I've Been Thinking About This…

What follows is the summary of the 15 pages of notes I took at the conference, speaker by speaker. Each of these men were encouragers; some were better atuned to the listeners than others, but I certainly got some tremendous help from each of them.

(‘MS’ stands for MULTISITE; ‘CP’ for campus pastor.)

Terry Broadwater

Director of the Chi Alpha Network

• Go where the people are.
• Lead the elders through a study of Acts – what should we be doing? Where should we be going?
• We must raise up and release a generation of church planters
• We should be people like Philip, who left the Jerusalem church and traveled to the desert, overtaking the lost eunuch in his search for Life.
• David’s attitude and praise in 2 Sam 6 – an example of NT worship in the OT
• Accountability is relational now, not legislated.

The question coming out of Terry’s talk for me is – are your elders or deacons so connected to the pastor that they want to spend time with him? … are they personal friends? … have they bought into the vision he has been given? Or are they ignoring or resisting what he’s trying to do? The founding pastor of a church plant gets to choose the elders, and they generally follow his vision and lead. When the founder leaves for whatever reason, the elders look for the replacement – and from that point on there’s always the concern that he’s bringing in change that they don’t agree with and that wasn’t part of the original pastor’s vision. After all, if they’re hiring him, then he reports to them, right? So there’s often an expectation that he should do the things they want the way they want.

But people and culture inevitably change, and so God’s desire and path for the church will change; can the elders grasp that if they haven’t had formal training? In general I think they can, but a real spirit of unity and humility must be present. Further, there must be a joy in the yoke. I think the proof of that is – do the elders enjoy doing things with the pastor (cookouts and hang times just for the lead team), or do they only get together at official meetings? If the latter, I’m pretty sure the church is in trouble.

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