“A church without godly leaders is an endangered church.”
(Thabiti Ayabwile, Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons)
As we seek to move forward in 2021, one of our priorities is to find a few more elders.
Currently, our team of elders consists of me (Josh Fenska, since 2006), Tim Tatum (since 2012), Josh Anderson (since 2013), Matt Vent (since 2017), and Mike Wiersema (since 2017). This year we’re praying that we could find a few more men to join the team and serve as elders.
We expect the process to work like this:
- Beginning now, we’d like to ask you to play a part in praying for Christ to lead and guide in identifying the right elders for healthy church leadership.
- We’d like to take the next few weeks in February to remind you of what an elder is and what the biblical qualifications of eldership are.
- In a few weeks, we’ll ask you (as members in this congregation) to nominate men you believe would serve well as elders beginning this year.
- After discussions with all men who are highly nominated, we hope that the result would be to identify 2, 3, or 4 men who could begin participating this spring in a kind of apprenticeship for six months or more.
Step 4 (the apprenticeship idea) begs for a little more explanation. We are still undecided if we might call them “elders in training” or “apprentice elders” or if we may find a better term—but hopefully the idea is clear enough at least for now. This period of time would give our team of elders an opportunity to invest in and evaluate these developing leaders, and would also give an opportunity to the entire congregation to get to know them and observe their leadership. For example, if a leader is recognized in his small group for shepherding others, but he is not as well known by others in other groups, this approach would give an opportunity for us all to more heartily affirm his calling.
We’ll share more info in the coming few weeks. If you have questions, you are welcome to find one of our current elders on Sunday or send me an email.