Eldership...Revisted?

My family and I have been attending our new church for 4 1/2 months now, and we are loving it! It's so encouraging to be attending an authentic Bible believing church, which not only teaches sound doctrine, has exceptional expository preaching, and interweaves the Bible into everything from the children's program to upcoming mid-week doctrine and church history classes. It has been more than a decade since I heard a sermon about Hell, man's sinfulness, integrity and moral living, and Biblical study excellence. My wife and I, after a couple of months, quickly realized that this is where God wants us to be and we are being spiritually fed more than any other time in our lives, it was a no-brainer for us to take membership classes and become official members last month. We couldn't be happier - we have entered into some very meaningful friendships with folks in our new community, some of them very deep friendships. We count it joy to entertain, feed, and be hospitable towards our new church family. Our kids have integrated very well - my son just finished an enjoyable fourth day of vacation Bible school / day camp, and for the first time, he is memorizing Bible verses. My walk with the Lord has improved dramatically in that I am spending more and more time in Bible study daily, something that was missing for years (and I have to bear a lot of responsibility for that, in part). My wife's and my marriage is stronger, our kids are getting solid Bible teaching at church and making Christian friends, and through the sheer grace of God, we have discovered fellow church members who are parents in my son's class, fellow parents we have known for years now, yet had no clue that we had a common faith. What really is the icing on the cake are our neighbours and very good friends, whom we met on the first day we attended our new church. It's strange - these neighbours live less than 100 feet away from us, but for the past six years, they didn't know us and we didn't know them and like most people in the bigger city, we all just sort of kept to ourselves. Now, either they are over here daily or we are over there. They just had dinner at our place on Monday, we ate at their place on Tuesday and they were over last night. We watch their kids and they watch ours. They are a solid, solid Christian family and we are just so blessed to have met them and have formed a very, very deep friendship with them even though we've really only known them for 4 1/2 months, but it feels like years. We are vacationing with them in August and are really looking forward to it.

Aside from that, our family has also semi-joined a small fellowship group, where we were made to feel both welcome and accepted. It is so refreshing to not have to deal with drama, pretense, and put on masks. We are part of a community of believers who not only struggle and have good and bad days, but collectively, strive towards understanding the Bible more and practically living out Biblical truths. Now, you may suggest that all churches should be doing this, but that is not the case. Many churches nowadays have become a glorified quasi-spiritual social club, where anything goes. Gossip is not only tolerated, but encouraged, and dependence on God through faith is replaced by self-reliance and pragmatism based on cultural and societal trends. I've been to a number of churches in the past 5 years, either visited or attended, which have personnified the churchy trend to focus on growth and be "contemporary and relevant". It's interesting to read about that behemothic, though misdirected Willow Creek church in the U.S. One of the first mega churches, it prided itself on being bigger, faster, and supposedly better than any other church. Only recently has it published a book detailing what a mistake it was to go in that direction and they are slowly moving back towards a more Biblically-sound model.

Our new church is a considerably more conservative church than any previous church I've attended, and I'm glad for that, since we need back-to-basics teaching. For the first time int he 18 years I've been a Christian, I will be switching Bible versions. Our new church uses the ESV (more conservative, literal version, along the lines of RSV, but not as badly translated as the KJV). When we became members, the church presented my wife and I EACH with a brand spanking new higher-end study Bible (they don't give pew Bibles there, since they want the Bible gift to stand out and as a reminder to the new owner that it was given on a special occasion). I'm OK with moving to ESV, and my Scofield ESV is on its way from amazon.ca (I don't want to use the gift Bible, since I'd rather keep it for home use so that I don't lose it).

I am grateful that I did not attend our new church 5 years ago, as it was embroiled in the same kind of seeker-friendly wishy-washy, lovey-dovey no-meat-on-the-bones "teaching". Doctrine was unwelcome and considered too divisive, but thankfully the denomination sensed the problem, installed a very solid, mature preacher from the outside into the church, and as a result, 400 people left and formed their own liberal-theologically based "church" about 15 mintues away, which cater to "contemporary" thinking by incorporating Nietzsche (sp.), John Lennon, etc. along with Jesus, and considers its worship services "entertainment" (it says that right on their website. Sad, sad, sad. Anyway, our new church is awesome and while we could have moved churches years ago (trust me, we were thinking of it, even back in 2006), I'm glad we didn't - God's timing for us was just right.

Why am I writing all this? In a way, this blog serves in part as a venting point, but at other times, I write here as a means to formulate thoughts and correlate feelings and such, very much like a diary, even though I never kept one growing up (it was always such a girlie thing to do, and in a sense, still is). This is one of the times when I am doing the diary thing.

I outlined the above experiences in a way to really demonstrate to me that not only are there good churches out there, there are excellent churches out there. There is no doubt in my mind that I eventually would have liked to get my feet wet again in serving in the church, but that was the farthest thing on my mind when I received a phone call at work today from the church. I saw it was the church calling on my call display at work, and instantly I thought, "oh man, what happened to my son?", since he was attending a Vacation Bible School or day camp there. Why else would they be calling?

It was the senior pastor's executive assistant. Now, I have gotten to know her fairly well and she is such a friendly lady and has a good sense of humour. I had thought that maybe there was something that got mixed up in a recent tithing cheque, or that perhaps I had left something at the church, for which I had to retrieve from the church office. Maybe she wanted to call and see how I was enjoying membership. Perhaps she wanted to invite our family over for a meet and greet or for a meal.

Little did I expect that I would be hearing these words...I am paraphrasing a bit here as to not use names or identifying information.

"On behalf of the Senior Pastor, I'd like to inform you that he has chosen to nominate you for the office of elder at our church."

First thing I did was grip the phone tighter. Did I just hear what I thought I heard? I asked her to repeat what she just said. She said it again - the Pastor is putting my name in as a candidate to be an elder, and would like to see if I am interested.

Second thing I did was take a breath. And then I reflexively responded, "wow, that's really nice that he is considering me, but I just became a member last month and I've only been coming here for 4 1/2 months..." She paused and said that the Senior Pastor put my name forth.

Now, I should provide some context here. The Senior Pastor is well aware that I was previously an elder at my old church. I don't think I ever shared with him about my experience. But I also did some leadership responsibilities at the church previous to that, running a missions committee and leading a college/career group. Both times I experienced ministry burnout. I think she could sense some trepidation in my voice. I honestly told her that well, I am really honoured that I am even considered, and really, this is totally unexpected, so I'm going to have to pray about it, look to the Scriptures to get some sense of God's direction, and seek Godly counsel from trusted mature Christians.

As I am sitting here typing all this out, I am still hashing these questions in my mind. The first thing I did today was call my wife and told to sit down while I told her about the call. To my surprise, she seemed fairly ecstatic and encouraged me to go for it, and really encouraging me that way - she's really good at that. The next thing I did was email my parents - I know my Mom's a believer, not so sure about my Dad, but I thought I'd include him). They shared some thoughts with me. I then emailed my old boss, and a dear friend and Christian brother who knows the Bible as good as anyone I know - he also shared some thoughts with me. I think that the next order of business is to meet up with another elder at the church (I already know with whom I am going to discuss this) and get his perspective as well as get some insight as to what goes on behind the scenes. And finally, I'm going to arrange a meeting with the Senior Pastor to find out the process that ended with my name being suggested, either by him or someone else.

This is so interesting, because I have a preaching series on eldership that I was planning on starting soon, since I listen to preaching on the way to work every morning.

I am finally, and most importantly, going to spend some time alone with God to seek his voice - I have a really nice place at a local conservation area that I go to to just sit in stillness...it's kind of weird, but really clears out distractions and I can get a better sense of God's direction if I sit quietly. I'll do that next week. And I'll be reading the 1 Timothy and Titus passages on eldership again.

My last foray into the eldership thing left a really bad taste in my mouth. To be quite frank, I had doubts as to my ability to be an effective last time. But I sensed God's calling and proceeded. It was an interesting experience for sure, but what really soured me was two years ago when I led a nominations team and we rejected the name of a prospective candidate. Apparently, it was only the second time in 20+ years that a candidate was rejected, and I was heading the committee that rejected the candidate. In looking back, the right decision was made - the candidate was totally unqualified and showed very little spiritual maturity and fruit. I thought it was a done deal until a couple of other elders and some other meddlers decided to try to reverse the decision and then talk with the people on my committee. Not only was this contrary to our mandate, but it totally undermined our committee. But moreover, it showed the lack of spiritual maturity in these other elders, and while I am not going to start comparing Christian credentials, if an elder is not willing to yield to Biblical standards and qualifications for prospective elders, they probably shouldn't be one in the first place. I saw enough during that process to know that I no longer wanted to be on that board, but since I made a commitment, I tried my best to serve out the rest of the term. Since then, I've seen other things occur at our old church and amongst some of the people there, to unequivocally conclude that there is a serious lack of spiritual maturity at our old church - of course, I am not including everyone in that, since there were some very solid Christians at our old church, but I'd say in retrospect that they were in the minority.

So when I got the call today asking if I'd be willing to stand as a candidate for elder for a church of 820+ people, I hesitated a bit. Did I really want to go through this again? But then again, I know enough about how our new church operates by its fruit that I know that behind the scenes, there are good leaders there. I've actually tested this theory in an unconspicuous way with a couple of elders, asking them some casual Bible questions. I don't expect any elder to be able to answer all Bible questions, but at the very least, you should be able to consider them someone you can ask, knowing that their interest is there. Thankfully, the elders I've talked with showed a very keen interest and understanding of God's Word. You can tell these men take Bible study seriously.

Several people who have provided initial counsel for me so far have commonly re-iterated the obvious point that our new church is a far different church than our old church. In fact, with our old church, it took my wife and I literally years to integrate ourselves into the life of the church: four years to become a member, eight years to actually start forming meaningful friendships, and all in between, we considered trying out another church. With our new church, we became a member in 3 1/2 months, we get to church early every week, have already formed meaningful relationships and are both being fed regularly. I know churches are different, and our new and old church are night and day, but that bad eldership experience really grinds at me to this day. I saw that decisions were oftentimes arrived at discussion only and without really serious prayer - one time, during a congregational meeting, a former elder stood up and suggested that they vote to leave their denomination then and there, that night, due to some denominational authority squabbles. I remember thinking, if a former elder would make a snap decision like that by thinking with his emotions in the heat of the moment rather than logically and objectively, that is not a good sign. I am sure things are done a lot differently at our new church, but to a small degree, I am afraid, since that previous bad experience caused me to leave our old church. I don't want this to happen again.

Then again, I recognize that God is in control and He will place us where He wants us. And that I really shouldn't be thinking of how I feel, but rather whether this is God's will. I also have to keep in mind that just because I'm nominated doesn't mean I'll pass what I am sure will be a much more rigorous selection and interview process. Remember, our new church has about 9 elders for 820+ people (I would potentially be number 10).

I also think about my hang-ups - I have a lot of them. I have some personality quirks and sometimes can be impatient or even a bear. I am very opinionated, as you can tell by my postings here, and sometimes have difficulty in coming across diplomatically. But my wife, who knows me best and has seen me at my worse, is encouraging me to let my name stand, or at least that's the way she's leaning...

You may say, what's the big deal? This is a volunteer position, so don't take it too seriously. Well, I do take it seriously since I think the church's leaders will more often than not influence how the church moves forward. I also see this as also a tremendous potential opportunity to serve God in a capacity that I though I could not handle. I take it seriously because the Bible takes it seriously (see 1 Timothy and Titus).

I really do have to pray about this and dig into God's Word to get some direction.