An Unfinished Church

There are a great many churches where the pastor has no other elders beside him. Sometimes the church is small. Sometimes the men who could serve were never trained, and nobody trained them because there was never time. Sometimes he inherited it that way and has carried it ever since.

If that describes where you are, I have been there for most of my ministry. I want to put one verse in front of you.

Paul left Titus on Crete by himself and wrote him this: "For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you" (Titus 1:5).

Look at what Paul handed him: an unfinished church. And an assignment that included producing other elders in every city on the island.

Titus was not an elder. He was Paul's delegate, carrying apostolic authority into churches that did not yet have elders of their own.

Which tells you what those churches were. They had believers. They had the gospel. They had no elders. That was the part Paul called unfinished.

Here is where a man in your position usually stops, and not out of laziness. Out of realism. The men are not ready. The church is too small. You look around on a Sunday and you cannot see any man for the role.

Acts 14 provides some direction.

Paul and Barnabas had been run out of Antioch, chased out of Iconium, and Paul had been stoned in Lystra and dragged outside the city for dead. Then they went BACK through all three towns. "And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed" (Acts 14:23).

Those churches were months old. The men appointed as elders had been Christians for months. The cities were hostile. Nobody was ready, by any standard you or I would use.

If plurality had to wait for ideal conditions, there would be no elders in Acts.

The key is found in the middle of that verse: having prayed with fasting. They did not scan the room and pick two. They fasted. Paul told Timothy something with a similar effect — "Do not lay hands upon anyone hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others" (1 Timothy 5:22).

So the answer is not speed. The answer is prayer and fasting.

Ask the Lord which man He would want beside you in ten years if the Lord grew him. Then, as the Lord leads in His timing, ask the man to consider Titus 1:6–9. Not as a test he passes or fails. As a description of what he would be walking toward, so he can count the cost before anybody asks him anything.

What potentially follows is a long work — the shaping of a man who may be called of God to serve as a fellow elder. And if he is, he will have been watched, taught, corrected and prayed over until the church sees what God led you to see.

The church I serve has been working to identify and train God-called men to serve as Christ's undershepherds. And I have put what we hope to implement into a packet — the whole twenty-month path, every form and reading list and evaluation, with our church's name lifted out so you can drop yours in. It is free at theshepherdforge.com. Take it, change whatever does not fit your polity, and put your own name on it. If you would rather build your own from scratch, build your own.

The Lord loves His people, and He has given pastors to them as a gift. Let us take seriously the necessary and noble task of training godly, called men to serve God's church.

If your church has one elder, it is not a failing church. It is an unfinished one, and Paul told Titus exactly what finishing looks like.

Begin praying this week.

—David