Another Musick-al Note: #18
IT’S AN ENORMOUS JOB
Would you be willing to accept a responsible position with a company that offers amazing benefits, unparalleled opportunities for work, satisfaction in accomplishment and co-workers who have the same goals and desires as you? It sounds unbelievable doesn’t it? Yet such a work is open for every man who will qualify for the position! This position is a place for WORK that will demand the very best of your thinking, much of your “spare” time for it demands “overtime” to accomplish all that would be required of you. It will tax your strength, your zeal, your imagination and your patience for you will be working with people who have obeyed the Lord’s commands. For the most part, these people will help in any way they can, but some will challenge your authority, your judgment, your reasoning and maybe your sanity. Some of these will also cause strife and discord among your workers, halting every program you seek to do. A few will become bitter and leave yet continue to agitate those with whom you work, and then deny that they do so. These actions describe those Christians who do not submit to the Divine authority given the elders and become a great trial to good leadership.
Are you still interested? Then let me explain a little more. The work is the Lord’s work. The position is the eldership. The reward is eternal life. The satisfaction comes when you see babes in Christ grow to maturity. Your fellow-workers are fellow elders and fellow Christians. Elders have the greatest responsibility of all in the church, for “They watch for the souls of men” (Hebrews 13:17). We who are under their care should help them by willful submission to their guidance and not be in rebellion, that their work will be a joy to them. Elders must pay careful attention to themselves and the church which they oversee for Jesus paid for it with His own blood. Their primary obligation is to ensure that none will be drawn away from Christ by worldliness, neglect, discouragement, false doctrines, hatred or any other thing. It would be a sad and somber end should an eldership fail in its primary task of protecting the flock. Paul warned the early eldership lest any of them would become the reason the flock would fall from Christ (Acts 20:29-30).
Thank God for dedicated and faithful men who serve as elders of the Lord’s church for they help us follow the Master.
Musick-al Notes 