In the month of December, as per the Constitution and By Laws, a new Board of Elders was confirmed. Therefore it is prudent at this time to reflect upon what the Board of Elders is, and what it does.

There always seems to be some confusion over these issues, and this confusion usually comes to a head around this time of year. So a short discussion of the issues is in order.

First and foremost, Church Elders are Church Elders regardless of whether they sit on the Board of Elders or not. While the previous statement might sound somewhat confusing, it actually does make sense. An Elder of the Church is any Christian who has matured in their Christian walk. It has nothing to do with management, popularity, or personality. It has everything to do with growing in ones understanding of Christ. In fact, it is the duty of every follower of Christ to mature in their faith. Therefore, at some point in their Christian walk, every Christian should become an Elder of the Church.

When we speak of the Board of Elders, we are talking about a managerial body, in some ways akin to its secular counterpart, the board of directors. It is a group of people made up of Elders of the Church, who have been invested by the congregation with the authority to serve the Church. That is they perform administrative functions to keep the Church running. This is done primarily for expedience, keeping to a minimum the decisions that need to be made by congressional consensus.

There are three basic steps to selecting members for the Board of Elders. First, likely candidates are nominated by the congregation. Second, these candidates are screened by the sitting board to make sure they are qualified to serve. Third, the sitting Board passes on a list of qualified candidates to the congregation to be confirmed.

There are several points of this process that can be qualified with additional information. First, it does not matter how many nominations someone gets, it could be one or one hundred. It only takes one nomination to be included in the people reviewed by the sitting Board. Second, the number of nominations has nothing to do with persons qualifications to serve. It is not a popularity contest

To summarize, the Board of Elders is an administrative and managerial body. Not all Elders of the Church necessarily serve on the Board of Elders. Regardless of whether they sit on the Board or not, all Church Elders have the same spiritual authority within the body of the Church.

Last update : Sunday, 30 December 2007

Keywords : elders, board, election, church

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