How do you choose leaders who will take His church in the direction it needs to go? Who do you look to?
yeah, I understand we must look to His Spirit's guiding... and I know we must pray for His Hand to be on the process... but, practically speaking, how do we choose elders for our local churches? There is no modern day Paul-esque itinerant preacher/apostle roaming around the country establishing churches and appointing its leaders...
so... what do we do?
the Bible actually gives scant little information about what steps we are to take in appointing/choosing/installing shepherds or pastors or elders... We like to take I Timothy and Titus and make them 'lists', although I suspect that these (and the I Peter 5 text) were intended to serve more as 'heart windows' into prospective shepherds, rather than the litmus test our fellowship has bent them into...
so what do we look for?
is it someone who can 'get along' with the current elders?
is it someone who knows the Bible front to back?
is it someone who will 'represent' his 'constituents'?
perhaps each of these have merit...
but if this is His Church and His Body, maybe the very most important trait we should seek is... seeking.
What if we chose elders who, above all, were seekers? I'm not talking about 'seekers' in the 'mall-church-felt-needs-looking-for-Jesus' sense... I mean the type of 'seeker' who does not have all the answers, so he is constantly looking to God for them.
What if we chose shepherds who, like their namesake, would climb sheer cliffs and skinny limbs to 'get at' God's will? (remember the parable of the lost sheep in Matthew 18?)
What if our litmus test for leaders was not 'sameness' but 'stretching'?
We have three terrific shepherds at Riverside! and each of them, in their own way, are seekers and stretchers...
as we choose additional shepherds, let us constantly look to God and His Spirit's leading... and seek 'seekers'...
God Bless!
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there are a couple other qualities I believe we see witnessed in the New Testament, and can identify with both Jesus and the leaders of the first church. One of them is serving. Jesus was all about serving others,as were his closest followers. He looked toward the needs of the people, and filled them. another that I fear we may be missing is humility. That is tied in with what you said in my mind. If our shepherds act as if they already have all the answers, then why do we need Christ? I mean, seriously we know men who, with possibly the best of intentions, would in their worldly knowledge make decisions out of their knowledge, without consulting the Lord of our church. That terrifies me. We can be so easily mislead. We need to be in constant prayer for this decision to be God's and not ours. And in that, we need to look for seekers and servers, who are humble men obviously depending on God for the answers.
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