Learning to
Number Our Days

Elders are a part of the biblically ordained offices for the New Testament church and, while many churches use elders poorly, this does not negate their value or their biblical import. Elders only work when they work. I offered several examples of prominent churches who had elders but some of the very individuals who committed themselves to serve as elders by accepting the position in a local assembly, rejected their office when the elder collective decided against their views, and they, for all practical purposes, abandoned the elder principle and exposed their churches to chaos, some publicly and others privately. Elders only work when they work. A tautology? Well, not really. Elders only work when those who are committed to the practice remain committed to the practice in trying times. Every church experiences difficult times of one sort or another. Elders are a part of God’s good gift to his churches to help lead and feed the flock, especially through stormy waters. So, what does the Bible teach about elders?

Elder plurality is an important part of this instruction. How many elders does any particular assembly need? There are plenty of proponents of elders who argue that a church must have an elder plurality regardless of church size. God never intended the church to be ruled by a single pastor but to be led by multiple elders. “Shared leadership has the benefits of balancing people’s weaknesses, lightening the workload, and providing accountability.” Amen and amen! Evidence of this may be found in Acts 11:30, the church at Antioch, which had multiple elders who commissioned Paul and Barnabas to Gospel ministry; Acts 15 which discusses Paul’s visit to the church at Jerusalem and his meetings with the “apostles and elders” (Acts 15:2, 4, 6, 22 and 16:4). Πρεσβύτερος, the Greek word from which we get our word elder, is in the plural in each of these verses, πρεσβύτεροι. Also see Acts 20:17 where Paul calls for a meeting of the elders of the church at Ephesus to assemble before him for discussions and Acts 21:18 where Paul returns to Jerusalem and meets with the elders. Mention should also be made of Tit 1:5 where Paul instructed Titus to appoint elders (pl) in every place (singular). James instructs the sick to call for the elders of the church to pray for the one sick (Jas. 5:14) while Peter instructs “elders among you” not to dominate their flock (1 Pet 5:1) calling himself an elder. Clearly many biblical churches had multiple elders. Doesn’t this settle the matter? Antioch, Jerusalem and Ephesus had multiple elders so churches today who wish to follow the biblical pattern should have multiple elders. Absolutely . . . almost. Are churches without an elder plurality, churches out of order?

The real issue to be addressed is the question of why these churches had multiple elders? Was the intention of the Holy Spirit, the ultimate author of Acts, to teach prescriptively that all New Testament churches have multiple elders, or is God recording in his Word the practical outworking of NT churches who recognized that as these churches grew, so too did their elder requirements. Large churches need more elders, smaller churches need fewer. So how many elders does a church need? As many as it needs. In the same way that the church at Jerusalem chose seven men to be the first deacons because two men were insufficient to meet the needs of the group, as churches increase in the number of people to be ministered to, there is a compelling need for more elders. Churches need as many elders as churches need!

Another consideration for the churches at Antioch, Jerusalem and Ephesus was the nature of these churches themselves. How did they meet, all together as large city churches with one in each location? Hardly. They met in houses, smaller house churches or small groups. The logistics of gathering the saints in these early days suggests that rather than one mega church in each city, there were multiple smaller gatherings requiring an expanded elder network to provide spiritual care. The story of Aquila and Priscilla certainly suggests this—they had house churches in Ephesus and Rome (1 Cor 16:19 and Rom. 16:3). This is an explanation for why Paul tells Titus to appoint elders in every town. The word πόλις signifies a population center as opposed to a rural area. It could be a city or a town. The important issue is that it was a population center. Again, no mega churches were in view here. More likely it was house churches. Hence the need for multiple elders.

I am not arguing that since today larger numbers of believers can meet in big church edifices, single pastors are all that is necessary. I am only suggesting that the city churches of the New Testament aren’t comparable to the big mega churches of today. They were the sum total of believers in Antioch, etc., not ABC Church at the corner of Appian Way and Rome Boulevard that was large enough to gather thousands of worshippers. Lakewood Church of Houston meets in the former Comcaq Center, former home to the Houston Rockets. The building can hold nearly 17,000. One man may be able to preach to 17k people, but one man cannot shepherd even a fraction of that number. Elder plurality in the early churches was driven by need. A church needs as many elders as it needs—in most cases, this means a plurality of elders.

What about a newly planted church? Should it begin with elder plurality? That depends. I remember reading in Christianity Today about the formation of Stonebriar Church in the Dallas area when Chuck Swindoll was president of Dallas Theological Seminary. Chuck decided in 1998, that he would start a Bible study at a country club. Two hundred people showed up for the first meeting. The next week, attendance doubled. It doubled again the following week. Within a few months, the church was running two thousand. Clearly from the beginning of this mega church, elder plurality was needed. How would a church even vet elders in this kind of rapid growth situation? There was a large SBC church in our area in the early 2000s that was planted to be a mega church. It had a full company of leaders from the beginning chosen ahead of time and paid for by the area association.

Few churches start like this today, especially in countries with small Gospel presence. American mega churches with superstar preachers may require large numbers of elders, but small fledgling churches in virgin territory may take a while before the congregation has a qualified plurality of men to serve as elders. Elder plurality is a goal to be aspired to, but not a minimum qualification in forming a church. A congregation needs as many as it needs. From the beginning, the church planter’s main job is to disciple leadership from whom the new assembly may select other elders and deacons. You have to start somewhere. Shared leadership is the goal to be sure.

I would make the same argument for deacon plurality. If one understands Acts 6 as the formation of the early diaconate, then the number chosen was based on the needs of the group—in Jerusalem’s case it was determined that seven men were needed. If this teaches us anything, it teaches us that a church needs as many deacons as it needs. In the early stages of church planting, a small group of six families may not need any deacons but it will become apparent that if the church grows at all, deacons will soon be necessary. Again, the church planter may need to disciple a man or several men toward becoming deacons. In the Acts church, many of the converts had come from Judaism and were almost “prequalified” to be deacons. They had been faithful Jews who became faithful Christians. I emphasize this because my esteemed and learned theology teacher used to argue that a church couldn’t start until it had a pastor and a deacon (or two). Yet many global churches start with just a handful of converts who need discipleship from non-Christian backgrounds. Diligent training and discipleship will bring qualified leadership to light in time, hopefully short time if the church is to grow.

For those who start a church and yet have no elders or deacons from the beginning, the church planter should seek the input of the men who attend, and he may find that he has qualified men already. Even in a small church with a single elder and no deacon, the pastor or elder need not act like the lord or boss. He would benefit from consultation with the church men. The goal is shared leadership not a single captain who has absolute authority over the whole ship.

I have a friend who has taught pastoral theology for years who doesn’t like the notion of “lay” elders. In other words, the way to determine what a church needs is, as it grows, when will it be able to afford more dedicated workers? Of course, dedicated elders are a lofty ideal and, elders who can be provided for by the assembly is the goal, but in church planting, even the first elder may have to work to provide for his family. Does this make him less qualified to be an elder? At various points in my ministry, I hung drywall and worked as an EMT out of necessity. If a man is going to be a “lay” elder, regardless of his work outside church, he must commit himself to do the requisite work in the assembly to carry out elder function.

It is important to remember that elders are not a panacea to solve all the problems within a local congregation. Elders are good and the multiplication of them should accompany the growth of the church. But simply having them will not insure that a church will weather the storms that come her way. Elders only work when they work . . . when those who serve as elders are committed to follow the duties of an elder. In recent weeks, I have pointed out churches that have had elders but either some elders refused to work with the other elders, or some elders refused to follow the decisions of the majority. In these cases, the churches have been thrown into turmoil. Elders only work when they work. What about arguments for a single pastor as the best model? I will address this question next week. May God grant his grace to do things decently and in order to his glory!

My introduction into Baptist life came in the mid-1970s when as a 15-year-old youth, I started attending a Southern Baptist church in Marietta, GA, Calvary Baptist. The church was then pastored by John Darnell, and he began to discuss with me my relationship with the Lord. Having trusted Christ through the influence of a Gideon’s New Testament, he informed me of my need of baptism (immersion) and soon I was dunked in a tank in the church basement. I became a “Baptist” because I got all wet!

I didn’t really know what a Baptist was, but I began to hear Bible preaching for the first time in my life. Before long, I was invited to a youth prayer meeting sponsored by another church, Piedmont Baptist Church, then under the capable leadership of Clifton C. Duvall. I was inclined to attend these youth Bible study and prayer meetings because some of my high school friends attended, especially those of the more delicate gender! Yes, I went to a church meeting for the wrong reason. At that meeting, as an eleventh-grade male, I met the young lady who would eventually become the love of my life about seven years later.

I went pretty regularly and started hanging out with the youth group. I attended and later joined the church. I began singing in the youth choir. I had a youth pastor in those days, Greg Merritt, who went on to become the first 21st century president of the SBC. Not sure why Greg started going by James, but I knew him as Greg. Anyway. it was a decent group of Southern Baptists who loved the Lord. Bro. Cliff was the pastor and there were deacons, some who smoked (one brother told me he started smoking before it became a sin) and some who didn’t. I couldn’t say how qualified they were as spiritual men. I was new on my discipleship journey, so such things were above my pay grade. The important thing is that there were no elders in the church. Just deacons and what they did, I really didn’t know.

I attended this church until college. At Bob Jones University, I began to hear that the SBC was full of “liberals.” Well as an eager Bible college student with a desire to learn the Word, I thought who wants to hang with liberals? (There is a gap here recounting just how I got to BJU and why which is worth rehearsing but would take too long to tell and doesn’t contribute to this essay). That summer I worked at a Christian camp and decided to join the church where the camp director was a member, a good independent Baptist church in Madison, IN, today Grace Baptist Church, pastored by my long-time friend Joel Almaroad. This was now the third church of which I had been a member and like the previous two, it also had deacons but no elders. Bro. Joel had been a part of a church in south Georgia that was Southern Baptist in its origination and it had deacons but no elders. He grew up in a church with deacons only, so that’s the kind of a church he started.

I remain connected with Grace through my university years, eventually returning to Indiana to serve as an assistant pastor. As a student living in Greenville, I attended Mt Calvary Baptist Church for a while, under the new ministry of Jesse Boyd, an ex SB man who had dropped out of his PhD at New Orleans over the liberalism of Frank Stagg. What made Mt Calvary unique was that they had elders. Huh? I thought that was a Presbyterian thing. Seemed that some Baptist churches had elders. I don’t think that church was elder run, but elder led. I attended a variety of churches over my six years in Greenville, partially to see how others did ministry. Some of these churches were out of town and I served in them for the school year, but Mount Calvary was the only church I had ever attended with elders.

I finished my studies at BJ in 1980, earning both a B.A. and an M.A. I had gained a good basic grasp of the Bible, some Greek, less Hebrew. I had no church history, no pastoral theology beyond what incidental training happened in a class called “Preacher Boys.” After five years of preparation, I was ready to go out and conquer the world. (Well, maybe not!) Boy did I have a lot to learn! My fiancée and I were married after grad school and we were accepted to go to Canada to work among the indigenous peoples in a place called Hole River in Manitoba. It was a great place to live, at the mouth of the Wanipigow River. I could hunt and fish all I wanted. The people generally accepted our ministry, and we are still “connected” to many today, thanks to Facebook. I could give a decent bible study, but how to plant and grow a church? Not much hope there. As far as discipleship and ecclesiology, I was bewildered.

In four years, our ministry came to an end, and we decided to go further north to a town in Alberta, High Level, where we spent four years trying to establish the MacKenzie Highway Baptist Church. We were moving toward constituting the church when Joshua, our youngest, was born, ten weeks early, so after he came home from the hospital, we began to consider a change in location. Clearly, I needed more training and Joshua needed better health care. We decided to go to Windsor, Ontario so he could get the care he needed and so I could attend the Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. Thankfully at Detroit, many of the holes in my education were filled in—church history, Baptist theology and polity, counseling, etc. I also pastored a small church in Windsor, Emmanuel Baptist. Again, as has been the case in my journey, in all these places—High Level, Windsor, Detroit, I was following a pastor/deacon approach to ministry with no consideraton of elders. We had deacons at Emmanuel. As far as I know, that’s all they ever had.

Sometime during my years in Windsor (the 1990s), I became aware of a booklet Mark Dever had written, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (1997). It wasn’t the book that it is today, just a pamphlet, outlining Mark’s ecclesiological views including elders. Here was the first real biblical argument for elders. I don’t know when 9Marks began having weekenders where this approach to ecclesiology was discussed, but I never had a chance to attend one. Nor did I remain at Emmanuel long enough to think about moving the church toward elders. There was pushback in my circles over the idea anyway, but as time went on at Emmanuel, I tried structuring the deacon meetings toward what I later learned was at least elder-like (whether intentionally or because I just thought our spiritual men should do more spiritual ministry). We talked about the spiritual needs of the assembly and prayed for members who struggled. We tried to dispense with the business of the church (financial issues) early in the meeting so we could devote our time to important issues (soul care). I also encouraged the godly men at the church to take a more active role in the ministry of the Word. I had several good men who could fill the pulpit and they gladly did so.

I tried not to press my agenda for the church but always wished for consensus in our meetings. Emmanuel was a blue-collar church. Some of the men worked at automotive plants in town and were used to “punching out” at the end of their shift. When quitting time came, the work stopped. One of my predecessors joked with the men that they should bring their lunch to church in case the sermon went long. The expectation was that the church should stop by noon whether the sermon was done or not. I suggested at one deacon’s meeting that we talk to the church to see if they would agree to shift the Sunday AM meetings by a half hour so that the morning service would begin at 10:30. That way no matter how long I preached, we would be sure to be done before noon. Of course, we could have just made a decision to move the meeting time, but we believed in congregationalism, so we wanted congregational input. After a few weeks of discussing things among the members and discussing this among ourselves, we decided that it was not in the best interest of congregational harmony to try to change the service times. This is how we tried to manage things—get a sense of the congregation’s attitude before we moved forward with major issues.

During my time there, I came up with the bright idea that we needed a new piano. I did some research and presented my findings to the deacons. The intent was then to gauge the interest of the congregation before a formal recommendation was put to a vote. But the issue never went to the assembly because the leadership couldn’t reach a consensus. There was resistance over the cost and the timing of the project. Therefore, the idea was withdrawn. Ironically, a few years later, we did buy a new piano with congregational approval. Later in my pastorate, I was criticized because I always got what I wanted. Well, truth be told, sometimes what “I wanted” did not receive consensus support from the leadership, so what I wanted was tabled. This was precisely what happened in the case of the time change and the new piano. No consensus, no putting these to the congregation for a vote. I figured that if the church leadership was split on a decision, the congregation was bound to be divided also. But the congregation wasn’t always aware of the discussions in our meetings where some of my ideas never went far for lack of consensus.

At the end of the day, I tried to operate the church on what I would later understand as an elder model. If I were to take a church today, it would either be a church already committed to elders, or one that would be open to being taught on the importance of elder leadership—not elder rule, where the elders make the decisions and the congregation has little input but elder led, where a group or plurality of good and godly men lead the church in its service to Christ.

Next week, I want to offer some observations on elder leadership in Baptist churches. How many does a church need, how are they to function, who should be an elder? But for now, this will serve as an introduction to my journey to understand elder plurality. 2 Tim 2:2 “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”