This seminar, subtitled “an interactive forum on elder rule,” will be led by Rob Iverson. There are approximately 250 part-time employees. The majority of the workforce are our seminary students, we pay them a bit, and we work them like dogs and call it “ministry.” And they don’t dare complain. =-)

We are more staff-run, than elder-run. We expect the staff to manage day-to-day operation. When the elders come together, they think long-term. That’s their general mode of operation at Grace Church.

* Rob Iverson is the chairman of the elder board.
* John Bates, elder since 1971.
* Rich Haricek, been at Grace Church since 1979
* Chris Hamilton at church since 1972

Q: If John MacArthur were going to retire tomorrow, what would be the process for finding a replacement look like?

A: Jokingly, Rob Iverson said he would simply take over, as the chair of the board. =-) Our bylaws indicate that 75% of the congregation has to vote for the subsequent pastor. So they’re looking at changing that by-law. We don’t really think about this much. The reality is John will be probably like his dad, who preached til 80+, couldn’t get up the steps to preach. Retirement has never crossed his mind. He’s 68 now, so he takes more time off than he did when younger; which is trend will probably continue. When he dies, we’ll have to deal with it. There are probably no more than a handful of people in the U.S. that we could consider. It’s complicated, we have a seminary, a church, etc. It would be nice if we had one guy to take over both.

Q: How do elders make a decision? Start at top? Start at bottom? What are expectations for elders?

A: We have both pastor-elders and lay-elders. We work very hard to bring men on staff who have established character equal to the job we’re going to give them. We do believe in hiring men and getting out of the way. But there’s accountability between the broader board of elders and the pastor-elders. That comes out of relationship, not just position. It’s all about trust, holding together our leadership team. Are lay-elders organized over ministries? No, but it happens to work that we’re usually paired up with staff guys in ministry. We had a staff retreat a few years ago, and we got a laid out history of the trust between elder board and staff. There’s been an increasing level of trust. A lot can get done when you have a lot of trust get done.

Q: Our church recently moved to an eldership model. What’s the relationship between lay-elders and teaching/vocational-elders?

A: We believe that the elders are equal, but how? In the sense that we all get one vote. All our skills & gifts are different. We use them wherever we find opportunity. But we clearly see John as our primary leader. No point in hiring him as senior pastor and not expecting/demanding vision & leadership from him. In what sense does he attempt to lead & guide? He spends little time in day-to-day operation of the church. He’s generally present one day a week on campus, for staff meetings. So we operate andmake decisions with John not here, and we keep in touch with him, but mostly expect him to provide long-term direction & vision. He scarcely dominates an elder meeting, most of the time says nothing. But in terms of ministry direction and changes, he weighs in with principles and strategy.

A plurality of elders doesn’t mean you don’t have someone in the eldership with a special role. Note that John has never made a motion in an elder meeting that might create tension. He influences in other ways.

Q: Does the elder board have a formal process for risk assessment, esp. in strategic decisions?

A: Generally, we have an annual staff retreat, sometimes elders as well. We talk about SWOT: “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats,” from which comes a strategic plan, and 4-5 key initiatives for the coming year. That becomes a grid by which you measure new decisions.

Q: How do you identify & develop potential new elders?

A: We’re consistently inconsistent. Chris describes that growing up in Grace Church, aspiring to be like one of the other men on the panel, who was an elder. He learned to love the church through that. The answer is, discipleship, discipleship, discipleship. What has built Grace Church is the process of discipleship. Ultimately that’s the role of an elder (cf. Acts 20). It answers how you interact with the pastoral staff, and you pour into their life with their now agenda. He meets with several guys right now who have an aspiration to being a lay elder at Grace Church years down the road. You can pour yourself into pastors, but what keeps the elders/church going is the next generation of (lay) eldership.

Three key principles from John’s book on leadership: availability, loyalty (to Scripture, to fellow elders/staff) and leadership (setting the standard from Scripture that others will follow, setting the vision that others will follow).

Also we operate on the process of unanimous agreement. Been there since day one. We live and die on this; we defer on decisions until we’re in full agreement.

Also a warning, don’t make an elder too quickly. Better not to do it, than suffer from poorly qualified men on leadership.

Q: What’s the dynamic between elder board & deacon board?

A: We don’t have a deacon board. We have no boards other than elder board. Deacons serve (GCC has 800). How do we involve them? They’re underneath various ministries, they’re not a “board.”

Q: Are all elders involved in some kind of ministry consisting of shepherding/teaching? Or are some involved in just oversight?

A: Generally, yes. There could be some older shepherds who are having trouble with finding time & energy to do it. You have to be shepherding/teaching or we’re going to wonder why you’re an elder. We’ve had that come up.

Q: How do you interpret “having children who believe?”

A: We have a high standard, which is that to be in leadership your children have to believe. If your child at any point in life abandons the faith in an obvious way, you should step off the elder board and minister to your kids. We’d rather walk away from higher principle in favor of lifting up the integrity of the office. If you know your kid is getting into trouble, you should raise your hand and take a year off from being an elder; and many times doesn’t come back.

If you have very small children, you wouldn’t be an elder. You could be on staff, young and ordained, but they wouldn’t be elders.

Q: What’s the church’s philosophy toward debt? How much cash on hand?

A: We have $4.3M of debt. In the last five years we’ve been growing our debt by fixing up bathrooms and other renovations (while interest is low, etc.). We’re not anti-debt. Neither are we “step out in faith.” We have healthy arguments on elder board. We capped out debt at $5M, because we felt our budget could handle it without hurting ministry.

Q: How do you resolve issues of trouble finding unanimity?

A: Usually issues come because things are “sprung” on the board. So it’s usually for lack of careful preparation. Most things aren’t critical, so we push it off for a week or a month. It’s usually clear, though, that we make a decision the next time. Those who are opposed, usually become the committee to resolve it. It’s not a free pass to say, I don’t like it; we make resolution happen.

Q: Are meetings public?

A: Yes. We don’t publish our minutes, but we’re not terribly good at publishing the decisions. We could do a better job. There’s a public part of the meeting, then private where non-elders are excused (e.g., discipline, issues we’re wrestling over) and then lay-elder only portion of meeting. We spend 5% on finance, of the remainder 50% on ministry updates and 50% of the time on discipline issues.

Q: On elder qualification, and “one wife,” if a person has been divorced prior to conversion what do we say?

A: We pass, usually because people won’t understand.

Q: What are things you’ve discussed at your level?

A: We sent out a pastor recently, we asked is it the right place to send, etc. Our former high school pastor just took a church in Indianapolis. One of the lay-elders traveled to meet with that church. It was an involved, collaborative process, part of shepherding our pastors. In the context of church discipline, restoring two people. John MacArthur gives reports on what’s on his agenda, ministry plans. Note that we’re a very mature church here, so a lot of the big battles were fought twenty years ago; the current eldership benefits from that now.

Trust issues are often dealt with among individual elders, which might previously have been dealt with by the entire board.

Q: What would you do for a situation where there is only one elder/pastor?

A: Your first priority is developing at least one other man. Find someone else to help be seen as a leader in the church. You’re vulnerable because you’ve got nobody but you. You have to work as quickly as possible to nurture someone into leadership.

Q: Thoughts on balancing between ministry and home, esp. lay elders?

A: It’s a huge problem here, there’s so much to do, you could lose your family in a heartbeat. We have to hold each other accountable. We’re usually paired up with a staff guy for that. You have to learn to say “no.” If you don’t make your family a priority, they won’t be. You don’t want your kid saying, “Why do you always have time for everyone else, but not for me?” We say ministry is your fifth priority after the Lord, your wife, your kids and your job. You do not have a ministry if those four aren’t functional.

Q: Qualifications for deaconnesses? Is a deaconness required to be married?

A: No.