Developing better elders is the first step toward overcoming this plague of burn out. It’s not enough, but it’s essential.
Once we have men in the eldership with the right raw material — the right gifts — we need for them to be well trained. You see, we have this insane notion that preachers need masters and doctorates and regular trips to lectureships and elders need to hear sermons. No, the elders need training beyond what they’ll find in the typical sermon series or Sunday school class lesson.
Here are the practical solutions —
1. Insist that your elders — all of them — attend each ElderLink seminar held near you (“near” being defined as accessible by car or airplane). Insist that the fees, transportation, hotel, and meals be paid out of the church budget. Getting your elders trained is more important to the health of a church than just about anything.
2. Send your elders to at least one lectureship at one of the more progressive universities. The ones at Pepperdine, Abilene, and Lipscomb are excellent. I’d include the Tulsa Workshop in this list, although I’ve never attended one there (you can’t get there from here).
They are free — and the church may want to help with transportation and lodgings and meals.
Don’t let them go someplace that teaches legalism — no matter how convenient.
3. Share good books with your elders. Send them articles from the internet. Have a shared intellectual life with them. Acquaint them with important books and authors.
4. Have classes on leadership. These are really hard to do, and 1, 2, and 3 are much, much better — and should be preferred to 4 despite the greater cost and time commitment.
5. Help your elders network with leaders at the universities and at other congregations. Give them the names of people to call for help on missions, conflict resolution, theology, whatever. The resources are out there, are common knowledge to many ministers, and largely unknown to the typical elder.
6. Blogs can be helpful, you know. Or just forward good articles from favorite authors.
7. Study together. Elders and ministers should spend time in the word, unless they are already very much on the same page. I wouldn’t focus on the controversial stuff — women, divorce, baptism — but rather would start with learning the basics: how to exegete 1 John, or Hebrews, or even Romans. Just sit around a table and study through a book
You see, doctrinal disputes lead to disagreements over some very practical things. Churches divide over doctrine disputes. Get on the same page.
Jay,
All of the things you suggest would indeed be helpful.
Since the mid '70's I have known people who are members of Bible churches, and even attended one for about two years in the Dallas area. My son-in-law became a Christian through the ministry of a Bible church here in Monroe.
My observation is that their elders generally do a great job. Every one I have known are very capable teachers, have a very comprehensive grasp of the Bible as a whole, and function the way I believe God intended in the body.
Most Bible church preachers were educated at Dallas Theological Seminary and thus will likely be strong dispensationalists. However, they are Bible expositors, the average person on the pew knows his Bible pretty well, and one of the things I like best is that the elders are very big on discipleship and accountability.
Perhaps we could learn some lessons from other Christians about elders.
I am convinced that many of our problems stem from poor teaching, majoring on minors, and putting men in leadership positions who are unqualified.
Royce
Preachers and elders both need more learning and training than any of the apostles had. If that doesn't prove modern Christianity to be a false interpretation of Christianity, I don't know what does. Perhaps we moderns expect to much of the church. We've made it something it was never intended to be. If the church was setup by the Lord Jesus Christ himself to be led by illiterate fishermen, then when we find that isn't enough anymore we have clearly moved away from the Lord and invented an idol and a manmade concept of church.
Jesus personally appeared to an extremely well educated and informed man. We know him as the Apostle Paul.
I believe Jesus' example is one of balance here.
Paul was not as well educated as everyone lets on. Being trained in rabbinic fables is not a real education. You can't compare learning all the perverse Talmudic arguments over the Old Testament to a modern education. If you do, you debase modern education by a lot.
i'm no expert on Rabbinic education. But dealing with any text on a scholarly level requires knowledge of linguistics, of analysis and construction of arguments, critical reasoning skills, also probably a lot of memorization, being familiar with interpretations of texts made by others with whom you either agree or disagree, and of course, clear communication skills.
Sounds like basically the same work undertaken by most research-oriented faculty members in a university's classics, philosophy, or religious studies department. i'm not sure how much more educated Paul could be unless you expect him to start crossing into other academic fields.
–Guy
But it is also highly biased and persecutorial. To understand the sort of education Paul received you have to think of the education of Imams and Mullas in Islam.
As though modern higher education programs are not biased and even "persecutorial" in some case? i don't know of anyone's higher education program that has even a fraction of the objectivity it presumes for itself. i think the idea of "unbiased research" is near myth. Perhaps Paul's differed, but only in degree; certainly not in kind.
But whether or not Paul was educated highly or not, i don't see how that hurts your point at all. i understood your original point to be a critique of the modern trend to expect high degrees of expertise and education in order to fulfill leadership roles in the church. This is not the pattern or practice of the early church. If that is your point, then i couldn't agree more. i have no idea why we'd think a bachelor's in Bible proves that a guy is qualified for youth ministry or why a master of divinity proves he'd be a great pulpit leader. Those issues are determined by character.
i think Paul was highly educated, but Paul's level of education was not the norm among the first generation of church leaders in the New Testament. The point that the text seems to make is that anyone from any walk of life could be such a leader. i don't see why admitting Paul was highly educated makes that fact any less obvious, or makes the fact that our current standards differ drastically from the values and trends of the early church on this matter.
–Guy
Jacob,
I've frequently mentioned the need for elder training here, and a number of readers have disagreed. I don't think I've ever had an elder disagree.
The apostles had miraculous giftedness to help them do their work, as I'm sure was true of many of the early elders. Modern elders don't share the same level of inspiration — but they do have the the completed scriptural canon as well as 2,000 years of experience and study by great elders and teachers. And we elders all need help to learn and understand all that's out there for us.
God helps us in many ways, including through the power of the Spirit that we receive today. But he also gives us each other — the church — to help each other learn and make wise decisions, to share experiences and lessons learned from mistakes. It would be a gigantic mistake — a rejection of gifts from the hand of God — to refuse to learn from each other.
No one would ever have a better education than spending three years walking with Jesus, plus the special giftedness from the Spirit the apostles had — but we can do better than pretending that anyone of us is wiser than the church working together to share knowledge and wisdom. And the training I argue for is simply one means of learning from each other and learning together.