One In Spirit

Today in our Elders’ Meeting, a topic was brought up which made me remember something I read in “Experiencing God” by Henry Blackaby. It dealt with being of one Spirit as he lead his church in Canada in starting other churches and in general following God’s agenda and not his own. It was when he thought the church should go a direction and no one else affirmed his leading. Instead of strong arming his folk, he would stop and pray; if it was the direction God wanted, the Spirit would show the other leaders the same thing. If not, he would drop the idea and more on.
The reason this story popped in my head was that we are finalizing a church constitution and covenant. One of the items deals with the calling a new pastor; one of the Elders question the concept of being 100% and if that could be possible. The wording is that the Elders must be 100% in agreement with a proposed candidate before he would be allowed to be presented as a possible pastor for our church. We have 5 Elders at our church; the senior pastor and myself (the executive pastor) are part of the board along with our worship leader, our financial (bill paying) administrator, and a retired missionary who does the bulk of the counseling for our people. We all 5 men must be in 100% agreement to call a person. I totally agree with this because if God is truly working in bring a new pastor in to shepherd His people, He (via the Holy Spirit) will show us that fact.
In our normal church business we do not need to be 100% but when it comes to major dealings, we try to be of one mind or better put of one Spirit. In the past, we’ve come to discuss items that one or more have been praying about and it has turned out all 5 of us have been praying and/or thing about the same thing. That is the working of the Holy Spirit in showing us what God wants done. After all, the church is God’s people so we should march to His rhythm and not ours or the pastors. In my life I’ve seen three approaches for church leadership; two are not Biblical and the third is.
One approach of church leadership is deacon lead churches. When I was a child, the church we were members of was lead by the deacon board where they dictated to the pastor; this is not Biblical. According to Acts deacons are servants (not an administration board) who are to serve the body of Christ so the pastor can equip the saints to grow in Christ.
Another approach is a pastor lead church. The bulk of my early ministry career was under a man who led the church. He is a Godly man who loved his people but he was in charge. What he said goes and there was no debating him. One time he wanted to enlarge the church auditorium but one no wanted to so he tried to strong arm the people to vote yes but God was not in it so he dropped the issue. I call that a dictatorship approach of leading a church and that too is not Biblical.
The one approach where I’ve seen God bless the most is the situation I am in now; an Elder lead church where the pastor has one vote and is equal to the other Elders. The Elders yield the leadership to the pastor and to what he is feeling God is leading him to do because we are all praying for God’s direction as we lead God’s people. On major issues or directions, the pastor will yield to the counsel of the other Elders. It works very well as long as we are praying for each other and for God’s will be done with His church.
We must be of one spirit to see where God is leading us. The church is not a democracy (deacon lead) or a dictatorship (pastor lead) but a Christocracy. Just as in the Old Testament Israel was to be a Theocracy (God as their King), the church is owned (lock, stock, and barrel) by Jesus Christ who is the Great Shepherd and King. Christ is to dictate the direction of the church and as a pastor and/or Elder is seeking Christ’s direction he is doing the job God called him to do. But a pastor is just a man with the same amount of the Holy Spirit as Joe church member so as we all keep our eyes on God and seek His direction; we will be of one Spirit and thus going God’s way and not man’s way.
Think about. . .