What would you say you do here?
Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our sermons or anything else about Christianity. It wouldn’t have to be about our sermons. But as you probably know, we’re in the middle of our 40 day focus where we’re looking at the blessing of church, why it, why it’s amazing to be together other, and the benefits that come when we are together. And this last week, we talked about elders and how God has really described, at least in Scripture, leadership of a local church. Being elders, we are not outright commanded to have this particular system in place, but it is the only system that we ever see in Scripture and a New Testament church.
And so it would be unwise, I believe, to deviate from the pattern that we see described in Scripture. This week the question comes in about elders, really, what are all of their jobs? We have some idea, probably from the sermon, but is there more to it than that? In other words, we ask elders, what would you say you do here? And so to give a response to a more full, fleshed out, full job description of elders, there’s different categories we talked in the sermon about.
They need to know you if they’re going to be shepherding you. Shepherds need to be around sheep. Um, they’re going to be directing you. They need to know what’s going on in your life, if they’re going to be correcting you. They need to know what’s going on in your life if they need to be encouraging you.
They need to know what’s going on in your life. And so, of course, we have 300 or so people here, a little more, a little less. And we have nine elders plus then Steve and Nate, like we talked about in the sermon. And so we only have eleven folks. So it’s not as if every single elder can know what’s going on with every single person.
But somebody should know you. You should have a sense that you are known by someone well enough to be directing your life in some way. And we talked in our elder meeting about what are areas of the church where we don’t kind of organically already have an elder in that area, what life groups aren’t represented, what ministries aren’t represented. So we’re starting to map that, and we really want to make sure that we have some amount of involvement from our elders in every kind of little corner of our church. The next job has to do with doctrine.
It’s both teaching and defending. And so we want our elders teaching in some area of our church, whether it’s a life group or it’s children’s ministry or it’s on Sunday morning for the whole congregation somewhere, somehow, elders need to be contributing to the teaching ministry of this church. The other side of that is defending correct doctrine. Our elders have in the past and are currently working on position papers for ranges of issues, how to address our culture appropriately, how to make sure all the teaching in all of the life groups is in alignment with Scripture.
They need to make sure we stay on the right page.
And so that’s a huge job for elders. There’s always decisions that need to be made. This is general leadership. But whether it’s facility use, policy, or new ministry coming into focus, or maybe a ministry has fulfilled its season and we’re going to transition into something else. These are all decisions by the elders.
But in every one of those decisions, again, the elders priority needs to be the people. Like we said in our first point on Sunday, the priority of a shepherd is the sheep. It always has to be what is best for this congregation. What is best to get our people further along in their spiritual walk with Jesus? What is best to reach our community with the message of know?
How can we best show people that they matter? How can we best show the truth matters? How can we best show gospel is our only hope. That always needs to be the filter through which we make all decisions. The Scripture talks about our verses in first.
Peter talked about as well, elders need to be a model for everybody else to follow kind of a spiritual model, which means two things. Not only do elders kind of need to be in every corner of what’s going on in our church so that they can be seen, so that they can be a model, but it means you need to be involved in ministries too. If you just come and sit in a pew on Sunday and leave, there’s no opportunity for you to interact with someone else as a model, to follow along behind, to learn from.
Lastly, elders have responsibility of praying, interceding for you every elder meeting. You may not know this, but we open with a time of prayer.
We talk about needs that we know are going on in the church, and we pray for people who are sick or we pray for ministries that need encouragement. We celebrate what God’s doing here. We lament over things that need to change. We ask for God’s guidance and help. And so that’s one reason why we want elders in every corner of what’s going on in this church, so that we know how to pray when we come together.
But you should feel prayed for individually as well. Again, you need to be connected to someone in leadership again, not every single person in leadership will know every single one of you. But you need to be connected to someone who cares about you, shows you that you matter, and is praying for you, and that you feel like is really praying for you. And so that’s a brief overview of job description of an elder to know you enough to be involved in your life, to teach, defend correct doctrine, make decisions that prioritize the sheep and God’s glory and our mission to model for you and to pray for you.
We hope that gives you a little bit bigger idea of the job description.
And as always, we would very much be grateful if you would be praying for all of those who are in our leadership. Thanks for the question, and we will see you next time. Bye.