How should a church go about the process of recognizing and ordaining new elders? What does the New Testament reveal about this process? While the biblical data is not exhaustive on every detail, there are certain points that seem clear: for example, current elders nominate prospective elders, elders are to be examples to the flock, there ought to be a process for training men to be elder-qualified, etc. Regardless of how this process is worked out in each local church, the process needs to carefully thought out and rigorously biblical in order to ensure as best as possible, that the church is led by qualified, holy men.

My topic this afternoon is a start to finish process for nominating and qualifying elders. So how do we get these mythical creatures called qualified elders? 1st Timothy 3 verse 10, Paul says that they must be tested then served, there must be a testing process. 1st Timothy 5 22 gives us the exhortation not to lay hands on anyone hastily and the immediate context of that is clearly the appointment of elders. So that's what I'd like to talk about.

I'd like to talk about where our church would be, where our church would like to be over the long term. So some of this is aspirational for us. That men should be nominated and officially qualified is evident in the New Testament. Exactly how they should be nominated and qualified is never given to us in detail, and so I'm going to give you thoughts about how our church has attempted to go about looking at the data points that we have in the New Testament and then proceeding in a way that would honor what we see in the New Testament, freely acknowledging that there's not a detailed plan in any book of the Bible. Let's ask the Lord to help us.

Oh Father, I do pray that you would raise up an abundance of men, qualified men, seasoned men, mature men, loving men, to serve your people. God help us to take the information that we do have and to proceed in a way that brings honor to you through obeying the principles that we see in your word. We want to be sensitive to your spirit and to love you by obeying you. We pray that you would help us in Jesus' name, amen. I'd like to talk about this in terms of three stages, the first being a pre-nomination, the second being nomination, which begins the qualification process by the congregation.

I would call that the kickoff sort of for the for the congregation qualifying a candidate, And then the third stage, which I'll speak about briefly, will be installation. So number one, pre-nomination. I believe that church leaders would be wise to always consider themselves to be in this stage, Whether you think you're on the edge of being in an active place where the congregation is being asked to consider a man against the qualification for elderships or not, that we consider ourselves as churches to always be in the pre-nomination process. In other words, we're always thinking about the pipeline of future church leaders, and we're never content with what we have. We're always desiring to see men develop and come into maturity and come in the ability to be leaders among the Lord's people.

I remember years ago I was in a sales training class and the leader of the class said this, when you need a friend it's too late to make one. It's a process to develop a friendship. So if you need a friend, you can't just slot in this afternoon, part of my to-do list for the afternoon is I'm going to go make a friend. You may make an acquaintance and start on the road to making a friend, but that's not how it works. And it's the same with elders.

When you need an elder, it's too late to make one. And so we should always be thinking in these terms, developing men, seeing men come to maturity, helping them to make progress so that when we need an elder there's an abundance of men who are ready to take on leadership among the Lord's people. Here's a question I should address first. Who nominates elders? Who should be nominating men to be considered to lead the Lord's people?

I believe what we see in the New Testament is elder qualified men nominating elders. Essentially elders nominating elders, There might be some exceptions to that, but essentially elders nominating elders. In Acts chapter 14, Paul and Barnabas, at the end of their first missionary journey, we see them appointing elders in every church. It's Paul and Barnabas who were doing it. In Titus 1, Paul reminds Titus that he had commanded him to appoint elders in every city.

So it's a man who's likely been discipled by Paul and who is responding to the instructions of Paul who is appointing the elders. By contrast, in Acts chapter 6 we see the leaders ask the brethren of the church to seek out and bring forward men to serve as deacons who fit certain qualifications. So in Acts chapter 6, I believe what we're seeing is the the congregation nominating deacons, but we never see anything like that in terms of the nomination of elders. All that we see in the New Testament in the limited data points that we have is elder qualified men nominating elders. Why is this?

Well I believe it's because the most appropriate people to nominate those who are responsible for defining and defending sound doctrine are those who have been acknowledged to be mature in doctrine themselves. The approved for defining and defending sound doctrine in the past are those who select those to be considered against the qualifications. So in our church, elders, existing elders, nominate and then the congregation qualifies the men who have been nominated. Now you'll notice I'm not using categorical language. Why is that?

Well, because not all churches share that view. I'm not condemning anyone else for their practice. I'm saying as a church these are the data points that we see in the New Testament and we're trying to walk out something that appears to us to be consistent with those data points. If you have a better way, we'd love to hear it. We'd love to do it if it is a better way that's more consistent with the New Testament.

Now back to pre-nomination. What can we be doing during the long stretches where a man hasn't been nominated for active consideration? In other words, I think it's the exception that you're in a period of time right now where a man's being actively considered by the congregation. It's not the rule. Most of the time you're not in active consideration.

What can you be doing during most of the time where you're not actively considering? You don't want to be doing nothing and we shouldn't be doing nothing. We should be doing things that bring us to the point where we're ready when the time comes. I have three suggestions. Number one, we, the current elders, can begin speaking with men who are more mature and in the pool of potential future elders about what could be gaps in their lives.

If you ask any group of elders, any group of existing elders, hey as you look across the landscape of your church, who are the two or three or four men in the church who you think might be the next elders here, they'll say, hmm that's a good question. Okay, yeah, it's him, him, and him. They're probably want one of those three just seems to us like it that's kind of the pool of potential future elders they're more mature we might have things we don't know about them yet, but probably the next one will come from that group. I'm saying that existing elders can begin to have conversations with those men about things that they see in their lives that may or may not be gaps but are potential areas that they want to know more about. These are potentially touchy conversations that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

Often when you look at the men of the church and you see potential gaps in their lives, often you consider that a part of their progressive sanctification. In other words, none of us are fully mature in every category of our lives. All of us have areas of potential weakness and gaps in our lives, and you don't go talk to every brother about every potential concern that you have in his life. Most of the time you say, the Holy Spirit is working in that man's life, this is a man, he really is making progress, God is dealing with him. But in this case, because you have him in mind as someone who's potentially suitable for leadership, you're having a conversation that you would not otherwise have had.

And maybe in an area where you know you don't have enough information, you're certainly not bringing an accusation, you're probing. You want to know more. So maybe that conversation is something like this. You get together one-on-one and you say, brother, I wanted to get together to talk because I think leadership might be in your future at some point. Near or far, you seem like a man who is being brought to maturity and you seem to have an appetite to be a blessing to the Lord's people.

It looks like either near or far in time, you could be a person who could be a leader here, and I've noticed something that I probably wouldn't have even spoken to you about. But since you're on this potential track for leadership, I wanted to know more. I've seen your three-year-old dishonor your wife with you nearby, and I don't even know whether you saw it going on, but I saw it going on, it's happened maybe twice, and you didn't address it. Why could you talk to me about that? Should I be worried about that?

And listen, and have a brotherly conversation. He responds and then and then you may probe on another area and you come to a new way of seeing and understanding that in his life. And this is seeing if you can clear some preliminary hurdles. First, it allows you to have a frank discussion on the top thing or two that you think might be trouble spots. Now, I have a thing or two that I think might be trouble spots in the life of every man that I have ever known or met.

Even the ones who are eminently qualified as elders, even the ones who are way better at being an elder than I am. There's a thing or two in their life that I think if I have a concern about this man it would be this or that. And if you know me at all you should have a thing or two that would be potential area of concern in my life. They're the things that as you observe you say that this is not fully mature in this category, It seems like he might not be. So it allows you to actually have a frank discussion about that top thing or two in that man's life, not accusing him of anything.

Secondly, it allows you to see how a man deals with getting that kind of feedback, and doesn't that tell you a world of information? Does this temperature rise really fast? Does this temperature rise too fast? Or does he say, Brother, I'm so glad you brought that up. My wife and I have been talking about that.

And how I don't really intervene when my three-year-old dishonors her, and I'm in the middle of repenting of that. And I don't want that to happen anymore. I hope you never see that again, but if you do see it, please point it out right on the spot. Like I want to be a different man going forward or he or he might say you know what that's a that's a good observation but I've I've gotten in trouble with reacting too strongly right on the spot and so I try to give it a little time and those instances absolutely have been addressed you just didn't see it it was anybody might have a really good explanation for it but he might handle the feedback that he's gotten from you well or poorly and that tells you a lot. So that's one, we can begin to speak with men who are more mature about what could be gaps in their lives.

Secondly, we can invite men to attend our elders meetings either from time to time or regularly. Hey, we meet on Monday mornings, could you join us? If we hit a really sensitive topic we might need to ask you to excuse yourself at the end of the meeting, but we would just love for you to come and see what it's like for us to have an elders meeting. We always start, We pray for the church together, so we want you to participate. Just praying for your brothers and sisters here.

We'll all pray and then we'll discuss various matters of the workings of the church, and then if we hit something sensitive at the end, you can excuse yourself. Come, come be part of our elders meetings, either frequently or from time to time you can ask men to do that. That allows the man to see how you work together as elders. He's going to need to know that if he's eventually going to go through a process of deciding for himself whether he's interested in the work, whether he's interested in even being considered by the congregation. This would give him important information that he'll get to know because he'll get to see how you work together as elders who get to participate in praying for the church, who get to hear how you think through the matters that are associated with you leading the church.

He learns about eldership and you learn about him. Is he self-aware? Is he a man who's an invited guest to your elder meeting, he's not an elder, but he comes in and he dominates the time. And he seems very, very interested in you knowing every one of his thoughts instead of him knowing your thoughts and how you think through the issues of the matters of the church? Does that mean he's necessarily disqualified?

No. But do you want to know that about him? If he's really not that self-aware, yes. So he's learning about eldership, you're learning things about him. You're learning his thoughts.

You may say to him during the meeting, we have to make this decision this week, here are the things that we're considering, if this was your call what would you do? And then you listen. You might say, that's exactly what I was thinking about this, I think we should do that. Or you might say, you know what we thought about that too, but here's the thing or two that bothers us about going forward on that basis. We're thinking this might be the unintended consequence of doing that and he gets to actually hear your thought process about how you make decisions that you make.

This is enormously helpful to a man who's learning to become an elder in time. Number three, we should be giving books to men and reading books with men. If you're a current elder, be a good book giver. Buy and give away a lot of books. Don't lend, give away.

Help men, encourage men to be building their library with good books. These are the theological and church life books that you think are important. There's about 10 theological and church life books that have impacted, influenced, shaped me a lot. And honestly, I want to be influenced by the books that have influenced my co-elders or at least be exposed. I want to know what shaped them.

And I want them to know what shaped me in terms of theological and church life books. This is a way to begin to bring other men in the church to that. I actually almost at any time I have three or four books going where I'm meeting with men either individually or in very small groups to read every week. Right now I have three books going. One is with a young man in our church, he's in his very early 20s, we get together, we read a book together, we actually get together and read.

And I actually would Commend that to you as a practice nobody has to do any homework you meet and when you meet you read and when It takes the number of weeks that it takes but when you're done You didn't have to do any homework, but you got together and you read another book. It's a way to read more books. I have another group of men that I'm reading a book with, a number of other fathers and sons in the church. We're reading books together. The youngest reader in that group I think is 15.

And then I have a man who's in his late 30s that I go out to near where he works and we eat a cheeseburger and we read a book together. This is a great way to to help men develop by reading important books on theology and church life. Okay, that's pre-nomination. Second, the nomination stage. This begins the qualification process with the congregation.

It's sort of the kickoff for the congregation considering a man. At our church this is the elders officially putting a man before the congregation for them to consider him in relation to the qualifications of 1st Timothy 3 and Titus 1. You have two lists, right? A list of qualifications of 1st Timothy 3, a list of qualifications in Titus 1, and you're bringing this man before the congregation and saying, church, brethren, we want you to consider this man Qualification by qualification, item by item, for these two lists to see whether you believe he meets or exceeds the threshold of each one of these qualifications. The threshold being is he blameless?

If a significant charge were made against him in this category, would the people who know him best say, no, no, he's not guilty of that? Or would they say, yeah, he really, that significant charge sticks. For us, meaning the existing elders, when we're at this point we have already done what we are asking the congregation to do. We have already satisfied ourselves that this man is qualified in life, in doctrine, in family life. We've talked extensively about his life and his walk with the Lord and his theology with him over a period of time.

And something we always do, and I'm going back to pre-nomination, I meant to do it at this point, something that we've done before we officially nominate a man is to ask him really early in our discussions with him, hey go talk to your wife. Ask her to consider, are you qualified? Is your wife affirmed? Is the person who knows you best who lives with you who sees you in in all kinds of circumstances and as she affirmed that you're ready have those discussions with her there'll be helpful discussions to you and then we actually want to meet with the husband and wife together to talk to her in in the presence of him to to get an affirmation that she believes, one, that he really is qualified, we'd be surprised if the answer wasn't yes at that point because we've already told him to go have that conversation with her, but two, to probe if she thinks it's the right time of life for him to serve the church as an elder. Those are two radically different questions.

One, is your husband qualified to be an elder? Two, is it the right time for you as a wife and for you as a mother for this man to dedicate significant time to shepherding the Lord's people in this local assembly? We had a period of time years ago we were going through conflict at the church it was taking a tremendous amount of bandwidth to be an elder in that church and I was co-eldering with Scott at the time and the phone rang and and caller ID came up it was Scott Brown and my wife said it's your girlfriend It's your girlfriend. You don't want to, and she said it jokingly, but there's a point there. You don't want your wife to view the church as your girlfriend.

Meaning stealing valuable bandwidth that she needs as your wife and that she needs as the mother of your children. She may actually think, I need so much of my husband and I need so much of the father of my children with all that we have going on in our home right now, I think if he served as an elder now the church would be his girlfriend. You don't want that. My personal view and opinion is you want to honor a wife's sense of that. You ought to honor a wife's sense of that.

You want a wife who says, yes it's about time, he's so good here, we get so much good from his leadership here, I can't wait till the church enjoys that. That's what you want. You want a wife who wants to thrust her husband into caring for the Lord's people and views it as sort of a partnership in it, where she supports him as he supports the church and cares for the church, where she cares for him as he cares for the church. Okay, so we've, as elders, as existing elders, we've been through all of that before we put him before the congregation and asked the congregation to consider him. Even then, the existing elders probably don't know as much as the congregation about this man.

Are you with me? This is an incredibly important point. Even after we've been through all the theological discussions, all the talking about his life, all the understanding his theological positions, talking with him and his wife, even then we probably don't know as much about this man as the congregation knows. So the qualification process with the congregation is not a rubber stamp and you have to tell the congregation that, and you have to tell the congregation that, and you have to tell the congregation of that, it is illegal for you to say the elders probably know what they're doing, fine I'll vote for this man. Because the congregation has been living in these with this man in a different way, in different circumstances, at different times than you've ever had visibility to or access to, and they corporately have a body of knowledge that you don't have, and you need it to understand whether this man is really qualified or not qualified to lead the Lord's people.

At that point we announced the nomination and this is a great time for instruction to go back over the roles of an elder to lay out the process and the timeline and the importance of the process and the congregation's active participation in the process and to encourage them to go and talk to this man one-on-one about potential areas of concern. And again you have to say that hey friends, brethren, this is not a rubber stamp. If a mistake is made on this man, you own the mistake. We own the mistake together. We're giving you an opportunity and we're telling you how important it is, neglect that at your own peril and at our corporate peril.

Here's a recommendation. Give the congregation multiple weeks to do their work, or longer. Give them a month, give them six weeks to consider, to pray, to think, to talk one-on-one with this man, to have his family over, to have your wife talk to his wife about whether the bandwidth can be spared or not? Consider this, this is 1st Timothy chapter 5. 1st Timothy chapter 5 verses 24 and 25.

Some men's sins are clearly evident, preceding them to judgment, but those of some men follow later. Likewise, the good works of some are clearly evident, and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden. Now what in the world does that mean? It's very simple. Some men's vices and virtues are on the surface for all to see.

You don't need any special experience. Depth of relationship, there it is. For everyone to see. His virtues, for everyone to see, they're obvious. His vices, for everyone to see, They're obvious.

For some men it's not like that. For some of their virtues it's not like that. For some of its vices are not like that. You do have to have depth of relationship. You do have to have experience over a period of time.

And this is really what Paul is exhorting us to. Don't just assume that all virtues and vices sit right there on the surface and that anyone can just see them without depth of experience and relationship. You must know the man and it takes time to know the man. You can't just know him at church. Somebody needs to know what his work life is like.

Somebody needs to talk to people that he works with outside the church environment. Somebody probably ought to talk to his neighbors. At our church you have to be a member at least a year before you can even be considered for eldership. It's arbitrary, but it's the idea of no haste and honestly it terrifies me to think that if a man became a member really really fast, normally it's six months before anyone becomes a member, no one would apply for membership until they've been around long enough to know whether they want to be around over a longer period of time, and to get to know the elders in the congregation. So it's normally six months, you're really probably talking about 18 months before you could even consider at the earliest stage, and even then it sounds too quick to me.

You got to know a man, you got to see him go through a couple of cycles of life. Life doesn't always go well, okay? How is he when life's not going well? You need to know before he's an elder. We would announce his nomination after a service and give all that instruction and then we would follow up with all of that in a written email again pounding away, it's your job, it's your job, it's your job, you can't take it lightly, you can't assume that we know what we're doing.

As elders, you know things about this man that we don't know. We need to consider it together, all of it together. We own the installation of this man into eldership or not together. We own it together. And ask the congregation to answer these questions.

Obviously, is he qualified? 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, 2 lists, go item by item, is he qualified? But here's some other questions that I think would get at that indirectly and are helpful because it sort of comes at it from a different angle. Can I follow him? Can I follow him?

If the answer is no, you can probably trace that to one of the qualifications, but you might not have thought of it in those terms. Think of it in that term. Can I follow this man? Can I submit to this man? By the way, young ladies who are considering a young man whether they should marry him or not, these are the same questions.

Can I follow this man? Can I submit to this man? Here's a question. If me and my family became more like him and his family, would that be a good thing? That's a really good question.

If I became more like him, my family became more like his family, would that be progress? He's going to be your elder. The answer had better be yes. We want to put forward men who are ahead of us who can help pull us into maturity. We also schedule a public examination.

We would probably do this as early in the formal qualification process as possible. We would do it on a Sunday night, we would bring the church together, and the first part of it, the elders would ask him a series of questions, a lot of them doctrinal but some philosophical. How do you think about leadership in this category? Some situational. If something like this happened in the church, how would you think about that?

And then we'll have a break after maybe an hour and a half of the existing elders asking those questions. We'll have a break and we'll come back together and members of the congregation will just continue with the questions. Sometimes we ask follow-up questions based on the responses that we get, but the church is there, all the church hears the responses given by this man and then have the opportunity to talk with him after the fact about any of these responses even maybe a week later after they've thought about his responses. I think this is helpful. Number three, installation.

1st Timothy 3 10, let these first be tested then let them serve so thoughtful and prayerful testing and consideration and examine examination happened first and then he serves as an elder At our church we have voting members and so we have a public vote at the end of the service where the requirement the required threshold is two-thirds of the voting members have to support it. So no man is foisted as a leader on the congregation without them taking ownership for the appointment of that man. And then, if the necessary approval has been given, the elders lead a time when the men of the congregation come forward and we all lay hands on this man and he leaves as an elder and we put him to work. But that's a precious time when all the men of the congregation come forward and we all together, you can't even get close to them because there's too many men to all be there so like I've got a hands on guys who have hands on him and and we're praying and it's a time of gratitude to God for raising up a man to serve our congregation in this way and it's a time of celebration.

The conclusion. This is very, very important for the long-term health of any local church, every local church. That's so clear from what the Apostle Paul says in multiple places And it should be taken very seriously and given lavish time and effort. You cannot afford to cheat this of the time and effort that's required to do it right. Father, I thank you for your church, for your people.

I thank you for the men that you raise up to lead your people and I pray that you would be faithful as we consider men to lead your people in the future, help us to take the information that we do have in the New Testament, be faithful with it, give us hearts that long to obey and honor you. We pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.