Eldership Announcement

6 · Reads Exodus 36:1-7 in full

Well, in Exodus 36, that's when you see. So, you know, 11 chapters later, we had to go through the. The fallout of the golden calf and the fallout and so on, and we had to get the tablets redone and so forth. But by the time we get to Exodus 36, the people had been giving faithfully. And what we see now is, well, what are you going to do with all this stuff? And in Exodus 36:1, it says Basalel and Holiab, and every craftsman in whom the Lord has put skill and intelligence to know how to do any work in the construction of the sanctuary shall work in accordance with all the Lord has commanded. And Moses called these two men, and every craftsman in whose mind the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him up to come do the work. And they received from Moses all the contribution that the people of Israel had brought for doing the work of the sanctuary. They still kept bringing him freewill offerings every morning, so that all the craftsmen who were doing every sort of task on the sanctuary came each from the task that he was doing. And said to Moses, the people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded us to do. Well, that verse is going to make me cry. The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the Lord has commanded to do. So Moses gave command, and word was proclaimed throughout the camp. Let no man or woman do anything more for the contribution for the sanctuary. So the people were restrained from bringing, for the material that they had was sufficient to do all the work and more.

7 · Reads Ephesians 4:1-16 in full, emphasizing verse 12 as the key verse

Now you might think, well, what does that have to do with elders? I'm convinced that that whole storyline is mirrored in Paul's discussion of the church, especially in chapters two through four. And it really kind of pays off in chapter four. Let me read chapter four to you. This is Ephesians, chapter four. I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all, and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the Measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. Now, in verse nine. That was verse eight. I'm not skipping, I'm reading the whole chapter to you. Verse 9. In saying he ascended, what does it mean, but that he also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the one who has also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers. This is our key verse to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all maintain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather speaking the truth. In love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

8 · Synthesizes the Exodus-Ephesians connection: in Exodus, the pile is material; in Ephesians, the pile is people

So in chapter two, Paul calls the church the temple. You know, we're bricks, we're living stones. That's what Peter says in First Peter, chapter 2. That's what Paul says in Ephesians, chapter 2. The church is a living offering. It's a living sacrifice full of saints who are living sacrifices. So it's really the pile of resources that we see in Exodus. In Exodus, the pile of resources are things. In Ephesians, the pile of resources are people, people that God has brought into a local church. And what does an elder do? Well, the elder does the work of Bezalel and Oholiab. The people are the gift, and the elders are like craftsmen who equip the saints for the work of the ministry and actually see that local church built up until it becomes the full measure of what God called it to be, and it's filled with the glory of the Lord.

9 · Extends the craftsman metaphor into specific pastoral work: knowing individual saints, shaping them, placing them in their spot, helping them serve in home, work, neighborhood—not just filling church volunteer slots

So what is an elder? Well, an elder is like a craftsman with some leadership abilities. Who knows and loves the saints and they know their unique callings and they know them as individuals. They understand that each person is a little mosaic tile that has a spot. And you know, maybe that tile is dirty with sand, needs to get cleaned up and so on and so forth. Maybe it needs to some edges chipped off. But they love each tile as an individual and they get that tile shaped up and set in the right spot. And then all of these tiles come together and display the excellencies of God. So when it says equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, it's really the elder's job to help all of the saints find their way into serving the Lord. Well now one of my pet peeves is this passage gets preached a lot when we're looking for nursery workers or something. And I just want to be clear. Like most of the ministry that the saints do is outside of the church. Most of it is in your home or in your role at work, or as a citizen or as a neighbor and so on and so forth. So elders aren't supposed to just be like plug in spots on the nursery roster or the AV roster or whatever. It's not the work of ministry at the church. I mean, that's a part of it, but it's really I need to know as a pastor, I need to know you, or you need at least somebody to know you, to know all the ways that God's calling you to serve, to know your gifts and your weaknesses and essentially work with you as an individual and help you to fit into this larger thing that God's doing. So that's really what an elder does. They're kind of like gardeners, I think also you've got to know all the plants and you've got to have a good sense of what goes together, where it goes and how they work together, and so on and so forth.

10 · Introduces the two-tier eldership model: ruling elders and teaching elders

So that's our vision of what an elder is. And that's maybe, as you can see, why we would want to increase our number of elders as we grow. We can either produce uniform disciples on an assembly line, or we can keep adding bespoke craftsmen. Those are the only two ways that this gets done. We either create a system which has its advantages. It doesn't need as many pastures, but it also really is a bit like an assembly line. It really does create a bit of a uniformity if we want to avoid that. The only way that we can avoid that is by training up elders as craftsmen. And that's the route that we're taking now at this juncture, I want to talk about kind of some theological things and some denominational things. And then I don't think this is going to be super long because I think I can get through this part of it in about 10 minutes. And maybe maybe another podcast down the road or in some other context we can talk more about the qualifications. But let me give you kind of some theological principles that matter related to appointing elders. So the first thing is that we think that there are two types of elders in the Bible and we would label them ruling elders and teaching elders. Ruling elders and teaching elders. And this is not novel to us. This is pretty robustly a part of church history and there are plenty of denominations that do it this way. Now, to be sure, all elders need to be able to teach. That's in 1st Timothy 3. But in 1 Timothy 5:17, Paul writes the following. Listen to this. This is where we get our sense that There are these two kinds of elders. Ruling elders and teaching elders. First Timothy 5:17. Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. That's the verse that we land on to see this, you know, this multi role kind of eldership. Let elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. So all elders rule according to this verse, but some of them express that rule primarily through preaching and teaching. So that's where we get the idea of two types of elders. You have ruling elders and they do pastoral care, church decisions, you know, so forth. And then you have teaching elders and they also do pastoral care and church decisions, but they have an emphasis on preaching and teaching.

11 · Quotes an external source to define the two-tier model clearly: one office, two classes, equal in rank, distinguished by function

And this view holds that the New Testament. This is not me. I pulled this off of a website. I just thought it was a good summary statement. This view holds that the New Testament office of Elder is one office with two distinct groups or classes of men. These two classes are equal in rank and authority, but they are named by their distinctive function or task. Ruling elders are those who govern and rule the church. Teaching elders are those who have the special task of preaching in addition to ruling and governing the church. These are typically the men who receive the double honor because they labor in word and doctrine. First Timothy 5:17. So that's a quote. This is me.

12 · Argues that all elders must meet 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 qualifications, but teaching elders need especially rigorous examination because of the vocational demands of sustained pulpit ministry

So from our view, and this, like I said, has been practiced in other contexts across church history, we would want all elders. We would see that all elders have to be qualified according to the qualifications put forth in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. But we would Also want to make sure that those who are going to dedicate themselves to preaching and teaching have undergone especially rigid examination for their theological acumen, their capacity to handle the Word in a fluent way, and so forth. Now, in our denomination that we participate in ordination is a relatively difficult thing to attain. It took Dove about two years of pretty serious study to get there. I was ordained in sovereign grace in 2015, but, you know, in 2015, I had already been a theology nerd for about 17 years at that point. And so ordination in Sovereign Grace is tough. It's a tough. It's a tough hurdle to get over. And if we required all elders to be ordained under their system, we would just not have many elders because relatively few men have the natural talents and time to clear this hurdle. This is really kind of where the vocational aspect of ministry comes into play. You know, it. The amount of time you need to dedicate to developing theological acumen and constantly feeding yourself. I mean, for a while there, I got super into strongman stuff, and I was watching all these strongman videos, and their main job is to eat. They just have to eat constantly. And everything else is secondary, the working out and all that. They do work out a lot, but the main job is, man, they just have to eat 10,000 calories at least every day. And, you know, these preaching and teaching elders, probably the one thing that you need to keep in mind when you have a guy who's, you know, doing a sustained pulpit ministry like I do, or like, you know, a lot of pastors do, you just can't imagine how much biblical calories you have to consume in order to stay fresh, you know, in order to. In order to keep learning how to say important things and new ways for people to, you know, hear them and receive them and so forth. So teaching all. All laboring in eldership is difficult, but preaching and teaching, it really should have a higher bar for. To clear, because it is actually fundamental to the church, you know, in a really key way. We are. We are people of the book. That's how our people are really fed, is through the Word. And so I think it's appropriate to ask those people who are going to spend substantial amounts of time preaching and teaching to be ordained. If any other people wanted to be ordained, that's fine, that's not a problem. But we would probably always insist that those who are going to be teaching elders, you know, go through a pretty rigorous ordination process that really has got a special eye on the theological proficiency of the candidate.

13 · Uses strongman competitors as an analogy for preaching pastors: their main job is constant eating; a preaching pastor's main job is constant biblical intake to stay fresh and feed the flock

I mean, for a while there, I got super into strongman stuff, and I was watching all these strongman videos, and their main job is to eat. They just have to eat constantly. And everything else is secondary, the working out and all that. They do work out a lot, but the main job is, man, they just have to eat 10,000 calories at least every day. And, you know, these preaching and teaching elders, probably the one thing that you need to keep in mind when you have a guy who's, you know, doing a sustained pulpit ministry like I do, or like, you know, a lot of pastors do, you just can't imagine how much biblical calories you have to consume in order to stay fresh, you know, in order to. In order to keep learning how to say important things and new ways for people to, you know, hear them and receive them and so forth.

14 · Clarifies the dividing line: teaching elders need ordination; ruling elders do not

Now, you do have this other elder the ruling elder. And they're not. They're doing a lot of the pastoral work. And of course they too need to stay fresh and read the Word and so forth. But the demands associated with the teaching ministry aren't there. And so we feel comfortable, not just that it's our decision, but that the Bible is pretty clear about this too, that that ordination bar is a artificial hurdle imposed, I think, with wisdom for the most part, but not the sort of thing that has to apply to every possible situation, every possible elder. So the way we're drawing the line is if the person is going to be dedicated either initially or ultimately in preaching and teaching, they need to be ordained. And there's a process that sovereign grace had spelled out for that, that it's, you know, really, really clear. It's really hard, but it's really clear and measurable. And then the other process is a ruling elder. And that would just be left up to our church and the leaders at Providence, along with the congregational advisement discerning whether individuals are called and qualified to serve in this ruling elder capacity.

15 · Announces the intended structure: Oswald and Dov as teaching elders, John and the two Noahs as ruling elders, serving as equals

So what we would hope to wind up with in a few months is to have me and Dove as teaching elders and John, Noah, and Noah as ruling elders, all serving together as equals on a team that is trying to steward the various means of grace God brings into the church via the saints. And, you know, a lot of congregational talk about plurality and eldership is about accountability. Like that plurality exists primarily to keep the pastors accountable. That is definitely a part of what we've been doing, but that's really not the weight of intention in the scriptures. The weight of intention in the scriptures is to have men who can teach, care for, provide for the people, rule over the church well, contend against enemies and so on and so forth. It's really not so much in the Bible for the care of the pastors. It's really for the care of the people.

16 · Summarizes the two-role model and clarifies the two tracks for aspiring elders: formal ordination for teaching elders, organic congregational discernment for ruling elders

So that's where we are. We are going to have this two tiered. Well, not really tiers. Two roles within eldership. Teaching elders and ruling elders. Teaching elders need to clear this higher bar of formal ordination. Ruling elders do not need to clear that higher bar, but they do need to be qualified and the congregation needs to be, you know, pretty overwhelmingly for, you know, pretty overwhelmingly for these guys coming in as ruling elders. So if you're interested in becoming an elder, there are two tracks under this system. The one is to pursue formal ordination. That's a system that's pretty well established within sovereign grace. And the other one would be a ruling elder, which would be just a matter of being qualified of having the confidence of the congregation. And then the process by necessity, because we don't have some kind of outside process to use that's rigid, the process by necessity to appoint a ruling elder is far more organic and really just more up to the need of the church and a bunch of other things.

17 · Addresses the denominational disagreement directly

So I guess the last thing to talk about is that there is a little bit of controversy with this. Not in our church, but our denomination wants all elders to be ordained and we just disagree. We don't think their ordination standards are appropriate for all elders. We don't. And we have wrestled with this for a long time, at least five years. And we finally just decided that we are going to exercise our autonomy a bit here. Ultimately, local churches can do what they want and we've just decided in this area we're going to graciously disagree and color outside the lines a little bit. Now, this isn't a big enough disagreement to fight over and certainly not enough of a disagreement to cause us to leave the denomination. But it is probably big enough for us to have concluded after several years of conversation that we're just not going to do it their way. We want to have these two kinds of elders and that we're just going to go ahead and do it our way, which we believe that in the spirit of the denomination. We are lined up with the main idea, which is that the local churches have autonomy to make decisions. And, and this is the decision that we're making now. You know, we're going to do it our own way, but at the same time, we're not going to rub our rebellion in anyone's faces. And by the way, when I say do it our own way, I don't mean like we just invented something. As I've mentioned, this was the view held. This has been the view held by many churches over the years. It was certainly present within the Reformation. I referenced Calvin's view, which was similar to this in some features. So we're not going to rub this in anyone's face. We're just going to do it and we're going to be chill about it. On the website, we plan on presenting the ruling elders as the quote, unquote leadership team. And the denomination won't recognize John Noah, Noah's elders. I mean that, that's, you know, that's non negotiable. That's up to them whether they would recognize them or not, because those guys aren't going to go through the Ordination process, they won't be recognized. I'll let you guess how much those guys are upset about not being recognized by the denomination these guys are in to serve. They're definitely not concerned about this or that title. But insofar as the church goes and how we function, these guys are going to be elders, period. End of story.

18 · Describes how the elder team already functions: unanimous consent preferred on big decisions, but minor disagreements (like the parking lot) are acceptable

Functionally, we've already been working together like this for quite some time. We've already been making decisions together, like the building renovation and so on and so forth. We begin to try our hand at voting here and there on certain things. But my policy has always been that when you're working with a team, it is not typically a good idea to proceed without a unanimous. When you're working with a team of elders, it's not typically a good idea to proceed on big ideas without some sort of unanimous consent. I guess there are some examples where it's okay to have some disagreement. Like, for instance, with the parking lot. You know, that was 60 grand. And, you know, we did have the cash to pay for it, but that was about it in terms of our reserve. And, you know, we took a vote, and I think I was the one that dissented. I didn't. I wanted to wait another year, and there were risks to waiting another year. It could have. If we had a bad winter, it would have cost us a lot more money. So I was. I was willing to roll the dice. I wanted to wait, but I was outvoted. The guys all, you know, said, no, let's do it this year. And in that kind of thing, when it's just a parking lot or it's, you know, I'm not worried about that kind of. Kind of disagreement. Frankly, it. It felt refreshing for me to just be able to say, I just disagree, but I don't want my disagreement to override everybody else's agreement. Let's just. Let's just go along with it. But for the most part, you know, I will still be. I've got by far the most experience on the team, and I will still be, you know, what they call, you know, a first among equals. I'll lead things. I'll lead. I'll lead kind of how we talk about things, and we'll be typically the person that will dove, or I will typically be the people who bring things up that need to be dealt with is we're, you know, we're spending more time focusing on these things, I guess. Although maybe not. I don't know. Anyway, I can. I can lead in a way that is, hey, this is you know, this is what I think this is, you know, 30 years or whatever of experience. This is what I think. But also God works through these teams, and God works through these men. And there's no need to, typically, there's really no need to have disagreement on these teams. We can very often slow things down and talk about them from different angles. This is what we've done, really, for five years. We keep working on something until we find a way that works for all of us. And a lot of times it's really just a lack of. We're trying to understand something, we're trying to plan for something, we're trying to solve a problem. We talk about it, we talk about it, we talk about it. Nothing seems quite right. And so we end that meeting, we come back for another meeting later, and, you know, we just keep doing this. We just keep working the process. And then when the Lord decides there's clarity to be had, he's going to give us clarity, he gives us a solution that we all feel good about, so on and so forth. So that's pretty much how these sorts of things run. You really want to, you really want to be able to go slow with a lot of this. As you might guess by just our choice with some of the structure in this, we're trying to do bespoke ministry, know, individuals help individuals, you know, all that kind of stuff. We're not, we're not too worried about speed. We're. We're pretty comfortable being low and slow. We don't want to waste momentum that God gives. But at the same time, we are pretty confident that we know the culture God wants to build at Providence. And it's a culture of kindness and honor and joy and humility. And we know that building that is not a quick thing.

19 · Closes with direct instruction to the congregation: read Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3, evaluate the candidates, ask around about their character and service, and bring questions or concerns to the elders

So that's, I guess, probably enough for today. You guys know these men already. You know that they're already serving with extreme zeal. You know, these wives already, these wives are, you know, I think it's been such a joy over the years. I grew up with a brother, one brother, and we were pretty close. But it's been such a joy just living in the church for 30 plus years to have sisters, you know, to have real sisters, girls that I really do listen to and rely on and root for and so forth. And, you know, Gracia and Lauren and Kate are girls like that. And Christine and Angela, it's been wonderful to have these, you know, little sisters to be a part of this team in some respects. So that's, that's a 35 minute kind of picture of what's going on. You really need to look over the qualifications for yourself as you're thinking through whether these guys are qualified. You need to read Titus 1 and 1st Timothy 3. And maybe the only piece of instruction I would give you about reading is in Titus. You know, it talks about his children are some, some versions say believers. The Greek word there is just faithful and, and most commentators understand that to simply mean, you know, obedient. So one of the things that we would typically look for is like, is, is a man helping his kids to be joyfully obedient? You know, is he walking that line between leading well and leading clearly and strongly, while also, you know, giving kids grace and mercy and so forth? And that's all, you know, that's, that's an art. And I think it's a good wise gift from the Lord to point us both in First Timothy three and Titus one to a man's home life as a really good indicator of what, you know, is he, is he qualified to lead? So, yeah, I'd recommend you read those two qualification passages with these three guys in view. And if you have any questions, comments or concerns, you can direct those to me or to Dove. But yeah, I think we'll probably, assuming we receive positive feedback from the congregation, I think we'll probably move to install these guys in an official capacity sometime in, in January. If you have questions, please just let me know. It's hard to anticipate where all questions might be. And if you're kind of new, do me a favor before you, you know, you come talk to me anytime. That's not a problem. But you need to rely on some of these people who have been here for a while, and some of the people who have been here for a while are young, so, so you probably, no matter how old you are, you probably know some longer term members of Providence. So if you're wondering about these three guys, ask around. My guess is that one or all three of these guys will have served almost every single person in the church in a meaningful way in the last several years. At least one of us has, I hope.

20 · Final pastoral charge to the congregation: thank them for listening, urge them to pray, and reiterate the vision—stewarding the saints well so the church is filled with God's glory

Okay, well, that's all I've got for today. Thanks for listening. Thanks for taking the time to, to weigh in on this and above all, pray because we really feel like the Lord's blessed us with a good group of saints and we want to steward those saints well for the, for the glory of Jesus. We want to build up this local church to be full of the glory of God. All right, I'll stop talking. I'm going to go home and have family dinner with the family. All right. God bless you. Bye.