With CR heading off this week to become the minister at Christ Church Salisbury, one of the places I’ll most feel his absence is in our elders meetings. One of the things I wish I could convey to the church is the beauty of deliberative decision-making. At his last elders meeting, CR read out excerpts from the minutes of the past 5 years. It was a lovely touch; we heard the joys of baptisms, and new members being admitted to the Lord’s Supper, mixed with a fair share of sadnesses, and the same old discussion items that we keep re-visiting. Those excerpts captured something very real about the work of pastoring and governing Christ’s church.
I know it’s hard to get the church excited about session meetings. They’re often invisible, though, in principle, they are public, and we do invite church members to attend from time to time to update us on things. We arrive at 7.30pm, normally fairly weary after a long day. We read something from Scripture, pray together, then tackle the agenda. I normally begin by saying: “this shouldn’t take us too long”, which two and a half-hour’s later I’m regretting! We’ll make suggestions, get Bibles out, apply verses, pick each other’s brains, read the IPC Book of Church Order, ask questions, and finally reach decisions. The principle is that we decide things collectively.
Why do it like that? Well, in the NT, elders and overseers are always appointed in groups (Acts 14:23; 15:2, 6, 22; 20:17; 21:17; Phil 1:1; 1 Tim 5:17). Behind this is the truth that “in abundance of counsellors” there is safety (Prov 11:14; 24:6). As a system, it’s slower and less “efficient”; having a pope, bishop, or senior minister to call the shots may well be more streamlined. But deliberative decision-making is much healthier. It’s actually how parliamentary systems work. The word “parliament” comes from the French word for speaking; you could pejoratively call it a “talk-shop”. But it’s actually as ideas are talked through and questioned that they are improved and get better.
The minister Terry Johnson talks about going to a session meeting convinced that the church should do “a”. Another elder is convinced they should do “c”. And he describes, as he listens to the case being made, how he feels himself shift away from “a”, and by the end of the discussion, the elders agree to do “b”, which was in neither elders’ heads! That’s how deliberative decision-making works.
I can think of a numerous steps I’ve taken as a minister that have been significantly improved by the input of the elders – letters I’ve written, courses of action I’ve set out on, that would be much weaker if it had just been me and my Bible.
Committees typically get a bad rap – they write minutes and waste hours! And not every session meeting is guaranteed to be healthy. It’s easy to turn up to elders meetings (like any meeting) with a bad attitude, disengaged, speaking about the meeting, rather than in the meeting. It’s possible for elders to be “yes-men”, who just rubber stamp whatever the minister says. Alternatively, an elder can just be a difficult man, who likes to argue, and criticise, but doesn’t want to be constructive. But when you have a group of men, who love God, love God’s people, and love the good deposit entrusted to them, elders meetings are a joy! Do not underestimate their significance for your own spiritual well-being. Happy is the church with that kind of oversight!