Membership - Part 6

Organizational Structure

George Barna, Donald Cousins and other church guru of statistics report that the average church in America aligns with the following (or similar) organizational structure:
> Board Led
> Staff Run (or solo pastor)
> Congregation Served
> World Ignored


I believe a biblical organizational model for a church is:
> Board Protected
> Staff Led (paid/unpaid people who are commissioned by the church)
> Congregation Serving
> World Served

I believe the above biblical model is close to how we are organizationally structured at this time. We are still defining roles and very much in the process of providing our key lay leaders with more responsibility over the membership of the church (namely, elders and overseers). I assume a healthy change in the membership procedure at WHFC would require us to view the role of elders and overseers all the more in this way.

Instead of screening membership applicants for conformity to the doctrine and testimonies of Friends the overseers would focus more on searching out the relationship candidates have with Christ and their commitment to the vision, mission and objectives of WHFC. Then they would make recommendations for membership to Administrative Council assuring these two primary objectives have been met. They would also be empowered to spend more of their time and resources assessing the giftedness of members, discerning the calling of the Holy Spirit for ministry among members, making recommendations to the Nominating Committee for action, and assume greater responsibility to thoroughly disciple and develop those under their sphere of responsibility and care.

In addition, we would need for the elders to be able to spend less of their time and energy each month assessing and developing policy and procedure and function more in a biblical role of protecting the body of Christ. The scriptures make this matter of importance very clear. In Acts 20 Paul tells the elders in Miletus, "Be on guard for all the flock which the Holy Spirit has made you an overseers, to shepherd the church of God." Paul goes on to say to the elders that "savage wolves" would come and "speak perverse things that will draw people away." Paul's admonition to elders was to protect the flock from harm.

Peter tells elders in his first book "to shepherd the flock of God among you... with eagerness" (5:2). In Hebrews the church is told to submit to the elders "who are to keep watch over their souls and who will one day give account to God" (13:17). James states, the congregation should "call upon the elders when they are sick for anointing and prayer and to seek how help when struggling with sin" (5:13-15). Clearly scripture calls elders to pastor people as priority number one.

Specific to this discussion on membership is Acts 6:1-6. Here scripture presents the role of elders as given to the ministry of prayer and teaching the Bible and searching out needs in the body of Christ and the appointment of Spirit filled, qualified people to serve. Clearly elders are given the duty of delegation in the New Testament as priority number two.

I believe these objectives will require further consideration in order to change our membership practice from being "doctrinally driven" to "relationship based" and still maintain integrity in discipleship, discipline and screening for leadership. I guess it would be the Spiritual life elders responsibility to make all of this happen. What say you?

Thanks for stopping by!

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Adrian