Being an Elder - Part 1

I have been an Elder at Grace Church Roseville for a little over a year now.  You may wonder what it is like to be an elder at a church and what it consists of.  Let me say that my experience is limited as I have only been an elder for one year. Also, my experiences as an elder may be quite different from others as every church board is run differently.  For obvious reasons I will not be talking about specifics regarding any issues we may have had at the church.

This post is going to talk primarily about what our Elder and Leadership boards look like at Grace Church Roseville.

Our Values
At Grace, we have 7 values that we try to live by.  I am starting this blog post with these values as all 7 of these values are seen in our leadership team at Grace.  I talk about some of these specifically in these posts.

• Anticipating God's movement
• Being people in process
• Being others focused
• Participating in authentic community
• Serving as a team
• Engaging culture with the truth
• Having fun in what we do

Serving as a Team
At our church we have an Elder board that consists of the Elders in the church (including the Lead Pastor). We also have a leadership team which consists of the Elders as well as the main staff in the church.  The Leadership team meets once a month and the Elders meet again as just the Elder board resulting in 2 meetings a month.  We currently have 7 Elders (this includes the senior pastor).  We have about 8 staff members that join us for the leadership meetings.  This results in about 15 of us in our leadership team meetings when everyone is present.

Elder/Staff Pairings
Each elder is paired with one or two other ministry leaders (main staff members) to create an Elder/Staff pair.  These pairs stay up to date with what is going on in that staff members ministry.  It also gives members of the church 2 people that they can bring issues to or ask questions to rather than just the staff member.  Each staff member can also know that they have an Elder that will support them and have their back. I am paired with our Children's ministry director.  I attend some of their leadership meetings and try to get regular updates on things that are happening in the Children's ministry.

Leadership Team Meetings
The leadership team meeting is once a month. People can arrive early and bring their own dinner if they want to eat with others. After that we start our meeting out by praying for the prayer requests that have been submitted to the church in the prior weeks.  We spend about 25 minutes in prayer for the congregation.  We then begin the meeting with some general discussion points.  We often have a ministry update during these meetings where one of the ministries shares about how things are going and what they are doing.  This is usually presented by the ministry leader along with the elder pair.  We will usually then proceed to discuss a couple chapters of the book we are reading through together, watch a leadership video clip, or discuss an article we have all read. Our lead pastor then provides a "Pastor's Corner" where he shares some leadership nuggets and encourages us as leaders.  On occasion the Elders will have an elder only meeting after this meeting to discuss any confidential matters.

Elder Only Meetings
The elder only meeting is also once a month.  We meet at one of our houses and have been starting out with dinner if people wish to eat first. We first spend some time sharing what is going on in our individual lives and then spend some time praying for each other.  We then transition into various discussions about items going on at the church as well as planning for the future of the church.  These discussions obviously vary much more from week to week.

That is a summary of what our team looks like as well as what the meetings themselves look like. The next post will talk about my experiences and reflections of being on the board in the past year.