How the Spirit Empowers Elders to Lead

Question 4168.

The Holy Spirit empowers elders for the work of leading a local church, and the New Testament shows us how, in the appointing of overseers, in the gifts He gives them, and in the daily strength He supplies for a demanding task. When people ask how the Spirit empowers elders, they often picture only a dramatic anointing, but the reality is steadier and richer than that, and it runs all through the life of a healthy church.

Let us look at the ways the Spirit empowers elders, drawing on the book of Acts and the letters of Paul, so that those who lead, and those who are led, can see what God has actually provided for the oversight of His people.

The Spirit appoints elders

The first way the Spirit empowers elders is by appointing them in the first place. When Paul says farewell to the Ephesian elders, he reminds them that the Holy Spirit has made them overseers to care for the church of God. The Spirit Himself stands behind their office, so that eldership is not finally a human appointment but a calling He gives and the church recognises.

This means a true elder does not seize the role or campaign for it as a career. He is set in place by the Spirit, who stirs the desire, supplies the character described in the qualifications, and confirms the calling through the discernment of the church. When the Spirit empowers elders, it begins here, before any visible ministry, in the quiet work of calling and qualifying the right men. I touch on this discernment in my answer on how the Spirit guides us.

The Spirit empowers elders through spiritual gifts

The Spirit empowers elders by giving them the gifts the work requires, chiefly the gifts of teaching, leadership, and shepherding. An elder must be able to teach, Paul tells Timothy, and that ability is itself a gift of the Spirit, who distributes such gifts to the body as He wills. The man does not generate the gift by training alone, though training sharpens it.

So when the Spirit empowers elders, He equips them with what they need to feed and guide the flock. One elder may carry a strong gift of teaching, another a gift of leadership or of pastoral care, and together their gifts knit the eldership into a team that can meet the varied needs of the church. I set out the range of these gifts in my answer on the spiritual gifts listed in Scripture.

The Spirit empowers elders to guard sound doctrine

A large part of an elder’s work is protective, guarding the church against error and holding fast to the truth, and the Spirit empowers elders for this too. Paul warned the Ephesian elders that fierce wolves would come, and he committed them to God and to the word of His grace, the very word the Spirit inspired and now illuminates in them.

The same Spirit who breathed out the Scriptures gives understanding of them to those who are set to guard the flock. When an elder discerns a false teaching, holds the line on the gospel, and feeds the people sound doctrine, the Spirit empowers that work through the word He has given. This is unspectacular and steady, and it is one of the most valuable things an eldership ever does.

The Spirit empowers elders to shepherd the flock

Leadership in the church is shepherding, not management, and shepherding is costly, patient, and often unseen. The Spirit empowers elders for it by producing in them the very fruit that good pastoral care requires, the love, patience, gentleness, and self-control that let a man bear with difficult people and keep loving them over years.

Peter tells the elders to shepherd the flock willingly and eagerly, not for shameful gain nor by lording it over those in their charge but by being examples. None of that comes naturally to fallen men. Where it is found, the Spirit empowers it, growing the character of a shepherd in those He has called to oversee. The strength to keep going when the work is thankless is His supply, not the elder’s own reserves.

The Spirit empowers elders to lead in dependence

It matters how an elder leads as well as that he leads, and here the Spirit empowers elders to work in dependence rather than in the flesh. The early church made its decisions in prayer and in conscious reliance on the Spirit, as when the leaders at Antioch were worshipping and the Spirit set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work He had called them to.

An eldership that leads in its own wisdom and energy, however gifted, has missed the point. The Spirit empowers elders who pray, who seek God together, who hold their plans loosely before Him, and who lead the church the way the apostles did, leaning on the Spirit at every turn. The danger always is to swap genuine dependence for a hollow competence, and a humble eldership guards against it.

What this means for the church

If the Spirit empowers elders in all these ways, then the church owes its leaders both honour and prayer. Honour, because the men who lead and teach are serving in an office the Spirit Himself appointed, and the New Testament tells us to esteem them highly for their work. Prayer, because the strength they need is the Spirit’s gift, and the church can ask for it on their behalf.

And for the elders themselves, the truth is steadying. The work is too heavy for any man, which is exactly why it was never meant to rest on a man’s own resources. The Spirit empowers elders, and the elder’s part is to stay close to the Lord, to keep in step with the Spirit, and to draw daily on the One who called him.

Power is for service, not for status

There is a danger that lurks near every discussion of empowered leadership, and it is the slide from service into status. The same word that describes an elder, overseer, is a word about responsibility, not rank, and the New Testament will not let a leader forget it. Peter tells the older men to shepherd the flock not by lording it over those in their charge but by being examples, and our Lord told His disciples plainly that greatness in His kingdom looks like the servant, not the ruler of the nations.

So whatever strength God supplies to those who lead is given for the good of the flock, never for the inflation of the leader. The moment an overseer begins to use the gifts entrusted to him to build his own name, to gather a following to himself, or to bend the church around his preferences, he has forgotten what the gifts were for. The power that comes down from God always bends toward the lowest place, because that is the shape of the One who gave it.

This is the safeguard against the cult of the platform that has done such damage in our day. Real authority in the church is exercised on the knees and through the towel, in patient teaching and unseen care, not from a stage. A leader who has grasped that will wear his calling lightly and his responsibility heavily, which is exactly the right way round.

Plurality and the protection of the church

It is worth noticing that the New Testament almost always speaks of elders in the plural, a team of overseers in each local church rather than a single strongman at the top. Paul appointed elders, in the plural, in every church, and he addressed the overseers, in the plural, at Ephesus and Philippi. That pattern is a kindness from God, and it bears directly on how a church is led and guarded.

A shared eldership protects the flock and the men themselves. It spreads the load that would crush one person, it brings a range of gifts to bear so that one man’s blind spots are covered by another’s sight, and it provides accountability so that no single leader can run unchecked. When God raises up and equips overseers, He typically raises up several together, knitting their differing gifts into one team for the care of one body.

For a congregation, this means looking for and praying for a healthy plurality of godly men rather than pinning everything on one gifted personality. And for those who lead, it means valuing your fellow elders as a gift rather than rivals, submitting to one another, and doing the work as a band of brothers under the one Chief Shepherd. That is how the Lord has arranged the care of His people, and it is wiser than any arrangement we would design.

So, now what?

If you are an elder, or training toward it, take heart from how much God has provided. He appointed you, He gifted you, He guards the doctrine through you, He grows the shepherd’s heart in you, and He means you to lead leaning on Him. The weight you feel is real, but it was never yours to carry alone.

And if you are a member, pray for the men who lead you, and thank God for them. The Spirit who empowers your elders can be asked to fill them, sustain them, and protect them, and few gifts you could give your church are greater than that kind of prayer. Will you start carrying your elders to God this week?

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

Acts 20:28