My first encounter with church elders occurred when I was a young teenager. During confirmation class, I told the minister about my conversion to Christ the previous summer at a Bible camp. He was so intrigued by my youthful, exuberant testimony of Christ that he asked me to share my story with the church elders. When I met with them and told them about my new relationship with Jesus Christ, they sat speechless, looking totally puzzled. Sadly, I realized they didn’t understand what I was saying. That experience left me with little confidence in the elders or the church.
In contrast, in college I began attending a church that taught and practiced authentic biblical eldership. The elders of this church took seriously the New Testament commands for elders to be biblically qualified and to actively pastor the flock of God. They provided strong leadership, loving pastoral care and discipline, sound Bible teaching, and humble, sacrificial examples of Christian living. As a result, they were highly esteemed by the church. Their inspiring example first awakened my interest in church eldership.
“This [experience in seminary] and other similar experiences served only to stir my increasing conviction that eldership was a biblically sound doctrine that most churches either ignored or misinterpreted. . . . This subject is too important to the local church to be neglected or bogged down in confusion and error.”
Later, while attending seminary, my growing interest in eldership was vigorously challenged. During a class on church government which stubbornly resisted any notion of an elder-led church, I asked the professor, “But what do you do with all the scriptural texts on elders?”
He quickly responded, “Numbers of texts on elders mean nothing!”
This and other similar experiences served only to stir my increasing conviction that eldership was a biblically sound doctrine that most churches either ignored or misinterpreted.
Several years later, I was preparing a series of sermons on the doctrine of the Church. When I came to the subject of eldership, I was shocked to discover that there was no full-length book on the subject, only small booklets, journal articles, and chapters within books. It finally ignited my desire to write on the subject of eldership.
Literally tens of thousands of churches worldwide practice some form of eldership because they believe it to be a biblical teaching. Unfortunately, because the advocates of eldership have not adequately articulated this doctrine, there are persistent, crippling misconceptions about eldership that hinder churches from practicing authentic biblical eldership. This subject is too important to the local church to be neglected or bogged down in confusion and error.
That’s why I wrote Biblical Eldership: An Urgent Call to Restore Biblical Church Leadership. This book (and the Biblical Eldership summary booklet) is aimed primarily at churches that practice eldership but may misconstrue its true biblical nature.
Next chapter: Biblical Eldership Defined