Elder Position Paper - Lesson 8

I. Dealing with Elder Sin

In our last time together I’m going to combine just a couple of different things to close off our discussion. The first topic is that of sin. How do you deal with an elder who’s caught in sin? In 1 Timothy 5:19–20 it says, “Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. As for those who persist in sin.” In other words, they don’t repent once confronted… “rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest may stand in fear.” In the presence of all, and all of whom? All the people or all the elders. So that the rest, but the rest of whom? The rest of the elders or the rest of the church may stand in fear. You must get Matthew 18:15 in here: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” 

This whole issue needs to be laid out carefully in your bylaws. Anybody can sue anybody for anything, but if you have a set of bylaws where there’s a process laid out, and if elders have agreed to be bound by that, then that’s the most you can do to protect yourself. But legal issues aside, you want to have a clearly articulated process so that you hopefully will follow it if, unfortunately, the time ever comes. 

You have to make up your mind who the ‘all’ are. The conclusion we came to was he had to be confronted in front of all of the church so that all the elders would stand in fear. In other words, it’s a way to tell your leadership, “This is serious stuff, and we don’t want to just bad mouth you, but we are going to follow through.” That was our interpretive position. The whole thing about two witnesses, though—the guidelines from Deuteronomy—is really important. You cannot work on hearsay. You cannot work on gossip. If somebody is going to bring a charge against an elder, they first need to have gone to the elder. They need to have confronted the elder. Sometimes that’s scary, and sometimes I’ve been okay saying, “You can take someone with you.” But the biblical pattern is you go one-on-one. The simple fact of the matter is in some situations, the person is going to say, “Well, then I’m just not going to do anything. He’s not safe. I’m not willing to be alone with him.” So, you have to be sensitive to that issue. But you need to have two witnesses and deal with it directly. It can’t be gossip. It can’t be perceptions. 

If this elder does something wrong against you, you have an obligation to go to him one-on-one. If he doesn’t listen, then you take a witness. At that point, I would say maybe one of the other elders should be the witness. Go to him and present it. If he repents, great. But if he doesn’t repent, then you have to have an official church discipline statement in your bylaws, and you need to follow that process.

There are two things to consider here. What if it’s molestation? What if the sin is private between the elder and one person and, by the very nature of it, no one else knows about it? That’s a really difficult step especially in the case of molestation. The girl won’t want to be alone with the elder. So, you need to take that kind of situation into account. If it’s in the bylaws, you’re at least legally safe. The elder can know what to expect. This is what he agreed to. They’re going to bring witnesses. But you must make allowance for that situation.

The other thing to consider here is, please don’t enjoy it. There are not many churches that do church discipline. There was one I was familiar with, and we’d visit occasionally. You can always tell when they’re going to do church discipline. I think the lights were a little darker, and the songs were a little more somber, and then they would go into the process. But it always seemed that they enjoyed it. We’re a church that actually does church discipline. Don’t enjoy it! This is a painful thing. Understand that. No one’s going to say they enjoy it, but I think some people do enjoy it. But again, if it’s gossip, if someone comes to you—I remember a couple that interpreted my words or my mannerisms as if I liked the fact that people were going to hell. To their credit, they came to me and told me that. I said, “I am so sorry. Help me understand what I’m doing that would give you that impression.” We took care of the problem. I don’t want people to go to hell, okay? They were misreading what I said or how I said it. But if you just get that one-on-one, or in this case, one-on-two, which is fine because it was a couple, a lot of problems can be solved.

In terms of reflection on this point, do you have a church discipline statement in your bylaws? It must be there. How will you deal with an accusation of private sin? Very important. Are you willing to not work on gossip? “I’ve been talking to people, and there’s this perception that you like people going to hell.” Don’t do that. Don’t do that, which thankfully is not what happened to me. 

II. Appointing Elders

The other thing I wanted to mention is the whole issue of appointment. This is also a bylaws process. I’m going to put up some sections of the bylaws that I wrote just to give you my opinion, nothing more than an opinion, on some of these things. But how you appoint elders is a critical issue.

It’s relatively easy to get people into an organization. It’s generally really hard to get them out. Now, whether that’s a board of a church or a board of a ministry, it’s really hard to get rid of people that need to be taken out of power. So, it needs to be in your bylaws. The verse is 1 Timothy 5:22, “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others...” Boo! How would laying your hands on someone to appoint them to an elder position be sinful? Well, Paul continues in verse 22, “…keep yourself pure.” Paul continues, “The sins of some [men] are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later. So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden” (1 Timothy 5:24–25). You’ve got to take time. You cannot be in a rush, and it is better to leave an elder position vacant than to rush through a decision and get someone that’s not qualified. So please take your time. 

But I want to go back to, “nor take part in the sins of others” (1 Timothy 5:22). Why did Paul put that in there? I think it’s because if you don’t follow the biblical principles, if you’re hasty in appointing elders, and if those elders are not qualified and fall into sin, then you are somewhat responsible for their sin, and you are somewhat guilty of their sin. That should add a note of solemnity to your deliberations. One might say, “Oh, we’ve got to get an elder. We’ve got to get him in here right away.” Oh, really? What if he turns out bad? What if he molests people? Church leaders are responsible in many cases for molestation of kids. If you don’t follow the biblical principle, if you appoint someone to leadership and they fall into sin, to some degree, you share in that sin because you appointed them to leadership over God’s church. That’s what the verse is saying, all right? You have to be slow and deliberate because you don’t want to share in their sin. One way to do that is to make sure they go through a time of testing and see how they prove themselves. The seven-minute manager rule in 1 Timothy 3:10—this is about deacons, but it applies to the elders as well, I think. “…let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.” Why would you have a testing time for deacons and not have one for elders? Again, that’s the nature of the list. It’s ad hoc. It probably just didn’t occur to Paul when he was talking about the elders because elders and deacons are so similar, you can mesh these lists together and be faithful to the text. Test them first. 

But in 3:6, a verse on elders, it says the elder “must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.” How do you know someone’s not a recent convert and all the immaturity that so often goes with a recent convert? You have a period of testing. Again, being a deacon is not a stepping stone to being an elder. There are other ways to test people based on where you can see them going, what their giftedness and what their calling is. 

In terms of reflection, are you willing to accept the responsibility of a bad elder that you appointed too hastily? How long do you think a person should be a Christian before they’re considered elder material? What is that time frame? Two years? Five years? You need to set one up. In the process—this is really tricky, and it’s in the bylaws that I’m posting on the class—what is the process? Eric Ferris will give an entire class on this question. 

I was always comfortable with having elders build relationships with people. If you think a certain person could be an elder, then you pursue a relationship. I think you have to open up to the church to make suggestions. All those suggestions are considered. If there’s a significant question about someone, then I think that person who suggested their name needs to go to that person and say, “I suggested to the elder board that you’d make a great elder. But they’re really concerned about how you scream and yell at basketball games. How do you feel about that?” What you might find is that the person may say, “You know, I’m probably not ready to be an elder. Take my name off the list.” Or the person might explain why they do what they do.

But one-on-one, give them a chance. If everything works out, then it’s the elder’s responsibility to put a formal list together. I would really encourage you to post the list because you go to a church of, say, a thousand people, and you have maybe five names of new elders going up. Odds are people in that church that didn’t know that person was being considered, and they might not know something. Yet, they might know something that the elders don’t know.

I think posting is a good thing. If there’s a problem, you go to the person and say, “Hey, I saw your name posted as an elder. But I saw how you flirt with waitresses. I have a problem with that. What do you think?” Give them a chance to withdraw their own name. Then you move into the process. There needs to be a lot more detail than that, so that’s just a suggestion.

III. Signs of a Spirit-Appointed Elder

Two final notes: number one, in Acts Paul talks about how you are elders in the church that the Holy Spirit has appointed. I’d like to grab Paul and say, “Don’t say things when you don’t explain your words! How do you know when the Holy Spirit has appointed someone or called someone to leadership?” I had a pastor friend who said, “Just watch to see who bubbles to the top. Just watch. Take your time. See who bubbles to the top.” What you want to find is people who are eldering without the title. You want to find people involved in ministry and involved in people’s lives doing what they can to serve and to help who maybe don’t even really care if they have a title or not. So, look for people who are already eldering. 

IV. Final Exhortation

But let me close on this because it’s such an important issue because of the importance of the role of the overseer and the deacons. It is necessary that they be above reproach. This is what it means to be above reproach. It is necessary. Please do not appoint people to leadership that are unqualified. It will destroy your church. I promise you, given time, bad people in leadership will destroy your church unless God chooses to intervene in some very unusual way. It is necessary. 

Thanks. I hope you found this class helpful. Like I said at the beginning, writing the elder position paper was one of the best things I think I’ve ever done. It gave us guidelines for who to look for, a grid to pass people through to be able to decide what was obviously the case and what other things needed to be interpreted. You put the paper together, you vote on it by the elders, you present it to the people, you explain it to the people, and then you use it. Okay? It is necessary. Thanks.