The American Church is plagued with a crisis of church government. This crisis is most obvious concerning the biblical office of the eldership. Part of the crisis is due to legitimate transitions and challenges facing local churches. Another part of the crisis is the product of generations of unbiblical traditions of men, rather than biblical patterns informing the government of the local church. The crisis is found in both “Dispensational” and “Reformed” Evangelical local churches. Extremism is rampant. There are those who simply reject biblical patterns of eldership, and some who even reject the concept of church government altogether. This may in part be a reaction to the genuine problem of tyrannical leadership.

On the other hand, I have witnessed and heard far too many stories of Reformed elders with such a misguided vision of jurisdiction, that they persecute families for seeking to keep their children with them in the meeting of the church, and who publicly excoriate such parents for refusing for conscience sake to have their children become part of the pastors vision to place them in peer-based, age-segregated youth groups.

Often times this anti-family philosophy is driven by the pastors need to service the debt he has built for the local church, sometimes by establishing yet another notoriously unsuccesful church school which requires the congregation to subsidize the school and cover the salaries of the working wives who man it, usually for near slave labor wages. (FYI: These church-run schools are not only notorious economic boondoggles, but they are usurpatious—-the local church has no more jurisdiction to start professional schools for young children than does the government.)In some cases, this confusion over legitimate jurisdiction has contributed to the ultimate usurpation of the jurisdiction of the family by church leaders—-the assertion that elders have the right and authority to direct children, not parents, at the moment the family enters the church building.

It is time to return to the proper function of the local church, which in part means we need to understand the role of church elders. The ministry of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches seeks to address these problems and will be doing so at our national conference this August.

We were honored and blessed to sit under the wise teaching of Alexander Strauch, author of Biblical Eldership, for a two day mini-conference sponsored by my local assembly. Brother Strauch is a dear brother, with rich insights and wisdom gained from careful study of the word and more than thirty years of experience serving as an elder to the same church.

The mission of the local church should be to encourage and equip all of its men to mature in Christ, and to exercise their gifts. Training for this begins in childhood. Our prayer is that God would raise up a generation of boys who will become elder-qualified men. To encourage this we want our boys present as we study the word, listen to teachers and discuss manhood and biblical leadership.

Before the conference the men of our assembly and sister churches gathered for informal “breakfast table” discussion with Brother Strauch.