A Continuation of basic elder tasks focusing on how to do basic visitation (home and hospital), how to oversee various ministries of the church, basic principles of how to lead the church as a soul-winning organization, and more.

Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

<p>A Continuation of basic elder tasks focusing on how to do basic visitation (home and hospital), how to oversee various ministries of the church, basic principles of how to lead the church as a soul-winning organization, and more.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Royce Snyman

Elders Basic Training- Part 1

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training- Part 1

Deacons and Deaconesses Basic Training - Part 2

Managing Theological Conflict in the Local Church

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

Father in heaven, thank you for a new day, a new morning, an opportunity to be together and to study and to prepare to serve you in the best way that we possibly can as leaders of the church and elders in seeking to assist the pastor in leading your work.

Pray that you'll guide and direct us now in Jesus' name.

All right, well, this morning, I want to mention something to you.

To be perfectly honest, I've not paid a whole lot of attention to this magazine, but it is a resource and I think you might want to know about it.

This happens to be the latest edition of the Elder's Digest.

Feel free to take some back to your elders as well.

I have a whole box of them here and I'm happy to let that happen.

If you happen to want more or need more, you can take them here.

And if we come up short, by all means, we'll have them.

I believe that you can subscribe to this and I wish that I could tell you I know exactly about it but I haven't.

I'd love to have you check it out and tell me what you think about it, any of those kinds of things.

But this is a quarterly journal for elders and it's nice to have resources.

I think it's like any other tool or any other thing that you have in your hands.

You have to determine whether or not it is appropriate for you and what you believe and so on and so forth.

The only reason I say that is because I've not looked at it carefully and you know there's a little bit of maybe a lot of it out there about different kinds of styles of worship and so on and so forth that I personally have concerns about and if that's being promoted by this magazine then I would suggest that you use your God-given wisdom to sort that part of it out.

But often in these resources there are good ideas and sources of leadership instruction and all and I encourage you to take advantage of that and get the value out of it that is there.

I wanna back up from where we were yesterday and cover just a little bit that I rushed off of to make sure that you don't have any questions because we ran out of time and then I'll try to get us back on track.

We talked a little about committee members there and the different kinds and then I jumped on past that.

Did you, I don't know if you had a chance to go back and look at it, but if you look at, I don't know what slide it is, but in your notes it's probably about 5 pages from the back.

And it was talking about an initiator, an elaborator, a challenger, a peaser, and an energizer.

Different kinds of people that are on committees.

And it's just kind of nice to know that there are ways of thinking about how people function on committees.

Sometimes we get the idea if people don't function the way I function on a committee, it's because they're all bad.

And sometimes we fail to realize that the value of committees is that you have different people with different talents, different personalities.

And those are advantages to us because it balances out a committee.

But if we don't realize what their approaches are and the way that they think and what they're trying to accomplish, we may see them as antagonistic or opposing us when they may just be trying to draw out some other ideas, and that's the value of this kind of instruction.

And it doesn't seem that it matters whether a church is large or small.

Conflicts within committees seem to happen almost naturally.

I don't like the word naturally, but seem to happen just all too easily.

And so I want you to have that information so you know a little bit about it.

Going a little farther down, it talks about the agenda and I discussed that last time.

Opening the meeting with prayer and a brief devotional is valuable whether it's an elders meeting, a board meeting or some other committing meeting.

I think most of you function that way already, your committees function that way.

But every committee should have a secretary.

If it's a church board, it should be the church clerk would be the secretary of that committee.

For the church board, they're required records.

Every church must have a clerk taking careful record of the meeting.

Official clerks minutes of a church board should not include every little detail discussed.

Because what you don't need is a permanent record of banter back and forth.

This is an ongoing discussion until you finally reach a conclusion.

When I first started pastoring, I didn't realize that, and in talking to a conference lawyer at 1 point, the conference lawyer made it clear to me that the only thing that should be on those minutes are the official actions of the committee.

And there may be other things that you as a committee decide need to be on there that might, quote, not be an official action, but it needs to be somehow registered there, and that is what needs to be included.

But include the actions there, and you don't include who voted and who voted for it and who voted against it.

You simply include the fact that it either passed unanimously or there was 1 descending vote or something to that effect.

Yeah, that's, you use Robert's rules, if you use that, there's actually no discussion until there's an option on the board.

And The reason for Robert's Rules of Order or whatever process we use, and that's the basic standard, is because everybody can agree on that and that's the way you function on a committee and then that just keeps everybody from saying, well, You are manipulating everything.

No, when you do it the way it's supposed to happen, nobody's manipulating, you're simply functioning that way.

And that's exactly correct, as John said.

If you put a motion on the floor and there's a second, then it can be discussed.

There are some things that you might be having a kind of a general discussion on that may not need a motion or want a motion at that particular point and you need to discuss, but you gotta be a little careful of that so you don't get carried away.

The agenda, by the way, keeps you from wandering.

First of all, not being on the agenda means you don't bring it up.

And having an open agenda where just people add on things, if you want a meeting that'll start at 7 o'clock in the evening and finish at 12, use a process that doesn't include an agenda.

And that can be really an annoying type of thing.

So 1 of the things that has always frustrated me about committee meetings is I cannot stand, my words, a committee where the chairperson does not keep that committee moving.

Where they seem to, when it hits a lag point, the chairperson's kind of thinking a little bit about it, and a couple minutes later says, all right, maybe it's time to move on to the next item.

The chairperson of that committee makes a lot of difference in how that functions, how you get your work done, when you get your work done, and getting out of that meeting.

Most of us have things, our responsibilities in our life we want to do, and the church is not the only thing we do.

And so it's good to keep that committee process moving ahead.

1 of the first items on the agenda, it says, in your material is the reading and accepting the minutes of the committee's last meeting.

I think that's important because that gives you an opportunity to review what took place at the last meeting.

The reason the clerk keeps the meetings, I'm talking about board right now, or somebody to be a secretary on the board of elders, and my suggestion is the head elder might want to be that person, or an assistant elder, whatever you would decide, but keep those records.

But you bring those records back at the next meeting to review them to make sure that what the clerk wrote down is what actually happened, because that becomes a permanent record.

And just recently, I had a pastor asking me about a certain situation and I said, well the only way you're going to know if that actually happened is by going back in the clerk's records and they he had to go back 10 years to try to find out if that action had indeed been taken, and I can't remember if he did find it or if there was just a brief mention of it, but that can make the difference years later about how you respond to a situation and it's it's just a reality.

I would like to tell you that I would like to encourage you to look at your board agenda.

Yesterday we talked about what you need to be doing in relationship to outreach and planning and so on.

After the clerk's report and the treasurer's report, The first item on your agenda should be what?

This agenda, it's just what you said down here, the first item on the agenda is reading the notes.

After those, that item and after the treasurer's report, okay?

So you've gotten through those 2 important items, but what are the first, what is the first item that should be on there?

It should be your master plan of evangelism.

If you look at your church manual, you'll find that the church manual says that the major responsibility of the church board is the planning of the soul wanting the outreach of that local church.

And what happens is if you make that the last item or only getting on there occasionally, the major focus of the work of that board does not get done.

You'll spend your time talking about boilers that need fixing and plumbing that needs to be adjusted and carpeting that needs to be replaced and Sabbath school quarterly things that need to be ordered and etc etc etc.

It'll absorb all your time if you want to and you'll never get to the most important thing.

It's 09:00 already and we haven't even talked about soul winning.

Well, let's just table it till next time.

But you are the elder or an elder on that board.

You want to make sure that is your priority and you're spending your time dealing with that.

Series

Elder, Deacon, Deaconess Basic Training

Elders Basic Training - Part 2

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Looking Unto Jesus

56m

Meeting the Master Gardener

Jesus’ Heavenly Fruit

37m

Biblical Relationships (Afternoon meetings)

Preparing to Tie the Knot (Part 2)

31m

Plenary

Explaining the Impossible

1h 20m

Home Gardening

Intro to the Home Garden & Planning

54m

Why the Trinity Matters

Why the Trinity Matters- Part 2

52m

Delighting in the Almighty

13. How Am I (really) Doing Spiritually?

29m

Market Gardening

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go! - Resources to Get You Out of the Starting Blocks

48m

The Cross

The Victory

30m

Ministerial

How to Follow up on Leads and Use the Interest Tracker Leads Software

1h 19m

Orchard Frost Protection

45m

Beginning with Eternity in Mind

53m

Sound Doctrine