The Biblical Role of Elders for Today's Church: New Testament leadership principles for equipping elders

by Larry Kreider, Ron Myer, Steve Prokopchak

Discover how every member of the body of Christ is affected and empowered for ministry when elders give healthy oversight to the church. This biblical model communicates the family character of the church as teams of servant-leaders equip, protect and love the local church. Complete with evaluation questionnaires, sabbatical guidelines, sample church by-laws, keys to developing a vision statement, biblical steps to make godly decisions, maintaining a leader’s health, and much more. Team based leadership in the local church is essential for unity, vision, and building a healthy, life-giving church. This book serves this need like no other book available right now. I highly commend it! —Floyd McClung, Senior Pastor, South Africa

Genres: Leadership

292 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2003

Reviews

[Ty Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Each the writers and narrators of this work certainly gave considerable time and effort, but ultimately the work falls short of providing a clear teach and understanding of biblical eldership. The historical chapters concerning eldership were very helpful and cleanly communicated, but as the book progresses a disjointed chapter progression begins to be apparent.

I believe, and I may be mistaken, that each chapter was researched and possibly written by a different participating author. Each of them do show a willingness to study and present scripture with several wonderful ideas presented. However, my overall discomfort with the book is the lack of clear teaching. The phrase "apostolic elder" is mentioned several times with the understanding that the reader will simply understand. Further, there is little mentioning of the verses behind male and female eldership and a lack of clear teaching on the authors approach.

I typically would always suggest a book. The more information that one can intake is always strengthening. However, this work seems somewhat off due to the disjointed nature of the chapters and lack of key terms being utilized. Read carefully and considerably.

[Rock Rockwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best part of this book was the first couple of chapters on the history of plural-led Baptist churches. I am not a Baptist, but the rest of the book was typical/common material that I had read over and over in other books. However, the Baptist history was an encouragement to see how biblical polity was implemented originally, but how it moved away from its conception due to contextualizing to contemporary ideologies. Now with the Founders movement (ex. - Dever - Capital Baptist), Baptist are returning to their roots in England and America to a plurality of Elders to shepherd and lead the church. A fast read but a good one!