Andrew Fountain - Leadership and Elders in the N.T. Church

Sermon notes - Leadership and Elders in the N.T. Church

1. What it means to follow a N.T. model

1. We can do what we like unless the N.T. forbids it
   • e.g. holy prayer mats (hey, it’s not forbidden and we can make money)

B. Don’t do it unless it’s in the N.T.

C. Follow the N.T. pattern when we are given one

• If there is a clear pattern in the N.T related to something spiritual in the church, we should follow it

2. Overview of leadership in the N.T.

A. There is a great diversity in kinds of leadership—everything we do involves it

• When we look around the world, we see different kinds of leadership
• You can summarize it in three kinds:
• positional: after many years of driving a TTC bus, Tom is promoted to be an inspector
  • Drivers now have to obey him because of his position
• relational: Jenny organizes a block party and all the neighbours support her because she is so well liked.
• gifting and results: Mary gets asked to speak at so many events because people find her so encouraging.

B. Leadership shows in many different ways

• using gifting,
• taking responsibilies
• discipling others
• showing/asking for accountability
• theological decisions
• administration tasks or teams
• everyone in the church can be involved

• Leadership is in with the other gifts: just another way of serving the body
• We also see the idea of servant leadership.
• That leads us on to the model of Christ

C. Christ as leader

• Servant leader who empowers his people
  • and even washes their feet
• I’ve read quite a number of recent books on leadership
• There is more and more support for the effectiveness of a servant model for leadership
• “Leader/follower” model is broken
  • instead a “Leader/leader” model, where the leaders says:
  • I’m going to tell you what needs doing,
  • but I’m not going to tell you how to do it
  • Instead I will help you think it out, and serve you in any way I can.
• Jesus has told us what needs doing: “Go into all the world and make disciples...”
  • But we have to figure it out
  • He told us that he is the source of new life
    • We must now take this message to the world
    • Do you have this new life?

D. Three Common Leadership Structures

• Everything is done by votes
• Difficult to have a vision
• Tends to provoke disagreement (e.g. the colour of the carpet)
• Hard for the leaders to lead
• Leads to politics (winning votes)
• Leaders can be afraid to take courageous stands or they may get voted down
• Difficult for the church to exercise any discipline

• Easy to have a clear vision
• Can very easily become controlling
• Can become cult-like
• No mechanism if it becomes unbalanced
• Disagreement is often stifled
• Leads to undercurrents of discontent that can suddenly erupt
• or people leave, very badly hurt

• Model: Shareholders / Board of Directors / Executive Management team (CEO, CFO etc.)
  • Shareholders = members (get to vote who the deacons are)
  • Directors = deacons (get to hire and fire the pastoral staff)
  • Executives = pastoral staff (have to perform well enough [=grow the church] to get a raise or will get fired)
• Probably the worst of the three
• Encourages politics and voting strategies
• Leaders are unwilling to take risks or follow their vision
• The board members tend to be successful businessmen rather than spiritual leaders
• Problems can easily split the church since this model encourages factions and “parties”
• People can get very hurt
• Pastors and their families can get destroyed

E The New-Testament Church

• Acts 6:1–5 (dealing with a practical problem)

• There was a complaint
• There was good communication—the 12 called everyone
• Not a democratic vote
• The core decision was made by the spiritual leaders
• but some of the decision was delegated
• everyone was pleased
• Acts 13:1–3 (Following God’s direction for a new venture)
  • A larger leadership team (not just elders) gathered to seek God’s will (fasting and praying)
  • They obeyed God without calling a church meeting
  • There was a strong prophetic gifting among the leadership
  • Paul and Barnabas were “send, not went”
• Acts 14:27–28
  • When Paul returned, he shared everything with the whole church
  • Accountable to the people who sent them
• Acts 15:2f (Theological problem—should the Gentiles have to keep the Jewish ceremonial laws?)
  • Paul was accountable to the other leaders
  • Apostles and elders
  • Meeting was chaired by James (brother of Jesus) 15:13
• Acts 20:28–31 (Elders are mentioned, and their responsibilities)

• Paul has an apostolic relationship with the church
• They have to be “gatekeepers” for the church
• This includes judging apostles (Rev. 2:2 in Ephesus)
• Titus 1:5 (Paul delegates the job of appointing elders)
  • Timothy also had this responsibility
  • Once a church had elders, they could be independent (but still interdependent)
• 1 Tim 3:8–16 (Deacons)
  • Only mentioned a couple of times in the N.T.
  • Phoebe (Rom 16:1) is called a deacon, and her work was to provide for people who had needs, and be funded to do this by the church. (A far cry from the “business model”)
• History of the Early Church
  • Dropped down to having only one elder per church (used the name Bishop)
  • More and more power in the hands of this person
  • Then there would be one over a whole city (Bishop of that city)
  • They were the only people allowed to baptize or lay on hands
  • Other people’s gifts tended to be suppressed
  • The politics increased massively after 312AD when Emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the official religion of the empire.
    • He needed to control the church through bishops
    • At that time people wrote that the supernatural gifts were diminishing

F. How it works out in practice

1. Every believer has spiritual gifts
   • Leadership is required for every part of the church
     • Leadership is male and female
     • It is closely tied to exercising gifts, which every believer has
   • The purpose is for the church to mature, (by increasing in quality and quantity)
   • Everyone is valued, and their ideas are valued
2. Leadership is done in relationship
   • Not “Lording it over others”
   • Relationship with those who have an apostolic (wider than one church) ministry
     • If done properly this defuses tensions that might build up by providing an outside perspective
   • Accountable (“send, not went”)
   • There is good communications

• How we do it at Newlife
  • Elders’ meetings and extended elders’ meetings
  • Core leadership team
  • ELT (Extended Leadership team)
  • Prayer meeting

3. Elders: role, requirements & appointment

• What are elders?
  • I googled images and found this?

• The New Testament using two words interchangeably: Elder and Overseerer
• Where does the term come from?
  • In ancient Israel, the old men of the city would sit in the gateway
  • They had two roles:
    • They would decide who was allowed into the city, keeping out those who would be a threat
    • People would bring legal decisions to them and they would judge
  • This became the model for the synagogue in Jesus’s time (no longer a requirement to be old)
• We saw that back in the Acts 20 passage:

• Their role would be like fathers in a family
  • In the New Testament, elders are only male
  • That is not because women could not do a good job
  • It’s because God has set the church up to model a family
    • elders have the role of fathers
  • There is always a plurality
  • Almost always there is a “lead elder” who takes a lead in setting the vision
  • Several of the elders may be full-time
  • God will hold them accountable for caring for the people in the body
• The church has suffered historically through women’s leadership gifts not being used

1 Timothy 3:1-7

1. This saying is trustworthy: “If someone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a good work.”
2. The overseer then must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, an able teacher,
3. not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not contentious, free from the love of money.
4. He must manage his own household well and keep his children in control without losing his dignity.
5. But if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for the church of God?
6. He must not be a recent convert or he may become arrogant and fall into the punishment that the devil will exact.
7. And he must be well thought of by those outside the faith, so that he may not fall into disgrace and be caught by the devil’s trap.

Titus 5–9

5. The reason I left you in Crete was to set in order the remaining matters and to appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.
6. An elder must be blameless, the husband of one wife, with faithful children who cannot be charged with dissipation or rebellion.
7. For the overseer must be blameless as one entrusted with God’s work, not arrogant, not prone to anger, not a drunkard, not violent, not greedy for gain.
8. Instead he must be hospitable, devoted to what is good, sensible, upright, devout, and self-controlled.
9. He must hold firmly to the faithful message as it has been taught, so that he will be able to give exhortation in such healthy teaching and correct those who speak against it.

• Note that Timothy is doing the appointing
  • Apostolic oversight
  • Value of an outside perspective
• David Campbell has been working with Newlife Church for the last two years and we look forward to appointing elders very shortly.

Moving forward

• As we move forward at Newlife, prepare to be stretched!
• Jesus said:

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mat 28:20)

• Being a disciple means growing to maturity, so expect to be encouraged to grow!
• The Parable of the Duck, the Rabbit and the Squirrel

• Image sources: duck, squirrel & rabbit Wikipedia: CC BY 2.5
• Both leadership and gifting take many forms in the church, and we need to encourage the diversity, not discourage it.

Updated on 2016-05-10 by Andrew Fountain