One In Jesus

16. Check references. It’s a pain and often complicated. If the preacher has a job, he will be reluctant for you to talk to his current elders.

However, we’ve sometimes had preachers offer to let us call a particular elder — usually the chairman or an elder charged with working especially closely with the minister. The preacher lets the elder know he’ll be called, and then the search committee or elders can call for a recommendation.

Sometimes those who make recommendations lie. In fact, church people routinely lie to help a beloved former employee get a job. Evidently, it’s the Christian thing to do.

Yep, in the Churches of Christ, elders and fellow ministers routinely bear false witness to help a beloved friend or former member get a job. Continue reading →

10. Don’t prepare a job description so much as a person description. Job descriptions are canned, boring, and unhelpful, in my experience. You aren’t hiring someone to do a job. You’re hiring someone to be in close, long-term relationship with your church.

You wouldn’t write a job description for your future wife, would you? No, what we men all do is imagine what attributes she’d have — her passion for God, her sense of humor, all sort of things. Continue reading →

Until a few minutes ago, I had a huge table in the right column listing all the articles in the Gospel of John series, completed a few weeks ago. I kept it there to make it easy for teachers in my church to find the materials, because we’ve been covering those notes during the last 5 months.

The series is now over at my church, and that massive table was slowing load times for everyone. Therefore, I’ve moved the lessons to the links at the top of the page under “CBS Bible Classes.” Click that link and you’ll be immediately taken to a choice of three Bible class series. One of those will be the Gospel of John series.

6. Don’t go too fast. People grow very attached to the pulpit minister. They see him as a pastor, counselor, spiritual leader, guru, father figure, best friend … all sorts of ways. Having him leave their lives will be traumatic for many. It takes time to mourn the loss and to be ready to give the new guy a fair shake.

Don’t go too fast. Remember, the elders have likely known about the minister’s departure longer than the congregation. They’ve had more time to get used to the idea. The church will have had less time to acclimate to the change. Continue reading →

Well, my webhosting service has confirmed that the backup from the day before they began to repair my comment system is hopelessly corrupted. All comments from about November of last year until a few days ago are lost.

So here’s the plan — Continue reading →

(So I did a search for images for “ElderLink.” And look at what I found!

For those of you who don’t play Zelda — or have kids who do (my situation) – the picture is a sculpture of Link, the hero of the videogame Zelda, imagined as much older — ElderLink. Really.

I’m thinking of getting T-shirts made.)

So my fellow elders, two of our ministers, and I attended ElderLink in Atlanta a few weeks ago. The program is jointly sponsored by ACU and Lipscomb University. (Thank you!)

It’s always a worthwhile trip. It’s good to spend some time with my fellow elders and ministers away from church. Continue reading →