Sunday Class @ 9am; Worship @ 10am & 5pm
Articles
Elders and Church Decline (2)
Because elders are so important to the functioning of a church, my suggestions for reversing church decline all involve elders. They are as follows:
Value the eldership. I think it’s no exaggeration to say that lack of appreciation for elders is endemic among churches of Christ. This is true both in congregations that have elders and don’t know what they’ve got and in congregations that don’t have elders and don’t know what they’re missing.
Of the two, the second may well be an even larger problem than the first. Over time, we’ve grown accustomed to the notion that having business meetings is an acceptable substitute for having elders, and that is categorically false. A congregation that does not have elders should not dismiss the problem with a shrug and an “Oh, that’s too bad.” Instead, it should regard the lack of shepherds as the congregation’s single biggest weakness and work diligently to address it.
Seek the eldership. It should be the goal of any congregation without elders to get (qualified) elders, as quickly as possible, using every Scriptural means available. No option here should be off the table. If the congregation is in “Grow your own” mode, that should be a point of heavy and repeated emphasis. From the pulpit and in classes, there should be constant teaching on the qualifications of elders and what men ought to be doing to attain to them. Sitting around and hoping that elders will serendipitously appear isn’t going to cut it.
Nor should churches shy away even from joining forces with other congregations in the area if an eldership will result. The math here is pretty simple. If there are two congregations with 60 people each, 10 miles away from each other, they probably aren’t going to have the numbers they need to keep an eldership on an ongoing basis. However, a single congregation with 120 probably will. When the benefits are so obvious, who are we to allow attachments to a particular meeting place to stand in God’s way?
Maintain the eldership. I’ve heard it said that in the business world, one of the primary jobs of every executive is to train his replacement. That certainly should be true of elders. It’s true of preachers and elders both, I think, that we too often find ourselves focusing on the weak to the detriment of the strong. We get so busy putting out fires that we forget to train firemen.
Instead, elders should take the time (out of their abundant free time, I know) to mentor promising young men. Show them the ropes a little bit. Teach them. Encourage them to take a small role in looking after the flock. To make a basketball analogy, they might not be ready for 30 minutes a game, but they can learn a lot from 5. Then, they can progress to 10 minutes, then 15, then 20. When the time comes, they’ll be able to assume the role of elders themselves, and they’ll be much better equipped to fulfill it than they would have been if they’d spent the past 25 years warming the bench.
None of this is terribly original. After all, it’s about an office that’s as old as the church is. However, I believe that this ancient answer is the best solution to today’s church problems. To paraphrase Chesterton, having “elders in every church” has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried. If we’re able to reverse that trend, I’m confident we’ll be able to reverse a lot of other trends too.
http://hisexcellentword.blogspot.com/2016/01/elders-and-church-decline.html
