‘This week I’ve been posting notes from our Business Meeting last Sunday on transitioning from a committee-led to an elder-led model of church leadership. Already, we’ve talked about What Biblical Eldership Is and the Relationship of Elders to the Congregation. Today, I’d like to talk about the Elder Selection Process.

Q. How will elders be selected? A. I’ve developed a training program and have invited a small group of potentially elder-qualified men to go through this process with me for the first time. We are nearing the end of our program and have discussed topics like godly character, the purpose of the church, biblical theology, the gospel, evangelism, worship, prayer, visitation, and teaching, while also doing ministry together.

Explaining the details of this course is a topic for another day. But my goal is to build within each man a solid foundation of godly character, theological conviction, and ministry competency that will lend itself to biblical eldership.

At the conclusion of this training program, each candidate is required to preach on a Wednesday night and to field questions from the congregation in an ordination style meeting. If the elder prospect completes the training in a satisfactory manner, he will be presented to the congregation for vote and approval.

Each year, we will invite church members to nominate additional people for elder. These names will be then reviewed by the existing elders and suitable candidates will begin the elder training program.

Q. Can women become elders? While women have many vital roles in the local church, elder is not one of them. Every mention of eldership in both Old and New Testament suggests this office is restricted to men (Deut. 21:21; 1 Tim. 2:12; 3:2; 2 Tim. 3:17; Titus 1:6).

Once a biblical plurality of elders has been established, however, the role of deacon can open up to both male and female candidates. That’s because the deacon ministry will finally take on its true biblical meaning of helper/servant/minister. It is my conviction that, far from suppressing women, a plurality of elders will actually expand the role of women in our church in beautiful, Christ-exalting ways.

Next week, I\’ll wrap up this series and talk about the timing of change, and what to do if I prefer things to stay the way they are right now.