Training New Elders - Lesson 4

Welcome to the final session. This session is going to be Q&A. We're going to field some questions from the studio audience, and the hope here is that by answering these questions, it colors in the picture for you a little bit more based on the content that's already been shared.

When we move to the three sessions of training the future elders, the first one you called basics and a lot of emphasis on how to pray. This is a question that I think all Christians have asked themselves, but how would you answer someone? I guess it's a very practical question. How would you answer someone who says, well, my problem with my prayer life is that I have unanswered prayers.

Why does God not answer my prayers? Is that something you would handle in the meeting or would you take them out to dinner? That's a fun question. So immediately, I think of two answers. If I put myself in the room training new elders and that question gets asked, the first thing I would probably do because I'm training elders is I would ask all of the people in the room, how would you answer that? Because I'm training elders.

And this is a real biblical question. It's a real discipleship question. And so I'm using it immediately as a way to train the elders.

Well, what do you think? How would you guys answer this? You're talking with a congregation member and they ask you this question. And so I'm going to use that as training in the setting. The second thing I thought of is this is the reason why we give our elders a lot of resources.

And so one of those resources is a real thick systematic theology. And so I would point out to them, well, here's what you do. Go to the section on prayer and the systematic theology, and it's going to tackle praying, how God answers prayer, how to deal with it when you feel like you're not getting an answer or it's not the answer you want.

And so I refer them to the resources that we give them. In Elder Basics, you talk about the different resources you supply. And you've mentioned a couple of books, Peacemaker, Wayne Gruden's Systematics.

What else do you give the elders to start training them? What other resources? Yeah. So we read Peacemaker and talk about it. We read Christian Beliefs, which is the condensed systematic theology and talk about that.

We give all of our elders the 1600-page systematic theology just as a reference for them. We also give them a series of three books called Every Moment Holy, which is a collection of prayers pre-written for just about any life scenario you can think of. Praying for the sick, praying for someone in the hospital, praying during difficult seasons, praying during wonderful seasons, praying for the loss of a pet, praying to christen a home.

You name the scenario and it's in Every Moment Holy. So we think those are really practical resources for our elders because what they get to do then is if they're asked to go somewhere and pray for something, they can kind of flip through those volumes, find a prayer and either adapt it or just use it right from that book. The other nice thing about those books is they're beautiful, like the way they're put together.

So you can show up to any setting and not be embarrassed that you're holding this book. So Every Moment Holy, three volumes, I believe for that set. We also have, we create a Google Drive, a folder for our elders.

And so we try to put all of the church resources in one place for them that they have access to. So all of our position papers, our bylaws, church calendar, like anything we think that they're need to readily access at any given moment, we try to compile all of that in one place for them. So they have one place to go to find it.

In the second training session, you're going over the book Peacemaker. And I think one of the most difficult things has to be, how do you determine what's primary and what's secondary? At what point do you say, this is something that we will defend and argue about? Yes. And this isn't something that we're going to argue, we're going to agree to disagree on.

How do you draw that line at a practical level? Yeah, that's a very important question. So primary doctrines, doctrines that we cannot disagree about, virgin birth, whether or not Jesus physically resurrected, these kinds of things, if we do not hold to them, it's no longer Christianity. So primary is pretty easy.

The problem shows up when there are secondary things that people want to make primary things, or actually tertiary level things that people want to make secondary or primary. So the way we explain it in our churches, there's primary Orthodox Christianity. We're not fudging on that.

It is what it is. Then there are secondary issues where you say, they're not primary, but you have to decide what you believe about these things because it matters in the way you function as a church. So an example would be, do you believe that females can serve as pastors? It's not primary to the Christian faith, but you have to decide what you believe about that because you're going to function a certain way as a church.

So these are secondary matters where you say they're important, but they're not primary. And so we have position papers that spell out what we would consider secondary issues, but we want to be very clear that this is the way we see the scriptures and this is how we function as a church. And we're not going to argue over it.

So we tell people, we just don't argue. We just say, this is where we've landed. And if you're comfortable here in this congregation, in this setting, then this is how we roll.

And one of the things that we're really focused on is, keep primary things primary, secondary things secondary. And then there are other things that are, I don't want to say they're not important because they're in the Bible, but how you believe the end times are going to play out. It's one of those things where we say, have intelligent conversation, explore the scriptures, but be okay with the fact that there are other people in this church that don't see it exactly the way you see it.

And that's okay. And so we're trying to teach our people that unity does not always mean everybody agreeing on everything. Unity means we agree on the principle things.

And the other things are okay to talk about, but we don't fight about them. And so in our church, we say primary, secondary, and then the rest of it. And we just really, really emphasize that we don't argue over things that are secondary or third level things.

And you're using your position papers to define that point between primary and secondary. What about your statement of faith? How detailed is that? Can you use that to distinguish primary from secondary? Yeah. Our statement of faith, I think would be primary.

And then our position papers, I think normally fall in that secondary category. And actually a lot of the work our position papers do is spelled out. So let's take, for example, creation, theories of creation.

Do you think it was seven literal 24 hour days or one of the other theories of how that played out and what the scriptures are communicating? Some of the work that our position papers do is try to spell out, there are views in our opinion that are legitimate Christian views. If you spell out, let's say four different views, you say you're probably going to land in one of those four, but you also need to recognize that the other three camps are legitimate Christian views that take seriously the authority of scripture. And even there in our position papers, we're trying to coach our people on what it means to be unity and to major on the majors and minor on the minors, and that we're not going to argue over the minor things.

How long have you had this elder vetting, training, deploying? How long have you had this process in place at your church? Yeah, I would give two answers to that. One would be a long time, and a lot of it was just being done intuitively, but you couldn't go to a document and say, here's step one, step two, step three, step four. So it was happening intuitively and informally.

I would say in the last five years, we really did the work of saying, okay, let's make sure that we have this written down and we understand all the steps in the process. And the reason that happened is because as we're adding church campuses, it was no longer adequate to just do it by word of mouth and, hey, here's how we do this. And we had to write everything down and say, okay, campus pastors, here's the process and here's how we do it.

So adding more church campuses has forced us to document more things and bring more clarity and detail to it. So two answers, a long time, intuitively and informatively, and probably about five years or so, very specifically and written down. And have you been kind of the key person who's been driving this refinement and recording process for your church? Yes.

Yeah. So what indicators do you keep an eye on in the life and health of your elder community of your church that indicates to you like, we might need to do more refining in our process? Yeah, that's a really good question. So whether it is a pastor on staff, like someone we've hired or someone serving an elder role or someone serving in a trustee role, really any role in the church, every once in a while, something pops up, a character flaw becomes evident, or they handle a situation so poorly that you wonder, well, how do they handle that so poorly? We thought we could trust them with this level of responsibility and authority.

And those kinds of scenarios always cause you to question your process. What did we miss? Is there something we need to add to the process? Those are always good questions to ask. Sometimes the answers you do refine your process a little bit, like let's make sure we ask this particular question.

Sometimes you just have to admit it doesn't matter if you have a thorough process, it's never going to be perfect and you're not going to catch everything all the time. People are people, right? So we're dealing with flawed, fallen human beings all the time that are being sanctified by God's spirit. So there is no perfect process that is going to negate any possible negative behavior or scenario in the future.

So you obviously have a well-defined process. How often do you communicate what elders are, what they do to the congregation at large? You're going to have turnover and stuff in your church. How do you make sure that everybody's familiar? How often do you do that? Once a year in a worship service on the weekend.

And all of our worship services, all of our campuses are exactly the same. Same worship set. I mean, obviously different bands, different musicians, different campus pastors, but our worship services are constructed and then they're executed at all of our church campuses.

And so once a year, by definition, there is a section in a worship service where we play the video that explains what elders and trustees do in our church. And then we have the elders and trustees at every campus walk out on the stage and we pray for them and the role that they serve in our church. So that's bringing awareness to the role of elder and trustee in our church.

And then in terms of the process, we don't publish the process. Everything we've covered in these training sessions, we don't communicate that to the entire church. But certainly the document that goes through the process, everybody, our campus pastors, anyone in senior leadership, elders, trustees, they all know the process because they've gone through it.

And this one might seem like a little bit of a curve ball and maybe out of place, but you had talked about the importance in your church for all key leaders to have an accountability partner. What are the qualifications for a person who might be a key leader in their own church? We're saying, I need an accountability partner. Who should they consider? What are the hallmarks of a really, it seems like a really dangerous relationship to me.

And so how do you go about just discerning who would be a good fit as what kind of advice do you give to elders and key leaders about having an accountability partner? Yeah, that's another good question. So a few of the things that we mentioned, you want to pick somebody that's for lack of a better phrase at the same spiritual maturity as you are, right? So you don't want to be a pastor. So for me as lead pastor of the church, I would not select someone that's only been walking with Jesus for two years.

That's more of a mentoring relationship. You're looking for someone that is your maturity equal. That would be one.

You're looking for somebody that knows you well. And so it's just not a random, hey, you need accountability partner. I need an accountability partner.

These things become troublesome though, because when we have someone new come on the pastoral staff, let's say they moved from out of town. Well, they don't know anybody in our geographic location very well. And so we give a little grace, give them some time to figure out who do they click with, who would be a maturity equal to them.

You're looking for somebody, we often say you really want someone that's around. Okay. So for example, for me, my accountability partner is a senior director on our church staff.

We've been friends since we were in our young twenties. I know him, he knows me, I trust him inherently. And the reason I like him to be my accountability partner is he knows because he sees me.

He sees me in meetings. He sees me in the hallways. He knows me well enough that I can't bluff him.

So if it was just someone that lives five states away and it was just a phone call or a Zoom call, you can kind of bluff your way through those conversations. But if someone sees you every day and say, all right, you look a little tired, or you seem a little edgy, or how are things going with this or that? So we think geographic proximity matters. Someone that sees you and can observe you regularly.

So geographic proximity, same maturity level, these kinds of things are the kinds of things that we coach when we're saying pick an accountability partner. I have a follow-up question to that. I work a lot with ministry leaders and pastors.

And one of the things that I've seen over the years is they have no one to talk with outside the system where they are able to communicate things in an open way for feedback. Do you encourage or discourage mentors or other accountability partners that are not a part of the church? Yeah. So in terms of accountability partners, we say it needs to be someone around, which almost always means part of the church.

Not by definition, but just because that's the way it works. But in terms of pastors having sounding boards, people to talk to, trusted people, yes, that's, of course, a very wise thing to do. So whether that is a professional counselor or sometimes pastors find a few other pastor friends that that understand the pressures of pastoring in the local church.

And they say once a year, we get together and we just spend, you know, two or three days at a cabin and we pray and we talk and we decompress and we encourage one another. Yeah, of course, all of those things are incredibly helpful for a pastor to be healthy. Well, thanks, Eric, for your time on Q&A.

We really appreciate it. Thanks.