Michigan Camp Meeting 2016: The Harvest is Great

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Elders Basic Training

Royce Snyman

Elders Basic Training - Part 1

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

Father in heaven, thank you for this morning.

We are grateful for Camp Meeting, the opportunities it provides.

I pray that you will bless our time now and that your Holy Spirit especially will be in charge of what we do, what we say, what we hear, and what we learn.

I've got 2 basic classes today and tomorrow.

And then I'll have 3 advanced classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

And the purpose of that is that I've been teaching this class for a couple 2 or 3 years now and I always have people that are new, people that are aspiring, people that are interested in this and that's perfectly fine.

I don't mind teaching people who want to know and learn, and also those of you who are elders that have been newly appointed, maybe a new, relatively new Adventist and now being asked to serve as an elder.

And so this is an opportunity to learn the basic duties.

But in some cases, Jim, what was I supposed to have been doing when I was an elder, right?

And so we're going to talk about that today.

So I'm going to talk about some of the basics.

I'm going to talk about a job description.

I don't want it to be boring, because job descriptions can sometimes be boring.

So first of all, I want to talk about the elder's call and election and qualifications for ministry.

You know, 1 of the things that happens in nominating committees, and I hate to say this, but nominating committees are under the gun.

When a nominating committee meets, everybody's trying to think of in that first meeting is how quickly can we get this process over with, and how can we do this in 1 session if possible.

And in small churches, they sometimes are able to pull that off.

They simply say, well, these people all take the same offices as they had last year, and they say, okay, go call all those people and bring us a report at the next meeting.

And in some cases, they don't even schedule the next meeting.

In more normal processes, the nominating committee meets together and they start going through the offices and they try to identify who would be willing to do that office.

Not so many times are they asking what are the qualifications for that office and who should be in that office and who shouldn't be in that office.

Because quite frankly, some people shouldn't be in certain offices.

And other times, there's some people who should be in offices that are doing something else and in relationship to an elder as well.

Would you pass a textbook down to him and if you need to take notes we have some notebook paper over there as well.

So I want to really help us to understand that I don't like the idea of higher offices versus lower offices in the church, because I don't want anyone to think that their responsibility is not important before God.

My toe is just as important as my head at times.

And I need to make sure that I realize that I'm a tool for God, I want to be used by Him.

But we must also understand that the responsibility of an elder is a very serious responsibility.

That we are called by God to carry that role and that responsibility here.

And the elder's call is that God is the 1 who leads to that position.

There are even times when we think about calling people to ministry and we find out that as we invite them into ministry and they get involved in ministry, that the truth of the matter is, and I'm talking about pastoral ministry, after a period of time, we realize and they realize they're in the wrong place.

And that's actually what the first 4 years of ministry is supposed to be about.

It's supposed to be evaluating whether or not a person is called to pastoral ministry.

Well, and elders are also in responsibility of being called to the task of service and ministry.

And elders who realize that their calling comes first from God will appreciate the importance and seriousness of their leadership responsibility.

I just realized that in all of this I didn't even push the record button on this 1.

So that's the first process is to recognize the importance of this role.

It's not a power position where okay I get to tell the church what to do.

This is a responsibility that God has provided to you and the responsibility to do what He's asked you to do.

And He is the 1 who guides you and teaches you what it is that he wants you to be doing in your life and in your service in your ministry.

You're elected by the congregation and the reason you are elected by the congregation is because they are the ones who recognize the gifts that God has given you.

I've seen people that I thought should have been elders when I was in Kalamazoo, Merv, and I recognized at that point that these people had those gifts.

But when I approached them in relationship to be an elder or the nominating committee approached them, they did not see it, they did not feel it, they did not believe it.

And it's interesting to me that 20 years later, those individuals are elders in that church now.

And that's kind of the way God does work with us.

He could have used them even back then if they had recognized that God was speaking through the church, speaking through the pastor and helping them understand that those gifts were there and that they could be used.

The other times, there are times when we think we've got the gifts and the church doesn't recognize it.

That is a good time for us to realize we can just back off and let God have His timing.

Because it's really God who's in charge, not us.

When I have somebody who tells me that they should be a minister or they should be an elder and nobody sees it, that really begins to worry me because sometimes we think more highly of ourselves than we ought to and let God take care of the work of leading us into position that He wants us to be in.

Elders should not be just simply put in that position because of some standing they have in the community or because of some skill or training that they have.

There are many professional people who would make good elders, but they are not committed Christians.

They are not committed Seventh-day Adventists.

And that reality is a challenge sometimes for people, and the church has to work within that reality.

And the church becomes weaker when people are put into a point of leadership for a responsibility God has not placed upon them.

And we do it only because they've got money, they've got position, or they've got something else that we think is community recognized but not God recognized.

And these issues of leadership are a very foundational, important aspect of this responsibility.

So if God has called you to this position and the church has recognized it, then the things that we list after this begin to help you to understand that you are carrying a major leadership responsibility.

An individual can be ordained as an elder.

Jim, you were ordained as an elder, is that right?

Lou, you are ordained as an elder, right?

But if you, and when you are ordained as an elder, you are ordained for life.

It's something like the Biblical's, Bible's definition of eternity.

When you die, that obviously is the end of your life.

But in the case of being an elder, you are ordained and don't have to be ordained again, but you don't automatically become an elder in a church that you transfer to.

So if Bob leaves Wilson and goes someplace else and he doesn't come in and say, well I'm already an elder and I'm gonna take over the church.

Okay, so if he comes over to Brighton and joins your church and you're excited to have him, he's still gotta be elected by the local church and put into that position, that responsibility there.

So you have no authority, even in the church you were ordained in, unless the church elects you to that position.

And if they choose to give you a year off or 2 years off, praise the Lord for the break, take it easy.

No, keep being a soul winner and go on from there.

There are some elders manuals here that I'm handing out.

And if you don't have 1, there's 1 up here and there's some in a box up here as well.

All right, So we're appointed in every congregation because you're respected and you have to earn that respect as Bob pointed out.

And these are individuals that are giving leadership in prayer and other issues and anointing the sick and many other issues that we're gonna be looking at here in our job description.

If we look in the New Testament, we find that they carried a major leadership role.

And the Bible defines the work of an elder as to what God has called them to do.

They were to be overseers, they were to be shepherds, they were to be examples and that was the New Testament directive that Paul gave to Timothy and explained to him what his responsibilities were.

And they were individuals that were to be not only respected, but able to speak well.

Now some people, some elders are elected to that position and feel very inadequate, but fail to remember that speaking ability can be learned.

And even though you may feel very inadequate at it to start with, doesn't mean that God can't use you and that you shouldn't be an individual carrying that responsibility.

I don't know, how many of you heard Elder Boonster speak this weekend?

Did you hear in 1 of his sermons how he told about his fear of speaking?

And even today he says he's scared of speaking, and so he takes his shoes off.

Now, you've got to be here the whole sermon to get all of those pieces together.

Series

Elders Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 1

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Elders Advanced Training

Elders Advanced Training- Part 1

1h 15m

Elders Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

1h 9m

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

1h 17m

Elder's Basic Training and Deacon & Deaconess Basic Training

Elder’s Basic Training - Part 2

1h 8m

God Saves the Church from Jewish Fables

15m

Emmanuel Institute - Ignite Your Church

Ignite Your Church - Part 13: Disturbing our Monotony

1h 15m

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training

Deacons & Deaconesses Advanced Training- Part 3

1h 8m

Decision - Discipleship - Destiny

04 Destiny and Deployment

53m

Seminar: Management

Leading by Following the Greatest of All Leaders

1h 18m

The Doctrine of Personal Ministries

Part 5 - Mining the Manual

1h 16m

Personal Preparation

Personal Preparation- Part 3

1h 9m

SPARK: How to Start a Fire for the Lord in Your Church

SPARK: How to Start a Fire for the Lord in Your Church- Part 3

1h 1m

Sound Doctrine