Spiritual maturity
Any team leader would like spiritually mature people on his team. Clearly, when building an apostolically-appointed eldership team this is not negotiable. Elders must have their own walk with God and be able to ‘take the rough with the smooth’ without falling apart.
The people who are following must have the security that the church is being well led without irresponsible decisions being made. Nevertheless, some churches I am aware of do have ‘leaders in training’ sitting with them on occasion as a way of not only training future leadership but also of exposing such men to some of the pressures of eldership without them holding the ultimate responsibility. This can provide a great opportunity to see how they react in times of challenge, one way of following the Biblical injunction of ‘testing first’ (Acts 6:3, 1 Tim 3:10) before making an appointment.
What about the Administrator?
For me it is vital that someone with the spiritual gift of administration (see Biblical Administration part 2 – The Gift of Administration) is seen at peer level with the elders. There may be times when it is inappropriate for him (or her) to sit in with the elders, such as when handling confidential pastoral issues. But if the Administrator is to serve the elders well he or she should be integral to the development of strategy and core to the planning ie not just a ‘do it’ person. For this to work satisfactorily spiritual maturity must be demonstrated.
Event teams
Through this series I have tended to polarise teams into short term (e.g. events) and long term (e.g. elders). Clearly there are other teams but this provides two models from which you can extrapolate for your own needs.
Spiritual maturity may not be so important for every individual in the event team provided that the team is broadly mature. Sometimes the need for particular skills is the more important factor in determining team membership. It is not necessarily essential for the person organising the sound system, say, to be spiritually mature, though I would hope they would be spiritually sensitive. I am more interested in someone who produces a high quality sound and does not dominate a meeting with too loud volume or acoustic distortion.
Next time we shall look at the matter of Time Availability.