My friend Steve kneale has responded to my musings on whether a church can exist without elders here. I think this is a helpful and healthy debate to have, though I don’t expect it to run on and on. Our disagreement is marginal. However, I thought it might be helpful to clarify a couple of things and then make some suggestions.
First, by the way, when I share a walk and talk style video, I’m inviting you to join me as I think out loud, to get a feel for the thought process. So, it’s not as structured or final as an article.
Steve picks up on my discussion around the marks of the church and argues that the marks of Scripture, sacraments and discipline don’t require elders due to the priesthood of all believers. I agree with him on the priesthood of all believers and in our own church context a variety of individuals would be involved in preaching, leading Bible studies, discipling one to one , leading communion and baptising people. The question then isn’t around individual acts, it’s more about taking responsibility for the whole picture. Who is actually “shepherding the church”. You see, even where the church members decide to discipline someone, there is likely to be someone or some people taking a lead to help the church reach a conclusion.
That’s why I think Steve’s argument in his book that elders should be thought of more as a gift than an office interesting. It’s here more than on what the Reformers said that I’m interested because we should be first of all looking at what Scripture is telling us.
What we know from Scripture is that elders were appointed quickly. In Acts 14, Paul ensures there are elders at Lystra and Derbe as soon possible. In Acts 20 we discover that elders are already in place at Ephesus, so we shouldn’t assume Timothy is appointing from scratch. Crete is an interesting case study. Titus is left behind by by Paul to appoint elders in each town, note not in each church. We cannot assume that there are autonomous churches in each town prior to him doing this. Indeed, it may not be that these were independent churches as we would understand them afterwards but rather that there were local elders for the one church. But again, notice that Paul is ensuring that elders are appointed quickly and that until indigenous elders are present, there is someone there shepherding, providing and protecting…
We also see that the apostles and their teams seem to have had ongoing concern for churches as they were being established to ensure that the congregation were being fed and protected.
My point then is that like it or not someone is “eldering” in your church. It’s not just that it isn’t happening at all. And this means that you either have the people who should be doing it or you have people who shouldn’t be.
There are implications from this. First, you cannot just assume that there is a benign vacuum. So, if no one is recognised as an elder then it’s not so simple as appointing them. First you may need to find out who has been doing that work. They may not have been given that title, had a confirming vote if that’s your polity or some kind of ordination service. However, people have been submitting to their teaching authority, allowing them to shepherd them. You then either recognise them properly as such if they are the right people or remove them before recognising the right people.
Secondly, if you are currently elders in a church and considering stepping down then be aware that you aren’t handing in to nobody. Someone will fill the vacuum. Hand over well. There is no such thing as an interregnum
Thirdly, if you send some people out to plant a new church, then it isn’t just a case of sending them out and letting them get on with it. The way you send may indicate that some of them are de facto elders. If that’s not the case, then you can still plant the church but your responsibility for the congregation doesn’t stop as soon as the people are meeting elsewhere. They still need elders and that remains your responsibility.
Fourthly, existing elders should not be doing everything by themselves with the expectation that they will one day simply pass the baton on. One comment on Steve’s post asks what would happen if all the elders were killed in a plane crash. We could be less drastic and think of a scenario where the entire team resign. Would that church cease to be a church under my view? Well no, unless everything falls apart which it could. Rather, I expect people to step up at least in the interim. However you should have been preparing others so they were ready for such a day.
Though actually even if you don’t think anyone is being an elder at that point, clearly we don’t expect everything to always function perfectly. Some churches took the view that Zoom didn’t count as gathering and not to have “online” communion in COVID. I don’t think anyone was seriously saying they were no longer churches even though they thought that they were missing a mark or two.
Fifth, I think that at times some churches can be focused on independency at all costs. Perhaps we should be small “I” rather than capital “I” when it comes to be being independents.
I suspect that in practice, there wouldn’t be much difference though between what Steve and I would advise.
Faithroots 