NEW COVENANT ELDERS (Acts 11:27-30)
As we make our way through the book of Acts, we find ourselves this morning in a spot where a crucial component of New Testament church ministry and organization comes into view. And it’s directly related to something God wants for us at Dundalk’s First Baptist Church right now.
It has to do with the idea of the elders of a church. The reason we need to talk about that this morning is that Acts 11:30 is the first place in the New Testament where the elders of a church are mentioned. Yett by no means is it the last place! The elders of a church will show up again and again throughout the New Testament. This is only the first of many references to the authorized teaching leaders of the church.
Remember where we are in the book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit. There had just been an outbreak of Holy Spirit-empowered evangelism and disciple-making in the major metropolitan area known as Antioch, hundreds of miles to the north of Jerusalem. Multitudes of Aramaic-speaking Jews and Greek-speaking Jews and full-blown Gentiles had repented of their sins, received Jesus the Jewish Messiah as Lord and Savior, received his Holy Spirit, and begun to live the Christian life. But there was no leadership, no structure, no official guidance. So when the believers back in Jerusalem heard the glorious and alarming news, they sent Barnabas to help provide some leadership. Barnabas surveyed the scene, quickly realized he needed help, walked the 70 miles to Tarsus to get Saul, and brought him back to Antioch, where they spent the next year teaching the disciples that were already there and helping them to make more. Then this happened.
S&R Acts 11:27-30
Thank you so much for standing for the Word of God. Please be seated.
Do you remember when first met Barnabas, in chapter 4 of this book?
Acts 4 32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. 36 Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, 37 sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
Do you see what was happening a few years later in Antioch? The believers in Antioch who had a little money to spare heard about a need at the mother church down south in Judea, gave and gathered together some funds, and sent it to the people who are in charge at the Jerusalem church.
What is different here in chapter 11 is that it is no longer the apostles who are in charge. The apostles have begun to leave Jerusalem and head off to the various places we know they ended up, where almost all of them died far from home as martyrs for Jesus. But before they left, they made sure that there was leadership in place in Jerusalem. Those leaders, whose job was to carry on the teaching ministry of the apostles, were the elders. As you read through the rest of the book of Acts, and indeed the rest of the whole New Testament, you will discover that the leadership that was put in place in any church was a group of spiritually mature men called elders.
What the Lord has for us today is a set of five necessary facts about the necessary leadership of elders in any healthy New Testament church. The pattern that was put in place in the New Testament is the pattern for any family of new covenant believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

the first necessary fact
The elders are the primary leaders of a New Testament church
If you look at the back of the listening guide in your bulletin, you’ll discover a multicolored chart containing the New Testament words for church leaders. New Testament churches had two officers, elders and deacons. Elders are also called bishops or pastors now and then. You can quite properly translate the word “bishop” as “overseer,” and the word “pastor” as “shepherd,” if that helps. But the point is that there are just two officers in any New Testament church: elder/overseer/pastor and deacon.
There is a page at our church website called “foundations,” where you can find the following words written:
Our confession of faith is basically just the Baptist Faith and Message of 2000, with a few little Dundalk tweaks. The 2000 BF&M was an update of the 1925 BF&M, which itself was an update of earlier Baptist confessions from all the way back to the classic Baptist confessions, from New Hampshire in 1833, Charleston, South Carolina in 1767, and London, England in 1689.
That colorful page on the back of your bulletin insert mentions several of those historic Baptists confessions of faith, also known as doctrinal statements. Perhaps you didn’t realize that our doctrinal statement is directly descended from a statement that was first written by some of the earliest Baptists, in England in the 1600s, and widely recognized as THE Baptist confession of faith, but it’s true.
So why does that matter? Because in 2023 Southern Baptists voted at our annual meeting to update even the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message when it comes to the words “pastor” and “elder.” There are heaps of details here that I could pile on you, but I’ll save you the grief. At its most basic level, this controversy does come down to some things that matter enough that we here at Dundalk’s First Baptist Church should step back and rethink how our church’s doctrinal statement and constitution describe proper New Testament church structure. Our partners in the Southern Baptist Convention feel such a need for greater clarity on this issue, it’s worth our time to think about it for a minute.
Please take just a minute with me to think about how our Baptist brethren have talked about biblical teaching on this issue over the centuries. The very first Particular Baptist confession of faith that we have record of said that the two officers of a New Testament church are elders and deacons. That was 1644. For the next 300 years, whenever Baptists updated their doctrinal statements (not to change or update their doctrine, but to update their language so as to more clearly address the issues that were most salient at their own moment in time) they swapped back and forth freely between the terms “elder,” “bishop/overseer,” and “pastor” to express what they believed the Bible taught was the primary position in the church to lead the people of God by teaching the Word of God. Then, in 1963, Southern Baptists tried to simplify everything by simply focusing on the word “pastor.” For most of us in this room, the only word we’ve ever heard in Southern Baptist churches for a church’s primary teacher and preacher is the word “pastor.” The word “elder” seems alien and weird to us. Yet in the New Testament the word “elder” is used almost five times as often as the other two words put together. It would seem that “elder” is God’s favorite word for the office. What is also really worth knowing is that for most of our history, “elder” was the favorite Baptist word for the office, too. If you’re curious about why that changed in 1963 and why it’s changing back right now, I’ll be happy to have that conversation with you. But not here, and not now, because most of us just don’t care, and don’t need to.
I’ve been telling you for years that the most fundamental thing about being a Baptist is that we believe the Bible, and we want to structure our lives and our churches by what it teaches. It’s time for us, the First Baptist Church in Dundalk, MD, to follow the Bible and recover the word “elder” for regular use in this Baptist church. As we study the marks of a healthy church in Sunday school, we’ll hear again that healthy churches are led by a plurality, or a group, of elders. If you’re wondering who are our elders (plural), let me help. First, and most obviously, I am an elder. I am the supposedly spiritually mature man who leads the church by teaching the Word of God. That’s the only way this church has ever known me.
Who else do you think is an “elder,” a spiritually mature man who leads the church by teaching? [[ ]] Some of your minds immediately jumped to Ryan, and they should have. He is a spiritually mature man, a year older than I was when I started as pastor here, and he leads by teaching. There are two other men in this church that I have been trying to convince for a couple of years now to begin to think of themselves as “elders.” They’re not convinced yet, but I’m patient. The fact is, Ryan and I and those two men make almost all the small decisions for this church right now anyway, and we’re the ones who guide the church in making big decisions. They’re just not convinced yet that they’re teachers. And I respect that. But I’m the only one here who is trained and paid to think about this stuff. So of course those three will not be as educated in the minor details. But they have experience and expertise in things that I don’t, and I think we’re making a pretty good elder team — even if they’re not all comfortable with the name “elder” yet. You just pray about this, and I’ll keep on doing it, too.
Another detail that matters, and that I’ve been pointing out to you for 25 years now,  is that in the New Testament the churches are always led by a group of elders, never by just one alone. For example, James the brother of Jesus will soon emerge as the lead elder in the church at Jerusalem, but here in Acts 11 there is no mention of James, just “the elders” – a plurality, a group.
Because the elders are the primary leaders of the New Testament church.

the second necessary fact
The elders are men who exercise their leadership primarily by teaching
One of the reasons I suggested to this church decades ago that we update from the 1963 Baptist faith and message and accept the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message has our doctrinal statement is that the 2000 includes the clarifying words, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” this old world just howled and hollered at us when we did that. They called us bigots and sexist s all kinds of other nasty names, but we didn’t care. We’re just Baptists. We want to order our lives and our churches by what the Bible teaches and we don’t give a rip what the world thinks.
The reason for the 2023 update to the Baptist Faith and Message is that there has been some confusion about who actually counts as a pastor. Specifically, what if a church has a music pastor or a children’s pastor who never teaches or preaches to men at all? The biblical answer is that a pastor is an overseer is an elder, and must be a man. That’s what the Bible teaches, in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 and elsewhere. We get our marching orders from God by his Word, no matter how the world feels about it, and that is not negotiable. That’s the reason every major form of Christianity before the 19th century limited the teaching preaching leadership of churches to men, and most still do in most places around the world today.
Plenty of modern people have asked questions about this or offered explanations for it, and I understand why. I used to drive my dad crazy with the incessant question “why?” Our Father in heaven loves us, and welcomes our questions. But he is under no obligation to answer them. In the end, we simply trust that he knows and wants what is best for women, for men, and for churches.
If you want me to show you that this IS what the Bible teaches, I’ll be happy to take some time with you this week to do exactly that. Just let me know. I’ll even gladly share some speculations about WHY God says what he says. But in the end, it all comes down to this: the Bible is the Word of our Lord Jesus Christ , and everything it teaches is always true, for God’s glory and for our good. And what it teaches is that in a New Testament church, the elders are men who exercise their leadership primarily by teaching.

The elders are the primary leaders of the New Testament church
The elders are men who exercise their leadership primarily by teaching
the third necessary fact
Elders teach churches to rule themselves under Christ
Yes, you heard that right: churches are to rule themselves under the lordship of Christ. The autonomy of the local church is a uniquely Baptist idea, And like any other point of our doctrine, we believe that it is what the Bible teaches. What that comes down to is this: we believe the Bible teaches three things that may seem contradictory, but are not.
1. The Bible teaches in 1 & 2 Corinthians and elsewhere that church members are to make the major decisions for the church.
2. The Bible teaches in Hebrews and 1st Peter and elsewhere that church members are to follow the leaders who lead their churches
3. The Bible teaches in Acts 6 and elsewhere that church members are to choose the leaders who lead their churches.
Now the truth is that #2 is the only one that is undeniably clear in those passages. That’s why other kinds of Christians believe either that the church is to be ruled by a single bishop or by a board of elders. Baptist Christians, however, look in our Bibles and see in New Testament church leadership a delicate dance of authority, submission, leadership, structure, service, obedience, and tender family love. Baptists believe that congregations should rule themselves, guided  by the teaching leadership of their own chosen elders.
As I contemplate how to more clearly give a biblical explanation of the duties of elders, here are some words that I think help to explain this delicate dance:
The Elders are the servant leaders of the Church, not the rulers. They are empowered to oversee the regular functioning of the Church, but not to make major decisions regarding membership, leadership, discipline, budget, and property, which are reserved to the Church alone. The Elders will normally plan, propose, shape, and execute those decisions, but the decisions themselves belong to the Church.
Or if I were going to boil it down to even simpler terms, I’d just say that elders teach churches to rule themselves under Christ

The elders are the primary leaders of the New Testament church
The elders are men who exercise their leadership primarily by teaching
Elders teach churches to rule themselves under Christ
the fourth necessary fact
Elders usually need to delegate duties to deacons
This is what we read about in Acts 6, where the apostles as the teaching authority in the church in Jerusalem find that they cannot take care of the details of making sure that the widows receive their get their needs met. So they tell the church to choose seven men full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom to take care of the ministry. That passage is almost universally recognized as the birthplace of the deaconship. This is what deacons are to do: the real world take care of the details that the elders delegate to them so that the altars can focus on  the word of God and prayer. Repeatedly in the rest of the New Testament we find that churches prosper when they have both of these kinds of leaders in place leading the church’s ministry.
Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that elders and deacons are to do all of the ministry. Oh, no, elders are to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The deacons are to organize and lead the saints in the work of ministry as the elders delegate and direct. The saints, regular church members, are to do the ministry. The church is to do the ministry of the church. That’s the way the New Testament lays it out.
If you find yourself a little uncomfortable hearing me talk about the elders and the deacons, instead of the pastors and the deacons, I feel you. Southern Baptist all my life just about, and I am comfortable with the language that we southern Baptists have gotten comfortable with over the last 80 or so years. The problem is, God doesn’t ask us to go with what makes us feel comfortable. He asks us to let his Word shape how we think and speak and live.
The elders are the primary leaders of the New Testament church
The elders are men who exercise their leadership primarily by teaching
Elders teach churches to rule themselves under Christ
Elders usually need to delegate duties to deaconst
the fifth necessary fact
Both elders and deacons are required to be spiritually mature believers
There is one more piece of information you might want to have if you want to have a solid understanding of what the Bible teaches about elders and deacons. In particular, you might be wondering why God Seems to prefer to call them “elders,” more than any other name. It is not that a man is required to be an old man before the church can count him an elder. It is that he must be mature. Specifically, he must be spiritually mature.
Do you remember what Paul said to his young protege Timothy when Timothy was called to be the lead elder in the church at Ephesus?
1 Timothy 4:12  12 Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
In other words, Timothy was not to demand respect, but rather to command respect by the consistent Christlike character and maturity he showed in his life. That is the life an elder is to live, and it is the most important thing about him.
When Paul gives lists of qualifications both for elders and for deacons in first Timothy and in Titus, the first item on the list is the word “blameless” or “above reproach.” This does not mean that a man must be sinless to be an elder or a Deacon. Obviously, only Jesus is sinless. What it does mean is that the man must have such a solid, obvious character that those who know him would have a hard time believing any accusation of serious sin leveled against him. He is a man with a reputation from godliness and purity. He is a brother with what the old people used to call a sterling character.
Both elders and deacons are required to be spiritually mature believers.

conclusion
I suppose the only question yet to be asked is, why now? Why, after 25 years, do I think it’s time that we start using the word “elder” as the primary word for the pastors of a church?
When I was younger, I listened to some older men who told me it doesn’t matter what words we use, so long as the reality follows the pattern that God has given us. That made good sense to me at the time.
Since then, I’ve come to see things differently. Jesus is our Lord because he came into our world to live the life we couldn’t live, die the death we should have died, rise again in power and glory, and ascend back to heaven to be enthroned at his Father’s right hand to rule and reign until he returns. If he has given us his Word, the Bible, as a written guide to know how he wants us to follow him in this New Covenant age, we should let the Bible be our guide. Absolutely we should give prime attention to letting the Bible rule how we live our lives and how we order our churches. But the fact that we put priority on living right doesn’t mean we simply ignore talking right. It seems to me that if our Lord demonstrates a clear preference for one word over another, so should we.
I want you to be aware of this little booklet “Who Is in Charge of the Church?” It is the simplest, clearest little presentation of what the New Testament teaches about eldership in a New Testament church. It is written by a Southern Baptist pastor and published by 9Marks, a publishing ministry based in the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington DC – the same people who produced the little book that we’re studying in Sunday School. It is written by Baptists for Baptists, about a Baptist vision of how a church should rule itself, taught by its elders under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ’s written word, the Bible. If you’d like a copy, just ask. I’ve bought a few and I’m more than willing to buy some more.
If you find yourself completely lost today because you don’t understand any of this church talk and you’re just wanting to know who this Jesus guy even is, let me speak to you for just a second. We believe that the man Jesus of Nazareth who lived about 2000 years ago in a restive province of the Roman Empire was and is the Son of God. We call him our Lord because he came into our world to live the life we couldn’t live, die the death we should have died, rise again in power and glory, and ascend back to heaven to be enthroned at his Father’s right hand to rule and reign until he returns. He has given us his Word, the Bible, as a written guide to know how he wants us to follow him, and he has given us his  Spirit to live in our hearts and empower us to follow him. We’d love for you to turn away from being the Lord of your own life and turn to him. Come and join us as we try to know him better and follow him closer. There is literally nothing that could make me any happier then to talk with you about that before you leave today.