29 March, 2024

Size Matters: The Changing Role of Elder

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by | 27 January, 2008 | 0 comments

By Doug Priest

Our family became members of Oaklandon Christian Church a dozen years ago when we returned to the States after our years as missionaries in Singapore. In Singapore we were part of a church with about 80-90 in weekly attendance. With the move, we became part of a church with an average weekly attendance of 350. And during the 1990s the church”s growth surged from 200 to 700.

The church in Oaklandon, a township on the outskirts of Indianapolis, Indiana, was founded 140 years ago. In the last couple of decades Oaklandon has lost most of its rural flavor and become the suburban area it is today. New housing developments surround the church on all sides. Oaklandon did not flee the city for the suburbs. Rather, the city has come to Oaklandon.

A couple of years after we began worshiping at Oaklandon, I was nominated as an elder and have continued in that role, fulfilling the responsibility of chair for the last two years. The church purchased a large piece of property a couple of miles from our current location and is constructing a building. It is projected our congregation, whose new name will be Outlook Christian Church, will be averaging 1,000 within two years.

A SIMPLE THESIS

At the height of our growth, our preacher, Dan Asche, brought a book for the elders to read and discuss at our monthly prayer and study meetings. The book was One Size Doesn”t Fit All1 by Gary McIntosh, seminary professor and president of The McIntosh Church Growth Network. At each meeting we discussed a chapter of the book, which spoke to our current growth situation with remarkable clarity.

McIntosh”s thesis is quite simple””size matters. What works in a small church does not necessarily work in a large church. The converse is also true””what works in a large church may not work in a small church.

He begins with statistics about the some 320,000 churches2 in America, noting “most churches are fairly small with 50 percent of all churches under 100, and 80 percent under 200 in attendance on an average Sunday morning.” He goes on to say, “The remaining 20 percent of all churches are evenly divided between medium and large churches. According to the best estimates, 10 percent of churches are between 200 and 400 in size, with the remaining 10 percent more than 400.” Finally, he writes that less than 1 percent of all churches fall into the category of megachurch, those having 2,000 or more worshipers.3

Each chapter highlights a specific church function or factor, and then explains how that factor differs according to the size of the church. The size categories used are the small church (attendance of 15″“200), medium church (201″“400), and the large church (401-plus).

One obvious function involves staffing. In a small church, the staff is made up of a bivocational pastor or a single pastor. In a medium-sized church the staff consists of the pastor and a small staff. The large church has multiple staff members.

Obviously, the totality of pastoral needs differ between a small and a large church. In a large church, staff specialization is required.

When considering the role of elder, two factors from his chart deserve attention. McIntosh states that leadership in a small church resides in key families; in a medium church it resides in committees; and in a large church it lies with select leaders.

Second, decisions in a small church are made by the congregation and driven by history; in a medium church decisions are made by committees and driven by changing needs; and in a large church they are made by staff and driven by vision.

In other words, as the size of a congregation changes, the role of the staff changes, and so does the role of the elders.

DIFFERENT ROLES

In many states, including Indiana, corporations are required to have a board of directors. So at Oaklandon Christian Church, along with the important biblical role of spiritual oversight, the elders also fulfill the role of corporate leadership by functioning as the board of directors. In addition to the well-understood tasks of teaching, admonishing, and shepherding the flock, the elders also have a fiduciary responsibility for the not-for-profit corporation (i.e., the church).

All of these responsibilities are elder responsibilities regardless of the size of the church. But how these responsibilities are carried out will change as the size of the church changes.

When Oaklandon was a small and medium-sized church, the elders were involved in many day-to-day decisions of the church. If the church van needed a new transmission, the elders would consider the need and determine whether there were sufficient funds to cover the purchase. An elder might even accompany the minister to the auto shop to give him a ride back to the church. When it was time to hire a new church secretary, the elders usually were part of the approval process. And if the minister wanted to have an evangelistic campaign, the elders signed off on the idea. Elders were heavily involved in decision-making and problem-solving.

As our church grew in size, so too did the ministerial staff. The addition of staff members, coupled with the amount of ministry being undertaken in the community, meant the elders could no longer stay on top of all the details. To continue to function as they had in the smaller church, the elders would have had to meet many nights a week. So a different role for the elders in leading and decision-making was needed.

AN ONGOING PROCESS

While still functioning as elders and continuing our oversight of the congregation, we began to delegate some of our prior responsibilities to the staff and to various committee heads. We began to utilize a governance or policy-making model.4 Using business terminology, that model sees the primary role of a board of directors (elders) as being the setting of policy and fulfilling legal requirements (remaining doctrinally sound), the hiring and firing of the CEO (senior or lead minister), and maintaining the purpose and ongoing vision (mission) of the corporation (church).

Our church did not make these changes overnight. It has been an ongoing process and not without some spirited discussion. Come budget time, the elders used to scrutinize the document line by line for the coming year seeking to understand why some programs were slated to receive more or less than the previous year. Now we approve the bottom line of the annual budget and exhort the staff to “make it work and stay within budget.”

In our monthly business meeting we receive a bare-bones financial report that lets us know how income and expenses are tracking with the budget. If offerings are less than expected, staff determines what programs to curtail and which purchases to delay. Our elders meetings are now primarily informational as we receive reports on the activities and ministries of the church.

Not all has been smooth sailing! One elder had a hard time with the changing role and resigned from the eldership. At times staff members have had to be reminded they no longer need to seek permission from the elders to initiate a new program or make necessary repairs to the building.

As the church grows, we understand that elder roles will continue to evolve. Leading a church of 2,000 will be different than leading a church of 700. But some things will not change. The elders must be as heavily invested in the spiritual growth of our church as ever, and we will remain firmly committed to Oaklandon”s mission statement of loving people into a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ.

________

1Gary McIntosh, One Size Doesn”t Fit All (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1999).

2Scott Thumma and Dave Travis, Beyond Megachurch Myths (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007), 5.

3Thumma and Davis, Beyond Megachurch Myths, 17, 18. In 2005 there were approximately 1,250 megachurches, which is 0.4 percent of all churches in the United States.

4See “A Guide to Effective Leadership: Policies” by Gary York and Randy Richards, CHRISTIAN STANDARD, 22 May 2005, pp. 6, 7. See also Boards that Make a Difference, by John Carver (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997).


 

 

Doug Priest is executive director of Christian Missionary Fellowship.

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