Equipping men to be leaders in the church is something that current leaders are called to do. The older men take the younger under their wing and teach them about God and what it means to lead and serve God's people. These future elders and deacons also need to know how to interact with one another. How do church leaders effectively and graciously work through the difficulties of shared leadership?

All right, we're talking about where are we going to get elders and deacons, and we need wives for them, by the way, the next generation. And I said to you it's going to get harder and harder because society is destroying our people, and so many lives, by the time they're saved, or maybe they are saved, but their lives are shattered with broken marriages, addictions, this country has become just an addicted country, country is terrible. You know, in Colorado we passed the marijuana law, so it's free. Do you know thousands of young people have come into our state, they're on the streets, the emissions are totally overwhelmed, just to smoke dope. Now imagine what that's gonna be like in 20 years with dope heads?

That's all they're concerned about. They're not gonna be contributing citizens. They're gonna be takers. And it does affect the mind and the spirit. And can you imagine thousands of males with very little ambition or a work ethic.

What's gonna happen? We'll pay the price, don't worry. Sin always has consequences. So our society is sinking into this toxic cesspool of just self-indulgence, sexual desires out of control, high addictions, ruined marriages, broken down families. What do you think is gonna transpire as a result of this?

Well, it is gonna affect the church. It's gonna affect the church. And we will have a harder and harder time. And that's why we must start with our own children. And within the church, it's always been my belief, as much as we can, we can't always do this, to produce your own elders and deacons, missionaries from within the church.

That can't always happen, but that would be the ideal. Now, we looked at Jesus prepared the next generation for leaders. Then we look second, Paul preached to the next generation of leaders. Timothy prepared the next generation of leaders. And now elders are to prepare the next generation of leaders.

Now, if you go in your Bibles over to Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 4, I do want you to turn there, Ephesians chapter 4 verses 1 to 16 is probably one of the most important passages, it's hard to say which is the most important, but certainly one of the most important passages on the church and the diversity in the church and the unity in the church. It's an extremely important passage. If you've never taught on it in your church, teach on it and take your time going through this passage. It even begins with the secret to how we can possibly get along. Look at verse one and two.

I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, should sit up and pay attention right now, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Here's the way to behave. Here's how to live in the local church. Be as smart as you can be, take authority. Does your Bible say that?

Are you sleepy? Let me be truthful. Are you sleepy? What does your Bible say? Humble, alright, that's the only way we'll ever live together, because the next thing is going to talk about unity.

There is no possible way we can have unity without humility. With all humility, by the way, all humility and gentleness, Look at that word throughout the New Testament, how many times it's mentioned. With patience, bearing with one another in love. Now Verse 3, Eager. See that word, eager to maintain?

That word has the idea, very strong word, spare no effort. Spare no effort. Spare no effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Already we have the unity. You don't make the unity.

We maintain it. Well, my dear, there's one body, one Spirit. There is no way we can maintain the unit of the spirit without humility and without bearing one another in love and gentleness We are built to fight one another and destroy one another in the name of Jesus, of course. Without these virtues. This is such an important chapter.

But jump down to verse 11. And verse 11 says this, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds. Now my translation says shepherds. This is interesting. This is the ESV and they've changed the word.

It used to be pastors. This is much better, more accurate. The shepherds and teachers. Now, my opinion, you'd have to read biblical eldership. Who are the gifted shepherds?

Who are the gifted shepherds? Those would be your local elders. And the word shepherd, the grammar here, it's rather unusual grammar for most of us Includes this the next one teaching so a shepherd is both one who leads and feeds Leads if it's sort of a double gift here. It's a long story you can read it in biblical eldership and if I explained to the Granville Sharp rule here right now you would definitely all go to sleep. You would have a very good sleep.

No you would. It would be a very deep sleep and you'd say, boy that was wonderful. I just feel so refreshed. Now, The shepherds, the shepherds and the teachers, which I believe would be your local elders, these are gifts. He doesn't talk about office, he talks about gifts.

But now the purpose, to equip the saints, to prepare the saints. Who are the saints? That's the body. For the work of ministry or the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ. That is such an important verse.

That's sort of a guide to the local church. So we who teach, we who lead, we are to equip the whole body, men and women, children, we're to equip them and prepare them for the ministry or the service, because as we all do this together, the body gets built up. Fantastic plan, isn't it? And then we learn also that every member gets a gift, a spiritual gift. Now, just look up here one moment.

Look at how beautiful this is. Okay, in our Christian faith, the Messiah has come, but the Messiah's rejected. He's killed, and he's buried, and then by the power of God he's raised from the dead and then he ascends into heaven. So in heaven is our Savior, our Messiah, our Head is in heaven. Then he sends down the Holy Spirit, right?

You all with me? Sends down the Holy Spirit, because he's at the right hand of the Father, waiting to come back again. Sends down the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives in every single believer. He that has not the spirit of Christ is none of his.

You don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not saved. I don't care how religious you are, you are lost. You need to be saved, get born again. Come up and see me and I'll tell you later. So every member has the Holy Spirit.

Every member has a spiritual gift. Every member, the one another, is to be ministering to one another, ministering Christ to one another. What a plan! What a plan! That's the body of Christ.

So, in the plan of the body of Christ, every member ministering I hope you believe in that, Every member ministering Christ to one another. Every member using their gift. Each member ministering and caring for, loving one another, praying for one another. But he gives pastors and teachers to equip you to do that. Because if you don't get some knowledge and get some equipment for that, you'll probably do a lot of damage.

Now that's the plan. That's the plan. What a wonderful, marvelous plan. So, now in that plan you have shepherds and you have teachers, and they are to see that the body is equipped, and part of that equipping is 2 Timothy 2, 2, let's bring it in now, where We're looking, we're out there looking, I see you right there, we're out there looking for people who are dependable and reliable and the kind of people that are able to understand doctrine and teach doctrine and show other people we're looking for these people and when we find them we gotta do something. You know what we have to do?

We've got to equip them. We've got to equip them. So if you put 2 Timothy 2, 2 in this mix, then you realize there are certain ones that we're going to mark out. We're going to mark them out and say, they've got the potential to teach others and transmit this glorious gospel. So we've gotta see them.

So, how are we gonna do the next generation? That's the question I was asked to do. First it begins, you've got to have an eye for people. Alright? You have to have an eye for people.

It doesn't be like, you know, you're standing there, and boom, someone runs into you. No, it's not gonna happen. Not gonna get it by osmosis. You've got to be, I've learned this, you've got to be more aggressive and more deliberate. So you're out there because you're a shepherd and a good shepherd.

Isaac how you doing? Good? This boy is something. He stands there and stares at me the entire time. You're not sleeping, are you?

Sometimes I see people in church, they're staring right at you, there's a glaze in their eyes, I wanna go like that. They're probably thinking, I'm gonna have lunch and I'm gonna go out, you know. So, Levi, you're awake, aren't you? Good boy. You've gotta be looking for them.

You've gotta look past them sometimes, so you see this fine young man, or maybe he's not so fine right now, but you see potential. Like the Lord Jesus, he picks these 12 men, right? Some of them were probably not what you would pick, would they? Would they? They're fishermen, you know, they don't sound like these kind of guys would be good teachers.

They're, you know, they smell like fish. But the Lord sees the potential. So you've got to have some wisdom to see potential. So let me give you an example. We've had some real rascals in our church, and you know, you just hope they graduate from high school so you can get them out of the high school group or get out of the even go move someplace because there's so much trouble.

But you know, you see, boy that boy, he's got a lot of energy, and if the Lord will harness that energy, and he's got a real ability to communicate, sometimes you've got to see the Lord unless the Lord touches them. The Lord grabs them. I don't care who they are. They might look really good to you. But ultimately the Lord has to get a hold of them.

And if you could see past some of their problems and see. So I've got 11 grandchildren and seven of them are boys. And one of them, he just got too much energy. He's bouncing off of walls and can't keep his mouth shut. But you know, I see a real leadership in this boy.

He's going to be 13 now soon. I see a real leader in him. I notice they all follow him. But the Lord's got to get a hold of them. Ultimately the Lord has to get a hold of them.

But you see that in someone, and then you start directing them. So here's what I do. Remember, we're looking for young people who have a future. This is one of the ways you're gonna get elders. Here's what touched me.

Where's Hudson? Where's Hudson, raise your hand. Where's Hudson? Hudson Taylor, where's Hudson Taylor? Oh, there you are.

Hi, Hudson, how are you? So I'm 14 years of age, and we had a camp director. I got saved through a Bible camp, and the camp director was very good with young people. Excellent. And he gave me, 14 years old, got way too much energy, about 145 pounds, And our camp director is 6 foot 4, 300 pounds with red hair.

I mean, he looked like a football player. And he used to say to us, read this book or I'll sit on you. I didn't want this 300 pound guy sitting on me and break every bone. With real big voice, sounded like God from heaven. And I had to read at 14, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret.

What do you think happens to a 14-year-old boy who reads Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret? You're never the same, it's not possible. Because young people need a challenge. The world's challenging them. The world's got its heroes.

We have to have Christian heroes. And that was my hero. And I read of all he would do. And I thought, I want to be a missionary. It gave me my idea of missions.

Missions is important. And then that man, every year we had to read the life of George Mueller, the life of Robert Chapman, which was also life changing, and we read these biographies that challenged us, they were role models, Young people need role models. So, a brother, Jason, just talked about giving books out, and I couldn't agree with him more. Every church should have some kind of book ministry. And you've gotta put these books, these biographies, in the hands of our young people and give them a model, give them a goal to amen.

It's life changing. It's life changing. So I'm saying you've got to have an eye. You have to look out there and you can't just say, well he's not good enough yet. I already know no one's good enough yet.

But you see what could come. The Lord looked at the 12 and he saw what could come of these 12 men as he spent three years with them. I mean, think of where they came from in three years. You know, at the beginning when the Lord went out to pray, they're running around, Where in the world is he? Mark chapter one.

Well, they didn't know him yet. Where was he? They should have known. He was out praying, talking to his father. Now, these were fishermen, remember?

They're fishermen get up early. They're not like city people that get up at eight in the morning. They get up at the crack of dawn They got up at the crack of dawn and Jesus wasn't there remember that mark. Where's verse 35 or 36? He wasn't there and and the people were all coming and are gathering and they're going where's the Lord?

They didn't know him yet. They should have known he's out with his father speaking. Then he comes back, they say, Lord, look at all the people here, they're all gathered around. Sorry, we're going to the next village. How did he know that?

Because he was in prayer. He was in prayer. So it took a long time for these men to learn and unlearn, unlearn many of their bad habits. Three years our Lord prepared them, but even then they weren't ready till they got the Holy Spirit of God, the power from on high, to do the great things they were about to do. So our Lord had an eye for people, and he prayed about people.

Notice in another passage he went to the mountain to pray, and then at the end of that evening of prayer, he picked these 12 men who would be the foundation of his church. And he even picked one who was a traitor, but he knew that right from the very beginning. So our Lord has an eye for people. He sees the potential. He works with them to move them on.

And you know, some people I've worked with, I had a lot of doubt about them, but sometimes they've turned out to be the best people. And some of the best people turn out to be people who don't even carry through. So ultimately, it's got to be God touches them. He uses you, but ultimately, don't ever give yourself any credit for this. It's the Lord who touches these people.

And so often the most unlikely people turn out to be our best missionaries. An eye for people. Then open doors, open doors. In other words, give people work. So I meet Isaac here.

I like Isaac. How old are you? 13, he's a teenager. Or maybe a little bit older. And we elders will talk about Isaac.

He's a little older, let's just pretend, and we say, you know, let's put him with some of these young people to lead games or do something with them. Why don't you take care of getting the food? We're gonna clean up, we're gonna take care of it, right? Put heavy responsibility. So when I was 14 at this camp, heavy responsibility was put on me.

At 14 by the camp director. Heavy responsibility. And then for, until I was 20, in fact camp saved my life because I had a non-Christian family. I don't know what I would have done hanging around in Newark, New Jersey and in Island, New Jersey all summer doing nothing. I would have gotten in trouble, but we went to camp.

We had to work hard all summer. Didn't go home. Worked real hard. So, open doors and give people assignments. That's how they learn.

They don't learn just sitting around. You get a certain amount of knowledge that way, but you've got to put responsibility on people. And even if they're young, teach them things like working at home. You can give them some money, but they've got to learn to take responsibility young. You open the doors.

You have the authority as an elder to open doors and say, here's an assignment. When people come in here, you're gonna take all the coats, all the equipment, and you're gonna put it up here, and when they come at the end, You know you had snow, didn't you? You just had snow here, right? It was a miracle, right? All that snow, you say, all right, you're gonna get a shovel.

You probably don't even have a snow shovel. You have a snow shovel at your house? You don't even have one. Gotta go out with a spoon. You gotta remove all the snow.

You get all that snow, you're gonna de-ice the walk because all the people are gonna come in here. Open doors, give them responsibilities. Third, build, the first one is have an eye for people. Number two, open doors for people, potential jobs. Third, build relationships with potential leaders.

So, let's see, let's see, how old are you? Alright, you're 18, you're a good age. Remind me of your first name, I'm sorry. Will, I'm sorry, Will's been serving me over here, he's done a good job, thank you Will. So, I'm gonna build a relationship with Will, that's what I'm gonna do.

And so Will, did you eat at McDonald's or is that not good enough for you? Did you eat at McDonald's? Maybe Burger King, what? What's your style? I eat at McDonald's.

You do, alright. You will lower yourself to go to McDonald's. Okay, I'm gonna pick him up at school at lunchtime. We're gonna go over to McDonald's, and we're gonna talk. I'm gonna find out all I can about him, how he's doing, and then here's what we're gonna do, Will.

One or two times we'll meet, and then we're gonna meet regularly, and we're gonna be praying about missionaries. Okay? And so after we eat, we have a little prayer time, maybe in the car, we might even do it at McDonald's, who cares? Probably think we're all crazy or something like that. And we're gonna pray together.

This is what happened to me. Our camp director started sharing his heart about missions. And we started praying about missionaries, started praying about the inner city, New York. The camp was right outside of New York City, a lot of inner city kids. And so all of a sudden, I don't realize it, but as we're having this relationship, he is transmitting his heart to my heart.

I don't know it at the time, I just think this is great, this big gigantic super guy getting together with me. So I'm gonna build a relationship. So I got two men now, I'm building a relationship. We go out, we do things, we go visit every Wednesday night, we go out and visit, we have fun together, we call each other a lot. As we build a relationship, they don't even know it's happening, but they're becoming like me.

Is that unbiblical? What did Paul say? 1 Corinthians 11, verse 1, the imitators of Christ as I am an imitator. He had no problem telling people, follow me, because I follow Christ. I'm not following Christ, don't follow me.

So, we're going to have an eye for people, potential, going to be looking out there all the time, all the time. I'm not just looking for older men, I'm looking for any age, but I'm particularly watching those teens in those early 20s, key moment in their life as they're becoming adults, they need to get the vision then, and then I'm gonna open doors for them, I'm gonna give them responsibilities, we're gonna give them jobs, we're gonna make them responsible, We wanna see how they do it. Then on third, I'm gonna build a relationship with them. And then fourth, I'm gonna provide them educational resources. First thing I'm gonna look at, Will, I wanna see your Bible.

Where's your Bible, by the way? Bring it over here. Let's look at your Bible. Okay. Let's see what Bible is using.

It's the Holman's Bible there. Oh, good size print, good size print. This is a very nice Bible. I can see, because I don't want you to have the little tiny print, that'll hurt. But Will, what I'm gonna do, though, I'm gonna get you a good study Bible with some wide margin, and I'm gonna show you how to be a Bible reader, okay?

We'll spend some time, and I wanna make sure you have a good Bible, I'm gonna explain Bibles to you, and then I want you to know, Will, that we're gonna have some books to read, okay? I got a couple books that I particularly think you need to read. So now I'm feeding him resources. Now I'm telling you what happened to me, so this is not something I made up. I'm not that smart.

Books were put in my hands and I was forced to read them early. Really serious, I was forced to read them because this 300 pound football player said he's gonna sit on me if I don't read them. And I did respect him greatly and he became a mentor to me throughout all of life until he died. So he always put books in our hands as young people. And young people today are not reading.

They're not reading. They're sitting in front of the TV. They've got the phone and they've got all these crazy things they see on it. And it's a big challenge to get young people to read. So I'm gonna put good books I wanna see about his Bible and then I'm gonna check on his Bible reading.

I'm gonna check on his Bible reading. I'm gonna hold him accountable that he is regularly reading his Bible. And now in training men, developing men for the future and finding these future elders, I have to tell you this, you must learn Romans, okay? That's the first thing I start people on in their Bible study. In Romans, you've got the whole gospel and you've got the whole of the Christian life, okay?

So I don't care if it takes three years or two years, we are gonna work through Romans. You're gonna outline the whole book for me because it is logical And then you're going to build your outline there I'm going to give you a commentary and that is going to be our first project together. You got to know Romans You're going no place. That's the that's the center. It's like the the hub of the wheel knowing Romans Okay Then I'll take you over to something like Galatians.

You gotta get the gospel first, because out of the gospel comes everything. And then, here's another big thing I'm gonna do. I'm going to say to Will, Will, so he's got, you got a car? You have car insurance? You have a real license?

The police aren't after you, are they? Oh good. I want Will to listen to great preaching. So the first thing I'm going to do with Will is I'm going to start him on Romans listening to great preachers like John MacArthur, S. Lewis, Johnson.

I've heard all those tapes myself, hours of them. Bill McCrae, All those men, I've heard all of them. I want you to listen. When you've got spare time, when you're in the car, and you're not looking for the police, and you're going to be listening to Romans, okay? Even if it takes a long while, I don't care.

So I'm gonna Get him involved in a ministry of listening to podcasts or tapes or CDs, however he does it. So, Will and I are building a relationship. He's 18. Now, I know that's young, I know that's young, but Will, I've learned something in my life. The years go by quickly and all of a sudden I'll be 24 and 25 and he'll be out of college, he'll be a mature man, I'll help him find a nice wife, a good Christian wife so every great man needs a great wife and it's a surprise mother-in-law, right?

Okay, that's a joke. Then, now, we're gonna get serious about this. He's a little bit older now, and I'm gonna say to him something like this. Will, we desperately need men like you in the church to lead our church. We're in desperate need of shepherds of the Lord's people.

Now, all along I've been thinking about that. Maybe I said something, maybe I didn't, but I will throw the thought out at him. Will, We need men on the front line of battle. We need soldiers. We need leaders.

We need shepherds. The church is in desperate need. There's so few. Would you come to our elders meetings? And that's one of the greatest training grounds, even if it's a couple of years in advance.

And then I make sure that he gets to go to some key conferences. One, the way we train our men in our church. They've got to go to conferences. And they hear great preachers. They meet thousands of other young men like himself.

So Scott and I, we were just at the MacArthur Conference, about 4, 000 men there, but just before the conference, the missionaries were there, almost 800 people involved in missions, missionaries, mission directors, people very interested in world missions. Well, man, that's exciting to meet people on the front line of battle all over the world, over 30 worlds. That's gonna take his vision and lift it way up. You know, the world is bigger than Alabama. Did you know that?

Did you know that? You know there's other states? Did you know that? You learned that in school. Yeah, Have you ever been outside of Alabama?

Have you ever been to Mississippi? You have been. Ever been to Louisiana? He's quite a world traveler, isn't he? So.

We might send him on a missions trip. Maybe you go down to Guatemala. There's a lot of work going on. You gotta be careful down there, though. Maybe I will suggest formal schooling for him, a year in Bible school, or three years.

I might have to see where you're going, whether you're a self-perpetuating student or what you need. So all along, I've been thinking about Will and maybe some others, some others. So how are we gonna get future elders? We're gonna have to be deliberate. We're gonna have to be deliberate.

We're gonna have to be aggressive. So I just don't tell you this story. We'll move to our next subject. About 10, 15 years ago, I don't remember exactly, we were trying to raise up more elders. And all of us by that time are in our mid to later 50s, and we see the need.

You know, we have a fairly good-sized church and a lot of mature families. Do you know we couldn't find one person interested? They weren't even interested. So we really started praying about this. Why is it we are not seeing these men raised up to eldership?

Why are they so frightened of this? I found in most cases that we talked to them, they were frightened that it was going to hurt their family and their wives did not want it. So we said, we better start thinking about this. We're gonna die on the front lines, and you know, it's good that the next generation is coming up, and they're not coming up. So we had to get very deliberate about this whole thing, and start targeting people in our church that we saw, as Paul said to Timothy, reliable, faithful, trustworthy men.

We could see we had plenty of them actually, we were very fortunate. And men who had the ability to communicate the word and teach others. So we just took them on one at a time. So let's just start with Lars Anderson, very fine elder, and a good Bible teacher, has a big job with one of the big investment companies. So we met with him.

And he said, well, you know, my wife is terrified if I become an elder I'll be a church widow. So I said, all right, we're going to talk to your wife. So we met with the family and we said, listen, the last thing we want to do is hurt your family. That's the last thing. We hurt your family, we hurt your eldership.

Your husband is going to be part of a team and our first job will be to protect him and his family. That's our first job. And we will not let him go beyond what is good and we want you to call us anytime he's doing too much. In fact, that invitation is to every elder's wife. If we're doing too much, neglecting the wife and the children, they are to call us.

So we found that unless we went to the people themselves and found out what the problem is, because these are good families. We didn't go to people that would never qualify. These were families that were already, really already qualified. So as we went around to different families, We were able to talk them through their fears, talk them through, oh, I can't do this. And what had happened is our elders, I'm part of the second generation, first generation of elders who started our church, all are dead now.

They were all in the church, they all stayed there until they died. I am part of the second generation of elders. The problem is the second generation of elders laid such a high standard no one thought they could reach that. We said, we're going to help you reach that and you already are good men. So we had to be very deliberate, we had to go out after them, remove their fears, tell them we'll prepare you in any way, we'll give you the time.

And so it took somewhere between five to ten years that we could all, the second generation like myself, could step aside and bring in that third generation of elders. My point is we had to be deliberate. We had to think about it and go out there and deal with the families. All right, I have said enough about that subject. So much more could be said, but you can't bear it.

Okay, are you guys all right? You're right down here? Okay, you're looking good. You're wide awake. The older people in the back, they're sleeping.

I can see. Yeah, that's okay, They're older. Now, my next subject, and I have 20 minutes because I am going to end at 3 o'clock because we don't want to torture you. I don't want to torture you. Don't want you to come here and say, these people killed us, sitting all day listening to these people babbling on.

Our topic now is Scott, it's written down there. What is the exact topic? What is the exact topic? It's about Yes, the landmines of shared leadership and there are landmines all right first of all the advantages of shared leadership now Probably in 95% of churches or more is led by one man. That man's in charge.

He's the CEO of the corporation. In many churches, he makes the final decision, or the final decision might be made by the congregation or the elders, but Really in practice, the church goes where he wants to go. If not, he probably won't be there too long. So they're really looking to one man to lead the church. They pay him to do that, they expect him to do that, or else they ax him.

Real shared leadership means that no one person makes final decisions. It's made by a group, a shared group of shepherd elders. All of them made elders, Acts 20-28, by the Holy Spirit. They've been examined by the church, as we just heard. They show themselves qualified.

The church has laid hands upon them. And together, together, the shared leadership, the council of elders, the body of elders. I do not like the word board of elders. I don't like that term. You use it, don't use it anymore, because it sends the wrong message.

We're administrators. We're policymakers. No, we're shepherds of people. Our business is people. And in many churches, many churches do have elders, but they're policy makers, they're administrators.

They don't shepherd people, they don't teach people. And they make policy, and then the pastor and his deacons or whatever carry it out. Let me give you a few advantages first and then we'll look at the disadvantages. I'll do this quickly. The advantages of shared leadership are, here it is, the secret document.

I actually had notes, but I've listed them at the hotel. So I had to. Quickly, you can see these are not inspired. I can hardly read them. OK, it's all right.

We'll do all right. Let me give you a couple of really key advantages. Number one, shared leadership, eldership, actually fits the nature of the church. That's really important. There is no ordained clergyman over the church.

That is a human idea imposed upon the Bible. If something as important as an ordained clergyman, the reverend clergyman, was a biblical, it's got to be in the Bible, That's very important. But it's nothing, nothing in the Bible like that. It's a brotherhood. So eldership meets the brotherhood, and the nature of the church and the headship of Christ.

It really harmonizes with and promotes the doctrine of the church. So That's a real advantage. Another advantage is accountability, real accountability, not fake accountability, like the pastor is accountable to the elders, but they don't know a thing what he's doing. It's accountability where you meet regularly, and you know what one another is doing. You're reading.

You're talking into one another's lives. Hopefully a good eldership builds friendships and doing things together outside of church work, having dinner together, going out fishing together. Some of those are the most precious times. Get in a car for 10 hours, coming to a conference, really unites you together. I noticed that we had about 12 men that went to the shepherds conference and they spent more time just discussing the messages and changes in the church.

Very exciting to see them talking about these things. So it builds real accountability. And then peer relationships. One of the most beautiful things in life is to have co-workers and not be out there all alone. Now, I cannot validate this, but I've read this, that a seminary student graduating from seminary, going into full-time Christian work, three-fourths of them are done in five years.

They're done. They're out of Christian ministry. One of the reasons is they're all alone out there at the top of the pyramid. God never made you to be alone like that. There's nothing like colleagueship.

There's nothing like shared ministry together. So you take the beatings together. Nothing like having peer relationships and sharing the load together, sharing the heavy burdens of the church, encouraging one another, praying for one another, really shepherds, shepherds, elders, pastor, pastors, And then balancing one another. Very important. We're all oddballs.

We're all got imbalances. We're all got blind spots, eccentricities. All of us. You want to know what mine are? Do you want to know what mine are?

You do. You do. Don't be nosy. I'm not telling you. Okay.

We all have these things. We can't see them. That's why they're called blind spots. But our fellow colleagues, they see them and they go, Why did you make them that way, Lord? But I see their blind spots.

They can't see us. It all balances out in the end. We need balance. You know some people are just evangelism, other people are Bible teaching, Bible teaching. We need both.

Some people are very rigid, very rigid, keep the rules. Other people are loosey goosey, you know, it all works out in the end, you know, that kind of thing. You got all of these personalities, temperaments, temperaments, gotta work together. Well, because we have to work together, then we've got to, the only way we can work together, by the way, I'll tell you the secret, is we must all submit to the Christian virtues. Unless we're committed to humility and servanthood and love and forgiveness, these wonderful virtues of gentleness and pain, unless we're committed to that, there's no way we can work together.

We will kill one another, no question about it. Especially if you have a couple of A personalities in the group who run over everybody, then the others who you know are like turtles. Cannot work together without these virtues. Impossible. Impossible.

Alright, those are some of the advantages. But there are disadvantages to shared leadership. One is, it can be an organizational trap. Like it or not, a church takes organization. Your home takes organization.

If your home is unorganized, you're gonna have a lot of problems and you're gonna have a lot of frustrated people. You gotta organize money, you have to manage money, you have to manage property, you have to manage time schedules, different things the Lord has given to us, people. So the Lord made us to be organized people. It's amazing what people can do when they're organized and in order. I remember one time I was out in the plains of Colorado to speak at a church, way, way out in the plains.

Nothing out there but cows and brown grass. And I went into the home of this pastor. I came into his home and instantly I knew it was a problem. First of all, it looked like a hand grenade went off. I couldn't find a place to sit because it was junk on all the seats and I looked into the kitchen I don't think a single pot or pan or dish was in a cupboard They were all there in a huge pile and I would have just thrown the mountain started new or they ought to use paper plates Maybe but it was complete chaos the home So I'm sitting down with this pastor and he says, you know, we have a lot of problems in the church.

I'm going, oh, I know that. I can tell already. I'm not Houdini. Total disorganization. You know, even his clothes show he's disorganized.

Eldership can be an organizational nightmare or trap. I wrote a book called Meetings that work. I did not bring it, but it's only a couple dollars. You ought to get it. As elders, we have to organize things.

And you can't just throw it out like, oh yeah, we'll get by the hospital. No one takes the responsibility. No one visits the hospital. There's a very important crisis in the church, and no one gets assigned dealing with it or taking the lead. So often you have, maybe you have three elders, four elders.

Some elders take the lead in certain situations. So you have a big operations coming up. Well, maybe at that one you might want all the elders there, but usually one elder, he'll do the phone calls, get there, take the lead. Unless you're organized, all of a sudden no one showed up. It was everybody's job, so no one did the job.

So one thing that's very important is that the elders meet regularly, regularly, and whenever an assignment is given, I hope you write things down. Don't be careless. You're doing it for the Lord's sake. All right? Will, you're going to make the calls this week to Brother Sohn.

So he says, open heart surgery, you're going to get all the information, OK? Now, Will, don't fail us, because the families will be angry if no one calls. And I've seen this. Major crisis, and no one calls, because we thought everyone was going to call. So Will, write it down.

You're gonna answer to us next meeting. You're gonna report to us. And if you know you're gonna report to us, you'll probably go out and make that phone call. Plus, we're gonna train you, Will. We're gonna train you to be responsible and that you follow through.

I'm gonna show you tips of how to follow through on things, okay? We'll spend time together, you'll learn these things. So, you've gotta be organized, and when someone takes a job, everyone acknowledges the job, and you report back. It's amazing how we can take a job in an elders meeting, go out and forget it the next second. So, as elders come on, we teach them how to not forget.

That's no excuse, I forgot. So you've gotta be careful organizationally. No one is in charge. A group's in charge, and when a group's in charge, things get dropped, they got forgotten. But you can't do that.

People get very badly hurt, people get frustrated with you, you're not using people's gifts. You're the stewards. Did you know you were called the stewards? Did you know that? Titus 1.7.

God's, by the way, not the congregations, God's stewards. Steward is a household manager, a state manager, a very important job, because the estate managers put it all in your hands. So we elders are estate managers of his people, and don't goof up. You got a job to do. You're going to be held accountable.

He was 13, 17. All right, so be careful of the organizational trap. Be well organized. If you have an elder that's very good at organization, mobilization, let him take the lead in that. And so let's just say go back to Brother Herb Banks who started our church, a great administrator, a great administrator.

And so things did not get by him. Get by some of us, you know, our heads are in the cloud or something like that. So he's the kind of guy that follows up on things to the point that he annoys you to death, but that's good. That's good, it's better to be annoyed than let things drop. So he wrote everything down and he would follow up.

That was his gift, He was very good at organizing and making sure we were organized, that we weren't just, you know, hey, okay, it was a great meeting, he had a lot of good fellowship. Nothing gets done, nothing gets done. So be careful of organizational sand trap. We're really, we're very ineffective because we do have to organize things for the church, just like we do in our families. And I know how many wives are frustrated with husbands who never get their jobs done, right?

Don't raise your hand right now, don't confess your sins. And it's frustrating to wives and children. The husband can't even remember to take the trash out when the trash man comes, and he promised to do these jobs and he never gets them done, things are falling apart. Very frustrating to people, don't do that. Alright, decision making, This can be hard.

So if you're in a church where one person really makes the decisions, well, then it's up to him and then you can criticize him if he makes the wrong decision. But we make joint decisions, which can be difficult because sometimes the decisions are tough things. So I'm just gonna give you a couple ideas. This is not in the Bible. This is how we operate, how we've learned wisdom over the years.

So we're a little bit larger church, and Let's see, right now I think we have six or seven elders. We've had as many as eight. So you got eight men, all of them of their own men, and a number of them type A personalities, a number of businessmen who make decisions real quickly, but they gotta learn to weigh down one another, and that's not easy. It's not easy to someone who's used to, all right, here's the decision, we're going this direction. And now you're in a group of men who says, well, we're not going that direction, we're gonna go in this direction.

We're going too fast, we're going too slow, we're going too high, we're going too low, that kind of thing. So you have to learn trust of one another, you have to learn cooperation, it's a great skill to learn. You have to learn people skills. You have to get better with working with a group of people who in Many ways are alike, but yet still we're all different in decisions, so here's how we do it. This is not the way that everyone has to do it.

So since we're a little bit larger group of elders, not two or three, which is a little bit easier, the more elders you get, the harder the decisions, the make decisions. So when we make decisions, there are many decisions we'll make even if we don't every single one agree. Now, I know there are churches believe that you have absolute unanimity. I think there's issues you have to absolutely have unanimity, but there are issues you don't have to. So, should we buy a vacuum or not buy a vacuum?

Should people bring their own vacuum to clean the church, or should we have a church vacuum? It's a really crazy illustration, but it's what came to my head. So, one of the brothers feels very strongly, and he's over the building, he's over the vacuums. He says no, the church needs a good sized vacuum here. Others say it's just a waste of time, people should bring their own, they got vacuums, they got to be more expensive ones.

So, if there's a brother among the elders who feels very strongly about an issue, and if he is over that area, we will, in most cases, just go along with that. All right. And we can make decisions very quickly that way. If you have to wait on every decision, full unanimity, especially if you have seven or eight men, you will probably not get much done. So, in most decisions, we approach it as serving one another, working with one another, and so Brother Doyle Roth really feels strongly about a certain ministry in the church in evangelism, and he does, by the way.

And others of us, all right, let me give you a real life illustration. Brother Doyle Roth has a farm, and he wants to have square dancing as an evangelistic outreach for all the college and career people, okay? He wants square dancing, wants a square dance, guy who calls it out, and he's gonna bring an evangelist in. Now, we don't dance in our church. Probably you don't dance in your church either.

He wants to do this, because he says, I can get a lot of college kids to come to this. Now, I have never square danced in my life, but I went out to see what this is like. It's like aerobic exercise. That's what it's like. It's exhausting.

All right. I used to think you hold a woman when you do it. This is your running up and down like this. Okay. So, I did not want to do the square dancing.

Brother Doyle Roth, but Doyle Roth is really the evangelist in our group. He's always coming up with all kinds of weird evangelistic ideas, way out there sometimes. So, he feels strongly about this. He says, I know, and the evangelist I know, very good evangelist, he would be there that night, and he said, there won't be any kind of really touching or anything like that. You're all worried about the wrong thing.

So what do we do? We can't get agreement on it, so we can just do nothing, but then they're totally frustrated, feeling we're holding them up all the time. So it's not a life or death issue. And so we give our complaints, we say what we think, and then Brother Doyle Roth, OK, let's go with it. We don't want to frustrate him.

He's evangelistic, he's got a lot of good ideas. He does a lot for unsafe people, many wonderful, caring things. If he's gonna be frustrated every meeting, then they frustrate me, they won't go along with my ideas. So we serve one another, right? We trust one another, let's go ahead with it.

You're in charge, you're gonna be the spokesman for this, and we'll back you now, once we decide. So we did not have unanimity on that, but we want to serve one another as elders, so let's do it. It actually turned out to be very successful. I was wrong and he was right. Now, let's say we wanted to start a new church.

We did, two years ago. Or we need to do some stuff on our building. It's gonna cost everybody and it's a major thing. Or we change some of our beliefs. We did change some of our beliefs, they weren't major beliefs, but they were beliefs very close to other people.

We have to have unanimity, because we have to go ahead as one group. We've gotta support this together. So there are issues that we need, total unanimity, and we've got to talk it through. Now, great idea. Here's what you do.

You're making a decision. You can't get agreements. So what you do. You ever notice that one group sits on this side of the table and another group sits on this tile. You ever see that?

The for and against, right? So, don't do that. All of you sit on the same side of the table, have a white board in front of you, draw a line down the middle, and one of the brothers gets up and says, we're gonna do the for and against. All right, should we start a new church? Here's one of the doo-doo.

Should we build a bigger church? Doo doo doo doo, and we start laying out the arguments. We're not against one another, we're trying to get the will of God. So we start lining up the for's and against, and all of a sudden, in a short while it becomes clear. You know, really, we have every advantage to try this.

We have nothing to lose in the end. And so we all come to a complete unanimous decision as we've reasoned through, prayed through, laid out our arguments, countered each other, go through it, it's obvious, let's go forward. So on certain decisions we've gotta have unanimity. On lots of pedaling decisions, We talk it out real fast, build consensus, let's move on. I have seen elderships that are stuck in the sand all the time, literally, of the color of the pews or the color of the songbook.

Seriously, they fight over everything. It's ridiculous and it makes meetings very, very hard to manage, and men get very discouraged, and everything's an argument. Can't have that. That's how we do it. You figure out your own way.

Personality clashes. This is probably the biggest one. So you got one brother, very organized, very rigid, you have another brother, you know, come see, come saw, you know it's all gonna work out in the end anyway, right? Two different personalities. And so you come to the situation, should we start another congregation?

Should we split a group of people off? Should we do that or not? One person wants to work through all the details. You know how it's gonna work and how it's gonna end up and all. The other person's going, oh my, let's just make a decision.

Usually our fights usually turn out to be personality clashes. So here's just a couple ideas. Notice that in the biblical qualifications, this is very interesting, In the biblical qualifications, do you notice how many deal with temperament? You ever notice that? You gotta be level-headed, must be sober-minded, you have to be self-disciplined, upright, devout.

A number of emphasis on self-control and balance. Sometimes in these situations, our weaknesses come out. And sometimes we have to address one another and do it privately. So we're having a clash between two brothers. And so I'll take, Isaac here is clashing, I'll take Isaac out to lunch, I'll say, Isaac, you cannot talk to Brother Doyle that way.

He's an older elder, he's been here for years, and you've gotta show a little more respect for him, and you're not really listening to him. You're just always, you're just fighting him. This is not gonna get anyplace. You're gonna hurt the church. And so we talk about how an elder approaches another elder who they're just different.

They're just different. Brains are wired differently. And then sometimes two elders that are clashing, gotta go out and work this out together. And the elders will say, you two men need to sit and have some fellowship time, go to dinner some night, talk through your differences, and get to know one another. When you get to know one another, you relax a little bit.

And get to trust one another. And you don't always have to be right. You know, no one's right all the time but me. Often the problems are personality clashes, and then you find out how little love you really have, how little patience you really have, little gentleness you really have. So in a way, the Lord's exposing us who we really are.

And if we operate in the flesh, we're gonna really, really be troubled. We're gonna operate in the spirit. So I wrote this book because that's what I see as problems in most churches, personality clashes. If you bite and devour one, that's Paul's statement by the way from Galatians, that he says to the church, if you continue to bite and devour one another, you'll all be devoured. You're all going to be destroyed.

And How many churches have closed because they were biting and devouring and as Paul says nothing's left. You literally can consume the church. And what I've seen, I've seen it many times, after they've consumed the church, broken the church apart, There is no church, five, six years later, those same people will tell you, we handled that all wrong, we handled that. I've heard that so many times. I wish we didn't talk that way and operate that way and treat one another that way.

Oh, I tell them, why be sorry five years later? Apply the biblical principles now, Humility, servanthood, love, patience, bearing with one another, listen to one another, doesn't always have to be your way. So this is where the problem of shared leadership comes. Can we get along with one another? And it does take bearing with one another in love or bearing with one another and forgiving one another as Christ has forgiven us.

So with our eldership, our second generation of elders, a lot of good strong men, quite willing to disagree, quite willing to butt heads, we just have to say time and again, unless we operate by the fruit of the spirit, not the works of the flesh, we are not gonna make it. Is it that important? Is it that important to square dancing that we'll rip our relationships apart? No, it's not that. Let's try it.

And then we came up with this phrase. All we could do is fail. Let's try it. It's better to try something and move ahead and if we fail, then we'll just sell the congregation. That was a bad idea, but we tried it.

We tried it. And that example I gave is a good one, because there were people in the church very much against square dancing, and the people said, no, it was a great idea. Remember, we're the West, and the West square dancing is not like maybe it is here. It's very acceptable. Many of the older people in our church do square dancing with their spouse, and they find it a great aerobic exercise.

I've had enough of it, but so, and I always crash into people all the time. Then they want to sue me. I hate that. Really, if we can't work together, we have somehow failed. We have somehow failed.

That we can't get along on, really, I'll tell you something, as an elder over 40 years, most of our issues were not life and death issues. Maybe at the time, but they were not life and death issues. A couple life and death issues with some terrible sin in our midst, even among our elders, we had the excommunicated and elder, those were life and death issues. And those issues we had to have absolute unanimity because we were taking on at one time a tiger and threatened with a lawsuit and threatened in many ways, but together we were able to deal with a very, very sinful situation, a difficult situation that just about tore us apart emotionally. Couldn't have done it unless we had unity.

Now, I'm gonna end with this, the key to all this, the key, we can talk about this forever, and every church is different. The key to a successful eldership, a key to eliminating many of these personality conflicts or doctrinal conflicts, the key, now are you listening carefully? Then you can go take a nap. We got a half hour break, go lay on the floor outside or on the lawn or something. You kids go around, run around the building five times, okay, you'll feel better about yourself.

All right, are you listening to me? Way back there, are you listening way back there? Wait, the back row. Raise your hand, raise your hand. Come on, that's good.

I wanna make sure I can see you. Don't think I can't see you. And your eyes are open or closed. The key to a successful eldership is training. In other words, no one comes on the eldership until you have been trained by us.

We know your doctrine, and you will make a public statement that if I change these doctrines, I will step aside. We actually had it happen to us. One of our elders, a fine man, a fine man, a medical doctor, young, every talent in the world, pianist. He completely changed his doctrine. It was amazing.

And a gracious, wonderful man, he said, no, I must step aside now and leave the church because I do not believe these doctrines. Now he could have caused us a knock-down, drag-out fight, but any elder comes on, they publicly state, if we drift from these doctrines, we'll step aside. We don't tear the church apart. By the way, great story, left for 10 years and then came back. Said he missed us so much.

It's true. It's a wonderful, wonderful man of God. All right, so we're all on the same page doctrinally. You don't come on the eldership until you're on the same page doctrinally. We have certain doctrines you must hold.

There's other errors we give leeway because it's not major and we've got to live with some disagreement. The second thing is we've trained each elder who's come on, we know the personality, we know the temperament, and they have met with the elders minimum a year. Most of the time it's two years or more. They've met with the elders, we see how they get along. If there's major, he won't come on, if there's major clashing right from the beginning, and we've had that, and we've just said, brother, we must work in peace.

Our job is hard enough. Really, you do not fit on this eldership. You might fit well in another church, but you do not fit. And it hurts. It hurts big time.

But it's better to say that to someone than to bring someone on knowing you're going to have real big problems. And this even includes a man who's a godly man, a lovely family, everything, but he can't follow arguments. Can't follow a train of thought and always getting off. So we had to say that to a man, lovely, beautiful family, in every way qualified. But somehow in his mind, he just could not, because we've moved very quickly and there's things coming at us and he'd just be holding us up and just going off the rails into different things and wondering what is he talking about?

We had to say to him, no. So, no one comes on the eldership until they've been trained by us. We're on the same page doctrinally, and we know they fit. They fit with the body. They love the other elders.

They're not a contentious person, or they're not some kind of extremist. We have plenty of those. And that solves so many problems. And so many elders are brought on to church elderships. They've never been trained.

They don't know, really, even their doctrine. Like, I'm in a church, and one of the elders says to me, he doesn't believe the body of Christ will go on forever, but it's going to destroy it. What kind of teaching is that? It's unorthodox, heretical teaching. Christ took on the resurrected body, and we'll have a body like his forever So if Christ loses his body, I guess we'll lose our body too.

How did he get on the eldership? No one ever asked. No one ever asked. He wasn't trained. So you get on the eldership, now you got boom, you got some real doctrinal differences.

So the key to all of this, to work effectively, if you don't train the men, you're just gonna get trouble. And so Will loved this guy, He's 25, 30 years age, and he is not coming on the eldership until we have spent time with him. And we're very happy with Will. And then we'll present him to the congregation. They know we've been training him.

He's been very active in the church. Everybody knows Will. And so it's seamless. It's seamless. It comes right on.

And there's not even a ripple in the pond, because we've been preparing for this. Now, to me, that's the secret to unity. It's the secret to effective eldership that we know what we're getting. We're not taking a guess. They're going to gamble on this guy.

Why do you think so many pastors only last a couple years in churches? You know why? Because they don't know anything about the person. They get a piece of paper that says something about them, make a phone call or two, bring them on to be their shepherd. And about two years into the deal, they go, oh boy, oh boy, we got to get this guy out.

Got to move them on, move them on. How do you get to know a shepherd by just reading a piece of paper and making a phone call. Remember, the sheep must know the shepherd, as Jason said. No one should come on the eldership that isn't known by the sheep. And I'll tell you, the sheep know a lot more than we think.

And they size people up. And I'll tell you who sizes the people up. Women. We have this man come to our church to teach, just a visiting teacher. And we all thought he was twinkle twinkle little star.

Brilliant, man, all this. Interesting, the women didn't like him. Women said, no, something's wrong. He's very arrogant, very into himself, a show-off. You know, in the end, it proved the women were right.

So they got their own radar system, right? They got their own radar system, and they read men differently. So I see this guy, oh, brilliant, real smart, good speaker. That's what I see. Woman sees, uh-uh, I don't like, I don't know, there's something wrong.

He's not relating to us. He's not comfortable to be around. He's uncomfortable to be around. Listen to your wives, they're lots more than you think. Well, they married you, so again.

Yeah.