Elder Position Paper - Lesson 1

I. Introduction

Welcome to this class on writing your own elder position paper. This is one of the single most important things that you can do if you really want to have a biblical leadership structure in your church. I hope you do because if you have unqualified elders, they’re going to tear the church down. If you have qualified elders, it’s going to raise the church up; it’s going to make the staff’s job a lot easier. It’s just that things go right when you have biblical elders. 

The end game in all of this is to use this elder position paper that you’re going to be writing on your own—after we go through the material—and then you’re going to use that as a grid when you’re looking at new elders. If you don’t have this kind of grid, and people come by and say, “Well, he’d be a good elder, or he’d be a good elder”—based on what? How do you know he’s going to be a good elder? Getting your guidelines straight, getting your qualifications understood, having the elder board as a whole understand it, and having the church as a whole understand it. This is a critical first step if you really want to have an effective leadership structure in your church. 

The history of this process for me was very interesting. I did it when I was pastoring, I sat down and looked up all the verses I could find on leadership. Now, most of them come out of 1 Timothy 3, 1 Timothy 5, and Titus 1. But there’s a smattering of other verses that talk about leadership. I took them all, then I grouped them, so similar verses were together. Then we had an all-day retreat where the elders—I guess I was the only staff person there, but I was an elder as well. We got together in a kind of remote location, and we spent the entire day going through because there are a lot of requirements about leaders that are obvious. It doesn’t take interpretation. They can’t be drunkards. Okay, but can they socially drink? They have to be faithful to their spouse. Well, what if he was unfaithful before he became a Christian, or he was unfaithful 30 years ago and has been faithful ever since? See, some of these requirements are very straightforward, but a lot of them require interpretation. That’s why I called this the “Elder Position Paper.” It wasn’t “Bill’s Elder Position Paper.” It’s that I needed—and it was the right thing to do—to have the elders as a whole make the decisions and then present it to the church and use that as the guide for finding new elders.

II. The Nature of Pastoral Lists

That’s the history of the process and why it’s so important. But before we get into some of the specifics, I wanted to cover some things in general. Here are eight general observations. Most of them apply to the lists in the pastorals because the lists aren’t, at first glance, what they seem to be; they’re easy to misunderstand. And by the way, if you want to know more of the biblical background behind my decisions, you can always pick up my commentary on the pastorals in the Word Biblical series. Almost everything I say, if not everything I say, is in this with a ton more documentation. I also wrote one of the chapters in the book on biblical leadership, so there’s a lot of stuff in this book as well (“The Noble Task,” in Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader). If you want to get deeper into any one of these points, you can look at them.

Here are the eight general observations. Number one, the lists in the pastorals are what’s called, ‘ad hoc,’ and this is the key to understanding them all. The pastorals were written to address specific people in specific historical circumstances, and it’s not often pictured that way. Sometimes we talk about, “Oh, this is what Paul said to pastors.” Well, neither Timothy nor Titus were pastors, they were apostolic delegates sent into a certain situation. Timothy was sent to Ephesus. Paul had been there for three years, the church was really messed up, so Timothy was sent in to try to deal with the situation. Second Timothy is unlike 1 Timothy completely. It’s an incredibly personal letter. Paul, I believe, wants to see his best friend before he dies, so it’s a very personal letter. Paul and Titus had a missionary journey in Crete, and the letter of Titus is the follow-up to that missionary journey and things that came up for a brand new church on Crete. 

So, they’re not these general pastoral letters that we often—in fact, if we could get rid of the phrase ‘pastoral letters,’ it’d be really, really good. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.

They were written in very specific situations, and we have to interpret what Paul says about leadership in light of the historical situation. Specifically, when it comes to leadership qualifications, Paul is looking at the false teachers. He’s looking at what they’re teaching, and he’s saying, “Well, an elder can’t be like that. They have to be like this.” That’s what ‘ad hoc’ means. It’s addressing the specific situation where Paul is trying to counter the false teachers in Ephesus. For example, they were teaching false things, so an elder has to be able to teach what is true. The false teachers were sleeping with the widows. An elder has to be faithful in his marriage. See how it goes? So, a lot of these are universal truths, but if you’re really going to understand the gist of these lists of qualifications, we need to understand that it’s against that particular backdrop. This becomes really important in just a little bit. So, let’s talk about five implications that come out of the ad hoc nature of these lists. 

First of all, these lists do govern elders and deacons, okay? If a person is a drunkard, like the false teachers were, they can’t be elders, they can’t be deacons. If they can’t teach and counteract the false teaching of the opponents, then they can’t be an elder. So, these lists do govern the selection of elders.

Secondly, it’s necessary—I’m going to talk more about this later on, but this is one of those things that really bothers me when I talk to people about, “Well, how do you find your elders?” Paul says, “Therefore, it is necessary because of the high view of an overseer’s position of being an elder” (1 Timothy 3:2). It is therefore necessary: they must be a certain kind of person. In other words, if they’re not faithful in their marriage, then they can’t serve. We’re going to talk a lot more about that in the next lesson. But these are not optional. I’ve run into a lot of people who think these lists are optional. They’re not optional. It is necessary; they must be a certain kind of person. And yet, this is not a checklist. There’s a tendency to think, “If I could lay out all 30—whatever the requirements are—and go, check, check, check, check, check, then that’s all we really need to do.” But it’s more complicated than that, and it has to do with the ad hoc nature of the list.

For example, Paul says that they must be faithful in their marriage, and their kids have to be faithful or good kids. Does that mean if a person is single, they can’t be an elder? Or if they only have one child, can they not be an elder? That would mean that Paul, Timothy, and Jesus would not qualify to be an elder in the Ephesian church. It also contradicts Paul’s preference for celibacy. But it also kind of helps us understand some of the other oddities in the list. For example, it says the deacons should be tested first. After they prove themselves, they can be appointed as deacons. Why not elders? Well, I think based on 1 Timothy 5, you can’t say elders have to go through a time of testing. But again, Paul is going down this list. He’s thinking of the false teachers, and, for some reason, he didn’t think about a testing period when it came to elders. But in the second half of 1 Timothy 3, he’s talking about deacons, and they have to be tested. If you’d ask, “Paul, did you also mean that to apply to the elders?” He’d say, “Well, of course, if it’s good for the deacons, it should be good for the elders—even more so for the elders because they are the ruling bodies in the church.”

That’s the kind of thing you have to deal with. Also, the lists you look at the different lists, they’re not identical. Well, if Paul had had a strict—here are the 30 checkpoints you’ve got to go through—then all the lists would be identical. But they’re not. They’re different. So, this is just Paul thinking out loud, thinking as he’s writing, thinking of the false teachers to say, “Don’t be like them, be like that.” They’re necessary, they’re essential requirements, but that’s the nature of the lists.

Fourthly, the key in all of this is to understand that Paul’s primary concern is that the elders be a certain type of person. If they’re married, they have to be faithful. What about people who aren’t married? Can they sleep around? Well, of course not. If you’re not married, you’d be expected to have the same kind of fidelity as you relate to women as married men do to their wives. So, it’s the kind of person that’s really important. 

He says, “You have to manage your children well.” “Well, I don’t have any children.” How are you at managing people? I mean, the home is the microcosm of the church, so if you want to know how someone’s going to do in the church as a whole, just look at how they manage their families. But if they don’t have a family, if they don’t have children, that doesn’t mean they can’t be elders.

It just means the test, the qualifications are going to be a little different as you’re looking at that person. But that’s the key to these lists. They’re essential, they’re necessary, they’re to be understood against the historical context, but they are describing the kind of person.

Fifthly—I want to be a little careful here because I don’t want to add to Scripture. Is Paul saying these are the qualifications but no others? I don’t think so because, let me ask you a question this way: can you be a good person and not be a good leader? Absolutely. There are a lot of good people in the church that are not even remotely qualified to be leaders because they just don’t have the skill set of being a leader. A person’s character is one of those primary indicators as to whether a person can be a leader in the church. It’s interesting, almost all the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3—most are character qualifications. You have to be a good person, but just because you’re a good person doesn’t mean you are a leader, at least not at the church level. Are there other things that we should look at? Well, we could ask whether this person is reflective or contemplative. Is it a praying person? Well, that comes under the requirement of being spiritually mature. That’s covered. Are they relational? That comes under the covering of managing people. Are they willing to act on faith? If your church has a growth plan or a plan to impact your neighborhood and you really believe that’s from God and the finances get tight, do you have the faithfulness to say, “This is what God has called us to do and we believe God will provide. We will go ahead and impact this neighborhood for Christ”? That’s a level of faith that not a lot of people have. 

Do you have the wisdom to know when to say yes or to say no? That’s not really enumerated in these lists, but it is an important qualification. Or my favorite is courage. Do you, as a person, have courage to do the right thing at the right time in the right way? That’s what I think courage is. I was talking to someone once, their church had lynched their pastor, basically, and he came to the fired pastor years later to apologize and asked, “Why did you do this?” The fired pastor said, “I was a coward. I didn’t have the courage to stand up to what was happening in the elder board.” See, that person is a good person, but he’s not qualified to be a leader in the church. Do you have the courage to take a minority position? If you really feel it’s the right thing to do, do you have the courage to confront the elders? If they’re doing something like lynching a pastor, and that happens quite a bit, frankly—are you in a position—do you have the courage to stand up and say, “No, this isn’t right. We’re not going to do it this way.” So, the general question is: are there other requirements that you would want to have for the leaders in your church? I think you have to be open to saying, again, because of the ad hoc nature of the list—I think you have to be willing to say, “Yes, there may be some other things that we’re looking for. But again, that’s going to be a clarification that you are going to make in your church and in your context. Those are the five qualifications.

III. Biblical Roles & Responsibilities

The third thing I wanted to address, again, is to recognize that the pastorals don’t give an explicit list of duties. Now, this is probably something that you’ll determine in your bylaws. But everybody, no matter what form of church structure you have—people find their biblical basis in the pastorals. I mean, you can take the evidence and work with it and come up with almost any form of government you want. The pastorals don’t give an explicit structure out for your church, but there are specific roles. If you look at just the names of those roles, then you get an idea of what the duties are.

But you’ll have to decide in your bylaws what the duties are. The first is, you can call them ‘overseers,’ ‘elders;’ the Greek is episkopoi or presbyteros. This is the role that has general oversight. If you look at the words that Paul uses to describe this role, he’ll talk about things like they manage; they are the shepherd of the flock, they tend God’s flock. So, the top level of leadership in the church is the elders. Now, I know that I’m going up against a lot of church tradition when I say that. Especially if you’re in the Southern part of the United States, you’re probably used to deacons having power. But some people have nominating committees, and they have all different kinds of things. But the pastorals are very, very clear that the elder, the overseer, the presbyter, has the leadership authority to make the decisions for the church. 

The other position is deacon, diakonos. Deacons were added to deal with the kind of the day-to-day needs of the church. When you look at young churches in the New Testament, they don’t have deacons. So, when Paul, at the end of his first missionary journey, went back, he appointed elders. He didn’t appoint deacons. Titus was written to a very young church in Crete. There was no need for deacons. There are no qualifications for deacons, only for elders. But the process is that as a church grows, then you start having more responsibilities that the elders can’t handle. That’s when you start seeing deacons. 

It’s the pattern you get in Acts 6. Now, the noun, ‘deacon,’ is not used here, nor the word for ‘elder.’ But as the church started to grow, the apostles said they couldn’t manage everything, including the distribution of the food. So, they appointed people who would serve. And the Greek word translated ‘serve’ is the verb form of the noun diakonos, diakoneo. The actual words aren’t used, but the idea is that the church is growing. The apostles who were functioning as the elders at that time weren’t able to manage it, so they appointed people who could appoint it. And so that’s the pattern.

The difference between elders and deacons is that deacons are not required to be able to teach. But most of the character qualifications for elders are shared by deacons. They’re all supposed to be really good, spiritually mature people, but deacons are not required to teach. That’s the function of the elders.

What are the implications for all this? Well, there’s a couple. Number one, the church is led by elders; not deacons, not nominating committees, not executive committees, and, in my opinion, not the congregation. I’ve read the argument for congregational rule. People that I really respect hold that position. I just don’t think they’re right. There are leaders in the church. It’s not a democracy. It’s not that everyone does what is right in his or her own eyes (cf., Judges 21:25). There is a leadership structure. We had it in the synagogue that Jesus was raised in, and it carries over into the early church. So, the church is led by elders, not by a governing board, over the elders.

Frankly, the nominating committee is the most powerful committee in the church, right? Whoever controls the nominating committee can roll off people they don’t like and can roll on people they do like. They’re actually in charge of the church. But there’s no authority (human authority) over elders in a biblical church.

Also, deacons are not just trustees. I’ve been in churches where there are trustees, and they’re just people who take care of the building, take care of the land. I don’t mean ‘just,’ because those are important tasks. But they’re not making decisions for the spiritual health of the church. And some people, at least historically, too—there’s a bunch of this stuff in the commentary—that deacons were viewed as a steppingstone to being an elder. But that’s just not biblical either. Deacons need to be good, godly people who are involved in the day-to-day affairs of running the church. But you don’t want to say, “Well, I’m just a deacon.” I’m a deacon, or I’m an elder. Be really careful at downplaying deacons. It’s a valuable role. It’s not a steppingstone to being an elder.

IV. Character Requirements

Number four, I wanted to say something, and I’m going to contradict what I said in the commentary. Commentary writers can change their minds. I really changed my mind on this: it is stated in academic circles that the qualifications Paul has for elders are very low. They say that because there are not many overtly spiritual qualities that Paul is listing. I mistakenly agreed with that assessment. Then I became a pastor, and I found that the qualifications Paul puts down are extremely high. One of my favorite quotes, I’m going to read it out of this, it’s page 441 from Luke Timothy Johnson, and I love this quote: “‘It is required of stewards [elders] that they be found trustworthy’ (1 Corinthians 4:2). Fidelity to one spouse, sobriety, and hospitality may seem trivial virtues to those who identify authentic faith with momentary conversion or a single spasm of heroism.” In other words, if your view of conversion is wrong, if you think it’s just a single transaction, then these other qualities may seem to be irrelevant. 

Johnson continues: “But to those who have lived longer and recognize how the administration of a community can erode even the strongest of characters and the best of intentions, finding a leader who truly is a lover of peace and not a lover of money can be downright exciting.”

I love that quote from Johnson because my experience and his experience and the experience of many people is that to find good people who meet the qualities, there’s slim pickings in many churches. They are not low-end qualities. This is why, by the way, that I think this—I used to say my primary job as a preacher is to work on the sermon. I wish I had said my primary task is to raise up the next generation of leaders and then do my time developing sermons. In the long term, the creation of a healthy church with a healthy leadership structure would far outlast anything I could do as a preacher. I really wish I had spent a lot more time almost viewing the elders and the staff as my small groups and really pouring my time into them. That would have created a healthier work environment. Low standards? No, tremendously high standards. The fourth general observation I wanted to make was relative to the idea that these are high standards.

V. Modern Considerations

Five, who are the overseers today? This is actually a difficult question. It’s pretty much outside the scope of what I want to do in this class. But this is the relationship between elders, the lead pastor (if you have one), the pastoral staff, and staff in general. What is the relationship between those? It’s actually a much more complicated question today. What makes it worse is that the first century churches were basically small groups. They met in homes. I stood in the ruins of these small homes. You can’t get more than 20—I don’t know, maybe 30 people. I’ve been told that Caiaphas’ home could hold 150 and that it was the biggest home in Jerusalem.

But most people’s homes were very small. They met in small homes. I doubt in a small group of 20 people, you would have two qualified elders because if you had two qualified elders, one of them would have his own small group and would have his own house church. So, it’s difficult to move. There’s an interpretive stage in moving from the first century to what we have today with our churches of 30,000 people. But it is an important question. Again, this will be in your bylaws. What is the relationship between these different groups of people? 

VI. Elder Authority &Conduct

The next thing is—and I just want to mention it in passing, because I don’t know where else to put it; I just want to say it here—I strongly believe that no individual elder has authority in and of himself. The authority is in the group of elders. Now, again, if you were all house churches, you had one elder per house church, then that’d be a little different. But in most of our churches today, they’re bigger than 20 people, you have multiple elders, hopefully qualified. It becomes a problem when one elder thinks that he can make any decision he wants to make. The elders are a group. I would strongly urge you to make sure that only the group makes decisions. If an elder goes off on his own and tries to exert his authority, you need to rein him back in. It’s the group as a whole that has authority. 

VII. Dangers of Unqualified Leadership

And finally, the most dangerous threat that you’re going to have in your church, it’s not from without. Now, if you were in Yemen, yes, the greatest danger would be from without. But for most of us, we’re not being beheaded. That’s not what goes on. That’s not what’s destroying our churches. What’s destroying our churches are bad leaders. I’m going to page 439, and I want to read this; it’s a half page, but I want to make sure that this is really clear. Sometimes I think I write better than I can speak: 

Paul has spent three years in Ephesus during his third missionary journey, a longer time than any other church that we’re aware of. When returning to Jerusalem, he met with the Ephesian elders [in Miletus] and gave them a stern and troubling prophecy: “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.” (Acts 20:28-30, ESV, emphasis added).

I really wish he had fleshed this out, but we’ll come back to it. The flock was “obtained with his own blood,” so this is really important; Christ died for the church. What happened—what Paul said was going to happen. In fact, we see that it did happen in 1 Timothy, men, and the Greek word is specifically a word for ‘men,’ so I think they’re elders—were “fierce wolves” and they devoured the group.

Continuing the reading: “God had apparently revealed to Paul that the Ephesian church was headed for conflict and not conflict from without, but conflict from within. In a healthy church, conflict should arise from without. In fact, it must. We’re salt and light (Matthew 5:13-14); in order to do our work, we must be different from the world.” I talked about why there’s going to be conflict with people who are outside. Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy, everyone who seeks to live a godly life will be persecuted. So outside persecution is not the problem. It actually is a sign of health. 

Continuing the reading: 

But this is not what was going to happen in Ephesus. The conflict was to come from within. There would be fierce wolves not sparing the flock, even though the church of God was obtained with Jesus’ blood. Those wolves were “men,” (andres [in Greek]), and from what we can tell, the false teachers in Ephesus were male. They were going to speak “twisted things,” which fits with Paul’s later descriptions to Timothy that they were, in fact, the elders of the church.

That story should scare you, because while it’s specifically talking about historical Ephesus, I think it becomes paradigmatic for what is going to happen in churches in general. In fact, there was one other paragraph. Let me read the final paragraph starting on page 442:

While Paul is prophesying specifically about Ephesus, life’s experiences have taught me that what happened historically is paradigmatic for much of what is happening in today’s church, and that the solution for today is the same as it was then: Appoint leaders who have the character (“above-approach”), calling (“able to teach”), and competencies (“manage his own household well”) to lead, and do so according to the processes outlined in Scripture.

Now, I don’t know what your church experience has been. I’ve had a very specific church experience. I’ve talked to a lot of pastors, many of whom are no longer in the pastorate because they were chewed up and spit out by the leadership of the church. Now, if you want to cast blame, there’s blame all over. Sometimes the preacher thinks he’s anointed of God and can do no wrong. Sometimes the congregation thinks it’s a democracy and will do whatever they want.

But many times—I think the majority of times—in which the leadership structure of the church isn’t biblical, and it destroys the church. So, on that somber note, these are the general observations that I wanted to make, so let’s get into the specifics.