What do church leaders do for the church? Guard the flock!
Acts 20:28-31
Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard!
In 1978, I served for six months as a college-student pastor of a little, tiny country church in a farming area where there was no city at all. Even though I was called the pastor of this church (I consider that an overreach of a title), what I actually did was show up on a Sunday morning and deliver a sermon—if you could call it that—to a small group of sweet people, all tolerating this 20-year-old kid who was essentially practicing his preaching. (I am really glad we have no recordings of those sermons, because I would be embarrassed to go back and listen!) I want to thank that handful of farmers who tolerated those Sunday sermons!
One distinct memory is from when it came time to appoint some official leader. My memory is that they needed an official officer, or maybe a deacon. It’s all fuzzy to me now. But when they were trying to decide who should officially take on this leadership role, they looked around the room at the five people there and picked one of them to play the leader—not because he was qualified or the most deeply spiritual, but because it was just his turn…and no one else wanted to do it.
Sadly, this is the way many church leaders are chosen in church congregations.
I am coming very close to the end of our academic-year sermon series that we have called, “Building His Church.” This Sunday, May 22, will be our second-to-last Sunday in this series. This Sunday at LifeWay, we are going to dig into the Scripture and see what it says about the critical role of leaders in the Church—specifically elders, and how eldership works at LifeWay.
Here is a quick list of LifeWay’s key leadership roles:
- Elders
- Pastors
- Ministry team leaders
- Ministry team core members
Even though the Scripture does NOT give us a chart on how to organize every detail of the Church, it does give us some profound and non-negotiable character qualities for an elder—and for pastors and, I believe, all significant church leaders.
I will be co-teaching this important message with Mark Neidlinger, the Chairman of Elders at LifeWay. I have reserved this teaching segment until near the end of this sermon series, in order to make sure that we understand how critical the work of the Body of Christ is. This critical work includes the role of the elder: to watch out—to guard, guide and keep our church on the path to fulfill the work of the Body of Christ in a broken world.
How to prepare for this Sunday
- Read Acts 20:13-38 and watch the urgency of how Paul addressed the elders at Ephesus.
By the way, here’s a little Billy Arnold trivia for you: that little country church was called Mother Neff Baptist Church, and it sat next to Mother Neff State Park, about 30 miles outside Waco, Texas. The church no longer exists, but you can locate it on Google!
See you Sunday morning at 10 a.m.
