The Ingredients Of Eldership

[00:00:00] This audio sermon is provided by AnabaptistSermons.com and may be freely copied and distributed. You may not sell or edit this sermon. Our prayer is that you would be blessed by this ministry. Please turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 5. [00:00:32] 1 Peter chapter 5. I would like to read the portion through verse 9. Then we would like to review a bit of the plans with regard to ministry selection. [00:01:06] And then have prayer. And then study together. Peter, the study that we have in mind is sort of a review of things that we have gone over before, but recall the words of Peter elsewhere, that he stirs up their pure minds by way of remembrance. And so rather than sermonizing, we would like to simply review principles of Scripture that should prompt us in the process that lies before us. [00:01:42] 1 Peter 5, verse 1 The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly, not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind, neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being examples to the flock. [00:02:13] And when the chief shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility. For God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, [00:02:45] casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist, steadfast in the faith, knowing the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. This is the word of the Lord. We want to hear it together. [00:03:18] To rehearse with you what is planned, there was a typographical error in the bulletin last week about the day of fasting and prayer. I believe it was announced correctly, verbally, but there was a print error. We are planning a day of fasting and prayer for the ministry selection process this coming Wednesday. [00:03:53] That would be June the 9th. And we would ask you to make that a day of prayer, of fasting as the Lord may lead you. We do not believe that fasting by itself avails anything. In other words, we are not trying to earn brownie points with God. But fasting is a biblical practice in which we focus. [00:04:26] And it does help us to focus. I remember an older brother in the church that we were a part of in Ohio when the church and that church did it more often than we do but a day of fasting and prayer was called for various items of major concern through those years and the old brother would say I don't eat that day and when the discomfort comes to my attention [00:05:01] that reminds me what the day is all about that I am to pray and that was a bit of his outlook on it it is that which we commit to the Lord to focus in prayer and concern on an item and so we are not saying that anyone has to fast But we are suggesting that you take that opportunity to focus on the spiritual concerns of our congregation [00:05:33] and particularly on the needs that we have for additional leadership. So that is Wednesday. The meeting house here will be unlocked for the day. You're welcome to come here and pray if you care to. But there will not be any structured prayer times during the day Just that the meeting house will be open if you want to come here in a quiet place And commit this matter to the Lord in prayer If you choose to stay home and pray, that's fine [00:06:05] If you go to work and pray, that's fine But we do need to be before the Lord that day as a body of believers Concerning this subject and need. Then in the evening of Wednesday, this would be our week that we normally would have a Bible study, but we have committed that to be a prayer meeting focused on the matter of ministry selection. And we would encourage the membership as well as those who regularly attend to come Wednesday [00:06:45] evening for that time of prayer. That will be a bit more structured, but we will commit that time entirely to praying about this matter and laying it before the Lord. Then, next Sunday morning, a week from now, and we're hoping it might be just about now. It's 11 o'clock. We're hoping to get started with a voice around 11. We've put 11.15 in the bulletin. That's the deadline time to get started. But we hope we may get started a little before that. [00:07:17] We will start taking the voice. And as you recall, the procedure that the congregation has adopted, the voice will be taken verbally and in person. We will not have a regular devotional next Sunday. The message will be shortened, but we will have Sunday school, and we will have a morning service, but it will be a shortened version. so that we will be able to get started taking the voice [00:07:50] hopefully at 11, but at least by 11.15. That's the plan. And Brother Art Hershberger will be bringing the message next Sunday morning. He will be with us for the voice. And the procedure will be that the church council, together with Art, We'll be over in the conference room in the building next door and we will be asking a number of you brethren to help us because what we would plan to do is dismiss a section of the auditorium at a time and brothers will stay here and be leading the sections in prayer until the section is dismissed so that the prayer time can go on during the voice until it's finished. [00:08:44] and the time that there's nobody left here. So we'll be dismissed by groups and there will be other brethren doing the doorkeeper sorts of things over there to help the process. You would come in as an individual or as a couple. If you come in as a couple, you would both be asked for your voice. It would not be one voice per couple but two. That will be the procedure. We are asking that the voice be rather brief. [00:09:15] You'll be asked for two names. If you don't feel that the Lord has given you two names and you have one, that's fine. If you don't feel that the Lord has given you any names, we're asking you to come. We're asking everyone to come through, every member. And if you don't have a name or names, you can simply say something to the council that the Lord hasn't given you a name that you are you want to be in support of the process or [00:09:45] whatever you care to say along those lines but we would like the the voice to be rather brief so that we can proceed through the whole congregation in a reasonable length of time then after the voice is taken the church council will meet with brother art on monday night to take the next step of evaluating the voice. And those things will be reported to you. Probably you will not get a report until after the Monday night meeting. [00:10:19] But they will be reported to you as they go forward. So that, to the best of my understanding, is where we are and what has been worked on to this point. And we ask that you give it prayerful consideration and be ready to participate in the voice. This voice is not just for those who feel strongly moved to come in. This voice is for all members of voting age. [00:10:53] So either you give voice in terms of a name or names or you give voice that the Lord hasn't laid a name on your heart or any other brief voice that you would care to give. And I want to assure you that every effort is going to be made to keep this on an informal, comfortable sort of plane. You're not coming before the council for examination [00:11:24] and you're not coming particularly to examine. We're just sharing together as brothers and sisters in Christ what the Lord has laid on our hearts. So let's look forward to that time and look forward to the opportunity for the Lord to speak in that way. Let's stand together for prayer. Heavenly Father, we stand before you now as children of Adam. [00:12:09] Broken because of sin, with fissures and cracks. But we also stand before you as many as truly know Christ As redeemed As blood-bought As your sons and daughters And we ask that you will lead us Step by step through the ministry selection process [00:12:41] You know the need here We sense it, but you know it perfectly. And you know the names that should be given. And we ask that you would help us to focus on your will and not our own. as we echo the words of the Savior. Not my will, but thine be done. [00:13:17] Guide us now as we look to your word, as we review together. Speak by your spirit to our hearts. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. As we look to 1 Peter chapter 5, [00:13:56] I trust that the Lord will make this, as the prophet said, new every morning. Something new to us, though it is truth that we have reviewed together before. I want to refer to several different passages of Scripture. We will not necessarily ask you to turn to all of them. We are talking about the eldership. And the eldership in today's church is somewhat confused. [00:14:35] We get tangled up in denominational distinctions and different denominations of the body of Christ treat things differently. Some wrongly, and others somewhat benignly. And the terminology, I'm sure, gets confusing. Even to those of our own number, we can only imagine how confusing it would be to those who come from the world. [00:15:12] Is the minister a minister? Is he a preacher? Is he a pastor? Is he an elder? Is he a bishop? Is he an overseer? What is he? And what do you call him? Is he a shepherd? And the names go on. Many of those terms have come from the New Testament and are appropriate. There are some who would stratify them, and ours is not to pick and criticize. [00:15:53] But it is important, I believe, that the emphasis in this week and next Lord's Day be that we want to hear God speak. God has many times spoken through congregations. I believe he chooses to do that. I think that's his preference, if I can put it that way. [00:16:25] If we can say God has preferences in his perfection, he probably doesn't have preferences like we do. Not that he cannot speak in other ways, not at all, but he has often chosen to speak through congregations. Now we do not believe, as some do, that the Bible is subject to congregational interpretation. [00:16:59] there are some who would say that you can't know what the Bible teaches until the congregation decides what it teaches that is wrong God speaks through his word and if it is carefully and prayerfully and exactly interpreted it is not subject to diversity of interpretation when it has diverse interpretations it's due to the frailty of our flesh not due to the limitations of the word of God or of God himself so what we'd like to do is review the biblical principles [00:17:57] of ministry, whatever you call these guys. Probably, if we would call them what the Bible most often calls them, we would call them elders. But that has fallen on hard times because there are some people who talk about lay elders Anabaptist, Anabaptist, Anabaptist, Anabaptist [00:18:53] And then Peter says, I am also an elder. And then he gives them counsel about what the elders, who the elders are, what they are to do. The first question that I'd like us to ask the scripture is, who are these men? These, whatever you call them Pastor, Shepherd, Pastor and Shepherd are really synonymous [00:19:30] Under Shepherd And all the other titles that are sometimes applied Who are they? And a part of the answer is here In the terms that are used There are three terms used in the New Testament relating to those we commonly call ministers. And the first one is the word elder, which implies some level of salvation maturity, [00:20:12] sometimes spoken of as spiritual maturity. But the term elder is related to the term father in the New Testament and it is not to be one who is just newly converted to Christianity and I believe that's probably part of the reason that in the book of Titus they did not do elders right away and Titus being an instruction book for Titus from the Apostle Paul about how to do church [00:20:43] and so it's coming along later after these churches are already established and he said now I want you to ordain elders we didn't get that done before so likely those churches were made up of new converts and there was nobody qualified because there was nobody that was an elder in terms of their salvation experience so that comes along later for that reason The second term is the term that carries a verbal in verse 2, the word feed, which is the word shepherd. [00:21:27] It is also understood care, to be caring for someone. The same root is used in Ephesians 4 in the list of gifts to the church where you have pastor and teacher as one category together. So some people hyphenate that then and say pastor-teacher. The pastor is the word shepherd or under-shepherd [00:21:58] contextually in the Scripture. The under-shepherd who teaches. And for that reason, there are some churches that call their ministers pastor-teachers. This is the word, the same root word, the same root here for the word feed. The third word that you have in this passage is the word oversight, taking the oversight. [00:22:29] Again, the same root word that you have for the word bishop. The word could be translated overseer, bishop, or in the verbal form, taking the oversight, and so on. These three terms speak of these people, these men, whatever you want to call them. You could call them any of those. If we were to take Acts 20 and look at that, you will again find all three terms. [00:23:06] The elders are being addressed, and then they are commanded to be overseers, they're commanded to pastor, and so on. Same words. If we were to look at Titus chapter 1, and maybe we ought to just for clarity, if you just take, we'll take a look at Titus chapter 1. So we've already referred to it, the things that were left undone in verse 5 of chapter 1 of Titus. [00:23:39] And what was the things left undone? Verse 5, ordain elders. So we're talking about elders. and without any break in thought all of the sudden the elders are called a bishop in verse 7. So whatever is spoken of as the ordained elder also applies to the bishop as you read through these qualifications. [00:24:16] Bible scholars are pretty agreed on that interpretation. In other words, elder and bishop are speaking of the same men rather than a bishop being over the elders as we commonly think of it. That is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible speaks of a bishop at the same level as an elder, same level as a pastor. [00:24:47] Those are three terms that speak of the ministry. And the qualifications are given in this Titus 1 passage. The elder, as we've suggested, is to be a father image. On the other hand, some elders in the New Testament were not chronologically old. [00:25:26] So he doesn't have to be an old man. It speaks of his salvation experience and the ability to father, spiritually speaking. The term overseer or bishop, taking the oversight from our 1 Peter passage, [00:26:00] refers to management. Managing is what is in view by that term. So you have the father sort of thing. You have the management aspect. And you have the shepherding or caring, what we call soul care. issues. And the soul care issue, if you go to Ephesians chapter 4, is connected to the teaching issue. So a part of soul care is teaching. [00:26:49] And it is teaching not just in terms of Scripture, but teaching with Scripture others to do soul care. One of the problems that we have in the modern church is that we have a dearth of soul care. We've talked about that before. But actually, soul care should be being done by every member of the congregation. [00:27:30] And the pastor should be teaching every member to do that. So it's not only doing soul care himself, but teaching others to do it to the point where the whole church is involved in caring for each other. And as you read the New Testament with that thought, it'll start to really amplify to you [00:28:02] because the scripture again and again talks about caring for one another. and so those three aspects of the ministry the elder, the overseer, the pastor or pastor teacher need to be looked at because they become a part of the qualifications if a man is a good manager but is poor in soul care [00:28:34] Father, or fathering, and I'm not talking about physical fathering as much as spiritual father. In other words, in terms of being able to help new converts come along, being able to be a spiritual father. So if you have one, but not the other two, or if you have two but not one, then I believe that it would be correct to say that the man is disqualified. [00:29:12] Some would say that you put the team together in such a way that they each are something. But I think that flies in the face of the clear teaching of Scripture. Scripture uses those three terms of all of the elders, not some. Now, I would quickly see that some will be stronger in one area than another. And we would recognize that. That we are not perfectly balanced. [00:29:46] None of us, as members of the congregation, are perfectly balanced and have all the things together equally. And so there will be some who are stronger in one area than in another. And we need to recognize that as we think of the voice, that there is no perfect minister here among us, including any of us, none of us are, but we'll be perhaps somewhat imbalanced to one direction or another, but the three basic qualities need to be present. [00:30:28] in any candidate. I want to say one other thing about the shepherding. Shepherding in our day has taken a bad turn. I think I understand why it has. Because of the brokenness that we have in our culture, in our society. And so some have gone, and even I could see in my own ministry at times I've overemphasized it. [00:31:02] Some have gone to see the ministry as purely shepherding. It isn't, but shepherding is still a major part of it. And a person who is not a capable shepherd should not be in the ministry. But this extreme that we've had where the pastor becomes a semi-professional counselor in a psychological way. I had a call from a brother not in our circles. [00:31:37] Actually, he was in the conservative conference circles, and he called me here a couple of months ago, and he was searching around for assistant pastors. He wanted to lead his church in calling some assistant pastors from the outside and the reason was that he'd gotten involved in counseling and he decided to open up an office and hang up a shingle and be a counselor and he needed to give the church some help finding replacements, essentially. [00:32:10] and that seems to be happening in the larger church ministry is being forsaken in the name of counseling probably because there is so much counseling to do and so much brokenness that the need is obvious and the need yells at you and so on but these things need to be brought back into some level of symmetry and the shepherd is not only a counselor [00:32:44] he needs to be available as a counselor and many of you know that we have lots of people that come and visit us for counseling many of you have done that and we want to be there on the other hand that is only one part That of the picture. And we do not want to let it get out of control or out of balance. [00:33:17] A person who cannot do soul care is not qualified for the ministry. A person who cannot manage is not qualified for the ministry. A person who cannot provide a fatherly care for new converts and others is not qualified for the ministry but those things will never be in perfect balance if we look for that person or people we won't find them this side of heaven [00:33:53] and when we get to heaven they won't be necessary because there'll be one chief shepherd that is spoken of in this passage There's another aspect that comes into the teaching aspect as well as the elder aspect and that is the matter of training. We as Anabaptists often talk about the fact that our ministers are untrained. [00:34:29] And some are, can I say this? Some are proud of the fact that their ministers are not trained. And there's often a regular reflection on the apostles that as the leaders of the Jews looked at them, they said that, you know, these are ignorant and untrained men. And so that becomes a qualification for the ministry in some circles. You know, ignorance, untrained, that's a qualification for the ministry in some circles, unfortunately. [00:35:01] On the other hand, I think we're also aware that intense training in academia has been a sword of the evil one in some cases where men have been led astray and led away from the truth. I don't know that that's education's fault, but education has not helped that process for those who have been led astray. [00:35:34] However, I would remind us that some training is necessary. In some cases it can be self-training, self-study, whatever. Remember, we're not talking about the necessity of college and seminary degrees or anything like that, but the discipline of study, particularly of the Word of God, and then even in addition to the Word of God, understanding the times, as the Bible talks about understanding the times as a qualification for leadership. [00:36:23] That cannot be emphasized too much. We need trained men. That doesn't mean, as I say, that they have to be college trained or seminary trained or whatever trained. But they need to be men who can handle the Word of God, who understand what theology is, who understand what biblical theology teaches, and are able to impart that because of the very issues of who they are to be. [00:37:00] And one of the weaknesses in the Brotherhood Church in recent times has been the lack of training, either self-training or training in ministerial school of some sort, whatever. The lack of that which has made ignorance a premium and has brought us to the point where many of us don't know what we believe because we haven't been taught and we believe that way because great-grandfather believed that way or because that's what I was taught at home. [00:37:45] That's what my parents believed or whatever. Those reasons will not stand the test of the modern world. We must be able to teach our people that we believe it because God said so. And he said so in his word. And we understand it because we've been taught it and we stand for it. I believe one of the reasons that we tend to lose our young people [00:38:18] and I don't mean Calvary's young people particularly but young people of our movement's congregations is because they have not been taught well taught well from the pulpit, taught well in classes taught well on a one-to-one, those sorts of things And we would look to our ministry to spearhead the effort of teaching. So the training doesn't necessarily have to be formal training. [00:38:53] In fact, sometimes formal training, as we all know, is a pitfall. But it does need to be training. In the days of colonial America, for the most part, and if you read some of those colonials, they were well-versed in the Scripture and in theology that flowed from Scripture. How were they? They didn't necessarily go to school. Harvard came along and was started in those early days, [00:39:24] But many of them didn't go there and so on They were trained by their pastors Or by other pastors from nearby communities The training was intensive And so we need some of that It doesn't have to be, you know, I don't know that there's a school that we can wholeheartedly recommend But we need to study the Word of God. [00:39:55] We need to sit under people who have studied the Word of God. We need to read books. We need to work at this matter of preparing to train our people. Now, finally, I would like us to just think for a few moments on how do we find these men? We've talked a little about who are these men. [00:40:26] How do we find these men? Well, we said earlier that God can speak through the congregation, does speak through the congregation. If we look around the congregation, we see a lot of people like ourselves, and if we're honest with ourselves, we'll say, you know, we're broken, we don't have perfect knowledge, and that's true. Congregations are made up of a lot of fickle people. I include myself. [00:40:58] And yet somehow God has chosen to work through those people. people that do not necessarily agree with each other on everything God has chosen to work through those congregations of fickle people to speak His perfect will and that should be what we're praying about that God will bring the congregation together in voice [00:41:30] Will we ever, this side of heaven, see everything the same? I would say not a chance. Some of you drive Ford, some of you drive Chevy, some of you drive whatever. That's going to happen until the Lord comes or until all those companies go out of business and they're replaced by someone else and we have a different set of possibilities. To think that we are going to be Clones of each other is crazy. [00:42:05] But God can bring us together on this voice. He can if we will allow it. If we will recognize the need for humility. And I take you back to the passage we were reading together and look at verses 5 and 6. The last part of verse 5, it speaks about God resisting the proud and giving grace to the humble and then in verse 6 it says humble yourselves therefore under the [00:42:35] mighty hand of God so as we come to this voice as we pray about it we have got to stop praying for what we want that is somehow that is sometimes what we do I'm as guilty as the next fellow You know, this is what we want. We pray for God to do what we want. But we need to hear the Savior say, Not my will, but thine be done. [00:43:09] And if you've already decided what names you're going to give next Sunday, maybe you ought to think again. And ask the Lord about that. and be willing for the Lord to say through you what you do not now want to say. Whatever that is. I don't know, but whatever it is. Be humble before God. [00:43:42] Put pride and your selfish desires. I need to put pride and my selfish desires away as well. Put those things aside. and humbly seek the voice of our God. And then God will bring together a voice for his glory, whatever that voice may be. So it is not what seems good to me, but what seems good to God. [00:44:17] And what seems good to God eventually will seem very good. to me. So I believe we should pray that the voice of the congregation will be the very voice of God. Let's pray. Thank you, Father, for your word. We have just reviewed some principles of our previous studies together. [00:44:50] Remind us, apply these things to our understandings, and direct us in this week to be humble before you, to give up our own agendas, and to look for your perfect will. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.