My Dad is seventy-seven years old, and is still preaching. In fact, he left this past Friday for Bangladesh. He will teach in a preachers school there for two weeks, then he will go on to Nepal where he will do street preaching. I ask you please to be praying that God will both look after and bless my Dad during this time.

But I do not mention my Dad primarily to gain your prayers, although I do really hope you will pray for him. I mention that he was and is a preacher to make the point that I grew up in a preacher’s home, and for ten of my years at home we lived right next door to the church building and our back yard served as a church parking lot. As a very young child I knew all of the elders at whatever congregation my father was ministering.

As a sophomore in college, I started preaching for a small congregation near my parents’ home. That church did not have any leaders who had been appointed as elders, but we had men who served in that role without the title. Since those early years, I have ministered in many congregations. Some had appointed elders; others did not, but I learned a great deal about church leadership from everyone of those church experiences.

Many of you know that my family and I moved to Lubbock for the first time in August of 1989. We came to Lubbock to join the team that we would move with to Washington, England for the purpose of planting a church. That church was planted and is still there, ministered to by Michele and Rodney Thomas who were members of the original mission team.

Just a day or two after Christmas in 1992 my family and I left England to return to the United States. We stopped along the way to visit family, arriving in Lubbock during the second week of January in 1993. The elders here had asked me to serve as the interim pulpit minister while they looked for someone to fill that position permanently. I preached my first sermon here as interim minister on January 17, 1993. Two and a half months later, on April Fools Day, I was hired as Broadway’s pulpit minister.

I tell you all of this because it allows me to make a point: I have worked very closely with Broadway’s elders for many years now. You see, I had much interaction with several of the elders when we were being invited to join the England mission team. I had even more interaction while we were living here just prior to our departure, and my interaction with elders continued while we were living in England. Since moving back to Lubbock in 1993, Broadway’s elders have become some of the most important people in my life. I have spent countless hours with them, both in group settings and one-on-one.

With all of the time that I have had with elders from my earliest days up to 1989, combined with the time that I have spent specifically with Broadway’s elders since 1989, no one will be surprised that I have thought a great deal about what kind of person makes a good elder and what kind of person would make a good elder here at Broadway. Therefore it is going to be difficult for me to preach concerning elders without preaching primarily my own opinions. But the Lord has not placed First or Second Rodney in the NT, and I must not pretend that He has. So as I, this morning, try to present a lesson which God can use to give us the elders whom He has chosen, I want to point us toward the will of God. We need guidance from God. We don’t need strong human opinions. We need, in fact, to lay those aside and to hunger for the will of God.

We have an outstanding elder team right now. We have shepherds who visit new members as well as our sick in the hospitals. We have elders who challenge us to give more, believe more, and trust more. Our elders are spiritual leaders who welcome hurting members, bring them into the middle of their circle, lay their hands on them, and pray for them. We have some shepherds who work at our benevolence desk every week. Other serve as role models in our youth program and campus ministry. Others were heavily involved in completing Broadway’s Habitat for Humanity House. And the list of services rendered to us by our elders could go on and on.

What new role should Broadway’s elders take on? What new aspect of spiritual leadership does God want them to accept? What new dream does God want Broadway to be energized by? I have my own personal answers to everyone of those questions, but I know that God’s answers are far superior to mine. Because of our profound awareness that God’s answers are far superior to our own, we will spend extra time in prayer this morning, asking God to be the one who chooses Broadway’s shepherds.

I hope that our Scripture reading prepared us to realize our need for guidance. That reading was taken from Ps 73, and that psalm begins with doubt concerning the justice and fairness of God. But it ends with a renewed awareness of the sovereignty of God’s will. The psalmist comes to a firm conviction that God is in control and that He will bring justice. As a result, the psalmist ends this poem with a confident expression of God’s nearness and God’s guidance. The psalmist says to God, "you hold my right hand" and "[y]ou guide me with your counsel."

Sisters and brothers, we need God to hold our hands all of the time as we make our way through life. We need God to guide us with His counsel, all of the time. But I hope we are especially aware of that need when it comes time to make important decisions as a church family. I hope we know that we do not want to be the ones who actually make the decisions; I hope we know that God is the one who must make the decisions. This must be His church guided by His will. As a result, we want the elders of this church family to be His elders, elders chosen by Him.

The Bible offers help in the selection of elders. For example, we have 1 Tm 3:1-7 and Tit 1:5-9. In 1 Tm 3:1-7 Paul tells Timothy the kind of persons who should be chosen to serve in that role in Ephesus. In Tit 1:5-9 Paul tells Titus the kind of persons who should be chosen to serve in Crete. The lists of qualifications in these books are not the same, indicating that the Lord inspired Paul to realize that different types of leaders were needed in different places because of the diversity of needs from place to place and from church to church. But these lists offer much insight into the kind of leaders whom the Lord wishes to lead His people. Please prayerfully study these two passages as you seek God’s guidance, and please do that before you write names on the nomination forms provided. If you would like to do some further study of these two passages, I would suggest that you get a copy of the taped sermon that I preached in 1996 before we added elders the last time. If you would rather have a printed copy of that sermon, those are available as well. Simply call the office and tell them what you want, and we will see that you receive it.

But right now I want to go to the book of Acts. Acts 14:21-23 contains a report of some of the work of Paul and Barnabas as they were nearing the end of their first missionary journey. These verses tell us that Paul and Barnabas

returned to Lystra, then on to Iconium and Antioch. 22 There they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, "It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God." 23 And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe.

These are very young churches; they were only planted at the beginning of this missionary journey, and yet Paul and Barnabas are able already to appoint elders for these churches. F. F. Bruce, an outstanding NT scholar, was commenting on these very verses when he wrote,

Many modern missionaries would probably think it unwise to appoint as elders men who had so recently been converted to Christianity. Paul and Barnabas were more conscious of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the Christian communities.

Because of Paul and Barbabas’s confidence in "the presence and power of the Holy Spirit," they appointed elders in those young churches and then they entrusted those elders and those churches to the Lord.

Are we entrusted to the Lord? Do we believe that this is His church? If we do, then our primary concern, as we add elders to our leadership team, will be to seek His will. We do not want to be led by elders. We want to be led by God who leads our elders and all of Broadway’s leadership team. That is why prayer is the most important thing we do. We must seek God’s will. We must long to know whom He has chosen. We must be sure that this church is entrusted to the Lord and not to any group of humans. We must be led by Spirit-filled individuals whose sole purpose is to be used by God.

Desire for self esteem, not here. Desire for ego boosting, not here. Desire for power, not here. Desire for status, not here. Desire to be a humble vessel in the hands of God, that’s the attitude God is after. Let’s pray hard that God will give us that kind of leader.

John is going to come now and lead us in a song to prepare our minds and hearts for prayer. Then Drew Anderson is going to come lead us in a prayer asking God to guide us as we seek spiritual role models and mentors who will shepherd this flock according to God’s will. Then we will sing the chorus of "Sweet Will of God" which will focus us even further on our need to know God’s will. After that song, Bill McCaughan will lead us in another prayer asking God to guide us as we seek elders who are humble servants of God who will help us become more and more like Jesus.

Brothers and sisters, this time of prayer is so important. Focus. Focus your mind and heart upon the will of God. Fervently desire His guidance. John, come lead us.