So glad you made it to Gospel City Church this morning. Go ahead and grab your Bibles and open to Acts chapter 14. Acts chapter 14 and 15. And we’re going to kind of anchor in 14:23 today, but we’re going to kind of go all over the book of Acts, all over the Scriptures a little bit today. I’ll just admit to you straight up. So we’ve sung a little bit less. I’m going to try to preach a little less today, save a little time for our elders at the end of this service, ok? And the Spirit of God has been working and I have been praying and asking God to give us some time to talk about a subject that we need to talk about, and it is in the book of Acts on this specific day and it’s just a beautiful thing by the Spirit leading.
So today we’re going to talk about (drumroll please) church governance, church governance. And now everybody is so pumped up in the room. I read this quote this week by Greg Allison. He said this: “Few topics in theology in general and in ecclesiology in particular have the ability to induce sleepiness among many while also generating heated debate among others as does the issue of church governance.” Ok?
And so I admit it’s not the most exciting topic. And yes, there is little exactness. And yet there’s plenty of sufficiency in Scripture for how the church is governed and led on this earth. But what we do see in Scripture and particularly in the book of Acts is vital to the church being led and cared for to the glory of God.
You probably don’t think a whole lot about church governance. It’s probably focused, if you do think about it, it’s based on your past experiences. Maybe you’ve had just a really poor experience in church at some time or you’ve been led in a poor way and you’re just like, I know I don’t want anything to do with that.
Maybe you’ve jumped on the podcast bandwagon where they’re telling like horror stories of church leadership gone wrong and so you’re just like, Whoa, I don’t want anything to do with that. And maybe you’re just thankful for the way your church has been led or your past church experiences and leadership. Don’t think about it too much. It’s like the offensive line. If it’s doing its job you don’t think about it, but you know when it’s bad, right? That’s how we want our church government to be.
And either way, my prayer for today has been that God’s Word could help us all to see that God is a loving God of order, that God cares for His church by ordering His church, and order is an ingredient for the gospel that we claim so often. We’re Gospel City Church. It’s in our name. Order is very important.
Check out this quote from John Webster. “A ministry of oversight is a necessary implication of the church’s confession of the gospel. Order is ingredient with the gospel’s logic because the revealed secret of God not only concerns the unfathomable majesty of God Himself, it also concerns that human society which the triune God elects, sustains and perfects. God is the one who manifests who He is in the economy of His saving work in which He assembles a people for Himself and that community which is constituted by the gospel is indeed an ordered society.
So as the gospel goes forth, God is orchestrating for Himself, uniting, building up, a human society. He assembles a people for Himself, a community, an ordered society. That’s talking about the church. And in a year called “We are Family,” we’ve talked a lot about what the church is and what the church isn’t.
Let me remind you. The church is not a building. Believers do not go to church. The church goes to a building. This gathering doesn’t make you Christian. You make this gathering Christian. There are people gathering all around the world right now in sporting events and concerts, all these things. But you, the people of God, are what make this distinctly Christian.
Here’s a definition for the church that we’ll look at. “The people of God who through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance from sin have been incorporated into the Body of Christ by the unifying bond of the Holy Spirit and are called to form communities that unite together for the purpose of worship, discipleship and mission.”
Before we get into that, just real quick, if you’re here today and you have not put your faith and repentance in Jesus Christ alone, then you’re not a part of the Body of Christ that He’s building up. You can’t just come to this building and be a church just like you don’t go to McDonald’s and become a cheeseburger. You’ve heard that, right?
So you come to this place. But the only way to be united to the Body of Christ that He is building up this thing, this living organism called the church, is for you to put your faith in Jesus Christ and repent from your sins because God is holy and you are sinful. And Jesus is a perfect Savior so we get to repent and believe.
And yet if you have turned from your sins and if you have began to follow Christ in faith, you’re joined to a Body that forms local communities that unite together for the purpose of worship, discipleship and mission. That sounds a lot like disciples who glorify, gather, grow and go, doesn’t it? And that’s the discipleship pathway at this church. We want every disciple glorifying God, gathering with the people of God, growing up into Christ through the Word of God and then going out on mission. And that’s a pathway that we can follow until we go home to glory. And because of God’s grace we get to do that together. It’s amazing.
Now God is a God of order and His designs and methods for ordering His church are because of His love for us. As we look in Scripture today, I hope to show you that it’s not that complicated. It’s certainly not as complicated as the world makes things. When elders and deacons and church membership is all working together to the glory of God, the flock will be cared for, the flock will be nourished, and the flock will be sustained and we get to be encouraged that God is at work in our midst. Who wants God to be at work in your midst? Who wants God to be at work in your local church? All right, got hands all over the room. It’s great.
So point number one that we have to establish today is this, Jesus Christ is the head of His church. Jesus Christ is the head of His church. I want you to anchor yourself in Acts chapter 14 starting in verse 21. Let’s just get the context. We kind of went through this last week but we’re going to focus on what Paul and Barnabas were doing in verse 23. So let’s read 21-23 together.
Now hear the Word of the Lord. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Verse 23. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. (Acts 14:21-23)
Now as influential as Paul and Barnabas were to these communities of believers, they were clearly not the heads of these communities. Sure, they were strategic. Yes, they were used in these communities. But as you read verse 23, you see their deep reliance on Christ, who is the head of the church. It doesn’t say that they went into every town and found those who had the most charisma that they could put in leadership. It doesn’t say that they went into town like CEOs and began to collect resumes to establish the best leadership hierarchy and organizational structure. It doesn’t say that they pulled together the best thinkers to build the most amazing staff in the church.
Verse 23 tells us that they prayed and fasted and committed ordinary men to the Lord. Clearly in establishing and organizing the earliest of churches, there was a deep reliance on Christ who is the head of the church. To believe firmly in the power of prayer. We talk about that as a church all the time. To believe firmly in the power of prayer is to trust that my God shall supply all my needs according to His riches in glory as Paul said.
You can do a lot, you can strategize, you can plan, but don’t do anything without praying. They were relying fully on God for their needs as a church because Jesus is the head of His church. Jesus is ordering His church. And they were fasting.
Dallas Willard says this: “Fasting confirms our utter dependence upon God by finding in Him a source of sustenance beyond food.” They relied on Christ to order their steps, to order and supply their needs among the church more than they even relied on food. They were willing to do without something so that they could seek the Lord for their needs. And the reason they could have such deep reliance on Christ, who is the head of the church, is because they’d seen His faithfulness and promises carry them this far.
I mean, it’s been fifteen, seventeen years since the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. And what have we seen the Holy Spirit do in the book of Acts so so much through finite human beings? They didn’t have it all together, but with the Spirit of God, the church was already spreading in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and now getting on and beyond to the ends of the earth.
Last week we saw Paul and Barnabas taking it to places that had never heard the gospel. And what was happening? People were getting saved. People were responding to the truth. And now there are local communities, local churches, in these cities that were once pagan being raised up by the power of the Spirit of God.
Paul and Barnabas must have been like We can do this because we’ve seen the faithfulness of Jesus to build His church. And you and I can have the same reliance on Christ. I don’t know what you’re going through, but you can have this kind of reliance every day on Jesus because He’s that in control and He’s that good and He’s that loving. And so when you wake up every day, you turn your eyes on Jesus and you look to Jesus, the author and finisher of faith. And we trust Him to do what only He can do by the power of the Spirit that’s within us.
What does Scripture say about Jesus and the church? Look at it real quick. Ephesians 1:22 says He put all things under His feet. God put all things under Jesus’ feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church. So Jesus is not only the head of the church, but everything is under His feet.
Matthew 16:18 Jesus promised, “I will build my church.” Hear it again. “I will build my church. And the gates of hell won’t stand against it.” Men do not build the church. Christ is building His church. And by His grace invites us to come along as long as we have the Spirit and as long as we live in submission to Him as the head.
1 Corinthians 3:11 says that Jesus is the foundation. Ephesians 2:20, Jesus is the cornerstone. 1 Peter 5:4, Jesus is the chief shepherd over all human shepherds. So God gives us human beings to shepherd the flock, to lead the flock, to love the flock, to pray for the flock, to care for the flock. But Jesus Christ is the head of all human shepherds. And our local communities get really messed up when we start relying on man as the head rather than Jesus as the head of His church.
All church leadership must be cognisant of and operate under the headship of Jesus Christ. When that gets off, it all gets off. Now the beauty of Christ and His bride that He is building up in His sovereign rule and reign is that He gives us instruction for how we can lead. He’s not left us on our own but has put His Spirit inside of men, has given us His Word, and He gives His church the gift of biblical governance and Spirit-filled leadership.
That leads us to point number two this morning and it’s this. Jesus-led governance takes Spirit-empowered plurality. Jesus-led governance takes Spirit-empowered plurality. Clearly as Paul and Barnabas were praying and fasting in the local Bodies of believers they were asking God to bring them something specific. They were praying toward something. They believed that God could supply them with a plurality of men who could take responsibility for loving, leading, shepherding and teaching the flock of God.
Now you’ve heard this word plurality I think a lot over the past nine months. I’ve heard this word. It’s kind of been a buzzword around the church. There have been books that have come out talking about plurality in church. It’s a healthy thing. It’s a great thing.
You’ve seen a plurality of different men come on this platform and give you updates over the last nine months. You’ve seen a plurality of people teaching God’s Word from this position. You’ve seen a plurality of worship leaders. I see a plurality of members of the church doing the work of Christ every single week. We wouldn’t be able to pull this off if the Body wasn’t leaning in together. And so we do this thing together.
Let’s give a definition to plurality. So Dave Harvey, president of Great Commission Collective, he says this: “The Bible rarely talks about standalone leader,” talking about the New Testament church. “Instead it speaks of plurality.” When I use the term plurality, I’m referencing the Scriptural evidence that New Testament churches were led by more than one leader. New Testament churches were led by more than one leader.
So check this out. In Acts 14:23: When they had appointed elders, plural, in every church. Edlers, plural, in every church. Not one elder per church in each community. Not one lead guy in every church per community. They appointed elders, plural, for them in every church. They weren’t trying to put one man in charge, but they were appointing a plurality of men to protect the ordinances of the church and to serve the people of God.
Now among that plurality I’m sure that somebody rose up and had the gift of teaching and preaching God’s Word and somebody was able to lead. And the elders were kind of like Yo, you need to keep doing that. And somebody rose up and had the gift of finances and they were like able to help lead in the plurality. And somebody rose up and they had a clear gift of leadership and organization.
And then you put all of those men together around a table and in humility they submit to one another and a beautiful thing starts to happen. The church begins to be led because of the humility and the deference shown by godly men who are submitting to Jesus Christ as the head of His church. And when you put all of those gifts together, the strength, the unity and the integrity of the plurality infused the church with durability for its mission and care.
And they had a criteria as Paul and Barnabas began to pray and fast for the leaders, for the elders, in every community that they went to. They had a criteria that they were looking for. If you want, you can turn to 1 Timothy 3:1-7 with me. I’ll read it but you can turn if you want. These are the qualifications that Paul writes down for what elders look like in the local church. It’s kind of cool that Paul wrote 1 Timothy chapter 3.
Could you imagine as he’s going to these different churches in Acts 14 and he’s praying and fasting under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, God gives him exactly what he needs in order to fill that eldership role in the church, that leadership role in the church. And then he divinely writes it down and it’s preserved for us. Let me read 1 Timothy 3:1-7.
It says this: The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer (Some of you all are like, Great, because I don’t aspire to that) he desires a noble task. Some of you are like, I really, I desire it so much. Here’s the thing. You get to trust God with your desires. God will give you the desires of your heart. Not necessarily give you everything that you desire right now. He might change your desires and put a new desire in there. And so you trust the Spirit to do what only He can do because Jesus is the head of His church and He’ll do that inside of you. But everybody should aspire to the characteristics that we see in 1 Timothy chapter 3. But these are the characteristics that have to be upheld by the elders of the church, the overseers of the church, the pastors of the church.
Verse 2. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach. We’ve seen a lot of our elders teaching in more recent years, in this more recent year, as we’ve done Core classes. You see our lay-elders teaching on Sunday nights, lay-elders teaching in Hope groups, lay-elders teaching in flock meetings. It’s awesome. I’m seeing it regularly.
Verse 3. Not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? That’s a great verse.
Verse 6. He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. (1 Timothy 3:1-7)
These are characteristics that everyone in this room should aspire to. At Gospel City Church, we reserve the title of elder or pastor for men who uphold these characteristics. But everyone in this room should aspire to these characteristics. And the home is the focus first. My wife knows she’s not going to be a pastor at our church, but I often refer to my wife as the executive pastor of my home. I go home and I’m a lead pastor, but the executive..You know I can do a couple of things well; my wife can do a lot of things really well.
And so she organizes our home and she has so much leadership in my home. And she helps me do the right thing in my home. And she helps me remember, hey, I need to get some family discipleship happening in my home. And if we can focus on our home, God can use us outside of our home. But we’ve got to lead that little church that God has put under our roof every single week. Amen? You feel that.
These are distinct characteristics that those appointed within our local Body are expected to uphold, and these are characteristics that your elders and leaders uphold. As they seek to rely on Jesus as the head, they seek to live out these characteristics by the power of the Spirit of God within them. And as they submit themselves to Christ, we get to submit to their leadership.
Isn’t it easy? Isn’t it a lot easier to submit to somebody that you know is directly responsible to Christ for their decision making? Like submission, it gets a bad rap. Anything with structure gets kind of a bad rap in our culture today. But the truth is this. If I, a husband, am directly responsible to Jesus Christ for how I lead and love and cherish and nourish my wife, then it can be a joy for her to submit to me because I’m going to answer to God almighty.
The same is true in our church. I mean, as we submit to the leadership of this church, our leaders are submitting themselves to Jesus Christ. And so it should be a joy. And because they’re submitting to Jesus as the head, there is this wonderful humility and deference that takes place.
Acts 20:28 says this to the elders of the church. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
We care for the church of God. Now you’ll remember in Acts chapter 6, ok, Pastor Tyler did a great job talking through Acts chapter 6. We saw church governance made simple. There were a lot of needs rising up in the local church of Jerusalem and they were important needs that should be met because Christ has called us to meet the needs of others and serve others. But hear this this morning. If the church is not careful, the very things that make it a church can be sacrificed for the good intentions of service and outreach.
Acts 6: 2 says this. The elders, the overseers of the church, the apostles, they said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Sounds kind of prideful. Were they above serving tables? By no means. The priority of the local church is the preaching of God’s Word and the shepherding of the flock.
So in Acts chapter 6, rather than neglecting the widows who were in need, the third tier of church leadership was given to us, deacons. So you had these elders who were like, This is pretty important. I mean it takes a lot of time to dig into God’s Word and deliver a message that’s accurate to God’s Word every single week. And so as overseers and elders who are under the headship of Jesus Christ, we have to protect the main things so that the church can be the church.
And so the elders gather around and they protect the preaching of the Word, the care of the flock, the shepherding of the flock, and then they pick these seven guys in Acts chapter 6 who were then deacons. So deacons serve and facilitate ministry. That’s something that we really want to grow in at Gospel City Church. I see people doing the role of deacon all throughout this church, serving the Body. but we don’t really call it that as often as we should.
And so we’re working as elders, and as we’ve been going through the bylaws, like how can we strengthen the role of deacon? They’re like the best friends of the elders because you’ve got elders submitting to Christ and leading the way and handing it down to deacons who help the Body, all of us, serve Christ really really well in this community and in our city and in our world. And so we’re working on strengthening that.
But here is like a simple way to think about church governance. Jesus ordains ministry, elders lead ministry, deacons facilitate ministry and members do ministry. The elders are members of the church. The deacons are members of the church. And as the elders submit to Christ they provide some leadership, and all of us together begin to be built up and be equipped as saints to do the work of the ministry. That’s a great church model and it’s not that hard is it? It’s not that complicated.
And the truth is, I heard a pastor talking about how the church is not an organization. We probably need to de-Americanize our way of thinking about the church and leadership sometimes beuca the church isn’t an organization. It’s an organism. The church is being built up. It’s a living Body.
And the mre structure and the more organization that kind of gets put in place, the harder it is for the church to be the organism that it was created to be in the world. You don’t wake up every single day and your knee doesn’t have a meeting with your ankle and your foot and your toes so that you can go about your day. If you had to have that meeting every day it would slow things down, right?
But you’ve been created to work together. You’ve been created to do ministry together. You’ve been created to move and operate under the influence of the Spirit of God. and so God has given us this simple structure so that His church through humility can be led by His grace.
Now the third thing that I want to give to you is this. Jesus gave governance for our protection, joy and encouragement. Jesus gave governance for our protection, joy and encouragement. You’ve probably heard before that the elders are responsible for the doctrine, discipline and direction of the church at Gospel City. They do a lot of prayer. But those are three words that you could maybe sum up some of what the elders do for the church.
I want to show you quickly why the plurality of governance is so important. So go to Acts chapter 15 now. Just look one chapter over. And we’re going to dig apart Acts chapter 15 next week and really get into verse by verse all of it. But there’s an important moment and I think it just lends itself to what’s happening in 14. As Paul and Barnabas are establishing elders in the local churches in each city, we see their leadership play out in Acts chapter 15. So let’s read verses 1-7.
But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.
When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, (So there was a homecoming in Jerusalem) the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. There was some great partnerships among these gospel-centered churches from different cities.
Verse 5 But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”
So what’s happening here is the gospel is being perverted. Already there are churches being established, leadership is put in place, there is gospel partnerships all around in the different cities. And then it didn’t take long because we live in a broken messed up world. And people starting preaching a false gospel. Hey, you have to be circumcised in order to be saved.
And the Gentiles were rising up and said, Heck, no we don’t, as you would too. And they’re like, We don’t want anything to do with that. It’s by grace alone, by faith alone.
And the leaders of the church rose up and they’re like, Yeah, it’s by grace alone through faith alone. We need to put a stop to this false gospel. And so they go to Jerusalem, the elders and the pastors through their gospel partnerships, and they get together. And look in verses 6 and 7.
The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. Verse 7. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. (Acts 15:1-7)
So just stop there for a moment. We’ll just stop there. We’ll get the rest of this next week, but you’ve got the context a little bit. Now here’s what elders do. The apostles and the elders in verse 6, they gathered together to consider the matter. That’s what elders in the church do. They gather together. That’s a challenge in itself.
Stephanie, who was leading worship, she said, “I was really busy this weekend. I wish I had more margin in my life sometimes.” Do you need more margin in your life? Well it’s hard to get a bunch of lay elders together. It’s hard to get a bunch of guys who are working full time jobs together.
When we got to the elder meeting this past week I said, “How is everybody doing?” And Chris, who is an elder, said, “I just took a tumor out of a turtle.” That’s what elders do. They take tumors out of turtles and then they come to an elder meeting after a long day. It’s great. And we get together and we pray and then they consider the matters of the church.
That was happening at verse 6. They considered the matter that was happening. They consider matters of doctrine, of discipline and direction. And then verse 7. After there had been much debate. Sometimes it takes a lot of time. Sometimes it takes a lot of debate.
I wrote this down this week: “Elder governance is careful, cumbersome and calculated with the Spirit of God.” Because it’s meant to slow us down. It’s meant to slow us down because it’s God’s church and it’s your lives and it’s our souls together being built up into Christ. And so sometimes there’s much debate. Sometimes there’s much discussion, not always out of disagreement but out of the reference for God’s Word, out of humility to not think our idea is the best idea. May our skills in leadership never supercede the Spirit telling us to wait on the Lord who is the head of His church.
I don’t care how many leadership skills you have, sometimes Jesus just simply wants us to wait on Him. And so we wait and we trust and we pray and we fast and we rely on Jesus, who is the head of the church. And I see that weekly in the elder meetings.
I see that as they gather together, as we gather together and pray. I see that in the worship team as they gather backstage and wait on the Lord and pray and ask God for their needs. I see that among the pastors who get together and open God’s Word and pray. If you have a plurality of leaders who are humble, accountable and consistently looking to Jesus who is the head of the church, then you have a great thing.
And if you have people in your life who are facilitating ministry opportunities and helping you to use your gifts to serve others to the glory of God, then you have a good thing. And if you’re able as a disciple of Jesus to glorify, to gather, to grow and go from your local church, then you have a really good thing.
And notice I didn’t say you have a perfect thing. I have been here long enough to know that this is not a perfect church and it will never be a perfect church. But I’ve also been here long enough to know that we have a good and gracious gift from God almighty.
I’ve seen a sensitivity to the Spirit among the elders. I’ve seen elders who go out of their way to care for the hurting, to listen to the flock, and to chase down those who are struggling.
I regularly see staff members who toe the line of shepherding the flock and serving the flock, staff members who are constantly praying for the flock. I see an enormous amount of people using their gifts in and among the family every single week. We have a good thing at Gospel City Church, don’t we? And it can continue generation upon generation if Jesus is the head and if elders remain in submission to Jesus Christ in humility and loving the flock and caring for the flock and leading the flock and prioritizing the Word of God being taught in and among the flock.
And if deacons rise up and serve and facilitate ministry and if we all together are doing it. If you’re relying on just the staff or just some leaders to do all of the ministry, we will eventually all wear out and there will be nobody left. But if we rise up together and if we follow Christ and if we grow up into Christ and if we have a mindset to live sent every single week from your seat, we can serve this Body and it can be a place where our kids and their kids will worship Christ and be built up into Christ and will have the joy of salvation on the earth.
And the enemy, he desperately wants to destroy it. He desperately wants to destroy it. Disunity among us as members will destroy it from the inside out. An expectation that staff and leaders can do all the work will wear us out. There will be no one left. Anything less than the full counsel of God’s Word and the true and right counsel will destroy what we’ve been united to do together.
But in faith we can say Christ is building His church. The gates of hell will not prevail against Him. And so we trust Him. We look to Him. We lean on Him. We believe in Him because He’s faithful. Amen? Can I pray for us? I’m going to invite Justin and Rick up to the platform. Let’s pray.
Lord, we thank you for your church. We thank you for your Word. We thank you that you have not left us on our own but that through your love you have given us your Spirit. You’ve given us your Son, who is the head of the church. And you’ve helped us to have order as we come and gather together.
And Lord, we pray a protection over your Body. We pray a protection for the church, God, that you alone would be glorified, that your Word would be held high. The book of Psalms says that you have exalted your name and your Word above all things. So God, we lift your name and your Word high today. And we say we trust you and we follow you and we lean not on our own understanding. Thank you for the way that you lead us. Thank you for the way that you order your crush. Thank you for humble men like our elders who are leaning into your presence, leaning into your Spirit. In Jesus’ mighty name we pray, amen.
