Ep.11 | Navigating Church Governance for Effective Revitalization

Nathan, thanks for joining me on another episode of our podcast. Great to be here today. Very excited about the subject that we're talking about. This is one that I know. you have you have a couple of opinions on it, therefore. Therefore, I expect this to be a very, robust and fruitful conversation. today we're going to be talking about polity and governance in the local church. 00;01;09;09 - 00;01;35;15 Unknown This is something that we have the opportunity to have conversations with many churches that, we're engaged with in partnership as they they a lot of times have to reevaluate sort of where they've been and where they're headed and how the church is ultimately led, especially if the church has gone through a pastoral transition. And, you know, some of the things that we might talk about here are going to be maybe unique to some of the experiences and the things that we've seen in our particular family of churches. 00;01;35;15 - 00;02;01;10 Unknown But I'm confident, that because we're basing our principles and our ideas out of Scripture that it will be applicable to any church anywhere, anytime. At least I hope so. Nathan, why don't you just kind of give an overview of when we talk about governance and polity in the local church, give us an overview, overview of what we ought to be thinking, what what's the what's the field that we're playing on here? 00;02;01;12 - 00;02;36;04 Unknown Well, it's a big challenge because the tension lots of times in churches is, is especially a church. This needs needing revitalization. Typically we've had a pastor there for like 40 years and has an elder team, but the elders are basically his buddies and he's their pastor and they have never really Eldred in a, in a in a thorough sense in terms of elders, maybe they are good men that love Jesus, typically, but in terms of actually taking spiritual responsibility for the church, beyond and above the pastor himself, it's very difficult. 00;02;36;04 - 00;02;52;13 Unknown So when the pastor leaves it, you typically don't know what to do. There's never been any training. They have no organizational structure beyond, hey, we meet once a month and decide stuff. but without the pastor, they don't know what to do or how to do it. And they don't know how to take authority, for the church. 00;02;52;15 - 00;03;12;20 Unknown So that's a big problem. But then a big problem is, is that, you might have an elder board, but there's other people in the church that have authority, actually more powerful than the elders. They've been in the church forever. This church was started in their basement. I've heard all these things. and they have they have this authority in the church. 00;03;12;20 - 00;03;30;21 Unknown It's that's not really right. And the end, it affects everything, and everything gets messed up. so the other thing that happens is, is sometimes there is no actual elder board. There's never been they never mainly been organized. And so they don't know how to make a decision or how to say things or right or wrong or how things actually operate. 00;03;30;23 - 00;04;02;14 Unknown Now there's different, you know, there's different polity structures for churches. Some some are congregational, some are elders, some are deacons, some are kind of a combination of all 2 or 3 of those. but there has to be some clarity on how things are operating. The last piece I would say is it's really complicated, for a pastor to come into a situation and not know who he is accountable to and what he can or can't do, and it creates all kinds of problems for everybody involved and usually ends up bad. 00;04;02;17 - 00;04;29;22 Unknown And so, not having clarity on how your structured and how things operate. Really. Yeah. It's really difficult to navigate, anything going forward, I would imagine that, those that are listening to this podcast are going to find themselves in one of a few different places. maybe you are a pastor who has been serving in the church for some time, and, you are recognizing that your church needs to revitalize, it needs to renew its vision. 00;04;29;24 - 00;04;56;22 Unknown and you have an existing leadership structure that maybe isn't necessarily serving the church at its full capacity. And you might need to lead your church through asking some tough questions about how the polity and the governance in your church might need to change, which can be a very difficult thing, especially if you have a, a long time established constitution that was, you know, written 30, 40, 80 and so on. 00;04;56;24 - 00;05;17;05 Unknown and it's and it's written it was it's written in stone, like, like the tablets that Moses brought down from the mountain. It's in stone. you could be a pastor that's new in a church, and you're trying to figure out how to best work with the existing polity and governance that exists in the church that you're in. 00;05;17;05 - 00;05;58;17 Unknown Or you could be an elder or a church leader in a church that doesn't currently have a pastor, and you're evaluating or reevaluating your own governance structure and asking yourself some questions about whether or not it's established in a way that's really going to help the church flourish in the future. And one of the things that you mentioned, Nathan, before we started recording, is that a lot of times, churches that we aren't engaging with in the early stages of a revitalization season are churches that have reached a place of unhealthy or unfruitful ness, and sometimes the reason they reach that place is because of the governance structure itself, because it isn't a governance structure that 00;05;58;17 - 00;06;19;01 Unknown allows for the most effective and fruitful ministry. Well, why don't you speak to that for a few minutes? Yeah. It's tricky. Like we we engage this one church with a the pastor just step down and, so I, I interviewed the pastor and I asked him, why did you step down? He said, well, it's been very, very hard. 00;06;19;01 - 00;06;44;04 Unknown I, I was brought in to bring change to the church, and the elders actually brought me in for that purpose. I've been here for five years, and and every time I bring change, the elder board will not support it. It's like. And the other board is divided. And because of that, my greatest nightmares have been the elders who actually recruited me specifically and brought me to the church. 00;06;44;04 - 00;07;05;00 Unknown And then I had to fight every step of the way to bring anything new to the church. And so when I started to engage the elders who were asking us to come help them, I said, guys, that there's something that's really important here on your side of it is, you know, is that the elders themselves don't have authority individually. 00;07;05;03 - 00;07;28;11 Unknown And they're like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, well, the the pastor is an elder and you guys are elders, and that's all great. And you were process for elder, but it's the board itself. When it makes a decision together. That's where the authority comes from, the decision of the board, not decision of an individual. And so when you make a decision as a board, you have to be unified. 00;07;28;11 - 00;07;48;15 Unknown It doesn't mean that you don't have dispute an argument to get to the decision. You might have all kinds of it. You might even have a vote. It's not unanimous. And that's that's okay too. But once the board has decided something, everybody in the church needs to submit to that decision, including the elders. And so which is kind of a funny thing to say. 00;07;48;15 - 00;08;05;27 Unknown But what happens oftentimes the elders will make a decision and one of the elders doesn't like it. You know, go and badmouth the rest of the church, the rest of the elders to the rest of the church about the decision that was made. And he wasn't the one who decided it, and everybody else wanted it. That is horrible. 00;08;05;29 - 00;08;33;20 Unknown It totally destroys the church and it destroys anything you're going to do. You can't unify. So I say this as a group, you have to make a decision, and then you have to all stand behind it and support it with your full vigor. And you have to be one. You have to operate as one group. And as we were talking back and forth in this conversation, one of the elders that I met with him 3 or 4 times to try to get the elders unified, and one of the elders said, you know what? 00;08;33;20 - 00;08;56;28 Unknown I don't have the same vision as the other elders, and I've been the one who's caused a lot of the problems that the elders have had. And I repent of that. And I need to step down from the elders board. And and it's hard for me to do that, but I'm going to and he did, he stepped down from the other board in that church, was able to move forward with unity and peace and strength. 00;08;57;00 - 00;09;20;00 Unknown because I told the elders, I said, we're not going anywhere until you guys are unified, but I'm not bringing this to the church. So you guys figure out how you operate and that you're unified. And once they were able to get there, the rest of it wasn't. I wouldn't say easy, but it was tons easier to move forward as a unified group, even though they had they had they still had disagreements and arguments and work through things. 00;09;20;00 - 00;09;36;24 Unknown But they decided that they were going to be a unified front to the congregation. And once they did that, wow, that was life changing for that church. Yeah, that's a very interesting thing. And obviously in that particular situation, I mean, we can thank the Holy Spirit for bringing conviction. Absolutely. That needed to happen in it. That isn't always the case. 00;09;36;26 - 00;09;56;19 Unknown you know, we we've seen so many different scenarios, with churches and pastors and elders and, you know, I can think of another church that we partnered with that, essentially had one elder on the elder team who was a, you know, everyone else was pushing the gas saying, we want to move forward. We want in this new direction. 00;09;56;19 - 00;10;29;23 Unknown And you have one person that's got their foot on the brakes, and that one person has been an elder for a really long time, is a key influencer in the church, and, is really making it difficult, if not impossible, for everyone else. And so I think this is something that churches see. A lot of times those that are elder led know, you know, we'll make sure that we we acknowledge this, that, you know, some denominations and some fellowships have churches, have different governance structures that are required for the church to follow. 00;10;29;23 - 00;10;50;26 Unknown So we're obviously speaking from our particular context, which is nondenominational. We do have a fellowship of churches that we're a part of. And and for the most part, what we're proposing, is what most churches in our fellowship could actually do if they so desire. Now, many of them, if not most of them, their constitutions would not necessarily know this. 00;10;50;28 - 00;11;09;04 Unknown But I bring this up a lot. A lot of times churches get stuck on their constitution and say, well, we have to do it this way because the Constitution was written this way. You know, it's interesting before you keep going. That's just one quick story. We were working with this one church that they had a constitution and a, something of practice. 00;11;09;10 - 00;11;45;25 Unknown It was I don't remember what the term was, but it basically laid out all the committees that were required for the church to operate. There was 12 committees that the church needed to function. Well, the church only had 60 people in it, and they couldn't even didn't have enough people to fill, give me. So I said, what you need to do is in this time of, of revitalization, we're going to have a motion to suspend, temporarily, the Constitution until you guys figure out what you're doing and live under the authority of the elders and, and then and then kind of we decide what you want to keep or, you know, or lose 00;11;45;25 - 00;12;09;18 Unknown a letter along the way. So yeah, that that's a very I mean, that's a very typical story. In fact, you know, when we are onboarding new churches into partnership now, I actually have a questionnaire that I send them. And one of the questions that I ask in the questionnaire is, are you able to currently meet all the requirements of your Constitution because sometimes, sometimes, again, you know, you've got 84 committees, but you only have eight people left in the church. 00;12;09;20 - 00;12;26;20 Unknown you've got you know, you can't do that, or you don't have enough people for certain votes on certain things or to fill all the roles on the, the steering committee of this and the board for that and the council for this. You just don't have enough people for those for all those roles. And, and this is the language that I like to use. 00;12;26;20 - 00;12;53;21 Unknown And I remind the churches of this that the if I like Jesus, you know, he posed this question about whether or not man was made for the Sabbath or the Sabbath man. And I asked the same question, you know, was the Constitution written for the church or the church created for the Constitution? And I think that's the thing that we have to remember is that the Constitution was was written to provide guidance and instruction at the outset of the church's life. 00;12;53;21 - 00;13;20;09 Unknown And sometimes it gets modified. And what we'll see sometimes is we'll see that, you know, 20 or 20 5 or 30 years ago, there were major amendments done to a church's constitution. Those are typically done in reaction to something significant that happened in the church that people didn't really like. And so instead of kind of finding a happy medium and a figuring out a way to move forward there, we just rewrite our Constitution to make sure that type of thing never happens again. 00;13;20;12 - 00;13;49;13 Unknown So all that being said, why don't you, you you have, kind of this, this framework for eldership. And let's assume that those that are listening could potentially create or recreate a leadership structure in their church. that's elder based. right. Why don't you talk through sort of the framework for that? And before you get into that, we have a document or some documents that have some illustrations and things we'll include in the show notes of this podcast episode. 00;13;49;13 - 00;14;05;28 Unknown So if you want to download some of the notes that Nathan has put together, that kind of review, these things, we'll make those available to you. But why don't you kind of talk through that frame? Yeah. I mean, because we have had so much challenge with how churches are constituted. We we we wrote something together where I call it the four team polity. 00;14;06;00 - 00;14;28;20 Unknown And, and it helps to really, break the church down into simple structures that allow for governance and decision making to take place. The biggest challenge for most churches is trying to figure out how to keep the pastor accountable, but yet let him be the leader at the same time. And so they have a real difficult time navigating that because there there isn't clarity on that. 00;14;28;20 - 00;14;50;12 Unknown But we're we're big on having an elder led church. But even if you have a congregational, led church that votes on elders, typically the elders are still making all the decisions that just bring back to the congregation the big ones. but, you know, part of the challenge is, is that that elder team might have been on that team forever, and you never rotate them off the board. 00;14;50;12 - 00;15;10;19 Unknown So, and they also typically will have an elder. So you're an elder as long as you're on the board. But once you come off the board, you're no longer an elder, which doesn't make any sense because a biblical elder is a spiritually qualified man. I mean, that's what a biblical elder is according to Scripture. So you read first Timothy and, and the rest of the passage of Scripture. 00;15;10;19 - 00;15;33;09 Unknown You know, an elder doesn't seem to be an elders because it's a sit in a board meeting someone for a once a month. So wait a year round, that is, we we recommend churches to create a college of elders, and a college of elders would allow you to have a constantly developing qualified men who can teach and are able to teach and are able to be part of the spiritual leadership of the church. 00;15;33;11 - 00;15;59;05 Unknown And so that's a really kind of simple idea. But it's a big idea because the College of Elders not only allows you to have this, larger group of guys that are being trained and developed and can speak into stuff, but it doesn't mean that the guys who sit on the board are the exclusive elders. Right? So from the College of Elders, create a board and I, I recommend a small board somewhere between 3 to 7. 00;15;59;07 - 00;16;21;20 Unknown Five is kind of the ideal number, but if you're just getting figuring out a three is probably a decent number. Another big mistake that guys make, in my opinion, is they they allow the staff members on their team to be on the the board. And that to me is a big problem because it's tough when you're over the person and then they're they're the ones telling you to do. 00;16;21;23 - 00;16;49;15 Unknown There's a huge conflict and challenge. You can't have personal conversations about either because they're all they're intertwined in the board. So let them be an elder. Put them on the College of Elders because they're likely qualified men, spiritual qualified men, which is fantastic. But the in my opinion, they should be serving on the board. So from the College of Elders have, have a board that that was the authorizing board of the church and that's, that's really important. 00;16;49;15 - 00;17;13;27 Unknown So this board, it doesn't it doesn't actually produce very much. It's not the purpose of the board. The authorizing board is to approve things and to make sure it keeps and trust the church. So the ethics of the church, the theology of the church, the financial responsibility of the church, it's entrusting all that stuff, but it's not necessarily doing all that stuff. 00;17;13;27 - 00;17;39;05 Unknown And there's a distinction between that. And so that elder board would then hold accountable the pastor who is the executive of the church. And so that the pastor can be on the elder board, he can be a member of the board. He can even lead the board if you want to. I don't really care, because at the end of the day, the board is the ones that make the decisions, not the individual. 00;17;39;05 - 00;18;04;23 Unknown And that's a really important distinction. So as you think about the construction of that board, you want to have, you know, qualified, spiritually qualified men who are going to make decisions for the church. The pastor then is empowered by the board to go bring a vision, bring a budget, bring a strategy, bring a plan. Now the pastor cannot go and do anything on his own. 00;18;04;26 - 00;18;28;28 Unknown he has to bring that plan and that vision and that budget back to the board. but the board isn't producing it, that the leader is producing it, and he's coming back and getting approval. And maybe he has to make changes, the ramifications and so forth. So, so the separation of the board from the lead pastor is that the pastor is the one who's bringing the vision, bringing the strategy, bringing the budget. 00;18;29;01 - 00;18;46;01 Unknown but he has to get it approved by the board. So he can't do anything without their authority, without their permission. And this is the big idea. One of the big mistakes that guys make that sit on the board is they authorized the guy to go make a plan. He comes back and they approve it, but then they don't hold him accountable to it. 00;18;46;03 - 00;19;02;16 Unknown And that's the next step is not only is the board responsible for authorizing things, but they're they're also responsible to hold the person accountable to deliver on. So, you know, they're going to check on the financials. Oh, you're overspending. How's that going? Or you said you were going to do this and this and this tax and keep this plan. 00;19;02;19 - 00;19;27;17 Unknown How is that going? How is it happening? So, it's important that that board functions as an accountable structure for the leader, but isn't actually the one producing the vision, it's the one authorizing the vision. And those are the distinctions that I would make with those two things. Okay. So you started this off by saying that you have a four team polity, and now you've explained a college of elders, and then a board from within that college of elders. 00;19;27;24 - 00;19;49;14 Unknown How does the first team okay, so that is one team, the College of Elders, and it's a subset of the board is considered a team. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well let's what's, what's what's team number two. Do you. Number two is the executive team which is led by the lead pastor. And the lead pastor is the one who I think should choose it is I you know, it's tricky. 00;19;49;21 - 00;20;10;24 Unknown You're dealing with a church with no staff when that's most of the situations we run into is small churches that are a big challenge, revitalizing or restarting them. But I reckon I encourage guys to go find people in the church who can function as a potential staff person or whatever to help them where they can meet with weekly and think through and work on stuff to make sure they can execute in the church so they're not doing it by themselves. 00;20;10;26 - 00;20;33;21 Unknown So I love teamwork. I think a team is really, really important, and I don't think that the that the, pastor needs to have 15 people on the team. I think that's ridiculous. But 2 or 3 people to help him actually get after making the big decisions and presenting stuff to the elders, and, and, and dealing with the daily operations of how the church is being functioning and running. 00;20;33;24 - 00;20;56;16 Unknown That's what I call the executive team. And from the executive team, all the other, accountability is happening. So the first team is the elder team. The second team is the is the executive team. The third team, is is the team of all the workers, the leaders of all the different ministries that really function as the deacons of the church. 00;20;56;19 - 00;21;17;02 Unknown So all your ministry team leaders, should be that second team, not the ministry workers with the ministry team leaders should be that third level of leadership in the church. And there needs to be, a place where they're accountable to someone on the executive team. And they need to be executing on that vision that's approved by the board, and that's where it goes. 00;21;17;04 - 00;21;35;07 Unknown so you have the, you know, the the board, then you have the executive team, and then you have the ministry team leaders. And then the last, of course, is the members of the church. You should be functioning on one of these teams to serve the congregation. So that's the kind of the four thing that was tricky is a small church context. 00;21;35;10 - 00;21;52;21 Unknown You might have a person who sits as an elder, but he also oversees a ministry. And so how does he relate to the pastor? And that becomes this tricky thing. He has to wear multiple hats. And, and then the pastor, you know, tries to do stuff. So I tell the pastors, listen, you know, you can only accomplish so many things in one meeting. 00;21;52;21 - 00;22;18;22 Unknown And typically they would have a meeting with all of the key leaders, which is usually the ones doing everything in the church. And they're only functioning on a couple levels. Either they're dealing with the corporate stuff, for the elder board, which the elders should be dealing with, or they're dealing with the day to day operational stuff, which the executive team should be dealing with, or they're dealing with the ministry leadership stuff, and they can't do all three typically in one meeting. 00;22;18;22 - 00;22;50;29 Unknown So I said, if you're going to if you're going to try to do all of that in one meeting, at least break the meeting up into those three sections so that you're getting after those, because there are different, obligations to make the church function and to be healthy. Let me, let me get you to kind of drill in on one particular area, because a lot of times, many of the churches that we were working with, by the time we engage with them, whatever governing body there is in the church, it's elder board or a council or, trustees or whatever it is in the church. 00;22;51;01 - 00;23;28;20 Unknown Typically, by the time that we begin to engage with them, they're spending about 98% of their time dealing with facility and finance issues. It's really do we have the money to keep the lights on? And then we do have we have bulbs in the sockets that actually work if we're able to actually keep the lights on. So it for many of the churches that are potentially listening to this, you know that the the facility aspect, it trumps in a lot of ways ministry that trumps a lot of the spiritual development, spiritual, discipleship and things that are going on in the context of the church because we've literally reached a place where our primary focus 00;23;28;20 - 00;23;49;11 Unknown is how do we keep the doors open and the lights on, the air conditioning on in the summer and the heating on in the winter. Right. What where does facility maintenance and those types of things fit within the context of your for team structure. So they're in the third team. They they're they're accountable to the executive team. And they're one of those ministry team leaders. 00;23;49;11 - 00;24;06;01 Unknown So one of the ministry team leaders should be the one who's overseeing the buildings and the facilities and the grounds and taking care of those things, functioning as a deacon who's overseeing in the ministry of the of the of the facility. And so that person then is accountable to the executive team. However the executive team chooses to facilitate that. 00;24;06;04 - 00;24;38;06 Unknown Yeah. Okay. You know, one of the things I will I will state what is potentially obvious based on the way that we've we framed this conversation so far is that, our fellowship, our family of churches is complementary. And, and so we we only have male elders, and male pastors in our churches yet, we recognize that there are many, many very gifted, very talented, very wise women who can contribute to the health, the growth, the function and the ministry effectiveness of a church. 00;24;38;08 - 00;24;58;26 Unknown How would you speak to where, if, if, if you're complementary and as we are, where would you see women fitting into the scope of these roles here in the. Well, the a woman could definitely be on the executive team with that executive team leadership. for sure. And then she can function. Well, it's got to be the only each church is going to have their own conviction. 00;24;58;26 - 00;25;20;13 Unknown So I don't want to be throwing out stuff that, you know, whatever your church decides is really totally fine with us, but, but, but and some of those ministry team leaders, like, over the children's ministry that were the ones ministries that were lots of technical stuff that happens in the church, woman could be leading those different, teams that are facilitating, ministry to those those particular groups of people, for sure. 00;25;20;16 - 00;25;42;24 Unknown but the other thing I like to have is I can have an ad hoc committee of the executive team. That's really what I call a vision team. And so it functions for a brief period of time. It's it's actually recruited by personally by the exactly which would be the lead pastor. And he invites a group of people to help him rethink the vision of the church and, and, and consider all options about the future. 00;25;42;26 - 00;26;19;19 Unknown And I definitely think you should you want woman on that on that vision team. So we're not asking for a woman to be on the authority of the elders. We're asking them to have input and to be part of helping think about the future of the church and how it can be better. Okay, that's very helpful. last thing, as we sort of tie a bow on what really is a very complicated this could be like 17 sessions, but it probably could be, when it comes to elders, you know, and again, one of the things that we encounter quite often is that, we connect with the church that that doesn't have an 00;26;19;19 - 00;26;42;11 Unknown elder structure. They consider their pastor to be their elder, and their pastor is the elder. Now that Pastor Elder has retired or moved on and is no longer there, maybe I'm a new pastor that's come in. What are some of the basic things that I could do if I want to develop men to be elders, I want to put a college of elders together. 00;26;42;14 - 00;26;58;19 Unknown What are some of the strategies that you might recommend to a pastor who's in the early stages of trying to figure that out? Well, I think that's a great challenge to get after. I mean, any man going to a place, I think the first thing he should be doing is seeing who are the gifted men in the church and being investing in them right away. 00;26;58;19 - 00;27;20;25 Unknown Like regardless of what you're trying to do for strategy, you should be discipling and developing, the key men in the church. That should be like priority number one that you're working on. But I encourage you to create a structure for actually producing and and mentoring and developing elders. And, and there's lots of churches that have already, you know, figured out how to skin that cats. 00;27;20;28 - 00;27;38;26 Unknown you don't have to reinvent the wheel unless you want to. so I would take a look at what other guys have done for an elder training track and implement that and start to be looking to be on board and to be training elders right out of the gate. Because ultimately, for your church to succeed, you need strong spiritual leadership. 00;27;38;26 - 00;27;56;26 Unknown And ideally, you want that to be local. And a lot of churches like that we're working with don't have enough strong spiritual leaders within it, and they're actually using outside leaders to help give them that support. But long term, you want to have, you know, local elders that are actually helping to oversee and helping to to give guidance to strengthen search. 00;27;56;28 - 00;28;18;28 Unknown It's amazing to a leader when he has healthy, godly men to help him in the process of leading the church. If you're all by yourself making these huge decisions or dealing with really difficult issues, it's it's really, really hard. But when you have really godly men who could help you, it's it's, you know, the burdens lighter and more can lift it. 00;28;19;01 - 00;28;50;13 Unknown You. So, you know, one of the, one of the challenges that many pastors face is and we hear this all the time that, you know, I wasn't trained to do that in ministry or in seminary, like seminary didn't prepare me for this aspect of ministry. And I think that a lot of the times, the things that pastors feel so ill equipped to deal with are, I mean, I've sat through these meetings where we, as elders are trying to make decisions about our insurance or decisions about, you know, I mean, I like I, I could give a rip. 00;28;50;13 - 00;29;13;19 Unknown Like, honestly, as a pastor, there are people far more qualified in my church to decide who our insurance provider is going to be. I know we have to have it, and I, but I want to have a team of people around me as the pastor, as the leader who I can, equip, trust and empower to make recommendations to the elder team so that we can make our best decisions. 00;29;13;19 - 00;29;43;01 Unknown The most painful elder meetings that I have ever sat through have been the ones where we've sat and we've talked about legal things, financial things, business things, building things. And we never actually talk about moving the needle for advancing God's kingdom. All of those things are important. but at the end of the day, when we think about the purpose the the first century purpose of elders, it had nothing to do with buildings and budgets and butts in seats. 00;29;43;03 - 00;30;10;11 Unknown It had everything to do with making sure that lost people were getting saved and saved people were being discipled. And that's what I want my elder team to really be able to focus their energies on, because that's what I. I see them as being uniquely set apart for that particular purpose. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't and don't have people who are highly gifted business people, accountants, insurance people, people who know lots of stuff on your elder team. 00;30;10;13 - 00;30;36;02 Unknown But that shouldn't be why you're asking people to be on your elder team. Those that are you're qualifying for eldership should be qualified for eldership because they are able to actually co shepherd the church with you. and if you've got, you know, other leaders in the church who have gifts and talents and experiences and a lot of these other areas, it's why we need to have a team structure that allows them to be able to speak into those things without them necessarily having to. 00;30;36;02 - 00;30;54;10 Unknown And if you structure the church right, the elders don't have to do this because they're responsible for everything, doesn't mean they have to do everything. They're not. It's not the same thing. It's about leadership. Right. And so I think that's where people get all messed up like this. Because the is responsible for them doesn't mean they have to be the one doing it. 00;30;54;11 - 00;31;17;12 Unknown The I mean, it's interesting, you know, when when the, the early disciples had all this issue with the, with the Greeks not getting enough food, what did they do? They said, well, let's go find a godly man who can oversee this. And they appointed deacons to go and serve those capacity. So they were still responsible. The people came to them to find a solution and they made one. 00;31;17;12 - 00;31;34;16 Unknown It it wasn't them doing it. It was them finding God. They met who could. And so I think that's a really big idea. Yeah. Well, we could go on and on and on and on about this. And most of you would probably tune out at some point because it's not the most exciting of conversations, but it is a very, very critical conversation to have. 00;31;34;23 - 00;31;52;07 Unknown If you are looking to help your church, move forward to find a new and hopeful future, sometimes it does take a good heart. Require taking a good, hard look at your governance structure, and make sure that it is established in a way that really helps you to accomplish the vision that you believe God has called your church to accomplish. 00;31;52;10 - 00;32;11;24 Unknown I think it's I think it's totally essential. But without solid and clear polity, how do you call a pastor into a church that doesn't have clarity on how it's organized, and then keep them accountable and help them let him know how to operate? It can't. And and so to me, getting your polity, your governance clear, it doesn't have to be complicated. 00;32;11;24 - 00;32;30;23 Unknown But whatever it is simple clarity. It really, really help your church move forward. For sure. Yeah. Hey, thanks so much for tuning in, to another episode of the Revitalize My Church podcast. if you haven't yet subscribed, make sure that you do that so you don't miss Future episodes. We release an episode on the first and the 15th of every month. 00;32;30;25 - 00;32;48;11 Unknown check out our website, Revitalize My Church, where we have some articles, some resources, and of course, links to these podcast episodes. And, on behalf of Nathan Bryant and our entire team at this church expansion, I'm Bart Blair. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.