Great post by Greg Gilbert about one quality, “Likemindedness”, sought after in an Elder

About two years ago, the elders at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville gave a series of “vision talks” regarding several different aspects of our church’s life. We were at the time considering nominating some new elders, and our church was full (and still is) of young men aspiring to someday be elders or even senior pastors.

I gave a talk entitled something like “What We’re Looking For In An Elder.” The first point I tried to clarify was why, in such a talk, I wasn’t just preaching an expositional sermon on 1 Timothy 3. That, after all, is where the qualifications are given. So why did we, the elders, think we needed to say anything beyond that? The answer I gave was that there were many men in our congregation who met the qualifications of 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1. But the text doesn’t say that a man who meets those qualifications must be an elder, just that he has to meet them in order to be an elder. Therefore, we as the current elders were looking not only at those qualifications, but also at a few other things as well.

I made four points in the talk, four things that not only would communicate to the congregation the kind of men we were hoping to nominate (not to mention be) but that would also, we hoped, spur the men in our congregation on to spiritual maturity. Here’s the first one, largely as it existed in my notes:

I. We Are Looking for Men With Whom We Are Likeminded on Certain Issues.

- This is self-evident on the gospel itself.

- But it is also true on things less important and less central than the gospel itself. There is an idea current out there that likemindedness of this sort is a very wrong thing, that it is better to have the elders disagreeing, creating gridlock.

- Let me argue to you that gridlock is great in the U.S. government, but it is not a good thing among elders. You certainly shouldn’t plan for it. (Proverbs 17:14)

- The church has made certain decisions, taken certain directions, and we want elders who are likeminded with us in those directions.

- Let me pause here to point out the danger of a talk like this. It could be said, “All they want are a bunch of yes-men, people who agree with them.”

First, that’s not true. Disagreement with the elders is not the issue here. In fact, we emphatically do not want yes-men. Perhaps you’ll simply have to trust me on that.

Second, I hope you can understand the wisdom of what I have just said.

- But on to what we want likemindedness on:

- The Sovereignty of God in Salvation. Because it affects everything we do as a church.

- Role of Women. Complementarianism. So if you’re going to start advocating for women to be elders, or arguing that they shouldn’t be deacons, you’re not going to be an elder.

- Ecclesiology. Elders, deacons, congregationalism, etc.

- Vision for Evangelism. Indigenous, authentic evangelism. That’s not to say there is not room for disagreement and thinking. But there has been a direction set.

- High Importance of Preaching. Not a church focused on social ministry or political activism. We have a certain texture that we have cultivated.

- There Are Others

From Five Ways to Pray the Psalms | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction]

1. Say Them Out Loud. Just read the Psalms slowly and thoughtfully, assenting to what they say with as much understanding as you have, intellectually and emotionally. Don’t just read them, pray them; say them from the heart. The Psalms contain both the Word God has to say to us about prayer and the words he wants us to say to him in prayer. “This is pure grace,” exclaimed Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “that God tells us how we can speak with him and have fellowship with him.”

2. Festoon Them. Think of a psalm as a Christmas tree. Read it and then festoon it with your own prayers, as you would decorate a tree. Your prayers are answers to what God says to you in the psalm. One way to understand a psalm’s intent is to read it through the lens of the “three Rs”: Rejoice: What do I find here that gives me cause to rejoice, to give praise and thanks? Repent: What do I read here that brings to light sin in my life? Request: What in this psalm can inform the way I pray for others and myself?

3. Paraphrase Them. Meditate on and study a psalm until you understand it well enough to put it into your own words. Then paraphrase the psalm as you have come to understand it, and pray your paraphrase. No one need read or hear what you have written but you and the Lord, who delights in the prayers of his people.

4. Learn Them by Heart. Memorize the Psalms—but not by rote. Rather, learn them by heart; make their words your words. Come to understand them so well you can recite them—by inflection and tone—as though you had written them yourself. This is by far the best way I know to learn to pray the Psalms. I can think of no more powerful way to allow the Word of God to change who you are and how you think. Over the years, the prayers of the Psalms have offered incomparable comfort and clarity in desperate, murky, and confusing situations, when I didn’t have a worthwhile word of my own to say—when I quite literally didn’t have a prayer.

5. Marinate in Them. Some people use the Bible like they use spice to liven up the taste of food—a little Tabasco here, some salt and pepper and oregano there; a particular psalm to read when you are (check one) sad or glad or afraid or lonely or struggling with doubt. But it’s better to use the Psalms as you would a marinade. A spice touches only the surface of the food; a marinade changes its character. The soul should marinate in Scripture by repeated, thoughtful, slow, comprehensive, and Spirit-enlightened reading.

Great post from Richard John Neuhaus, editor in chief of First Things

How, in the right ordering of our loves and loyalties, the Church gives effective expression to being a distinct society within the societies of the world is the burden of American Babylon and, I would add, the defining mission of First Things. It is the question that the Church has been addressing in a multitude of different ways over the centuries. My disagreements with Stanley Hauerwas are to be understood within the context of our agreement on the perennial question of how the Church orders its life as a “contrast society” in distinction from all temporal sovereignties. To be a Christian is to be out of step, until, as St. Paul writes to the Philippians, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:10-11).

Meanwhile, and as members of the “contrast society” that the Church is to be, Christians exercise the courage of their convictions in trying to bring clear reason and moral truth to bear in the temporal order. This is the mission betrayed by Catholics and others who resort to embarrassingly contrived complexifications in order not to be seen as adherents of “single-issue politics” in a political season in which we are confronted by the starkest alternatives on the single issue that distinguishes the culture of life from the culture of death.