Biblical Eldership Church Leadership

Qualified Leadership

board elders and pastor elders. New Testament elders are both guard ians and teachers of sound doctrine. For this reason, God’s book, the Bible, is to be the prospective elder’s continual course of study. The Bible is God’s complete training manual for all spiritual leaders. Paul reminds Timothy that “from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3215; italics added). Paul further states that “all Scripture is inspired by God [God-breathed], and profitable for teaching, for reproof, cor rection, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be ad equate, equippedfor every good work (2 Tim. 3216, 17; italics added). Thus a man is unequipped for the shepherding task if he has not been schooled in God-breathed Holy Scripture. An elder who doesn’t know the Bible is like a shepherd without legs; he can’t lead or protect the flock. The probing comment of P. T. Forsyth (1848-1921), an influential British theologian of the early twenti eth century, bears repeating: “The real strength of the Church is not the amount of its work but the quality of its faith. One man who truly knows his Bible is worth more to the Church’s real strength than a crowd of workers who do not.”'3 How are prospective elders to be educated in God’s book? First, if raised in godly, Christian homes, they will have had years of instruc tion in doctrine and holy living from the most effective teachers in the world, their mothers and fathers (Deut. 627; 11219; Prov. 128; 421-5; Eph. 6:4; lThess. 2211; 1Cor. 14:35; 2Tim. 1:5; 3215). John Gresham Machen (1881-1937) was a renowned Presbyterian scholar and edu cator who brilliantly defended the orthodox doctrine of Christ and the trustworthiness of Scripture during the famous fundamentalist-mod emist controversy of the early twentieth century. His books on the virgin birth of Christ and the theological continuity between Paul and Jesus are still classics. On the significance of the Christian home in teaching the Bible, Machen wrote: The absence of doctrinal teaching and preaching is certainly one of the causes for the present lamentable ignorance in the church. But a still more influential cause is found in the failure of the most important of all Christian educational institutions. The most important Christian educational institution is not the pulpit or the school, important as these institutions are; but it is

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