December 15, 2006
Noble Task
“Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task.” (1 Tim. 3:1 NIV) This year five men in my congregation have come forward to place their names on the church ballot as an elder candidate. This being their first eldership in our congregation shows me the church is developing new leadership. That being said, I find it interesting that none of our past serving elders are on the list of elder candidates. Understandably, there are a variety of reasons a previously qualified elder is unable to serve for a time, or needs a longer sabbatical. However, when year after year I see the wisdom of qualified men sitting in the bleachers or on the sidelines, I’m alarmed. I can’t help but wonder what has caused them to lose heart and no longer desire a noble task.
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Gail;
----Christ is the Head of His church. He informs us by Peter's hand that the elders are to be examples to His people. His church, as designed by the New Testament, is a community of influences within certain definite boundaries marked by the Scriptures alone.
----But the operative attitude of the leaders in your church is the attitude of rule - a sort of cancerous over-extension of Hebrews 13:17. When people rule over each other it is their ideas that rule over each other's ideas. This is precisely not what the New Testament prescribes. Scripture alone is to rule over all of our ideas. The Holy Spirit wrote of a loving relationship among people who are each ruled by the Word of God through the understanding imparted by the Holy Spirit. When a group of brothers puffs up and takes precedent over other brothers, the influence of the Spirit is inevitably going to be frustrated, to one degree or another.
----The division at your church caused by this authoritarian rule of the few has lead to extreme frustration in many of her godly men. They have been puffed up against (I Cor 4:6), and they perceive those who have puffed themselves up to be unreachable by reason or Word. Certainly they have seen what happened to a family in your church who did try to deflate what has been quenching the Spirit there.
----This condition is exactly what Paul so carefully dealt with in the first five chapters of I Corinthians. Call it division, party spirit, partisanship, favoritism, or whatever you want, it is selfish ambition and vein conceit nourished by hearts intently observing themselves serve the Lord. Only the Word of God will be able to overcome it. And if more people do not stand up with the Word of God and act like the messengers of His Word that many are called to be, then only the Lord Himself will be left to move upon that arrogance. How well they would rather one of you had moved first, when finally they will have been brought to know. I pray that happens in this temporal setting, graciously and full of rejoicing by them, rather than later.
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