In Reply to Patrick Mead’s “The Problem with Elders,” Part 2 (Summary of My Views)

If you’ve not yet read them, here are Patrick’s original posts —

• The Problem With Elders, Part 1
• The Problem With Elders, Part 2
• The Problem With Elders, Part 3
• The Problem With Elders, Part 4
• The Problem with Preachers, Part 1
• The Problem with Preachers, Part 2
• How Then Should a Church Be Organized?

To help contextualize some of what I’m going to say, let me lay out a few principles regarding elders that I believe —

* I believe that elders and preachers should work together as peers. I suspect Patrick and I largely agree on this.

Although I see elders as having authority to hire and fire the preacher, that fact should not make the preacher a subordinate (or “hireling,” to use the traditional term).

Think of a law partnership. (Well, that’s easy for me.) A majority of the partners have the power to include or exclude a lawyer from the partnership. But they are all peers, and yet they are all accountable to each other — and quite truly so.

I’m the managing partner of my law firm. But I can be fired by my partners. Am I at the top or the bottom of the law-firm totem pole?

As managing partner, I have a job, and that job is to serve my partners to free them to do what I most enjoy — practicing law. I sacrifice for their good and the good of the firm. I have very real authority (I can set salaries and bonuses, for example), but I’d really rather someone else do the managing. And the attorneys I manage — over whom I have authority — can fire me.

It’s a position of real authority, but most days it feels like cleaning up other people’s messes.

Just so, elders have positional authority, but that hardly makes them unaccountable despots. They may choose to act that way, but having authority does not necessarily lead to “lording over” others. Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth, and yet he is the Great Shepherd and the model of humble, submissive Christian leadership.

* Elders should be and are accountable to each other. When I became an elder, I was asked to sign a pledge to resign quietly if the other elders asked me to do so. I think that’s wise, although I would have resigned quietly on request without the pledge. I have that much respect for my fellow elders. (And, yes, I know of cases where an elder was asked to quietly resign and did so. It works. Not always, but it most often fails to work because the other elders are unwilling to confront the offending elder.)

* Patrick and I very much agree that the eldership is best composed of men who do not crave the position for the sake of position. Rather, elders should be men who recognize God’s calling and gifting in their lives and who respond out of love for God and their churches.

* Being an ordained an elder is a great honor — one of the greatest honors that can be bestowed in this age — and yet the best elders do not enjoy honor for the sake of honor. They do, however, enjoy a job well done. They take pride in their congregations and the work they see the Spirit doing among their members.

* As I will explain in future posts, I believe the scriptures plainly give elders authority and plainly require the membership to submit to their authority. I utterly disagree with the teachings of such men as David Lipscomb and E. G. Sewell, who taught that the eldership is not an office and carries no authority other than the authority of moral example.

* Moreover, I can’t agree with those ministers who argue that elders should do little more than pray. Prayer is, of course, an essential work of elders, but there is no scriptural warrant to limit the work of elders to prayer. (Where is the passage that says any such thing?)

* Just so, the idea that elders should only meet to pray seems to suggest that the rest of the church shouldn’t be meeting to pray. Right? I mean, if the entire church were to pray as they should, what would distinguish an elder from the general membership — if his only job is to pray?

* I do agree with Patrick that elders are called to be teachers. Every eldership should contain a number of teachers. Indeed, I think it’s important that elders be men who are capable of independently exegeting the text without relying on the preacher, church periodicals, or the like. Elders need to be men well-schooled in the Bible.

* While the scriptures plainly center the responsibility for teaching on elders, elders should be raising up the next generation of teachers to follow them. They should not be the only teachers, but leaders in teaching.

On the other hand, the elders are charged with making certain that the church’s teaching is healthy and based on the true gospel. They are ultimately responsible for the truthfulness of what is taught — in the pulpit, in the classrooms, and in the small groups. They cannot abdicate this responsibility. And if they and the preacher disagree on what ought to be taught from the pulpit, the elders have the final say — not because they set his salary and can fire him, but because the scriptures plainly give that responsibility to the elders. (I’ll defend this position in a future post.)

* As a businessman — well, a lawyer — I utterly fail to see the point of criticizing churches who appoint businessmen as elders. Alexander Campbell was among the first elders in the Restoration Movement, and he was a skilled businessman who made quite a lot of money
— money which he largely donated to Christian causes. Why is this bad? Where does this prejudice against business people come from?

Lipscomb was an elder and a farmer and a publisher — which sounds like “businessman” to me.

You see, the problem with poor elder selection is not that we ordain businessmen; it’s that we ordain men who aren’t formed in the image of Christ. And some businessmen are, and some businessmen are not. Just so, some professors are, and some aren’t. Some homeless men are, and some are not. Some preachers are, and some are not. Whether a man is in business is simply not a particularly relevant consideration.

And those churches that appoint businessmen who are not Christ-formed as elders do so for the same reason they ordain other men who are not Christ-formed: they’ve been taught the wrong Jesus.

* I entirely agree with Patrick that one failure of elders is that they too readily enable selfish, consumeristic behavior by the members. The central task of elders is to lead the members to become more and more like Jesus — more servant-hearted, more sacrificial, more submissive. They do this in part by example but also by teaching — and especially by refusing to acquiesce in self-seeking demands.

Even very grace-centered elders often yield to the temptation to let the office of the elder become a consumer good. The elders agree to provide pastoral care and father-figure services for the members while expecting little of the members in return. They become a program designed to appeal to members but a program that doesn’t transform members into the image of Christ.

All members are all called to be pastoral. When a couple is struggling with their marriage, it’s not uniquely the elders’ job to help them work it out. Their friends at church should love them enough to help, too. Their small group leader should want to help. And the elders should be an example of how all who are in the lives of this couple should help them overcome their marital difficulties.

And I’ve seen it happen. Their friends help with childcare while the couple attends counseling. Another friend helps them get on a budget and resolve their financial problems. Another friend listens and counsels the wife on forgiving her husband and making a fresh start of it. Friends coach them on helping their children through rocky times.

Pastoral care is indeed part of what elders do, but not as a consumer good to be offered to attract members. Pastoral care, rather, is what all healthy church members do for each other. As a result, pastoral care is not a consumer service enjoyed by members but an expectation of all members, as they grow closer to each other in love. I’m sure Patrick would agree.

* I’ve spoken with many elders who tried to get entirely out of church authority — focusing solely on pastoral care and prayer. They came to regret it — in retrospect, considering themselves to have abdicated their God-given responsibilities.

After all, no large group of people can function well without formal leadership. If the elders decline to lead, someone else will. The paid staff. The biggest donors. The strongest personalities. Someone will lead.

Then why not let the staff lead? Well, many congregations are experimenting with staff-led churches. The larger the church, the more likely the church is to rely on staff for leadership because the demands of a large church can quickly overwhelm part-time, unpaid elders.

Personally, as I said early on, I find the ideal in the partnering of staff with elders, so that the work is shared. I find that in denominations that have a single-pastor system and no equivalent of an eldership, well, they have problems dealing with a pastor who acts badly. It’s too much authority in one man — and the newspapers are filled with examples. (I do legal work for many churches of many denominations. I’ve been able to see how well their structures work under stress. Many a non-Church of Christ leader has told me how he wished his denomination had elders.)

No, the preacher needs to be accountable to the elders. And the elders need to be accountable to each other and to the preacher. But they may (and should) delegate much of the work of the church among each other and to others as need be.

I’m told that Lynn Anderson (author of the excellent They Smell Like Sheep: Spiritual Leadership for the 21st Century) was once asked to be an elder. He declined, preferring to remain as “just” the preacher. I’m told he described his position as a non-elder as empowering him to prophetically call the elders to account — a task more easily done from outside the eldership. I think there is wisdom there. We all need to be accountable.