A Thought on Business Meetings and Elderships

by Bill Jackson

In any situation involving men laboring together, some decisions are going to have to be made and some course of action must be decided upon by someone if any good product is obtained. In the congregations of God, the thousand-and-one details wherein the work of the congregations goes forward must be decided upon by someone. We shudder to think of a business meeting called, and a vote by democratic processes being used to determine every single item of business from establishing the times for the services to purchasing erasers for the classrooms!

Many of us remember an earlier time when many places had no elders, and every move the congregation made had to go through the business-meeting process. In so many instances, the work of the congregation was hardly expedited by this method!

And there is yet another factor in this: Sin and Satan being as they are, in the business-meeting endeavor there is encouragement built in for the most non-spiritual and inactive man to have one of the strongest voices in the work of the church! It is often the case of men not in the leadership then seizing the leadership of the church and thus a congregation can find itself without elders but with a rule by either a non-spiritual man or a non-spiritual clique of the same type men. Thankfully, God has provided for us the better and more spiritual way of conducting the business of the kingdom.

"For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee" (Titus 1:5).