On Discipling Your Elders (Pastors Talk, Ep. 197)
How should pastors disciple their elders? In this episode of Pastors Talk, Mark Dever and Jonathan Leeman discuss how a pastor can disciple his elders and how that varies depending on the size of the church. They also analyze how pastors can structure their elder meetings so that it is not only a time to address church issues but also of discipleship.
- Should Pastors Disciple Their Elders?
- Different Ways to Disciple Elders
- The Structure of Elder Meetings
- Advice for Small Church Pastors
Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
On Discipling Your Elders
Taylor Hartley:
Welcome to the Pastors Talk podcast. We have our hosts, Jonathan Leeman and Mark Dever here. The Pastors Talk podcast exists to build up pastors for the good of the local church. You can refer to 9Marks.org to learn more information.
Mark Dever:
You got to clear your throat more, Jonathan. That was really good.
Jonathan Leeman:
I know. I wish my voice always sounded that good.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, as Taylor said, that’s who we are. That’s what we’re doing. Mark?
Mark Dever:
Jonathan?
Should Pastors Disciple Their Elders?
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you disciple your elders?
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I pray for them. I teach them God’s Word regularly.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you disciple your elders? And I’m not talking about would-be elders. I mean, guys who are elders in the church, whether staff or…
Mark Dever:
So you think we’re getting a whole podcast out of this one topic.
Jonathan Leeman:
At this rate.
Mark Dever:
Okay, today here on Pastor’s Talk, it’s discipling the local elders. Why, the senior pastor, what does he do? Does he do anything? Is it preaching? Is it praying? Or is it more than that? Stay tuned for Jonathan Leeman. Over to you, Jonathan.
Jonathan Leeman:
And we’re back. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, I think we’re going to get a whole episode out of this. You keep that on, it’ll be easy. You are intentional about discipling…
Mark Dever:
I’m pushing right back on you, brother. You pastored First Baptist Church in Grand Cayman.
Jonathan Leeman:
I mean… A few months. Four months, five months.
Mark Dever:
Four, five months, and you had four or five other elders?
Jonathan Leeman:
Five.
Different Ways to Disciple Your Elders
Mark Dever:
Other than your meeting with them at your elders’ meetings, what did you do to disciple them? You probably taught God’s Word, they were present for that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Obviously. Lunches, right? And meaningful conversations and lunches.
Mark Dever:
Lunches, does that mean you deliberately set out to say, I’m going to see Sean every Tuesday? Going to see Bill every Wednesday? Or you mean sometimes you had lunch with one of them and some of your conversation would be spiritual?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, with those guys in particular at that moment, because I knew I had a limited time there, I was a little bit more regular and deliberate in it. Yes, absolutely. I tried to find times to have a lunch or dinner with, or breakfast with each of these guys.
Mark Dever:
How did John Joseph disciple you at Chevrolet Baptist when you were serving as an elder there? I know you’re on sabbatical right now.
Elders Should Read Books
Jonathan Leeman:
I think one of the main ways he does it, well, he does several things. Number one, he has us read books.
He has the elders read books right now. The elders are reading The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson.
Mark Dever:
Okay. Our elders are reading Jay Budashevsky’s The Meaning of Sex.
Pastors Should Meet One On One with Their Elders
Jonathan Leeman:
He is also, again, very intentional on conversations and scheduled times together to ask each guy how he’s doing spiritually and how he’s progressing
Mark Dever:
You mean one on one.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, progressing in the faith.
Mark Dever:
So he discipled you better than I discipled you when I was your pastor and you were one of the elders at CHBC.
Jonathan Leeman:
We had lunch, not usually at your initiative. Is that what you mean?
Mark Dever:
Well, I don’t know. It just sounds like he, it sounds like John is being very conscientious and deliberate more so than I am with the elders here at CHBC.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think both of you did a good job of discipling me and others. I think you have slightly different ways of doing it. John, because he’s got four or five elders, is able to be a little bit more proactive and deliberate in scheduling time with his guys than I think you can with your 27, 30 elders.
My view from the cheap seats with you, brother, is that when you got 30 elders or 25 or whatever you have, if you devote as many lunches to elders as say John does, you’re not spending time with anybody else in the church.
Mark Dever:
No.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re going to take up on it. You just can’t. You have to go about it in different ways. Is that a fair assessment?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I don’t know. I want to exculpate myself like that, but I think what you’re saying is accurate. I know that today and yesterday, I had lunch with an intern. I had lunch with an intern today.
I had lunch with a different intern yesterday. So getting to know these brothers and their…
Jonathan Leeman:
Future elders.
Mark Dever:
Four or five months that they’re with us. Well, one has served as an elder for many years in the Middle East and one has served as an elder in the Midwest. Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you think it’s part of a senior pastor or lead pastor or whatever you want to call him’s responsibility, just staff pastor to be discipling his elders? Is that one of his responsibilities, to help them grow and mature in the faith in a way that’s distinct to being a pastor, not just as a Christian, but in a way that’s, I want you to pastor better. So therefore I’m going to do this.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I think so. But with the awareness of that, I want to allow a large space for different ways of doing it.
Jonathan Leeman:
It’s a generally good ambition to have.
Mark Dever:
Oh yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Constraints on life being what they are.
Mark Dever:
No, and I’ll go with you in the way you asked the question. I think it’s a responsibility, but I think the way that responsibility, like you were mentioning a moment ago with John and me, gets fulfilled in different ways depending on the size of the eldership, which you mentioned, but I would also say the size of the congregation, what that person is like.
How does their personality work? How are they gifted? Some guys are really exceptionally good in the pulpit and they’re okay one-on-one.
I mean, I can think of some pastors like that. And I’m not sure one-on-one lunch with that brother or that brother would be that hugely helpful, whereas…
Jonathan Leeman:
Giving them an opportunity to teach might be.
Mark Dever:
Yes, or listening to their teaching or letting them spend their time telling you, giving you a good thing to read or, yeah, just… I can imagine the Lord using different brothers in ways that aren’t just like each other.
Can Elders Grow?
Jonathan Leeman:
Would you say you’ve seen guys grow in their times as elders? Like, he came on at year one, he was…
Mark Dever:
Certainly. I think a lot of that has to do with what goes on in the process of the actual eldering, which would include conversations in the meeting as guys watch each other speak and respond to things in the elders’ meeting, and also the elder work they do outside of the elders’ meetings.
Pastoral situations that they’re brought into, that they meet with a small group or this couple that’s in trouble or this guy who’s struggling with something, and they are giving biblical counsel in those situations. And as they do that…I think I’ve definitely seen brothers grow in their ability to shepherd and pastor.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, in the same way that being a dad helps me get better at being a dad.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan Leeman:
You’re one of dadness. I wasn’t awesome, and I’m still maybe not, but slightly better than I was then. So the main growth comes from just doing the work.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
But I would say it also comes from reflecting on the work that you’re doing.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s good
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s service reviews, thinking through what went well, what didn’t go well, and so forth.
Pastors Should Encourage and Correct Their Elders
Mark Dever:
I have, you know, over the last 25 years, maybe 20 times or less. Taken a walk with a brother to review how he did at an elders meeting, so with the brother elder and trying to help him think about maybe if he’s chairing or some comments that he made in the meeting or how he said something or position that he has, maybe more than that, maybe 30 or 40 times.
So there have been particular times when I felt it was my unique responsibility as the senior pastor to step in and try to encourage a brother to change in a particular way.
Jonathan Leeman:
Those longer walks tend to be more corrective, whereas the encouraging things I’m assuming are just quick mentions walking out the door, hey, great job on this tonight.
Mark Dever:
Yes, certainly that, or a little bit more, maybe a note or email, or maybe just lunch with somebody and just thanking them for things.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, right.
Mark Dever:
See, I would say we’re most of the way through the topic now and we’re like seven minutes into this thing.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I want to think more about the how. I asked a number of guys about the how. I sent out an email to a number of pastor friends and I got a lot of material here that they offer.
Mark Dever:
What’s it like having so many pastor friends?
Jonathan Leeman:
You tell me.
Mark Dever:
Are they a good group of people to be friends with?
Jonathan Leeman:
They’re awesome. Oh, they’re wonderful.
Mark Dever:
What makes them good friends?
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, among other things, the guys I’m thinking of, they tend to be very gracious with me and patient with me. And I think I need a lot of that, honestly.
And the pastors that I’m around tend to give you the benefit of the doubt, tend to be kind, gentle, and encouraging. I mean, who wouldn’t want to spend time with that?
Mark Dever:
I feel like you’re publicly correcting me.
Jonathan Leeman:
Why would you say that?
Mark Dever:
I don’t know.
Jonathan Leeman:
Hey, let’s get back to the list.
Mark Dever:
Okay
Jonathan Leeman:
Brian said…
Mark Dever:
Brian from Nebraska, yes. Brian, line one.
Jonathan Leeman:
Said I take them on pastoral visits with me.
Mark Dever:
Right.
Jonathan Leeman:
Do you ever do that?
Mark Dever:
Yes.
Jonathan Leeman:
Because that’s going to train a guy doing the work.
Mark Dever:
Not often, but yes.
Jonathan Leeman:
He brings in outside speakers to talk to only the elders about pastoring?
Mark Dever:
We have done that some, not much, but we’ve done that some.
Jonathan Leeman:
Certainly he prays for specific areas of growth in each of them. I trust you do that.
Mark Dever:
Yup.
Jonathan Leeman:
He helps them get to conferences that might equip them.
Mark Dever:
Some of that.
Jonathan Leeman:
I think I can think of like a number of your elders going to T4G conferences or other…
Mark Dever:
CCF, yeah. Stuff like.
Jonathan Leeman:
Dave says, I encourage them when I see them doing godly work and exhorting them to continue to be faithful in their shepherding, the sort of thing. He also says, I try to do ministry with them together in membership interviews, trips where I’m speaking, lunches with other pastors, and sending them helpful articles, sermons, podcasts.
Mark Dever:
Yeah. I do the sending information thing. I did the membership interviews with other pastors a lot in my first, I don’t know, 15 years here. In the second 15, I’ve not done many membership interviews except for… Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah, well I learned…
Mark Dever:
So my schedule changes.
Jonathan Leeman:
I learned how to do membership interviews sitting in with you and watching you.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
I mean, there’s something about it. Another pastor, let’s just call him Bobby J.
Mark Dever:
Oh, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
No, no, no, let’s call him B. Jameson.
Mark Dever:
Let’s call him RBJ the third.
Jonathan Leeman:
Or that.
Mark Dever:
10-Minute Theology Time Window in Elder Meetings
Okay, RBJ3.
Jonathan Leeman:
He says, a 10-minute theology time window in each elder’s meeting.
Mark Dever:
Yeah
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s new. That wasn’t going on when I was there. What is that?
Mark Dever:
No, you. We didn’t need it then because we had you. Losing you.
Jonathan Leeman:
What is the 10-minute theology time window?
Mark Dever:
We are trying to be deliberate as an eldership to educate ourselves in theological topics, and we have done a number of things. We have gone through our church’s statement of faith, then had one of the elders lead us in conversation about it.
We’ve gone through Scott Swain’s book on the Trinity. We’re now doing Jay Budashevsky’s book On the Meaning of Sex. So we’ll all agree to look at one chapter and then one of the brothers will be assigned 10 minutes in which he’s to give a brief summary and then open up for conversation.
And I would say, I mean, Alberto is sitting here. He’s one of our elders. I would say it’s been various. More times have been good than not. Yeah. Any other? As a lay elder, how have you found those kinds of things? Have they been useful for you?
Elders Should Pastor Eachother
Alberto Juarez:
Thank you for that not so smooth heads up, Mark. So if I were to narrow it down to one biblical principle, it has to be iron sharpens iron. We begin to get a sense on how elders think about different matters as we let God’s word sharpen all of us in the end.
Elders are also sheep, disciples of Christ. We never stop being that. We also need to grow, learn, relearn, change our perspectives and thinking. Elders should pastor each other and this is a wonderful tool that helps in the theological aspect of that pastoring.
Of course, we should also focus on accountability and other areas, but as we challenge each other in what we think we know about any given matter, we are discipling each other and that is one of God’s means and blessings for us to get at this time.
Of course, aside from the faithful preaching of God’s word on a Sunday. Oh, and just thinking super fast also, we go through so many different books in a year, this actually helps our bibliography and it gives all the elders a list of helpful books as resources that they can recommend to people when they are asked about different matters.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, it helps the elders know good books that they can read, good resources to go to. It’s slow. I mean, back when you were on the Eldership at CHBC, Jonathan, we went through, we spent two years going through Mission of God by Chris Wright.
Not because I thought it was so good, but because I thought it was so… Problematic. There’s good stuff in it, but there’s also problematic stuff in it. We’ve gone through Jonathan Leeman:’s Don’t Fire Church Members.
Jonathan Leeman:
Something I appreciate about Bobby’s…
Mark Dever:
And we did that one because I thought it was good.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thank you. Something I appreciate about Bobby’s… He says…
Mark Dever:
Another one that would be good to do would be your book, The Rule of Love. That would be a great one to look at.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I love helping people think through that topic because it’s so misunderstood today.
Mark Dever:
So if you look at Carl Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self…
Jonathan Leeman:
So good.
Mark Dever:
I think Rule of Love, and then a very practical application of that in my book, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, those would be all good elder conversations.
Jonathan Leeman:
That’s exactly right. What I appreciate about Bobby… His comment, he says you have different lay elders, be it Gardner, Billings, lead out the discussions. So this is not just you, senior pastor, with theology degree teaching, you’re getting…
Mark Dever:
I don’t say much. I mean, they’re carrying the water on this.
Jonathan Leeman:
Which is one way to help disciple them and get them to teach each other those things. Nathan says one thing that they do is as they’re going through the membership directory and praying and discussing different members of the church and what’s going on…
He understands himself to be modeling and teaching the other pastors or lay pastors how to think through these situations. Right? I think that’s a big part of it.
Mark Dever:
And I’m sure he’s also learning from them as they respond to some of them.
Jonathan Leeman:
Deepak, we’ll just leave his last name off.
Mark Dever:
Of New Jersey, we’ll say.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yes. Says, what I’ve seen in Mark.
Mark Dever:
Okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
Talks about walks around the blocks.
Mark Dever:
Whoever that would be.
Jonathan Leeman:
A couple of things he mentions that are unique is senior staff time and how you use that.
Mark Dever:
This was Michael Lawrence’s idea. Staff time had been for a long time mainly receiving reports and scheduling. And Michael suggested it would be good if I would put some more time into the guys who are going to be here longer, the senior staff.
So we’ve been doing that for 15 years now, probably, maybe once a month, instead of a staff meeting with all the pastoral staff, just the senior staff, that is the staff who are pastoral and elders. We will meet for a longer period of time, all Tuesday morning, including lunch.
And it gives us time to… We’ll often physically go away from here where the church is, and it’ll give us a longer time to be able to talk about how we’re doing personally or to pursue a theological issue or some other situation that somebody’s wanting counsel on.
And sometimes we go off and we’ll read together, and then we’ll all get back and talk together and talk about something we’ve just read. So yeah, it’s a very useful time.
Jonathan Leeman:
Deepak also mentions your application grid lunch. Do you typically take pastors or elders to that?
Mark Dever:
If they want to, generally they don’t want to because it’s in the middle of Saturday.
Jonathan Leeman:
What is that just for those who don’t know?
Mark Dever:
Sure, I will get folks, usually, they’re preachers or potential preachers to read through the text of Scripture, come up with how they would preach it, and then go over the passage with me, answering questions and coming up with applications that they see in the passage.
Jonathan Leeman:
Sam refers to a once-in-a-week email he sends to his elders. He calls it his FYE, four-year edification email, pointing them to articles or YouTube theologically rich songs or any number of things that he finds helpful and encouraging.
He helps to encourage them in that. Josh refers to Simeon Trust workshops that he has. He also tells people to listen to pastors talk. Can you believe that?
Mark Dever:
Is that that podcast that Taylor opened up today?
Jonathan Leeman:
He sure did today. He did a great…
Mark Dever:
Great radio voice.
Jonathan Leeman:
Job yeah, that’s right.
Mark Dever:
You know, they can train you in that stuff.
How Does the Elder Board Change as a Church Grows?
Jonathan Leeman:
I might need to take that training. How has it changed over the years as your elder board has grown, the kind of work you can do in these men’s lives?
Mark Dever:
I’ve probably assumed more. I probably assumed because of the health of the church that there is more thought thoroughness on the part of the elders than I did at the beginning, certainly.
And therefore, I may be less attentive to them as individuals, except ones I happen to know. So on our eldership, just one little bit of inside baseball here, I never nominate a guy.
So the way our church works… Our elders bring a name to the congregation of a brother we want to see recognized as an elder that we think would serve well as an elder. The congregation has two months to think about, pray about, ask questions to the person or to us, and then we vote.
How does that name get decided by the elders to be brought to the congregation? Ah, well, that’s a conversation. It’s an ongoing conversation on the eldership. A
nd there, the way that begins is one of the elders sitting around in the elders meeting has to bring up a name. And the chair says, is there anybody who wants to bring up a name for us to discuss? And I never, or next to never, if I do, it’s like part of a job with a senior pastor assistant kind of thing like we did with John Joseph and Ben Lacey.
But if it’s not sort of built into somebody coming here from another church and getting on staff, just in our normal eldership, I never bring up any names, I never nominate anybody. And the reason I don’t do that is because I don’t want the eldership just to turn into a collection of Mark’s friends.
So it’s gonna have to be someone else who sees the ministry going on and then… I won’t even second them and somebody else will need to second it. And then I will talk when people ask me, but I’m extra careful about not influencing who is in the eldership.
Jonathan Leeman:
Okay, now tie this back to…
Mark Dever:
Well, why that matters is because it means there are some guys on the eldership who are very close friends of mine that I spend a lot of time with and I know well, and I’m active in discipling them. There are other guys who the only time I ever talked to them is in elders meetings.
And I would say that’s the majority of our elders. And I love them, I pray for them, but I reactively will disciple them in individual ways, but I don’t proactively disciple them in individual ways. I think that’s accurate.
Jonathan Leeman:
Because you don’t understand it’s your responsibility as a lead pastor, senior pastor, to be discipling all the elders.
Mark Dever:
I don’t think I’m supposed to be spending a lot of my time pouring into 30 individual cups. Right. Yeah. Now, there are some people, I’ve heard them talk about this in larger churches, who will say, my job is to disciple these men, and that these men in turn will disciple all the other people.
But I spend a lot of my time discipling other people who then later become elders. So I kind of do it at every level, but not comprehensively at any level.
I don’t disciple all the members of our church individually. I do in my teaching publicly, but I don’t individually, nor do I all the deacons, nor all the elders, nor all the small group leaders, nor the staff.
The Structure of Elder Meetings
Jonathan Leeman:
The guy who says it’s my job to disciple them, the elders, so they disciple them, the church. That’s a fine way to go. That’s not the only way to go.
One thing you haven’t mentioned is how the very structures of elder meetings rotating between member-centric and issue-specific is a way of facilitating growth. True?
Mark Dever:
Yes, it is, and what we do in the elders’ meetings, the time we give to prayer, for instance.
Jonathan Leeman:
Can you unpack both of those?
How Frequent Should Elders Meet?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. So the way we structured our elders’ meetings… And I can’t remember how this innovation started, maybe in Matt Schmucker. We have an elders meeting every month, but then eight months of the year, so the non-summer months and not December, we’ll have a second elders meeting.
So that is, there’s only one elders meeting in June, July, August, and December. But the other eight months of the year, we have two elders meetings in the month. They’re almost always on Thursday nights, 7 p.m.
The one that always happens every month is what Jonathan just referred to as the member-centered elders meeting. That’s where we will spend the bulk of our time going over how individuals are doing and praying through… I don’t know, 30, 40, 50, 60 individuals in the church.
The other eight months, when we have a second elders meeting in the month, we will have an issue or a couple of issues that we will give extra time to. So this last Thursday night, we had a truly excellent, I thought, issues meeting on missions and trying to think through both our missionaries and what we’re doing and larger issues out there in the missions world today that we need to be kind of up to speed on.
And I would say that I got as excited a feedback from that among the lay elders as I’ve ever heard on an issues meeting. It was really well done. Caleb Harrell served us, particularly when Riley Barnes did such a good job as our chair in this.
So anyway, that was a… And Andy Johnson, if you’re listening, we could have used you there, brother. But that was a great time. We’ve done other issues.
We will do theological issues. We’ll do practical pastoral issues, sort of application in the Christian life issues. How are we going to approach this issue in parenting? I mean, lots of stuff that we’ve addressed in those kind of meetings with elders.
Jonathan Leeman:
So at the beginning of the episode, you said, do we really have so much time to talk about this? And what I think is worth highlighting is you have structured your ministry and your elder board to be a just constant source of growth for everybody.
And I think that’s crucial for those who would be shepherds and pastors. I mean, I just think about my own preaching. When I’m kind of intellectually stagnant and spiritually stagnant, it shows up in my preaching.
Whereas when I’m reading books and certainly pursuing a deeper knowledge of the Lord. That shows up also in my preaching.
And in the same way, I think you want elders who, one of their ambitions, spiritual ambitions is to remain learners and continue to growing these different ways. And you’re just going to have a more active, vibrant, robust, generous elder band of men.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, I think it’s right. When that’s part of your project.
How to Creat Cultural Expectations in a Group
Jonathan Leeman:
We were sitting in a group of pastors just the other day, Mark, and you went around and you asked everybody, so what are you preaching right now?
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
Or I think you said what book of the Bible are you preaching on?
Mark Dever:
Well, I did it in sections. I said Epistles, General Epistles, Paul’s Epistles, Acts, Gospels, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
And it seemed like among a group of pastors, sort of an innocent ice-breaking question in a way. But I leaned over to Isaac next to me and I said, okay, right now, Mark is discipling these guys.
He’s creating a certain set of cultural expectations in this group that A, you’re preaching the Bible, and not a topic, and B, you’re going through different and being aware of different genres of scripture. So even in that innocent sort of question, I felt like I could see you working for change.
Mark Dever:
Or just supporting what I assume they’re doing.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, I’m sure that’s true as well. Nonetheless, you spend a lifetime doing that sort of thing. It’s gonna create a certain kind of culture of growth and godliness around you.
Mark Dever:
Yeah, that’s the intention.
Jonathan Leeman:
What counsel would you give us? Wait, the one other thing, the other issue, there’s time spent in
prayer.
Mark Dever:
Oh, yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
We said two issues.
Spending Time in Elder Meetings in Prayer
Mark Dever:
Yeah, the second issue was just that time spent in prayer. We, as an eldership, it’s very easy to turn it into just a business meeting. And by saying just a business, I want to be careful.
Business is not just a thing. Business is important. It’s how things get done. It’s decision-making, it’s understanding situations and applying wisdom to them, and helping to bring structure and order.
But it is also important that we spend time in obvious dependence on God, asking the Lord to act by His Spirit in these people for whom we’re giving an account. And so I have decided early on in establishing the eldership here, because there was no plural eldership when I came, that we would try to normally spend a significant portion of our time interceding for members of the church. And we have just continued to do that.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, okay, I can give another testimony of how you…
Mark Dever:
And so the decision to do that is a kind of discipling. What we pray about in those prayers is another kind of discipling.
Jonathan Leeman:
Yeah.
Mark Dever:
The priority of that over other spending time on other things in the meeting is a kind of discipling.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, again, yeah. So I can testify to how I’ve learned from you, been discipled by you in the way you prayed in those elder meetings. So very often, as I recall, you’ll pray very concisely and often just Bible.
Something almost basic as to be in the first hearing of it, like, really? Is that all you’re going to… So you’ll pray something like, Lord, we pray for Stan that he would live with his wife in an understanding way.
And that’s all you would say. Amen. And it’s like, is that it? What’s happening there? Well, you are showing me that you’re making a priority of exactly what the Bible says in Stan’s life.
That’s what you are pushing and hoping for and praying for in Stan’s life. And you’re not filling it with all of your words, just the Bible. And that in turn has impacted how I pray and the kind of priority I’m going to give to biblical things in Stan’s life or whomever, right?
Mark Dever:
And to be clear, if Sarah has an important decision to make with her kids, I’ll certainly pray about that too. I’m not trying to only pray that, but yeah.
Advice for Small Church Pastors
Jonathan Leeman:
Should have said that. What counsel would you give to a small church pastor who wants to start doing this?
Mark Dever:
Start doing what? Discipling his fellow elders?
Jonathan Leeman:
His fellow elders.
Mark Dever:
Well, it’s that time of the program when we come to the small church pastor advice. What advice would you have for the small church pastor?
Jonathan Leeman:
You know, I’m going on to these different podcasts with, you know, like talking about rediscover church or whatever.
Mark Dever:
Yeah.
Jonathan Leeman:
And more than once, the hostess said to me, Hey, Jonathan, I’m going to randomly hit different buttons just so you feel at home.
Mark Dever:
Oh, that’s so cool.
Jonathan Leeman:
During this conversation.
Mark Dever:
The funny thing is they think I’m the one hitting those buttons. You have really got that idea out there. You are very clever. Very clever. What was the question? The small church pastor advice?
Jonathan Leeman:
He wants to start doing this. He wants to be more deliberate in this. And maybe he’s pastoring some older men who are a little resistant.
Mark Dever:
Well, it’s hard to be resistant to being loved. I mean, just go take the guy out for lunch or go see him.
Jonathan Leeman:
I don’t have time to read this stuff, Mark.
Mark Dever:
That’s okay.
Jonathan Leeman:
Knowing about the simplicity of God, that’s your job.
Mark Dever:
Okay, then just go sit on the front porch and talk to him. You know, open your Bible with him, read a Psalm, pray. Doesn’t have to read…
Jonathan Leeman:
You don’t have to read Scott Swain On the Trinity.
Mark Dever:
No, or a Baptist.
Jonathan Leeman:
Are Baptists better on the Trinity?
Mark Dever:
No, I’m just saying there are all kinds of people you can read that would be edifying for elders.
Jonathan Leeman:
Right. So you’re saying take whatever territory you can get.
Mark Dever:
That’s right. Whatever, if the brother’s serving as an elder, there’s probably something that you can work with spiritually.
How to Show Elders They Can Make a Difference
Jonathan Leeman:
What counsel would you give for a lay elder who doesn’t feel like he has the theological chops to really make a difference?
Mark Dever:
Yeah. You know, you can ask whether or not that brother should be serving and you can review your congregation’s own bylaws about if you have limitations.
It’s just a much less personally damaging way to handle things if you’ll have a term limit after which a brother has to be reaffirmed, renominated, reaffirmed, and then we have a necessary year off where after that, after a year has passed, after he’s been off for a year, then he would have to be renominated and reaffirmed by the congregation. And those are just nice save face outs for trying to freshen up the board in a helpful way.
Jonathan Leeman:
Well, Jesus commands us to make disciples and that means starting the process, but it also means encouraging one another on words toward maturity as Paul talks about in Ephesians 4. And brother, I feel like you’ve set a wonderful example of helping continuing to grow and make disciple even of your elders. And I would commend other brothers to think about how they’re doing that in each of their own locations. Any final words on this topic?
Mark Dever:
My little book, Discipling, could be helpful. It’s not written with this in particularly in mind. It’s written generally in discipling, but a pastor can certainly apply it to his own elders.
Jonathan Leeman:
Should we close this with some word from Taylor?
Mark Dever:
Yeah our new host…Taylor
Taylor Hartley:
A great set of wisdom today coming from Dr. Lehman and Mark Dever.
Jonathan Leeman:
I’m a doctor, you’re not.
Taylor Hartley:
You are Dr. Dever.
Mark Dever:
Whatever.
Taylor Hartley:
But we do hope this was helpful to you and that you have an excellent rest of your day as you go out and disciple your fellow elders.
Mark Dever:
You didn’t hit the right one, Jonathan.
Jonathan Leeman:
The wrong one.
Jonathan Leeman:
Thanks, Taylor.
Mark Dever:
Oh you can cut that out, Alberto.
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