What is the role of elders?

Question 09049.

The role of elders is set out in the New Testament with more care than almost any other practical matter, and yet many believers could not name what an elder is supposed to do. They know elders exist. They may know who theirs are. Beyond that it gets vague, and vagueness about leadership is how churches end up with the wrong men in the wrong jobs.

So let me work through it: what an elder is, what the role of elders involves, who is qualified, and what the office is not. I write this as a minister who has served with good elders and has seen what happens where the office is treated as a committee seat.

Three Words for One Office

The New Testament uses three terms for the same men. Elder, presbyteros, speaks of maturity and standing. Overseer, episkopos, speaks of the function of watching over. Shepherd or pastor, from poimen, speaks of feeding and protecting a flock.

That these are one office rather than three is clear from Acts 20. Paul sends for the elders of the church at Ephesus, tells them the Holy Spirit has made them overseers, and instructs them to shepherd the church of God. Three words, one group of men, one passage. Peter does the same thing in 1 Peter 5:1-2.

So the role of elders is described by all three images at once. Elders are mature men who watch over and feed a particular flock. Take away any one of the three and you have distorted the office.

The Role of Elders in Teaching

The first duty is the word. An elder must be able to teach, which is the only competence in the entire list of qualifications; everything else is character. Titus 1:9 puts it more fully: he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

Notice the two edges there. Positive instruction and negative correction. An elder who can teach warmly but will not confront error has done half the job, and the half he has left undone is the half that protects the church.

Not all elders teach publicly with equal frequency. 1 Timothy 5:17 distinguishes those who rule well from those who labour in preaching and teaching, which suggests a difference of emphasis rather than of office. But every elder must be able to handle Scripture, because a man who cannot will eventually be unable to lead.

Shepherding the Flock

Shepherding is the image that governs the whole role of elders, and it is worth pressing. A shepherd feeds, leads, protects, seeks the wandering and knows the sheep individually. Ezekiel 34 is a devastating chapter about shepherds who fed themselves instead, and it is required reading for anyone in this office.

In practice this means an elder should know the people. Not know of them, know them. Which family is struggling, who has stopped coming, who is grieving quietly, who is being drawn towards something dangerous. That knowledge cannot be delegated and it does not come from meetings.

Paul’s warning at Miletus is that fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and that from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things. Protecting a congregation from teaching that will harm it is not an optional aggression. It is the job.

Leading Without Lording

Elders lead. Hebrews tells the congregation to obey their leaders and submit to them, because they keep watch over souls and will give an account. That is real authority and I will not water it down to make it comfortable.

But Peter puts the fence around it in the same breath as he describes the office: shepherd the flock of God among you, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. Authority that has to assert itself has usually already lost the thing that made it work.

I do not believe in eldership that sets itself above the congregation. In my own church the membership holds the final say, and the leadership is bound by the decision even when it is not the one we would have chosen. The role of elders is to lead a congregation that follows willingly, not to command one that has no choice.

Who Is Qualified

1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 give the lists, and their character is striking. Above reproach, faithful to his wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money, managing his own household well, not a recent convert, well thought of by outsiders.

Almost every item is about who a man is rather than what he can do. There is no requirement of education, eloquence, business success or social standing. A church that selects elders on the basis of professional achievement has read a different list from the one Paul wrote.

Two items deserve particular attention. Not a recent convert, because pride is the specific danger and time is the only remedy. And managing his own household well, because Paul reasons that a man who cannot care for his own family will not care for the church of God. That is not a demand for perfect children. It is a question about how a man handles responsibility where nobody is watching.

Plurality and Accountability

Wherever the New Testament mentions elders in a congregation, the word is plural. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church (Acts 14:23). Titus was to appoint elders in every town. James tells the sick to call for the elders of the church.

That plurality is a protection for everybody, including the elders themselves. It means no single man carries the weight alone, no single man’s blind spots go unchallenged, and no single man becomes the church. Where a congregation is small, that ideal is harder to reach, and in my own setting the deacons presently function in both an elder and a deacon capacity, which is a pragmatic reality rather than an ideal.

Accountability runs both ways. 1 Timothy 5:19-20 says not to admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses, which protects him from gossip, and then says that those who persist in sin are to be rebuked in the presence of all. The office confers no immunity.

What Elders Are Not

Elders are not a board of directors. The role of elders is spiritual before it is administrative, and where an eldership spends its meetings on buildings, budgets and rotas, something has gone wrong that deacons exist to prevent. Acts 6 was written precisely to keep this from happening.

They are not a representative committee either, with each man speaking for a constituency within the church. Nor are they simply the people who have been around longest, though maturity matters. And they are not a rank. Jesus was blunt about leaders who love titles and the best seats.

Finally, they are not the ministry. Ephesians 4 says leaders are given to equip the saints for the work of ministry. An eldership that does all the visiting, all the teaching and all the caring has misunderstood the role of elders and exhausted itself proving it. My article on the role of deacons works through the other half of this.

The Elder’s Own Soul

Paul’s charge at Miletus begins with a phrase that is easy to read past. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock. To yourselves comes first, and Peter says something similar when he tells elders to be examples rather than administrators of other people’s holiness.

The role of elders is spiritually dangerous work, and I say that from experience rather than as a rhetorical flourish. A man who handles Scripture publicly every week can begin reading it only for material. A man who counsels the struggling can lose the habit of being counselled. A man who is respected can quietly start believing the estimate. Paul warned that a recent convert might be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil, and he did not restrict the danger to recent converts.

So an eldership needs practices that protect the men in it. Reading Scripture devotionally as well as professionally. Real friendship with someone who is not impressed by them. Permission for wives to say the uncomfortable thing. And a willingness to hear correction from the congregation without treating it as rebellion, which is a good deal harder than it sounds. See 1 Timothy 4:16, where Paul ties an elder’s own perseverance to the salvation of his hearers.

When an Elder Must Step Down

Since the qualifications are about character rather than skill, disqualification follows character too. If a man is no longer above reproach, no longer faithful to his wife, no longer self-controlled, no longer able to manage his household, then the role of elders is no longer his to hold, however gifted he is and however much the church would miss him.

This is where congregations fail most often, out of loyalty and out of dread. A church that keeps a disqualified man in office because he is popular, or because removing him would split the fellowship, has decided that its comfort matters more than its integrity, and the cost of that decision always arrives eventually. My article on how a church should handle a pastor who falls into serious sin works through the process.

Recognising Men Before Appointing Them

One practical question decides whether the role of elders will be filled well: how does a congregation identify the men in the first place? The commonest method in British Baptist life is a nomination and a vote, which tends to select the well known rather than the qualified.

A better approach is slower. Watch who is already doing the work. Somebody is visiting the sick without being asked. Somebody is being sought out for counsel by people who have no idea he holds no office. Somebody handles Scripture carefully in conversation. The role of elders describes what these men are already doing, and appointing them recognises a reality rather than creating one.

Then test it properly. Paul told Timothy not to be hasty in the laying on of hands, in 1 Timothy 5:22, and the warning is there because haste in this matter is costly and slow to undo. Give a man responsibility short of office and see what he does with it. Ask his wife. Ask the people he has helped. The role of elders is too weighty to be settled by a show of hands at the end of a long evening.

So, now what?

If you are an elder, or think you might be called to it, read 1 Timothy 3 slowly with your own life in view and ask somebody who knows you well to read it with you. The role of elders is not a promotion to be sought for its own sake, though Paul says it is a noble task to desire. It is a weight, and the men who feel that most are usually the right ones.

If you are a member, pray for your elders by name this week and tell one of them that you have. They carry things you never hear about and they will answer for you. What would it look like for you to make their work a joy rather than a groan?

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 (ESV)