch on. Now two more things in way of introduction, then we'll get going. From time to time I'm going to stop and ask for questions and comments. If something really grips you as right or wrong and you want to make a comment about it, try to hold it until the end of that section. And secondly, if you find yourself needing to get up and you know, move around or whatever, put your hand up and we'll all do it and just make a little exercise out of it or something. I'm committed to trying to end equally beyond 9 o' clock as we are past 7:30 starting. All right, I'm committed to it. We'll be done by 9:15 unless the Holy Ghost changes our minds. All right, Praise the Lord. It's been just a little over one year ago. You know what I need? I can, I'll have to walk over there from time to time. I'll tell you what Guy, why don't you start unraveling that thing because it's going to be a problem. I need to come to that outline on it. It's about a year ago that we started in the way of introduction we first established the community. You're going to do that. You ready now? Yeah, just run it up here and we'll eliminate this and I'll feel able to move around a little bit. Our whole purpose when we started was to come to a discovery of New Testament life. But we were very cautious right off the bat that there's a lot of people who claim to have the pattern. And we didn't want to say, well this is the way to do it. This is a way as we were led by the Holy Spirit. And I think that's important because I don't want us to go off somewhere else and tell someone, well, we have the New Testament way. Ever hear someone talk like that and you like to show them, as Paul said, a yet better way? Because there is a better way. The way of love. We just want to share with you the pattern that the Lord is revealing to us. When people say that you're a non denominational church, the first thing that goes through many of their minds is what? Well, they're just free and hang loose and there's nothing, there's no order, there's no structure to it and it really isn't very well disciplined and people don't care A whole lot about keeping any form and so on. But how many of you know that all life has form? All life has form. So it's foolish to say because we're an independent fellowship at this point, that we're not going to have any form. We're going to have a form, we're going to have a structure, we're going to have a government. And our desire, our yearning is that that government be according to a New Testament principle and not something we just feel is the best way to work it. The the servants council began as the governing form of Northway Christian community, and that was nine men, including myself. We began on two basic principles. One was co equality, that is, each man had an equal vote. Just because Paul Gregg was the biggest, he didn't get two votes. It had nothing to do with our experience. It had nothing to do with our former roles and so forth. And the other thing that we were committed to from the outset was that there would be a plurality. There would always be more than one leader. It wouldn't be. Remember the old thing we dealt with way back when, J's church or whatever. We avoided that whole thing because New Testament, it isn't one man's operation. It was never Paul's church, it was never Timothy's church. And every city where they went, they set elders. It was a group of men. Now, a couple scriptures on that. You'll never find the term elder in terms of over a whole body in the New Testament, it's always elders. Look at Acts 14:23, Acts 20:17. Don't turn there now. Just note these for your own reference. Peter refers to the plurality of elders in 1 Peter 5 and equates himself on an equal par with those first elders. He, the great apostle Peter was among the first elders. Now we saw ourselves in the Servants council as being an initiatory body, and we were not counting ourselves as being the ongoing leadership of the church ad infinitum. I know of many churches where the men that start it are the men that finish it, and that's what happens. And that was not our intention. It was simply to serve as God's instruments in that initial stage until such time that eldership could be established. And we wrestled with this because there's not a whole lot, as you'll discover in a minute, of precise blueprint kind of things. Here's what you do in order to establish elders. And I want you to know that from the very beginning we've been praying and seeking the Lord about how do you get elders out of this group, where do the elders come from? Most of you know, back in November, we had a long retreat. Hours in Dawson's basement in prayer and in seeking and studying the Word and asking the Lord, how do we do this? And then for the last two months, we've been praying about it and asking, what are we supposed to do? How do we go about this thing? So it's not something that the servants council just decided last weekend. We need elders. It's been on our hearts, and I know it's been on your hearts too. Now, Servants council was just a name we came up with, but how did it compare with the biblical understanding of what leadership was all about? There's three functioning forms of leadership in the New Testament. Elders, deacons, and then the whole area of ministries. How many of you think Timothy was an elder? To timothy, I don't think you'll find where it says he was an elder. It just says he had a gift and he had authority. He was a man of God. He had disciples under him. He was a tremendous, powerful man of God. But there's no place that we can find that says he was an elder, but he had a ministry and he was functioning in a New Testament leadership form of some sort. That's all through there. But clearly the New Testament government was built on the shoulders of the eldership with Jesus as the head. Always keep that picture, okay? It's Jesus as the head, and the elders become the shoulders upon which the burden of establishing the church is built. Now, why is it so important that we begin to move toward this biblical topic? Why can't we just keep the servants counsel and keep functioning like that? Well, because according to what we read in the New Testament, eldership is foundational to having a church. Derek Prince says that you don't have a church until you have elders. So what do we have? Well, I believe we have an organic being here which is a church, the body of Christ. But we want to come into the fullness of the biblical pattern, right? We don't want to fall short in this thing. Remember in Titus 1:5, Paul was exhortative saying, get some elders established here so you can begin to deal with some of these problems. The job wasn't complete until the elders were fashioned and formed and appointed properly. Now that's why we want to go toward the biblical pattern. And we see, I gave the scriptures first. Timothy 1:5 is particularly important in that regard. And there's other ones. Now, how do elders function in the body? Any questions? That's just background. That's where we've been, Someone asked the question, well, are the servants council elders? No. Can the servants council people be elders? Yes. Am I, as a pastor at any different level of eldership than any other elders? No, I just have a different ministry. I have to pastor teacher ministry in Ephesians 4 and so on. We can build on that later. Any questions? Just for background, the more relevant material now comes before us. And brothers and sisters, you're going to see as we go through this, the tremendous. I wish I could take a giant vacuum right now and suck everything out of your brain that we've known from our old forms of what an elder is. Look out. I'm praying in my spirit for some of you men that sat on boards and how can this be? Trying to decide what kind of faucet, washer to put in the kitchen in the church basement. Those kind of decisions we used to wrestle with. And so get that out of there and let the word of God enlighten what your understanding is. This is a glorious call. It's a tremendous thing. And you'll see why. The Bible says, he who aspires to the office of elders desires a noble task. Amen. All right. In the very purest sense, an elder is a shepherd. One of the Greek words. There are three. I'm not going to. I decided early on I wasn't going to get into a lot of Greek tonight because it'll just confuse. Overall, I think it'll just make it more difficult. But there's three Greek words that are all translated elder. One of them literally comes from the word to shepherd. A shepherd is one who does what? Who pushes along, right? No, he leads. He leads. I love some of you. You'd say, yes. If I say, go and punch your wife, That's just because you love me. No. A shepherd, he gets out front and he leads. A shepherd feeds. A shepherd cares. A shepherd looks for. A shepherd draws together. A shepherd above all, lays down his life for the sheep. Jesus was the great shepherd, our model shepherd. Above all, an elder is one who pours out his life for the sheep. And all that that means in the fullness of that meaning, which I think we're just beginning to comprehend. The last thing really that I picture in my mind, an elder doing is sitting around a table and making decisions. An elder is caring for the flock of God. And that's what the word really gets down to, meaning. Now. I listed five things here that I believe are priorities in the life of an elder. The first one is to keep right with God. To keep right with God. Turn to Acts 20. In case you want to have something in your hand to look at. Look at this. Acts chapter 20, One of the classic passages in the New Testament about eldership and how Paul treated the elders and so on. He's just about to leave the Ephesian Church for having been there for a couple of years. And here's what he says. Let's pick it up at verse 28. There's more preceding, but we'll pick it up there. The first thing he says is, watch out for yourself or take care of yourself or take heed for yourself. Any other words that your Bibles have. Be on guard for yourself. You see, brothers and sisters, if an elder isn't seeking to be right with God, watching out for his own life before the Lord, an elder will be no good with you. If he's not a person that's seeking the Lord's face, then there won't be from him the life that you are so desperately looking to follow after and live in. An elder must keep right with God. Jesus said, he who abides in me, and I abide in him. It is he who bears fruit, and that fruit shall abide. As we go through these first five things here, trying to get off the page, you be thinking this is the kind of man that we are seeking to be elders. A man who spends time with God, a man who delights to be with the Lord, whose first, first priority in life is to be with Jesus Christ and to be conformed to his image and you sense it in them. A man who's with God is a man in whom the charisms of God, the word from which we get charismatic, the drawing forth kind of life that's coming from that man. And you yearn to be with him. That's what you're looking for, a man who yearns to be with God. He's a man who must be filled with the Holy Spirit, because apart from the Holy Spirit will become the labor of the flesh, which will be dry and lifeless. So the life of the Holy Spirit must be radiating and flowing through this man, keeping right with God. Take heed for yourself. The second thing is you must be a man who will feed and lead the flock. He will feed and lead the flock. Look at 28. Take heed to yourself and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own son. Let's talk about feeding the flock. And Timothy will see a little later that an elder is an apt teacher. Now, lest you think that what he's talking about there is a man who has a tremendous teaching skill that's in demand around the nation and that kind of thing, I believe it really means a man who can take the word of God and make it living to you, but not necessarily on a regular basis in front of a large group. But if you can't sit down with that brother and have him break the word to you so that you can understand what it's saying, then he's not really skilled as an apt teacher. He should be familiar with the word, the Old Testament and the New Testament. He should know how to rightly divide the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15 says, this is the kind of man that we would yearn to have as an elder. He's a man who is. Who's familiar with the word of God, has spent time in it. Not expositional greatness. He doesn't have to be somebody whose tapes are sold all over the nation. God calls some people to that ministry, but that doesn't mean that's what you have to be in order to be an apt teacher as an elder. Also, in this thing of feeding, to me it implies discipleship. What is 2 Timothy 2? It talks about discipling there. And it says, entrust these words that I've given to you and teach them to other faithful men as well. A man who's to be an elder should be able to disciple others in the words that you're given. It's rough, Chuck. It was rough. Translation Chuck's running through his mind. I roughed it up a little bit. Would you like to read it, Chuck? Amen. Because all the rest of it, it's impossible without, isn't it? Without the grace of the Lord Jesus. So it is an entrusting. It is a matter of being able to teach what you know to somebody else. If you can't do that, then you're not really qualified to be an elder. Amen. That is so important because, brothers, I look around and I know how many of us sat on elder boards and never had to take our faith and reproduce it in somebody else. And never did. And yet we were elders. Do you see the difference? Another thing that being teaching an apt teacher brings to my mind is that the man needs to be able to refute false doctrine and false teaching. If you're not an apt teacher and someone comes in with a thing that's just a little bit cockeyed. I had a person the other day who brought in a brochure called something about the glorious Covenant of God or something like that. And I was reading through it and she'd asked me to review it, and I was working my way through it. And, you know, it turns out that the person involved was a Jesus only preacher. You know what that is? That's a person who believes that there's no trinity, but that Jesus is the Father, Jesus is the Spirit. And they dilute completely the whole idea that God is through, he's one and all, and that's it, and so on. And you see, a person without discernment could come in and allow that kind of teaching to go on. And pretty much, you may sit there and gee, there's something not quite. You ever hear that? It's not quite right. Well, an elder can put his finger on it and say, this isn't the truth of God. The fifth thing about a person who's a teacher, an elder who's an apt teacher is one who's teaching. If an elder does not teach a bull, then he's really not suited to be an elder because he will sooner or later find himself puffed up in his knowledge and will fall. What about the matter of leading? All right, look at the word at the end of the first half of verse 28, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. What are some other translations of that word? Verse 28. Overseers. What else? Anyone else have a different one? Let's begin at verse 28. Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you guardians. What? Bishops. Oh, you Episcopalians like that, don't you? Bishops. It's in your margin. You scratched it out and put it in there. Overseers, guardians. If you really want to get kind of gritty on us here, some of them say rulers. But what the word is really talking about is the whole matter giving oversight to the body. Now we're talking about functions of the elders. This is what the elder does. He feeds and he leads. And if he doesn't feed, then he can't lead. And if he doesn't lead, then feeding just makes people fat and discontent. Yes, the elder understands the blending of those two qualities, because without either one of them, there's going to be error and eventually a falling off of the way. Feeding and leading go hand in hand. And he sees the vision of the two and connects. The word means. It comes from the word in Greek, which is used for forman or manager, literally, a leader was one. An overseer was one who made sure the job got done right? Now when we think of management in church, all of a sudden we get these centers up and we say, uh, oh, you're getting back in the institutional line again. But you see, God always intended for there to be good order and good administration and get things done right. How many of you ever sat in frustrated boards where things just seem to get lost? And how many of you walked out sand? If my business was run like that, it would fail anyone. An elder is a good overseer. He makes sure the job gets done right. That's why our gifts are referred to as talents sometimes. And we're to administrate them well. And we're to make sure that they are well taken care of and well used and well directed. Look at the Old Testament. What kind of an overseer was Joseph? Terrific, wasn't he? He saved the nation from famine. What kind of administrator was Moses? Broke the people down and set up captains over the groups and so on. That's in Exodus 18:13. Read about Joseph in Genesis 41:14. What kind of overseer was Nehemiah? Terrific study, brothers and sisters. Love to do that with you. The study of the oversight that Nehemiah gave to the people of God in the rebuilding of the walls of the city of Jerusalem. Well, that's all Old Testament. There's no oversight in administration in the New Testament. What kind of oversight did Jesus give? How did he make sure the job got done? Did he just go around scattering seeds? What kind of organization did he have? He had 12 disciples. Hey, listen, he knew that there was. If he shotguned it and he didn't give direction to it, it would just basically fall apart. And so he organized. There's nothing unspiritual about godly organization. It facilitates life. Amen. It really does. It facilitates life. Okay, so an elder is one who feeds and leads the flock. Again, there's much more we could get into, but we have to move along. An elder is one who warns and watches, or to warn and watch. This is something that the elder is to do. Look at verses 29 through 31. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore, be alert. You see, there is in the design of the enemy of God an all out of effort to destroy something that God is building. It's just always is that way. You see the pattern all through the Scriptures. And an elder must be one who is Given over to the protection of the flock. The protection of the flock. You know the word there, the phrase fierce wolves does that picture off in your mind the kind of battle that we're talking about? This isn't some little thing where a couple of birds are pecking at each other. We're talking about Satan literally wanting to devour the people of God and scatter them. You think Satan would like nothing better than to make a mockery of this community to the whole North Hills so that all the churches that some of us have come from could wag their heads, I told you so. But the function of an elder is to protect, to warn and to watch over. What does he warn from? From Satan, who would devour the flock in the form of false teaching, false doctrine. And you know, that can come from the outside, people who come through and have a word for this or have something for that. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who have a lot of good things to say, but God didn't tend them for us. And there are some people that have some things to say that we aren't ready to hear, and there are some people that have some things to say that we should hear and we don't. But an elder can discern those things and is willing to stand in front of the flock so that no wolf gets to the flock unless he goes to that elder first. And one of the things that I would be committed to, and I believe the elders of this flock would be committed to, whoever God raises up would be sure that only God's men and women would be able to address the flock of God after they've gone through that eldership. But you know something? That there can be false teaching from within, not necessarily born out of malice, but out of confusion. And elder guards against those kind of things. Look at first Timothy 1:3:7, just for a moment, As I urged you, 1 Timothy 1:3:7, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus, that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith. That's another way of saying that there were people there who were trying to get caught up and going through these genealogies and all these different myths. And they weren't really teaching the faith of the Word of God. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and sincere faith. Other references you can look up later on your own is Titus 1:9 12 Peter uses the same references about the wolves in 1 Peter 5:8. You know, Grant mentioned on Sunday about men in eldership as we see it now being the role of the men in the body. I think one of the best thoughts that I heard spoken on this was from one of the brothers who said that one of the reasons why, apart from some of the, you know, the varying ways you can interpret things in the New Testament in regards to men and women in eldership, but one of the arguments that he thought was very much in favor of the nature of this being a man's position is this very one. Because how many of you in your household, if fierce wolves attacked, would send a wife out to deal with them? And I think that still strikes my heart as a true thing. It's not the whole thing, but it's just a point. Some of you husbands are sick. Send the wife out. Praise the Lord. The other thing that comes along with warning and watching is the need for discipline. Now, discipline, and we can't digress on this, but discipline is not a matter of weeding out the undesirables and making people feel antsy. Discipline is correction for the purpose of restoration. You ought to write that down. Discipline is correction for the purpose of restoration. When an elder would discipline a person in the body, it would be so that that person would come on in love and be restored in their faith. The unity of the body would be maintained. It's so important, you see, that it's always done in humility, always in love, and always with tears, but with authority. And I really pray that you have a heart that's willing to be disciplined if the need arises. We're talking not about expulsion but about correction. People get this idea in mind that when a person is being disciplined in the body of Christ, and you've probably known people who've left churches because somebody said something about something they did and they didn't like it. Oh, ask God to deliver you from that kind of a mentality. That would say, well, they. They don't understand me there. They don't like me there. I'm going somewhere else. That person will never grow up because God will get them. The same point sooner or later will come back to their life. An elder needs to be able to discern that. All right, moving along, two more on this point. To pray and to study. Look at verse 32. And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace. Acts 6:4. It's when the apostles say, we're going to set aside deacons so that we can devote ourselves to the ministry of the Word in prayer, to pray and to study Acts 6:4 and Acts 20:32. An elder who is not able to be in the Word of God and devoting himself to studying the Word of God and in prayer will not be able to do the things that we've already talked about because he won't be hearing from God. He'll kind of be going on feelings and his own emotion and his own discernment. I'll tell you something I feel in my heart is that as we move ahead as a community, we are never more in need of the rhema leading the revelation, leading of God than we are right now. We need to know what God's saying to Northway. We're in danger of us, all of us, of grabbing onto some vision that we've had of what we always thought the church should be. And God may be saying, but this is something I want to speak to you now about. And here's a path that you haven't even thought about. Unless the elders are in prayer and study, they're not going to hear that. And if you don't get alone with the Lord, you can't hear. It's as simple as that. I was so convicted and blessed both by a couple of days that I had last week that I was able to just close down my desk and go out and spend some time with the Lord because the Lord said, it's good of you to stop by. It's been so long since I've done that. Boy, I just don't know how else to underscore that. It's very, very important. As you read through the New Testament epistles, what are some of the most beautiful things that Paul says? Think of Ephesians, for example. Almost all your Bibles, I bet they're underlined. Well, one of the things that he says are his prayers. Think of his prayers in 1 Timothy 1, 17:19. I pray that you be filled with all the fullness of God. And he goes on, his prayers are gripping and they're beautiful. Alright, an elder needs to be given to prayer and study. And finally, an elder needs to be free from self interest. Verse 33, I coveted no 1 silver or gold or apparel. That's a broad statement and it sounds on the surface. Sure, I'm not interested in getting rich, but there's a lot more of a seed in that than we probably are willing to admit most of us. And an elder needs to be able to say, and I throw this out For God to convict you at the level that it needs to be brought to conviction. But an elder needs to be able to say above what I make of myself and my job. I'm an elder in the church of God and beloved, I don't say that with one bit of. Misunderstanding of the gravity that that bears on your lives and your jobs. I respect all of you and the weight that you carry in your jobs. What if that that is a root for your seeking higher elevation and ambition and silver and golden apparel and it's keeping you from being an elder of God? Do you mean that if I'm going to be an elder of God, I've got to sell pizza? No, it means that in your heart you've got to lay the ax to the root. And if God elevates you praise his name, if you elevate yourself, you'll never be able to fully function this thing. I'm just telling you what's there. I'm not telling you what I think is best. That's just what's there. One reason is you need to mark this down as a general thing and turn to 1 Peter 5. Just look here at this simple expression. 1 Peter 5. So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed, tend the flock of God that is in your charge, not by constraint, but willingly, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge, but by being examples to the flock. You see, if you're out concerned about your silver and your gold and your apparel and coveting that in your life, then people are going to see that and they're going to think that's what it means. I mean, yeah, I'm a Christian, but I'm also climbing it in the world. And I sense that boy, where we are in 1982 in the north hills, this is a reality. And I weep inside over the fact that you can hear it be said and still we just can't bring it up and say, okay, Lord, I'm honestly willing to look at my life and say, what does this mean to me? We are examples to the flock, Those that God calls to be elders. And see, one who is self concerned cannot look out for the interests of others. Here's just a few things an elder does. He prays and lays hands on the sick in James 5. Now if you're self concerned, he gives to the needy and poor. In Acts 20 he encourages and stands with the idol in 1st Thessalonians 5:12. See, an elder is involved in visiting the widows and orphans in James 1:27. And so in doing all these things, if he's concerned about his silver and his gold and his apparel, he's not going to be free to do that. Do you mean everyone that's going to be an elder has to be full time in ministry? No, it just takes a real godly man to be able to balance those things out. And I recognize that. And one of the reasons why an elder can be free from self interest is because the people are to hold him in honor. First Timothy 5:17. Honor. In all cases, full time or not, an elder is to be held in honor and that compensates for that which he might covet after of his own. And in some cases it's very biblical for the elder to be remunerated, to be cared for by the flock financially. You see it in First Corinthians. You see it in 1 Timothy. Timothy. And it's specific. The laborer is due his wages in Galatians 6. Right. Okay, praise the Lord. Let's take a break here. Any questions about that, about the role of elders? These are the kind of men we want to lead our community. Let's take a stand up break. Praise the Lord. Don't move around. We have one more section that's meaty and then we'll have time for talking more. This is yes and this is no. Yeah, the abstention is when you. It's worked pretty well too. All right, praise the Lord. Any other questions? I'll take maybe one or two more that are germane here to the issue, the role of elder. Okay, Chris? Yeah. One of the things that the Bible really encourages is for women to minister to women. I want it to be really clear. It's the. It's worth saying more than once, but in all of the deliberation and all the attention we're giving to