In April 2007 our church experienced a moral crisis. Our pastor of more than 16 years resigned after admitting to a moral failure. Our church responded to the crisis in amazing ways.
I was asked to co-pastor the church with our Membership Pastor during the interim. It was the most challenging experience I have ever had, both personally and as a pastor. Days ran into weeks managing one apect of the crisis after another. There were many issues to adress. The the urgent completely over-shadowed the important, as we struggled to focus beyond the immediate.
In time our team began to ask some important questions. We earnestly sought God about the future for our church. The years leading up to the crisis were unprecedented in growth and we believed that God had his hand on our church. We wanted to do everything we could to protect the church and keep this kind of crisis from developing again.
In time we began to dream of a new kind of leadership structure. We looked to the Bible to see what we could learn about church leadership structure and discovered that in almost every example of the New Testament church there were appointed “elders” to lead the church. Among the elders there was an equality, a team. When one of the elders became the leader he was viewed as a leader among peers.
We presented this leadership structure to our church and, remarkably, they voted unanimously to support the necessary changes in our constitution and by-laws to accommodate the new leadership structure.
We had some significant work to do to make this dream into a reality, including hiring an Executive Pastor, and the new position of Lead Teaching Pastor. Both of these men serve strategically as leaders on our elder team, with six other pastors as champions of different aspects of the church.
We’ve been working with this structure for a little over a year now, and it has been the most refreshing, and fulfilling time of my ministry. Our church has thrived! During the last year we saw a growth of 500 new members and over 300 baptisms.
I know that many in the church world will argue that this kind of structure will not work, and I would have to agree, in most churches it will not work. With most leaders, it would not work, but it’s working at our church. God is faithfully blessing.
There are a variety of models of leadership structure, and it’s evident that God has blessed many of them. This team structure serves us well, and appeals to me for reasons I think you understand, but I pray that, whatever model you prefer, you will join me in the prayer that our team, and other leaders will continue to remain faithful and obedient servants to our God. It is His hand that causes all things to grow, or not grow. He appoints leaders among men. We simply serve Him.
