Constitution V (c)

So it's been two weeks since we began this discussion. I know a few of you were not here the last time we started it. So I'm going to do a very short highlight review of where we were before. Because we're going to be looking at the issue of elders and deacons in the church. And one of the reasons we had originally attempted to do this all as one session is these are two groups of people who are going to be working together and how those duties are connected and what scripture says about those roles and responsibilities were what we wanted to focus on. You'll remember we started by talking about how the context for this is within the idea that the Constitution also says that Christ is our heavenly head and the final authority for all we do. We all work under his leading. And the final earthly authority is with the body as a whole, the assembled congregation. But we also believe that scripture says there's a role for church officers who have a role to bring order and protection in the church. Last time, we looked at the numbers, roles, and responsibilities, preaching elder qualifications and responsibilities in organization of elders. Tonight, we're going to do a quick review of that and then look at the deacons' number, roles, and responsibilities in organization. And then rather than moving on to the next section, Keith and I thought it would probably be profitable to have a time of question and answer because there were clearly a lot of questions last time. We want to make sure we clear up some of the initial questions before we move on to qualifications, election, term, and termination. Real quick, last time we looked at Acts 6 and 1 Peter 4, and we saw there that it appears to be in Scripture the idea there are two kinds of servants. One kind of service that focuses on the word and teaching and prayer, and one that focuses on everything else. And that's sort of the model that we see in these passages of Scripture. Just because there are two different kinds of service doesn't mean that one is important and one is not. It's important that in Acts 6, essentially the very first church conference where there was a disturbance and people were unhappy. The answer wasn't you guys are complaining. Be quiet. Your needs aren't important. The answer was the apostle said, said this was a critical need. We need to make sure this is addressed. We don't want these problems to fester. These are important needs. We want to make sure that God has called faithful people to deal with this issue. Look here that those who are called to serve the tables are supposed to be men of good repute, full of spirit and of wisdom. This is something that you need to be qualified for. Notice that in the very next chapter, one of these men set aside for table service is Stephen, the first martyr in the church. He was able to go out and teach and speak to the public. So both of these kinds of roles are very important. We also looked in scripture, for example, in Acts 20 and 1 Peter 5, to see what it is that elders ought to be doing. There are three terms used in scripture for people doing this role, elder or, excuse me, elder, bishop or overseer, and pastor or shepherd. And we saw how these terms were used interchangeably. And then we see that these people seem to be tasked with protection and care of the flock, shepherd the flock. They need to be men who can teach and guard against false teaching and provide that level of protection spiritually. for those under their care. And they need to be able to oversee the ministry of the church. They're exercising oversight. In Ephesians 4, specifically, we saw them talked of as shepherds and teachers preparing to equip the body. We look in other places in Scripture where we saw that they need to be able to manage things well. They need to labor in preaching and teaching. They need to be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it. They need to be available to pray for those who need their prayers. When people are sick, James tells them to call the elders of the church to have them prayed over. Again, they're called on to do things like public reading of scripture and exhortation and teaching. And as Second Timothy 2, 24 says, must not be quarrelsome, but able to teach, correcting his opponents with gentleness. We see elsewhere that they're talking about they need to have a character that is imitable by the flock, people that you would want to follow after and imitate and that they are those that have to be able to give an account. of those in their responsibility. So that's where some of this oversight comes in. And then we saw that throughout the New Testament that elders are talked of in terms of a plurality of elders. There's not just one elder, but there are many elders. We noted that even in Acts 6 and in Acts 15, the very first group of leaders in the church were the apostles who acted as a plurality. And then they called on other groups to assist them. And the language is in the plural. And the only place where it is used in the singular is for an individual like Peter when he calls himself an elder, or John when he calls himself an elder, that is used in the singular. And do note that these apostles are choosing elder as the title that's appropriate for them. Then we looked at some of the scripture that talked about what deacons do. And rather than being five or six or seven slides, it was one slide, because there's much less in Scripture about what it is that deacons are charged to do. And we looked at 1 Timothy 3.8. It talks about the qualifications for deacons. And then it says, and let them also be tested first, then let them serve as deacons. And that phrase, let them serve as deacons, is really just the verb, let them deacon, let them serve. Expanding on it to show that this is service as a deacon is important, but really it just says they're there to serve in this role. It doesn't say exactly what they're supposed to do. And then, again, it says, those who serve well as deacons. Again, it's that verb that means deaconing. Those who deacon well, it doesn't go into a lot of detail, gain a good standing for themselves. And then we see deacons mentioned in Philippians 1.1, where the two groups of leaders are called overseers and deacons. So what we had to do in order to try to figure out what Scripture is talking about in terms of Deaconing, we look at several places in scripture that use this verb to deacon outside of the context of deacons, and we see that it's used in all sorts of places. It's a very common word in Acts 6 where they talk about people serving the tables. That's deaconing. When Paul talks about his ministry of the word, that's the deaconing of the word. Jesus and Paul and Peter are all at various times called deacons as servants in Scripture. But ultimately, one of the things that we looked at is the strongest tendency of this use of this word in Scripture is to refer to the kind of serving that involves very practical acts of supplying material needs, literally in Acts 6, table service. And some of the examples of this are angels come to serve Jesus in the wilderness, tend to his needs. He's hungry. He's thirsty. The angels come and deacon to him. Peter's mother-in-law rose from her sickbed to deacon her guests and make sure that they're fed and taken care of and shown good hospitality. The women who followed Jesus served out of their own pockets. They were deaconing to him by providing for his monetary and physical needs. Martha deaconed in the kitchen. While Mary was busy listening to the Word in one room, Martha was busy deaconing in the other. And Paul's caring of money to the church in Jerusalem is called a service, the same word, deaconing. And so it's financial support, physical support, the needs that people have other than purely spiritual needs. And again, these are not unimportant needs. These are critical needs. James tells us that true religion is taking care of the widows and the orphans. This is very important, critical work that the church is involved in. Paul at one point tells us that those who don't take care of their family and their family's physical and financial needs may not be believers because they're not showing it through their lack of stewardship and service in that fashion. So it's a very important part of what the church does. So that was the scriptural background that we looked at. And then we looked at elders. And if you have a copy of the Constitution text in front of you, this material is in that. We looked at the number of elders, and we said the elder body shall be comprised of not less than three men. The total number shall be determined by the elders based on the needs of the church and the available qualified candidates. As we said, that's sort of the way things are done now for selecting our leaders. The main difference here is there would be more than one elder. Rather than just the one elder that we have in Keith, there would be at least three elders And certainly the desire of the committee that in most circumstances there would be more than that. That would be a minimum, certainly not a maximum. Then we looked at the roles and responsibilities that were assigned in our constitutional draft to the elders. And one of the things we tried to focus on last time is you should hear the same language here that you heard in the scripture passages. that we looked at, issues of care, shepherding, oversight, stewardship, prayer. So, the text reads, the elders shall care for the body, shepherd the body through edification, discipleship, and equipping members for service, as well as by admonishment and correction. The examples to the body which they love as under shepherds of Christ, lead in prayer and the ministry of the word, oversee public worship services and the ordinances, oversee teaching, appoint teachers and protect doctrine, oversee the deacons and their ministries, evaluate and nominate elder and deacon candidates, appoint and oversee any committees, coordinators and agents as needed. And then that continues, lead the church through the membership and discipline processes, We looked several weeks ago about the church's role in that. They have the ultimate authority in that. The elders would lead through that process. Lead the church in evangelism, outreach and missions. Pray over and anoint the sick when called upon. Exercise primary responsibility for the employment, supervision and evaluation of staff. Approve any outside speakers or other uses of the facilities. Just to follow up a little bit on some of the questions we heard last time, one of the ones that we heard a couple of different ways. here when we were talking about it and afterwards people followed up with us, is the idea that the elders would appoint and oversee any committees, coordinators and agents as needed. I addressed this a little bit last time, but just wanted to go in a little bit more detail. There are some people who wanted those kinds of decisions to come back to the church for approval. We can have that discussion, but what we had in mind is Again, using the biblical model of the two offices, the two groups of leaders that will be involved, that most of the ministries of the church will be either overseen by the elders or the deacons. As we see when we get to the deacon section, the deacons are going to have responsibility over a lot of things that committees and coordinators do now. And the elders, as we've seen, sort of function as a nominating committee and a constitution committee and a personnel committee. The deacons will sort of function as a finance committee and a properties committee and do other things like that. They'll have the opportunity to have people to come alongside to help them do the work. The expectation would be there's not going to be a lot of committees. It isn't like there are going to be five other important committees that are going to be making decisions that the elders and deacons are going to nominate arbitrarily. This is largely a holder that if there's a need, a specific need that has to happen at a given time, they have the ability to address that need by finding people to do it. Just as now, we might have somebody who's responsible for the greeting ministry or the kitchen ministry, but we don't bring it to a vote to find out to approve every single greeter or to approve every single person who works in the kitchen. There's going to be oversight of these kinds of responsibilities or the food closet. We may have somebody who's responsible for overseeing the food closet, but the church doesn't approve every individual who sits there and serves by handing out the food or going and buying the food. All very important things. but things that even now that we don't have the church as a whole vote on. Also, we haven't gotten to this section yet, but there are other officers that the church as a whole will vote on. The trustees, the clerk, and the treasurer are all offices that we'll get to later in the Constitution. that are nominated by the elders or deacons, but then need to be elected by the church as a whole. So I just wanted to lay that out and give you the big picture of where we saw that going. And like I said, we can talk about that some more if you'd like. We also said that all elders are equal in authority. All elders are uniquely gifted and should complement each other. Staff elders are called out for specific purposes as gifted. We talked about that again a little last time. The idea is that when these men come together and look at the serious matters of the church, you know, that essentially the way to think of it sort of in terms that we can relate to is they all get one vote. And it isn't a matter of Keith gets three because he's the senior pastor and everyone else gets one or that whatever Keith says goes. These men are equal in authority. But we also understand that people have different gifts. So just as we have set aside Keith as being especially gifted for preaching, we have talked about in our church already saying, hey, we need someone to come alongside of him who's gifted in administration. Because that's a different gifting, and we're large enough that we can have someone who can focus on those needs. And so we certainly allow for staff elders who are called out for specific purposes as gifted. We then pointed out there's a special section on the preaching elder, his qualifications and responsibilities. And one of the main things to keep in mind here is, as I've already alluded to, the preaching elder shall be an elder. He shall have the same qualifications and perform the same duties of an elder described above. And he shall also be recognized by the church as particularly gifted and called to the full-time ministry of preaching and teaching. And then the rest of that description really matches what we already expect of a senior pastor under our current Constitution. And finally, last time we talked about organization. that the elder shall elect a non-staff elder as chairman and any other positions as needed. The elder shall meet regularly at a time and place of their own choosing and at other times and places as deemed necessary by the chairman. The majority of the number of active elders shall constitute a quorum. And that again is very similar to the way things are organized now. The one specific here that would be new or different since we have a plurality of elders is that we had indicated that the chairman should be a non-staff elder. The idea being that those who are on the staff are, by the very nature of their position, going to have sort of an outsized public presence of authority. Keith has great power. He talks to you every week, usually twice. And he can lead, and we expect him to lead, when he's in the pulpit. That's why he is our preaching elder, and we looked at him for vision. But just as a check, we thought it would be a good idea, particularly as we're moving into a new way of doing things, just as one of the built-in checks would be the idea that a non-staff elder would act as chairman, so there'd be another person's view in helping to organize the business of the church. And that's where we got last time. And we had to stop because of time constraints. But tonight, I want to move on and talk about deacons, what we see them doing, and then how they might work together with the elders to make sure that the broad spectrum of ministries within the church gets done. Just as we do now, we would expect there would be a plurality of deacons. The total number of deacons shall be determined by the elders based on the needs of the church as well as the available qualified candidates. Sorry about that. Language is almost exactly the same as what we said under elders, except it doesn't have the minimum of three. And I think the clear expectation of the group writing this was there'd be probably at least as many deacons as there were elders, and then as many deacons as there needed to be to serve the functions of the church, which is somewhat what we do now. My experience having been a deacon several times is as the nominations come in, we see who's receiving a call from the church, who the church already sees as serving, and try to get as many as we can who are qualified and that we have a need to use. So here is sort of the next big section on the roles and responsibilities of deacons. We want to be clear that We're pretty firm in our understanding of what we think that elders ought to be doing, because we think Scripture is relatively clear as to what elders ought to be doing. As I've already alluded to in our discussion of deacons in Scripture, deacons have much less detail. It's much less clear. And we recognize that churches that we are in agreement with doctrinally, churches that we are in agreement with on how churches ought to be run, churches who also have elders. There are lots of different ways to do this. And we looked at the different ways that different people, different churches have chosen to do this. So this is an area where we think this is a matter of prudence based on example, by analogy. These are some of the things that Deacons ought to be doing, but we want to be clear, we don't think we have quite as much explicit scripture to point to. And so we try to use prudence and we hope that as you look at this, you can help us or say where we might not have been as prudent as we could be. So roles and responsibilities. In order to give these officers freedom, biblical guidance and protection, The overall role and scope of the deacons, both individually and collectively, shall be determined by the elders. Deacons shall be under the authority, vision, and leadership of the elders in accordance with scripture to maintain unity within the body and care for the physical and emotional needs of the church with their primary responsibilities including, but not limited to, and then a list of things that they would be doing. So the first thing to see here is what we see in scripture is that the elders, the overseers, the shepherds are ultimately responsible. for the right running of the church. They're responsible to the congregation to see that that happens. They're responsible to Scripture to see that happens. Deacons have work to do, have ways of serving, but they're not an independent body that makes its own decisions so that you have two groups of people who are going in opposite directions and there's no unity. Unity is something that we're called to in scripture. And so these these were people who who serve, but they serve under the direction and vision of the leaders of the elders. So first item, caring for the physical and emotional needs of the church's members. Someone had already flagged that they thought that the word emotional was a bit unusual in the context there. I think what we had in mind, and we can discuss whether or not we want to change it or not, I think the idea is the fellowship, the relational kinds of things, so like hospitality, visitation. Emotional probably isn't the best word for those kinds of things, and if fellowship's not the best word, I'd be happy to hear something different. But the idea there is visitation, caring for people, relating for people, joining them in conversation, greeting them. being involved in their lives in that kind of way. Promoting, receiving, holding, and dispersing a fund for benevolence, reporting on its use to the elders at their request, and reporting to the church its total receipts and total disbursements only. We have a benevolence fund now that's available to help those in need. This sounds like a wonderful role for the deacons to have to identify those in need and make sure that they're being taken care of given the monies made available by the church as donations to help them out. Maintaining and promoting the physical upkeep of properties and facilities. Those of you who've been around for a long time know that that is certainly a non-trivial task. That's something that takes a lot of time. It's something that doesn't go away. It's a continuing need. And having faithful servants to participate in that is important. The list continues. Preparing and managing the church's budget. under the elders' guidance. There's a section later on in the Constitution where we talk specifically about how the budget process occurs. But what this alludes to is later on that budget process, we'll talk about the deacon sitting down with the elders and hearing from the congregation to know what the needs are, what the vision is for the church. And based on that input, then going and putting that into math. doing the hard work of saying, here are our priorities. How are we going to make that work with the money that we have available? How do we divide those things up? Who needs how much money to do these kinds of ministries and how should that work out? Supervising the collection and counting of the offering. That's something that goes on now. And that's another case where we talk about what kinds of people would not be coming before the church. Right now, we have devoted band of folks who serve the church behind the scenes by counting the offering. And those of you who've done that know that that requires a lot of effort. It usually means staying after an hour or two after the service to make sure everything is done right. And right now, those people, again, are not people who have been approved by the church, but the deacons arrange for those people to do that. And so that would be the kind of thing deacons would be responsible for under the new model. Maintaining and promoting church and member hospitality goes into that sort of fellowship idea of the original sort of proto-deacons in Act VI. What they're doing is making sure that people are able to have table fellowship together. That's a critical part. In Acts 2, 42, what are they doing? They're breaking bread together. They're studying the apostles' teaching, and they're praying. That's one of the key. We joke about it sometimes, that as Baptists, we eat a lot, and we always look for an excuse to have a potluck. But that fellowship around a meal is an important part of the way that we get to know each other, and we get to be involved in each other's life. It's not that we just sit as individuals in a congregation, hear something preached to us, and then separate. We come together, and as a family does, meets around the table and enjoys each other's fellowship. Preparing and organizing for public ministry and worship, including but not limited to assisting with the Lord's Supper and baptism, greeting worship attenders before worship and fellowshipping with worship attenders after worship, and setting up, maintaining, and taking down equipment for church functions. Again, a lot of people are involved in that kind of service already here at the church. The deacons, with the agreement of the elders, may establish unpaid administrative positions or committees of members to assist them in fulfilling their responsibilities to the church. So again, the deacons have the oversight for these physical and fellowship needs in the church. But they're going to need other people to come alongside them to do the work. And they can help identify people who are available to help with preparation of Lord's Supper, to help get people ready practically for baptism and other kinds of hands-on kinds of work that needs to be done. Can you give me an example of an unpaid administrative position? Yeah. For a very long time, I was the church's webmaster. We got Asher to take that on when he was here. I don't know who's been doing that now, but we have a church librarian. We have somebody that gets put in charge of the food closet. The nursery, excellent example. Well, Cheryl's technically got her own office as treasure. She's special. But it's still unpaid, yes. She just gets to be elected and unpaid. And we did write in there that it's always going to be you. It's in the fine print, it's a footnote, but we just assume that that's the case. So those are the kinds of things that this model of church government sees deacons involved in. That makes sense. You can see how the goal here is that all the ministries of the church have oversight. But I can tell you Particularly during the period when we did not have a senior pastor, and deacons were literally doing all kinds of service, it was very difficult to make sure that the service was running right, and making sure you had a counter, and making sure that the proper food had been ordered for the next Wednesday night, and having these kinds of responsibilities separated so that one group can focus on one important aspect and another group can focus on another important aspect means that it's a lot easier for people to serve because they don't have to have giftings in both areas. They need giftings in one of those areas to serve in one of those groups. And it also reduces the amount of work that one group of people might have. So how would the deacons work as a group and then as those cooperating with the elders? On the organizational front, again, this first part sounds a lot like what we said for the elders. The deacons shall elect a chairman and any other positions as needed. The deacons shall meet regularly at a time and place of their own choosing and in other times and places as deemed necessary by the chairman. Majority of the number of active deacons shall constitute a quorum. The addition that is not in the elder section is, there shall be regular communication and consultation between the elders and deacons, including reports, minutes, and attendance at each other's meetings as the elders deem appropriate. Again, these are groups that work together. They're not in competition. But we want to make sure that there's a strong element of communication among them. And we believe in scripture that the elders are to be given oversight over the whole ministry and that the subset that the deacons are working on, they do in cooperation with the elders. So that was a lot between the sort of review from last time and then the new material on the deacons. Why don't we have a ton of questions? We are recording this, I think, so if you could wait till you get the microphone, that'll make sure that everybody can hear the question and it gets on the recording. Thank you. I'm Mike Halstead. I'm not a member here yet, but we're regular attenders in recent times. Elder chairman and deacon chairman, do they have a term limit? Yes, that was the part that we're going to get to in the next batch. We're going to talk about election and the term and termination. Quick preview, it's three years for membership, for being an elder, for being a deacon, and then in any You can be re-voted in, again, a validation of the church for a second, third year term, but you can't do any more than six years in a seven year period. No, I'm asking about the office of chairman. As written, it leaves it up to the elders to determine who they want the chairman to be. I guess the maximum term they could serve would be three years because that's their maximum term being an elder. Okay, the three elders includes staff elders. Yes. Do all pastors need to be staff elders or just a senior pastor? Our expectation that anyone who has previously been given the title of pastor would be an elder because that's what a pastor is. We have as part of later on at the end of the discussion of the text of the Constitution, we'll be looking at the transition plan. And part of that is once we've elected non-staff elders, if the Constitution and the transition plan are approved, then at that point, the senior pastor and any associate pastor that we might have called in the meantime would also be designated as elders. One final question. Are there standing committees? There are no fixed standing committees under this structure. The elders or the deacons could establish them if needed. That sounds like someone who's read a constitution before. That's my kind of people. This may be something for later too, but is there an ordination process for these? Is there such a thing as ordination for them? It talks about them being set apart. It doesn't prescribe any particular ceremony. Presumably, the elders would establish an appropriate. As with Keith, we had an installation. We have done ordinations in the past. Exactly what the ceremony itself would look like and what words would be involved, there's no fixed item for that, but it does explicitly talk about that they're not only elected, but that's seen as a call, and that they're then set apart for leadership, which is really what ordination is about, is about the calling and the setting apart. That language is used rather than the word ordained, but I think we would see that as essentially the same thing. So right now, you kind of have the congregation divided up, like, and each has an elder. And I thought there was talk at one time of maybe having like elder deacon teams and having the congregation kind of divided up with an elder and a deacon. Is that still a thought on how they would serve the church, or is it just that they would always do physical needs as just the deacon board or that kind of thing? Right now, and I know we have some non-members here, but right now the organization is we have one elder, which is Keith, and then we have a group of deacons, and what we have done the last couple of years in order to try to take care of both the spiritual and practical needs of the body is to divide up everybody so that there's a deacon responsible for each family so that they're covered. Exactly how we might operate going forward. We decided not to get to too much detail on the Constitution because there might need to be appropriate times to change the way that we do specifics. But I think it's fair to say that we had talked about expanding upon that current model where you have basically one man responsible for a family and all of its needs to say that you might take the elders and the deacons, sort of line them up so that we'd still divide the families up and there might be an elder and a deacon for each family, so that again, those responsibilities can both be taken care of. You're not just having one person that you can go to, you have two, and they can help share the burden, rather than just having one person responsible for the burden. Does that make sense? And again, that's not a requirement of the Constitution, that's just sort of one of the ways we could see this working out as sort of a building on our current model. See, Ben is like most people when you hear Constitution talk. You put your hands over your ears and you shake your head. You guys were a lot more talkative last time. You just want me to stop talking, don't you? Let's have one more question. This may be, again, something for later, but I thought I'd probably forget it if I didn't say it now. The current men who are deacons are really fulfilling a role of elder in a sense, right? Mostly. I think that's I think that's safe to say that the jobs that are doing look more what's going on in scripture for elders than deacons. And so when when the time should come for us to ratify the Constitution and put it into place, then those deacons then would be re. How are we going to handle that? We're going to rename them at the end. When we get to the end of the text again, we'll have a transition plan. And when the audience is in the transition plan is what happens at that point. The Constitution Committee is still finalizing the transition plan, in part, based on what we're hearing. But I think, sort of in draft version, the idea would be that there would be an initial elder selection process, as described in the Constitution, where we take recommendations from the body that candidates are examined and brought forth. But that would be a fresh election, that whoever's elected at that point would be elders, and that whoever had been a deacon at that point that deacon term would end. If they were elected as elders, they would be an elder. If they weren't, then they wouldn't be. And so it basically builds in that when elders are elected, the current deacon's terms end. I see. Thank you. It would not surprise me if there were some overlap. Presently, I think it's important to know that while you may assume that I act as an elder, I don't assume that I am an elder, and I don't assume that I will be an elder. And I think that that's hardwired into the way the Constitution is written. Other questions? I was going to just take some other people have actually asked questions that I was going to answer. Brian, thank you for walking us through that section. Very helpful. Yeah, very much the nuts and bolts of the Constitution there. The real working of the two main, well, offices. Answer your question a little more Whenever the new Constitution comes, the old is obsolete. And so we're starting over, in a sense. The Constitution changes that. So yes, we've had a number of very gifted men who have served as deacons, but that process will come forward. The complication there isn't that just the deacons are serving as elders, but the really what elders should be doing are spread throughout a number of committees. Andy Benton has just been a fantastic nominating committee chair. Thank you for all your work. We should applaud him. Thank you, brother. He doesn't like that, so we should keep doing it. But the nominating committee does the work of elders. They are establishing the teaching ministry of the church. And so you see there that there's also the folks in the nominating committee, they're also establishing the teaching ministry. the missions committee. They're overseeing and giving vision to the mission of the church. So a lot of these elder tasks are to spread throughout a number of places and we're trying to bring the elder tasks to the one office of elders and so forth. Does that make more sense as to why it's not just the deacons? There's elder tasks all around. Yes. You wanna go off the record. Okay, very good, okay. So a question was sent in, Matthew's given me a few questions that have been sent in. One was, I'm gonna paraphrase here, what's the difference between elder led and elder ruled? And I think the key question is which one fits us. So that's a very helpful distinction. An elder-ruled church does not see the final earthly authority in the assembled body. An elder-led church does. An elder-led church sees authority in the elders, in the office of elder, but the final earthly authority is in the body. And the rationale there is Matthew 18, Jesus saying, whatever the assembly binds or looses, That is bound and loose in heaven. So, an elder-ruled church, the elders are not voted on by the church. They're not voted out by the church. Members are not voted in by the church or voted out by the church. An elder-ruled church, the elders make all the decisions and the church receives those decisions. And I'm seeing some folks who have been in an elder-ruled church nodding their heads. We fully intend for this to be an elder-led church because we believe in the final earthly authorities and the assembled body. Any questions about that? Because that is a very important distinction. Elder-led versus elder-ruled means that the elders aren't ruling in the sense that there is no authority in the body itself. The body chooses who is elder and the body can remove an elder. We've actually made it very easy to remove an elder. Intentionally. Very hard to become an elder. Intentionally. That's clear? It's an important distinction. So we're elder-led, not elder-ruled. I've been given the task to do a very brief explanation of the qualifications for an elder and a deacon. It's going to be very brief. Unsatisfactory, in fact. You're going to walk away thinking, is that all? I hope, Lord willing, that if this Constitution passes, Lord willing it will, we'll then spend the next few weeks thinking about the qualifications. The reason I'm putting on the back side is after the Constitution passes, then we'll really start thinking about who are elders. and we're deacons, and we're prayerfully thinking about who God is setting apart. So, we're going to do something very brief now because, well, Lord willing, we can think about it much deeper later when we're actually in the midst of praying through and thinking through who God is calling out. So, one question is, why aren't there women deacons? Why aren't there female deacons? Well, the short, kind of snippy answer is, we couldn't decide on that. The Constitution Committee, that was the most hung, real important decision. The Bible does speak about it, maybe, depending on which Constitution member you met and discussed it with. So, I'll tell you my position, and then you can take it up with other committee members or my own. This is what my position would come down to, but this is my position that I think makes it helpful. The Bible doesn't prescribe female deacons. At best, the Bible warrants female deacons. And we could look through 1 Timothy 3. We could see that Phoebe's a deacon, and then there's a lot of debate over if that's actually a servant or the office. The Bible says it explicitly hard and fast clear and that's why we were all very hung on female deacons. There's also an issue of we talked to some females and well a lot of the females that would be recognized as deacons if we thought that was a biblical category, they wouldn't even want the title. That's the kind of amazing thing about women, they don't need the title to serve. Fantastic. But more biblically, it just isn't an absolute clear prescription. So as we're really getting hung on the issue of female deacons, we had to ask ourselves, is there any way in which we're not going to be a true church if there's not female deacons? And everyone said, no, we'll be a true church. We're preaching the word biblically. We're preaching the gospel faithfully. we're observing the Lord's Supper, we're taking membership seriously, we're exercising discipline among the body and caring for one another. And we ask, is there any way in which we'll be a less pure church? Which is a different category. You know, there's a sliding scale of how pure a church is. And we really couldn't, it wasn't clear in Scripture that it would be less pure, so we just simply said it would be easier to not put them in at this point because it's just not clear among us. So, is that an Yes. Yeah, and so the female elder, there's great clarity in terms of a woman not teaching, a woman not being responsible for doctrine in Scripture. So, yes, where there is clarity, again, I think every committee member actually had a slightly different opinion interpretation on female deacons, and so we just said we're not going to add them because there's no clarity from Scripture, there's no clarity among us. Any questions about that? I can walk through the interpretation. I don't know if it would be helpful. Female deacons? Yeah. Yeah. It is the word deacon, deaconess. It is that word, but that word is also, as he said, it's not just the office of deacon, it's the word used for servant. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of interpretation as to, a lot of disagreement over the interpretation of that. There's actually stronger arguments from scripture for female deacons, for. But I still don't think they're clear. They're not explicit. And so that's why I say I think it can be a warranted interpretation. Someone told me they interpret a scripture that way, I would say, OK. But I don't think it's prescribed explicitly. That's my way of thinking through it. Other committee members have stronger opinions than that and some looser. I'm right in the middle. So Phoebe, we're not sure if it was just someone who served him or if it was actually the Office of Deaconess. We have stacks of paper this high of things we read trying to figure it out and it wasn't clear after all that. Yep. That is actually where it got hung up is what is the actual title, Deaconess, Servant. Yeah, another example, women will have authority in the nursery. Well, a woman will continue to do that. Well, yeah. In my previous church, we had a different way of doing deacons. And there we actually had them broken up into female and male deacons. I actually was the one reacting against that, and I didn't think the breaking down was helpful. But no, there will be male deacons, but yes, female. The whole point of this Constitution is actually to free people to serve better according to their giftings. We think women will actually have better opportunities to serve in this Constitution. In the nursery example, it's authority over children. Yes, yes. They're the ones that will be organizing and having that kind of immediate oversight over that area. Other questions about female deacons? Again, what just happened? That was a pointed issue, so it's fine to have questions about it. Okay, at 7.15, those were the primary questions, and I'll just say this, it's gonna be very brief, When we're looking for elders, you're first looking for members who are faithful to Christ. That's where a lot of those declarations are coming from. They have self-control. There's reverence. They have a sincere faith. They're not quarrelsome. Most of the declarations about qualifications, looks like qualifications, is just saying you're a good, faithful Christian. You're following Christ faithfully. So you're looking for a man who's a faithful Christian. You're looking for someone who's active in the body, present and active. You're looking for someone who's exercising their gifts that God is using. And the main thing that separates an elder from a deacon is the gift of teaching and then oversight. There's teaching and oversight. So what you're looking for is someone who helps you know God better. Who helps you understand yourself and your sin and the gospel and the truths of scripture. So, as we're looking for elders, you're looking for men who have character, integrity, a faithful follower of Christ, and then that other thing that sets them apart is really the teaching and the overseeing. So, we're not looking for the strongest, most outspoken leader. We're looking for someone who opens the Word of God and lets you see God better, which is a difference. Yes, Matthew. Yeah, there is no age because we did not see scripture limiting the age. Timothy was a youth, which meant he was somewhere between 15 and 30. That would be youth's age. So we didn't really see, we assumed no one under the age of 15 would be voted in. And so as if Paul's own disciple could serve at that age, we didn't feel like an age limit was necessary. He couldn't be president, but it could be an elder. The word elder, the qualification isn't necessarily age as you look at the qualifications. We'll discuss that more in the qualifications. All right, well we're gonna end before 7.30 tonight. Sometimes it hurts my feelings.