Sunday, November 20, 2011

Giving Honour Where It is Due

This morning our congregation will experience the resignations of three of our seven Elders.  David Bailey has been serving as an Elder among us for about 15 years.  Bud Ashby has been serving among us for over 10 years, and David Lidbury, after having served as an Elder in other places, has been serving as an Elder among us for about 5 years.  I will miss the contribution each has made to our church and, more specifically, our leadership team.

The role of "Elder" in a church is, I think, too often taken for granted. These men do not stand up each Sunday and list for the church the things they have done for them in the previous seven days.  And, in a culture that tends to enjoy challenging leadership and negatively criticizing it, there is not enough admiration, respect, and dignity held in the minds of sheep toward their shepherds, as is warranted.  This is even more so the case when you have Elders like Bud, David, and David who serve with such distinction.  We as a church have been richly blessed by God with the Elders He has appointed among us.  Their collective wisdom, vision, commitment to the Kingdom, godly character, devotion to Scripture, cooperative spirit, willingness to work hard, willingness to make sacrifices, willingness to put their own interests aside for the greater good, desire to see the lost come to Christ, care for people, prayerful attitudes, and many other virtues make them worthy of the church's appreciation and admiration. We have been served well. Bud, David, and David, thank you.

If you can hear me the way that I mean this, the resignations of these three come at a good time, a healthy time, with a positive outcome for our church likely to be the result. I think each of these men would say that their resignations come at a time when the church is able to handle Elder resignations. There is currently a high level of alignment within our leadership, a solid direction in which we are heading, a positive feeling that God has been blessing us, and a sense that healthy transitions within our leadership team can include the passing on of responsibilities from some current leaders to both incumbent leaders and to some new leaders who will make their own valuable contributions to leadership within our church. Transitions in leadership can be healthy, and in this case the healthy benefits extend both to the future of the life of our church and to the personal futures of those who are resigning. No doubt, the levels of service we enjoy in the cases of these three will be reduced in some ways, but largely it will simply be altered, so that their "official" responsibilities will now change, without any reduction in their devotion to the ministry of our church, to their support of its ministry, to the church's vision, and to the leaders they will in one sense now be following. In fact, because true Shepherds shepherd, whether they are officially serving in the role of Elder within a church, or not, we will continue to see Bud, David, and David "Eldering" within our body.

So, despite a certain sadness I feel in seeing such wonderful Shepherds move aside, I look forward to the ways in which God will use this occasion to bless our church. Leadership change can bring about opportunities and renewal; leadership change can propel forward a church's ministry in ways not previously experienced. Think of what the church would have been like if Paul had not become an apostle, supplementing the ministry of those who had been with Jesus when He ministered on earth! Among us, whom will God raise up to do wonderful things as new Shepherds, who would not have taken on a new role had our experienced Elders never transitioned from their roles? In what new ways will our church's ministry be enhanced because the dynamic among our leaders has been altered, guided by God's Spirit just as the Spirit was guiding us when those resigning this morning served as designated Elders?

This all looks good to me. Bud, David, and David have served well and deserve to make a transition. They have helped to put us in a position where God can build on what they have done to create a blessed future for our church. I greatly look forward to the days ahead!