A High View of the Church = A Proper View of Elders

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00:07

So, Chuck, we're talking about elders and deacons, but the origin for the idea is the fact that you've been preaching through this series for several weeks.

00:19

Several weeks, yeah. Into a month or two, maybe. Yeah, so we need more elders and deacons at Christ Church, and before we began any kind of selection process, we wanted to spend some time talking about that, and it is actually a part of a larger series on the

00:36

Church, Ecclesiology, but yeah, we're wrapping that up now in the hopes of the

00:42

Lord leading us to more men. Yeah, yeah, and it's been a fantastic series. There's so many things that I've learned about both the office of elder, the office of deacon, but then also what all should be involved in thinking through who should fill those offices, and that's really kind of where we wanted to focus on this episode and this podcast.

01:08

So you start with, you know, one of the very first things after, so like you said, this came in the context of a series on the

01:16

Church. We looked at different portraits of the Church that are found throughout Old Testament and New Testament, and I really like the image that you gave.

01:25

It's almost like an art gallery, and you can go and look at these images or these depictions or descriptions of the

01:32

Church that God gives us in His Word, and we can take a long time and look at each one, but when it comes to the offices of elder, when it comes to the office of deacon, why are we spending so long as a

01:49

Church going through this series, and then why are we taking a full podcast, maybe two, to discuss this?

01:58

Yeah, well, before I answer that question, let me back up real quick and say that view of those portraits as an art gallery,

02:06

I think I actually heard Jeremy Walker use that, and so that's where I think

02:11

I got that illustration. But we went through that longer series leading up to that. We're looking at the

02:17

Church and how God esteems the Church, how He values the Church, to raise our estimate of the

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Church, and then that should lead to a greater desire to make sure that we have qualified men to serve.

02:30

If the Church is just like the PTA or some other organization, then our view of the people who lead that is going to be vastly different than if we see it as something that's precious to God, redeemed by the blood of Christ and the apple of His eye.

02:49

If that's what the Church is, well, that's different, and the leaders who lead that then need to be a different sort of people than those who run just some organization down the road.