A couple years ago, when I was an associate pastor in Indiana, we transitioned into an elder-led model of church government. We had previously had six deacons. When we transitioned we now had three elders and three deacons with a handful of men who would be brought on in a new leadership capacity—some elders and some deacons.
We knew that we needed some sort of resource to teach on eldership and also to help train our leaders. Such a resource didn’t exist. All I had were a few books to help with this. Some of them were great on training but didn’t teach much about the theology behind who an elder actually is and what he is supposed to be/do. Other books were great about the theology and not the greatest at training. I wanted a resource that had both and so my only recourse was to compile all of these together and put together my own resource. No such book existed.
Now it does.
Bob Thune has written an absolutely phenomenal resource in Gospel Eldership. It has everything in it that I was looking for a couple years ago. Not only does it have questions for training the skills of an elder it also has great questions to assess the heart of your elders. It is meant to be used in a small group capacity between elders—and I cannot wait for the opportunity to need this book again.
If you are working on training a group of men to fulfill the role of elders in your church and you need a resource—look no further than this little book. I think even if you have an established group of elders this book would be a great encouragement and help.
This is such a needed book. My only regret is that I didn’t have this book a couple years ago.
Get it here.
