Eldership and the Mission of God

Equipping Teams for Faithful Church Leadership

J.R. Briggs, Bob Hyatt

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780830897155
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Every church needs leadership. But leadership should not reside in a single pastor. The biblical model for church leadership is found in teams of elders who together guide the community into God's mission. Church leaders J.R. Briggs and Bob Hyatt provide a comprehensive picture of elders as agents of mission for their communities. Healthy eldership structures a church for mission, as elder teams model the kind of community the local church is intended to be and steward the gospel in a local context. Looking at eldership through a missiological lens, Briggs and Hyatt unpack the role, character and posture of a mission-oriented elder. Elders oversee, shepherd, teach, equip and model for God?s people what life with Jesus looks like in a particular context. Including a study guide that elder teams can work through together, the authors provide practical guidance for how elders are selected, work together, make decisions, protect the congregation and invest in the lives of others.Discover here a clear vision for what it means to be a faithful elder. May it help you and your church thrive in pursuing God's mission in the world.

1

Mission-Oriented Elders

The separation of church from mission is theologically
 indefensible. More and more Christians of the old churches
 have come to recognize that a church that is not
 “the church in mission” is no church at all.

LESSLIE NEWBIGIN, THE OPEN SECRET

And in him you too are being built together to become a
 dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

PAUL, TO THE CHURCH IN EPHESUS

Floating Docks

My (J.R.’s) grandparents have owned a cabin on a lake in central Florida for almost forty years. Four generations of the Briggs family have spent precious time on this little piece of property nestled deep in the Ocala National Forest. Few things have changed on Owens Lake the past four decades, but the most significant change is the drop in water level. While it provides extra lakefront property at no extra charge, it poses a significant problem for many property owners.

While canoeing around the lake one afternoon with my son, I noticed dozens of docks that no longer touched the water’s edge. Built years prior, when the water level was normal, they once connected land to water. Now none of these docks are fulfilling their functions. Though useful years ago, they are irrelevant today.

Our family cabin is one of the few properties on the lake that does not have a dock. On my canoe ride, I wondered if I were an owner with a useless dock on my property what I would do.

One option would be to extend the dock another fifteen or twenty feet out into the water. It would involve a great amount of time and money, but the dock would be useful once again.

Similarly, I could dig a narrow canal from the lake to the dock’s edge. It would involve more backbreaking work without a sustainable, long-term solution; it would function until the water level changed again.

Another option would be to disassemble the dock and enjoy an unobstructed view. But I’m still left with the same reality: no functioning dock.

The simplest option would be to ignore the issue and leave the dock as is. That wouldn’t solve the problem, but if I don’t mind looking at it, who cares about the status quo?

But there was one more option I considered: I could build a floating dock. It’s not as stable as a dock permanently attached to land, but no matter what the level of the water, it would never become obsolete. Ironically, on the entire lake, not a single property owner had a floating dock. Wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to build that type of dock instead?

The North American church is experiencing an eerily similar dilemma. If the land is the mission of God, the water is culture and the docks are local churches, our purpose as elders is to work to connect and make accessible the mission of God with the current culture. The stable churches that once met the need of connecting God’s mission to the world with the cultural waters are now hardly touching the waters of today. Though the docks haven’t moved since they were built, the cultural water levels have changed significantly. These docks may be stable and impressive, but they are often useless and irrelevant.

Based on these conditions, it seems church leaders have several options in leading local churches in the future:

• Add on to our already existing churches—new programs, styles, buildings or staff—which still runs the risk of being obsolete again in fifteen to twenty years as the cultural water levels change again.
• Ignore the issue altogether and let our churches continue on as they always have—further distancing our churches from participating in God’s mission.
• Shut the doors of our churches—out of either convenience or necessity.
• Dig up the old way of doing church and build another one with a different model, approach or style. But then we risk becoming irrelevant when the water levels change again.

Or we can cultivate a mindset of adaptability by building floating docks. These will lack the stability and predictability of the old docks, and we run the risk of getting culturally wet. But our churches can remain true to their purpose: connecting the mission of God to people, regardless of the cultural context.

Elders are called to construct floating docks. This requires unbelievable amounts of sacrifice—especially of our own personal preferences—but we must remain committed to God’s mission.

Returning to—and Remaining on—Mission

Before we delve into the topic of mission-aligned church leadership, it’s important to define what we mean when we say mission or missional. In my (J.R.’s) first day of class at seminary, my professor asked us a simple question: “How would you define ministry?” Despite many of us being in full-time vocational ministry, we had a difficult time coming up with an answer. Some gave long, drawn-out answers with impressive theological words and complex definitions that took even further explanation. When we had all shared our answers, our professor gave his definition: meeting people where they are and journeying with them to where God wants them to be.

I can still remember how this simple definition hit me. What struck me most was what ministry is not.

• Ministry is not waiting for people to come to us and then journeying with them to where God wants them to be. That’s an old—and inaccurate—understanding.
• Ministry is not meeting people where they are and being content with where they are. That’s friendship, not ministry.
• Ministry is not meeting people where they are and journeying with them to where I want them to be. That’s not ministry, that’s manipulation.
• Ministry is not meeting people where they are and journeying with them to where they want to be. That’s Oprah with a little bit of Jesus sprinkled in.

Ministry is where we make ourselves accessible to others—entering into their world on their terms—with the hope that they encounter Christ. With this posture, there is a healthy burden and a sentness. But it is God who sets the agenda, trajectory and destination of people’s lives and the pace at which people journey.

When we speak of churches led by mission-oriented elders, it means leaders take God’s mission seriously; they seek to make it accessible, relatable and clear in the context in which God has sent them. Sentness is the belief that we are being sent or sending others, or both. In its truest sense, it’s what we acknowledge when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Often we miss the point, boiling the gospel down to a simple act of saying a prayer in order to ensure our eternal future. This is not the gospel. Scholar N. T. Wright said that if we make salvation about going to heaven, there is an awkward and embarrassing gap between our baptism and our funeral. When leaders grasp this sending orientation of God’s Spirit, we realize we are not called to take earth to heaven when we die; instead, we are called to bring heaven to earth as we live. Leaders oriented around God’s mission are rooted in being consistently present with others, are found in proximity to the people Jesus loves, are ready with a hope-filled proclamation of the story of God and maintain a committed involvement to meeting the needs of those around them, just as Jesus commanded his followers. To join faithfully with God’s mission, elders must model this in local churches.

In many churches we’ve interacted with, we’ve noticed church leaders focusing an exorbitant amount of time, attention, energy, finances and conversation on the past and how it might inform the present. Too often, decisions are made based on precedent, security, sentimentality, history and tradition. Mission-driven elders are motivated less by preserving past structures and more by cultivating a healthy and faithful group of people that pursues the kingdom of God together. While tradition and history can develop kingdom leaders, make sure they never become sacred cows or idols.

Understanding Missio Dei

Much has been talked about regarding imago Dei (the image of God) and missio Dei (the mission of God). These concepts are crucial to developing an accurate understanding of God that has implications on our identity and calling. Elders are called to cultivate a people that cares the most about the things that Jesus cared about. Sadly, some churches reflect either missio die—all talk, but no mission—or missio me—selfish ambition and self-centered pursuits veiled in spiritual language. This grieves the heart of the founder of our faith and the creator of the church.

Instead of “the image of God” and “the mission of God,” a better translation of these two phrases might be the “imaging God” and the “missioning God”—a definition more rooted in God’s character. The role of mission-oriented elders is to model a humanity that is broken yet redeemed and given incredible value (imago Dei) while reflecting the sending/sent heartbeat of a missioning God in the world (missio Dei). They see themselves not as preservers of tradition, but instead as shepherds of God’s people, image bearers aligned with God’s mission and culture cultivators within his kingdom. The call of elders in a local church context is to faithfully lead God’s people by imaging the character of a missioning God.

Sending is built into the DNA of the triune God. The Father sends the Son and the Spirit. Jesus didn’t merely show up; his Father sent him, and Jesus lived in confidence of his sentness. The Son sent the Spirit and the apostles. And the Spirit sends Jesus and the apostles.1 If elders are seeking to display the character of God to a world in need, then we, too, will emanate the sending nature of the God we worship, the Jesus we follow and the Spirit we join.

In Acts, the “mother church” in Jerusalem experienced incredible growth, but it was not the only center of mission. Antioch became the mission center for the north and west. Additionally, the church in Philippi was the gateway to the spread of the gospel throughout Europe and the supporting center for Paul’s missionary endeavors to the south.2 These churches had a sending culture because they caught the heartbeat of our sending God.

God Has a Church for His Mission

In his book The Mission of God, Christopher Wright wrote, “It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world but that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission—God’s mission.”3 We must remember that God has not called us to the sacred task of leadership to oversee a religious institution or a weekly spiritual event. Elders are called to shepherd a flock in pursuit of the heart of God, to seek the kingdom and to join faithfully in God’s mission in a movement of discipleship that is both personal and corporate. If mission is to be pursued, elders must make a wholehearted commitment to leading differently.

Graham Buxton called ministry a dance with God. Local churches are invited to dance with the Spirit—to let him lead the dance, trust his embrace and let him teach us how to do it. We dance with God while joining hands with others and inviting them to dance with us.

2

Characteristics of Mission
Alignment—and What Derails It

A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out
for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp,
is being untrue to its calling. . . . We must play down
our longing for certainty, accept what is risky,
live by improvisation and experiment.

HANS KÜNG, THE CHURCH

Everything is fine, but the ship is still
heading in the wrong direction.

EDWARD DE BONO

Elders who think like missionaries—in their jobs, families, neighborhoods, community responsibilities, schools—think like missionaries in their role in the church. They strive to see people exhibit a clear and compelling incarnational representation of God to the world. Christopher Wright, in his helpful book The Mission of God’s People, writes, “Churches, then, are to be communities around the world, planted, nurtured and connected through ministries of sending, going and supporting—for the sake of the name of Christ and the truth of the Gospel.”1

Mission traction among a team of elders happens when the team is rooted and committed to the following elements.

An Ever-Deepening Dependence on Prayer

It is nearly impossible to overemphasize how crucial prayer is to the pursuit of the mission of God. It is the fuel for mission. We may be able to minister for a season without it, but prayerless kingdom mission will not make a lasting impact. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: Structured for Mission
• 1 Mission-Oriented Elders
• 2 Characteristics of Mission Alignment—and What Derails It
• 3 The Roles of an Elder
• 4 Biblical Qualifications for an Elder
• 5 Cultivating an Ethos Rooted in God’s Mission
• 6 Selecting Elders
• 7 Eldership as Spiritual Formation
• 8 Team Leadership
• 9 The Role of Elders in Decision Making
• 10 The Difficult Tasks of Elders
• 11 What About Women Elders?
• 12 Practical Questions and Answers
• Epilogue: Eldership as Stewardship
• Discussion Questions
• Recommended Resources
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Praise for Eldership and the Mission of God
• About the Authors
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press