Friday, June 11, 2010

Whose Agenda Are You Ambitious For?

Here's a good word on ambition. The best part:
One great measure of our humility is whether we can be ambitious for someone else’s agenda.
It works for all of us, but it's especially important for we pastors who are fortunate enough to serve with a genuine plurality of elders. And its particularly important for those of us who are associate pastors.

2 comments:

d4v34x said...

Tangent: Could you define genuine plurality of elders?

Ben said...

Sure Dave. Sometimes churches that technically have a plurality of elders/pastors/overseers functionally don't. By that I mean, a respected FBF Baptist pastor (whose name I'll omit because he isn't exactly having his best life now) argued that merely having more than one person on church staff with pastor in his title constitutes a plurality. But the structure he described was one in which the assistants functioned as his staff, not as genuine leaders.

When I talk about a genuine plurality, I'm talking about a structure in which a church is led by a group of gifted, qualified men, not one man who has unilateral supervisory authority over all the rest. That group consists of elders/pastors/overseers, not a senior pastor and deacons. And to be biblically faithful, that church ought to be intentionally raising up elders from within the congregation (2 Tim 2:2), not merely importing hired guns.