Yep yep. My experience in churches with a high view of “elder-led” leadership is that we believed all the shepherding things about how elders were to pastor (and not just be a board member) but functionally our elders were terrible lay pastors being asked to pastor. It wasn’t a good fit for them. We specifically, intentionally, philosophically, and theologically didn’t want them to just be merely business men who have to do pastor-y things but in practice that’s exactly what they were and the pastoral side of their responsibilities fell way short of the mark. So here I was a kids ministry director finishing my MDiv doing pastoral things like meeting with parents and teaching kids the faith and preaching some times but not allowed to be called a pastor because I wasn’t an elder (which I accepted) but our elders couldn’t pastor and didn’t. Conundrum haha!
What do you do when a Church refuses to allow a preaching pastor to be an elder? Often the idea is more American than Biblical when an eldership will not allow a preacher to be an elder to “keep church and state” separate? As if there’s a need to keep a line between elders with a title and the preacher who is often doing the work of the eldership.
Yep yep. My experience in churches with a high view of “elder-led” leadership is that we believed all the shepherding things about how elders were to pastor (and not just be a board member) but functionally our elders were terrible lay pastors being asked to pastor. It wasn’t a good fit for them. We specifically, intentionally, philosophically, and theologically didn’t want them to just be merely business men who have to do pastor-y things but in practice that’s exactly what they were and the pastoral side of their responsibilities fell way short of the mark. So here I was a kids ministry director finishing my MDiv doing pastoral things like meeting with parents and teaching kids the faith and preaching some times but not allowed to be called a pastor because I wasn’t an elder (which I accepted) but our elders couldn’t pastor and didn’t. Conundrum haha!
What do you do when a Church refuses to allow a preaching pastor to be an elder? Often the idea is more American than Biblical when an eldership will not allow a preacher to be an elder to “keep church and state” separate? As if there’s a need to keep a line between elders with a title and the preacher who is often doing the work of the eldership.