In this series, we focus on decision making principles among elders, based on Acts 6 and Acts 15.
Lecture Outline Detailed Outline Remember ItActs 6 dealing with the unequal distribution of food to the widows and Acts 15 dealing with whether Gentiles believers needed to observe the Mosaic law and practice circumcision.
Without good decisions, the church gets preoccupied with internal issues and wastes a lot of energy that could otherwise be spent on spreading the gospel.
Writing it down provided a clear, unambiguous response to a serious doctrinal issue. All could read it.
- How can you know when to involve the whole congregation in solving a problem and when not to?
- What criteria would you use to determine whether a discussion is ready for a decision?
- Can you think of a time when a decision was made but not written down, and then at a later date people had differing memories of what the decision was? What was that like?
- Discuss with your fellow elders (or develop on you own) a plan to record major decisions and keep them accessible for future reference. Possibly store them in an online storage system, like “DropBox” or a binder.
- Think back over some of the decisions your team has made in the last year. Did any of those decisions involve things others could have dealt with? Are there any decisions you would have handled differently?