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Podcast: How to Find a New Church (Edward W. Klink III)

November 22, 2021 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Considerations When Choosing a Church

In today’s episode, Mickey Klink talks about what you should look for in a new church, what factors (the preaching, the music, and the theology of the church) should impact your decision, and what warning signs to be on the lookout for in your search.

The Local Church

The Local Church

Edward W. Klink III

In today’s hyperindividualized culture, Edward Klink III not only demonstrates why it’s vital for individuals to connect to a local church, but also reveals why it’s vital to God’s work in the world.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:00 - The Challenge of Finding a New Church

Matt Tully
Mickey, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Mickey Klink
It’s great to be here.

Matt Tully
Most of us have been in the situation of having to find a new church at some point in our lives. Often that’s due to a move, maybe a change in our theological convictions, or maybe even unhealthy dynamics in a previous church. Regardless of the reason for the change, most people I’ve talked to would agree that it’s generally not a very fun experience or process to have to find a new church to be a part of, and it’s actually quite stressful for people. Speak to that from your own experience. I know you’re a pastor now, but have you ever experienced the challenge of finding a new church? What was that like for you?

Mickey Klink
It’s very hard, and part of the reason I think it’s hard is because you don’t get to know a church just by attending one particular aspect of its life. A church is really meant to be the deeply committed, gospel-based relationships—disciple-making and disciple-developing relationships—that just take time. Oftentimes, a church is based on things that are, quite simply, the event of church, and those sometimes can be the main draw. The reality is that it is very difficult. I was in a PhD program in St. Andrews, Scotland, so my wife and I flew from the Midwest where we were both raised and lived all our lives to St. Andrews, Scotland. I remember well the shock of just trying to explore churches. Here’s a quick example of that: we arrived on a Monday and we were adjusting to our new flat and I remember even at one point my wife, with tears in her eyes, couldn’t figure out if the detergent had bleach or not because even though they spoke the same language, it was a different culture. Then Sunday morning came and we went to St. Andrews Baptist Church where we ended up being all three years, and even though the opening welcome was in that Scottish accent, when we all began to sing. It’s remarkable how in singing you kind of lose the accent. So we began to sing the songs that were so familiar to us as long-time Christians, and we began to participate in the practices that are historic and biblical in the church, and for the first time we felt like we were at home. There’s a reality that that’s what church requires. Even in that church, we entered in knowing that we weren’t going to find something that exactly fit us. We were going to find something that fit God, and we wanted to align ourselves to that and even be willing to be realigned ourselves in certain ways because this is what it means to be the people of God. So I think it’s a difficult challenge and this is something we need to wrestle with as Christians, especially in our consumeristic Christian world.

Matt Tully
I want to get into that dynamic of how so often the things that are most evident about a church, which often focus on that Sunday morning service, they’re not necessarily the whole story and that’s not enough. It’s a challenge to discern some of those other realities about a church. But before we get there, I think another thing that can be stressful for all of us as we think about contemplating a move to a new church for some reason are wondering what are the valid reasons for leaving our current church and looking for a new one. You mentioned that we live in this consumeristic culture where it is so easy to get wrapped up in What will this church do for me? How will this serve me and meet my needs? What guidance would you offer on discerning when it’s valid for us to leave a certain church for some reason and go to a new one?

Mickey Klink
It’s very tricky. I remember when an older brother spoke into my life once years ago when we were talking about this topic and wrestling with the question, When is it right to leave a church? Clearly, there could be gospel-based reasons—if there’s a denial or distortion of the gospel—but it feels like in our day reasons people leave are much less gospel-based and things that are much more particular or individualistic are directing the changes in our churches. In fact, statistics say that post-COVID there has been a reduction, on average, of 20–25% in many of our churches. Are they going back to church? Are they just going to different churches? Why are they leaving? We’re in a difficult age. I’ve framed it for people in this way: Christians love the pastor and the church leaders (the elders) to have a priestly role in their lives, but they aren’t as comfortable with pastors and leaders having a prophetic role in their lives. By that I mean they love to be cared for when they are brokenhearted, but they aren’t as comfortable when their hard hearted. What we’re finding is that it seems like people will switch churches not for doctrinal reasons at all, but for political alignment. Or with COVID, if a church was asking, along with the state and the local community, for people to wear masks, they would go to a church where they didn’t have to wear masks. Those seem to me to be invalid reasons for someone to leave a church. I’m not saying it’s wrong to have that conversation. I’m not saying it’s even wrong to disagree about the sides of masks or COVID, but for people to do some ghosting—to literally never respond, to walk out completely, to make it all on a political basis. We’re a baptistic church. As an Evangelical Free church we had a brother go to a Presbyterian church over masks. I said to him, Are you Presbyterian? There’s nothing wrong with our Presbyterian brothers and sisters, but that’s a big switch from credo to paedo Baptist, from congregational to Presbytery. He had not thought of any of those. It was completely based upon a mask policy that was temporary at best and trying to balance a love of God and love of neighbor and love of one another that King Jesus seems to command. So I think it’s very difficult. One thing I would recommend is I would hope that a committed disciple would go and talk to their pastor-elders and that there would be a conversation. A scary trend that seems to be happening in churches like mine and others is that there’s not even a conversation. There’s no dialogue. That does not fit with what membership is supposed to be about; that is not submitting to the leaders over you. There should be a good conversation and a humble willingness to find a place to come to an agreement, especially when it’s not based on the doctrine of justification by faith but something to do with a practice or a policy

Matt Tully
How do you think about that idea of submission to our spiritual leaders in a church given the fundamentally voluntary nature of church participation and membership in our culture? Even in a Baptist ecclesiology where we don’t want to move in a direction of saying, You live in this area, therefore you have to go to this one church and that’s your assigned church. In church history that has been something that has existed in different places and times. How do you think about that idea of submitting to leadership, in particular when you might not agree with them and you might be concerned about certain issues with them?

Mickey Klink
It’s very difficult. Church has become, at least in the practice of a lot of Christians, a voluntary society or association. It’s no different than a movie theater or the YMCA. When the YMCA raises rates, you just stop going. If a restaurant no longer serves the pasta you like, you just stop going. That is not the way that church is designed. It is hard, in a free-market economy, not to treat the church like a free market. If you are a Christian, if you have been redeemed and are united to the body of Christ physically, then you are thus connected to the body of Christ, the local church. It is a direct connection, so it must be with very solemn, humble attitude that one would disassociate in some way with a church, or treat the body of Christ loosely. I worry about that in our context—the free market, consumeristic sense—and churches, too, can feel the pressure with the branding, the marketing, and the big Sunday event, rather than just the deeply entrenched life of the body of Christ. So I think we have to ask Christians to take seriously the Bible’s commands that the church actually—and the church’s leaders: humble individuals who are redeemed by Christ—for them to take seriously that they are under the authority of their pastors and elders. I don’t know how this happens outside of church membership. I think churches have to do better to speak about church membership and the role of church membership. They have to be deep in relationships and community. We’re asking Christians to be biblical in this regard. In a free-market economy, right now the culture is directing more how we engage with the church, and consumerism, than the fact that technically I sit under my pastors and elders. They sit over me. As Hebrews says, why would we want to burden those who care for our souls? We have a responsibility to sit under them, and that’s just a level of spiritual maturity and maybe even just biblical teaching.

10:36 - The Importance of Being Connected to the Local Church

Matt Tully
You talked about how by virtue of our salvation and who we are in Christ we are connected to the church. What would you say to someone who says, Yes, I agree with that and I agree that it’s important for me to be connected to a local church, but that local church could change. I’m still committed to the church broadly—the global church, the invisible church—and I am even committed to a local congregation; but that might change depending on my stage of life, my preferences, and things that I’m feeling like I need at this point in my life?

Mickey Klink
There are two things you raise and I’ll hit on the invisible/visible first. Nobody attends the invisible church. Every church is located, i.e. local. So the reality is that the church is not just coffee with friends, it’s not just a metaphor, it’s not just some biblical-theological category; it is the local church. Everyone should, in their connection to Christ, be connected to a local church. That can vary. You can be in a large city—like Chicago, which is not too far from us and there are churches all over the place—or you can be in rural Kansas and there is just a select few churches you can find. But in your connection to the body of Christ, you are connected to his body the church. That’s just non-negotiable. How one does that, we have to be careful. We have to be open to the fact that we are consumers. I think we just need that on the table. We are master consumers and it is so easy for us to treat our church based upon Do I have friends here? Do they teach on the topics I want them to? Do they politically align with me? Do they do homeschooling or are they public school? What is the worship music like? That is, in a sense, the new sacrament for evangelicalism. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper—those things are minimally as influential in most evangelical minds today as something like worship music. Has worship music become a new sacrament? Is that the way that I’m fed? Am I in relationships? Am I known by the pastors? We have to ask people—and call them—to be faithful to the biblical prescriptions for connection to a local church. That’s going to take discipling and catechizing and hard conversations. The reality is there will be some that will just be consumers, but we need to be a church that seeks to help them be developing into faithful disciples.

13:05 - How to Leave a Church

Matt Tully
Let’s turn to the person who has maybe thought very carefully and intentionally sought counsel and even talked with their pastors about a growing conviction that they need to find a new church. Maybe it is because of a significant life change or a move across the country, or maybe there is a growing theological difference of opinion. How would you advise them to actually have those conversations and go about making that break? Is that something that you would say there’s a set amount of time that they should give it? Is there a set number of people they should talk to? What advice would you give to that person?

Mickey Klink
Obviously, there are lots of variables that even you’re raising when you pose that question, but I would hope that there would initially be conversations with the pastoral leadership. If there’s a concern regarding the church, that’s the best place to start, just to simply say, I’m concerned about this. There’s not any gossip, there’s not a slander, you’re going to the leaders and you’re addressing that. That can be hard. It is more tempting for people just to do their ghosting moves and just to separate. But to go to the pastors and elders with humility, with a level of love for the church and the gospel, and to address those concerns; and be willing to be spoken to where there is a level of disagreement, to be asked to take more time, to be asked to think through this more and to have more conversations. I think in the end it may come down to a level of Christian liberty. We are not yet—and probably never will be until the Lord returns—where we are a John 17 oneness that is between all the people of God, some ecumenical unity that is beautifully in Christ. There may just be a difference of opinion, like there might be between an Anglican and a Baptist or a Presbyterian. We love one another, we recognize that, and we give them a Christian freedom to make that decision. But we would hope they would do that with humility and with lots of open conversation. It’s not what’s happening. There is just no conversation. People are just gone. So, good conversations; time in prayer; clear, biblical reasoning that allows for a level of nuance and difference of interpretation; and then a proper closure that would be with the elders, with the congregants, with people in your small group or those connected to you in order to protect the name of Christ and the church’s reputation. And then to be open to our own inability to perfectly understand in our Christian freedom and application. I would hope that the church leaders are the primary ones being spoken to about this and that there’s a good conversation there.

Matt Tully
A brief aside to church leaders: What advice would you give to them in that kind of a situation when someone has come to them and said, I’ve got these concerns; I’m feeling like this isn’t a good fit. What would you say to the pastor?

Mickey Klink
Guard your pride. Some of the deepest wounds that pastors that I’m familiar with face are when people leave their church. It is impossible not to take it personally. Christ is their true shepherd; you are not. You are an under shepherd. No pastor can minister beautifully to everyone. People leave for good and for bad reasons; you must hold that loosely and not get defensive and not try to attack or explain away. Literally and humbly hold people loosely as to the Lord. Be able to speak into their lives with gentleness and respect, but in a way that allows them to embrace their Christian freedom. I think it’s just hard, honestly. It’s hard for pastors because it just hurts and it wounds. You invest years into people’s lives—you marry them, you bury some of their family members—and for them to not feel ministered to or that your preaching is not feeding them well or that this church is not loving them well (when you’re thinking of the late night visits, etc.), it is very hard. We just must find a way not to be wounded by that. That’s just a process in and of itself for the pastor.

17:24 - What to Look for in a New Church

Matt Tully
I was talking to a friend recently who said something that I thought was really interesting about what it feels like to visit a church for the first time. He described the experience as walking through the front door of the church with an invisible clipboard and looking around to see if the church has everything or is doing everything that we would want it to do. I think all of us, if we’re honest, would say that we do have that invisible clipboard. It exists for all of us. The question is, Are we looking for the right things when we’re looking at a new church? If you could jump into the shoes of that person right now, what would be on your invisible clipboard if you were looking for a new church?

Mickey Klink
Before I would even go to a church, I would probably be making sure via their website or other available resources that they feel theologically connected to a denomination or have a doctrinal statement that fits well a biblical, gospel-based summary. You would also want to be seeing that that is actually the constitution by which they are living and acting out as Christian lives. The centrality of corporate worship. I think that there should be a level of focus on what discipleship looks like, whether that be for those in the church a commitment to raising up disciples and a commitment to making new disciples. Even things like prayer. It feels like that’s a thing we’ve lost in this generation. In the early part of Acts when the apostles—the earliest elders of churches—are dealing with all the ministry needs of the people and all of a sudden the office of deacon is being established by God in his providence by the work of the Spirit. When they look at the role they have for the soul care of their people and not just the physical, bodily care, they list two things: word and prayer. There’s just a reality that there should be a sense of word and prayer happening in our churches. That there’s in-reach, that there’s outreach, that there’s a family dimension. All of things can vary. I would be leery of making the checklist merely preaching, other than that it’s based on God’s word and—

Matt Tully
Do you say that because you think that’s a common way people view this?

Mickey Klink
I think so. We are a celebrity culture; it’s just part of us. It doesn’t have to be the most popular names. It can be just certain skill sets that we’re drawn to. Probably preaching and the style of the worship music are the things that we most base it on. Whereas the reality is that the healthiest of churches may not actually thrive in those two areas. The most Spirit-led, biblically-based, disciple-forming churches may not be the biggest, may not have the most eloquent pastor, may not have the most vibrant, youthful worship style, but God’s Spirit works in those things beautifully because God’s Spirit can preach through donkeys. God chose the weak to humble the strong. The gospel is proclaimed and the work of the Spirit does not require any particular vessel to work. So, there would be a case of time. It’s hard to evaluate a church in a Sunday or two because all you’re looking at is the platform. Arguably, what a lot of churches tend to focus on is that Sunday event. But the reality is that most of church life is Monday through Saturday. Sunday is just that corporate gathering of God’s people to springboard them forward into the week of life and ministry that follows. All of those nooks and crannies you’re not going to see just by being there for an hour on Sunday. All of that is to say just be careful because our clipboard might be filled with boxes to tick that are driven more by the consumeristic mind of the air that we breathe and the water that we drink rather than to say these are the clearly prescribed aspects of what a healthy church looks like.

21:39 - Three Marks of a Church

Matt Tully
On that front, throughout history there have traditionally been three marks of the church—at least for Protestantism—that must be present for a church to truly be a church and to be a healthy church. I wonder if you could comment on those three marks and how they would fit into a broader "checklist" for a church.

Mickey Klink
The three marks are the word—the gospel, preaching, the centrality of Scripture—which is more than just a message, it’s that the word is the constitution, by-laws, or road that we drive on (directionally) so that we know that everything we’re doing is based on God and we’re hearing from him. The second would be the ordinances, or sacraments, which would be baptism and the Lord’s Supper (communion). Again, as I mentioned earlier, I worry—and I’ve heard it from this way before; I’m borrowing this from a paper I heard several years ago—that in evangelicalism, worship music and the worship experience is the new sacrament. I find that fascinating. I came to my church and there were people that had never been baptized ever. I was just shocked. I had been at my present church for about two years and a man came in to meet with me and I didn’t even know what the meeting was about. He said, I get the impression from hearing you preach over the last two years that baptism is a big deal. It is a big deal! To think that this man had gone over two decades and baptism was not part of it. But I can guarantee you that our impression regarding whether it’s a contemporary song or a particular hymn, whether it’s piano or guitar, we have tons of strong, spiritual connections to such things; yet, the ordinances, or sacraments, would not be. That would be remarkable. So, the centrality of those things. Finally, the third is authority. The third mark of the church is the authority of the church. This gets back to what we spoke about earlier. I don’t know how you can do this without some biblical understanding and practice of membership. I’m not sure you can do that without that, that there is an actual pastoral care and accountability that people have in their church. We established something a couple of years ago as a church where we divided our members into groupings and attached each of those groups to an elder. We asked our pastor-elders—we use that language because an elder and a pastor is the same office. Whether they are a lay elder or a staff elder or pastor, they’re the same office. We asked them to once a year connect with every single member on their list and to commit to weekly praying for them. Those groups of people could talk to any elder or any pastor, but we said this person is specifically assigned to care and shepherd you. They will be visiting year after year and caring for you. You can contact them. They gave cell number so that there was access, because how do you do shepherding if you’re not in the lives of people, if you’re not sitting in their homes and hearing about when they lost their husband seven years ago, issues that they might have, care that they could need, you’re learning their kid’s and grandchildren’s names, and you’re actually being a shepherd. I would hope our church is doing something that’s faithful biblically, and I would hope that someone looking for a church would try to find something that fits true shepherding and pastoring of a family.

25:15 - Church Membership: A Discipleship Mechanism

Matt Tully
I would imagine there might be some people listening right now who are either from church traditions that didn’t emphasize membership very much (or maybe at all) or perhaps they just have never been a member of a church and they never saw that as a super important thing to do and never saw value in that. What advice would you give them for thinking about that for this first time? Even wondering how long should they wait before becoming a member because it feels like a big, scary commitment that they’re wrestling with? What should that look like?

Mickey Klink
I really don’t know how an individual can do what the Bible commands an individual to do, or how a church can do what the Bible commands a church to do, without the process of church membership. I think church membership is something like a discipleship mechanism. It’s a discipleship mechanism where the church commits itself—the church leaders, the congregation as a whole—commits itself as a whole to care for and shepherd an individual Christian. It’s also a discipleship mechanism in the way that an individual Christian commits and submits him or herself to a local church. It’s not like you see the world "membership" in the Bible, but the substance of membership—the subject matter of membership—is all over the place in the nature of its commands. I would hope that in some kind of a transition—if you’re moving to a new area—that you start looking for churches, you find one or two you’re attending, you're meeting with the pastors and elders, and you’re learning about the process. Maybe you’re spending a few months doing this. Even in an ideal world—some churches require this and some churches don’t—you’re even communicating with the church you left. You’re getting their insight into a particular church. You’re saying, We’re going to sit in a new members class and I’m meeting with the elders. When we transition membership, we’ll send a letter and let you know. That would be an ideal world. I think that’s happening too few and far between. Most people aren’t even thinking about membership, and to be honest with you, I don’t think most churches are even teaching on it. A lot of this falls into the fact that churches need to say, Brothers and sisters, this is what it looks like where we commit to you. I pray weekly for the thirty-two people on my membership list. They call me in the middle of the night. I am one of their shepherds. This is what it looks like. I can’t do that for the five hundred people, but I can do that for the members. Even for a church to balance it’s resources. I wonder if, in a sense, not that we don’t want to focus on new people or regular attenders, but we have covenanted, so to speak, with our members. There should be a special care that we give to them as part of our commitment to them and our commitment to us.

Matt Tully
I guess I wonder if part of the resistance or indifference that some Christians might have towards that issue of membership does stem from never really being taught or shown the importance of it—the practical value in their own lives. I think they feel like they experience all of the same benefits of a local church without going through this weird, formal process that ultimately just means their name is on a list somewhere but it doesn’t actually make a difference for their experience of the church.

Mickey Klink
That would be possible. I would be scared or concerned if other reasons would be that they don’t want the accountability or they don’t want the responsibility—the biblical prescriptions about a role or even congregational roles in a congregational church with membership meetings and voting, or service. Maybe an anti-authoritarian or anti-institutional vibe in our culture—that could definitely be part of the symptom of a lack of membership, let alone the church not teaching on such things. I think there’s a really healthy process. When we tried to set this up about four years ago in our church where we had the elders over a select group, I had a person come to our membership class (I’m the main one that teaches that) and when they talked to me at a break they said, Do you know why I signed up? I know there are probably better and more biblical reasons, but when I heard that I would be prayed for—that there was an accountability that the leadership was making to its members—I realized I need that. Yes! There are other good reasons, but that’s a good reason. We are committing ourselves to people in a local body. I think that’s what Christ commands his under shepherds to do, and membership is the way we know who they are and how to care for them and how we can keep accountable to them as to the Lord.

30:18 - Evaluating the Sermon

Matt Tully
We’ve already hit on this a little bit, but I wanted to return to the topic of preaching. We’ve said that hearing a sermon on a Sunday morning is only a snapshot of what a church is all about and their commitments and how they operate. Even with that said, a Sunday sermon is sort of the front door. It is often the first thing that someone is going to encounter about a church. For the person who is visiting a church for the first time, sitting down in the pew, waiting for the sermon to begin, what are some things that they should be watching for and paying attention to in the sermon that might be helpful for them to consider?

Mickey Klink
The way that the word is honorably and seriously handled. Not just the communicative skill of the pastor, but the centrality of the word in practice and in focus. God’s word is what God wanted to share with us. Why or how could we have anything else more important that we want to say at that corporate worship gathering than God’s word? That’s at least for me why. At least in our church, expository preaching is the primary means we do that. Not every Sunday is specifically through a book of the Bible, but it’s the majority of them because God already said what he wants us to hear. Not that expository preaching is the mark of faithful preaching, but that is one good expression of the centrality of the word of God, of getting in and letting us truly hear what God’s word wants to say. And just being careful that we have been sensitized to be entertained and to be careful that it may not be just the style of the presentation but the substance of it that is the most important. It should be God’s word in its detail that is proclaimed week after week. That is how you’re fed. That’s a good steak dinner, and that’s what we’re looking for. Illustrations? Absolutely, but it is based on God’s word.

Matt Tully
When you think about the sermon, or maybe even the worship service in general, are there any warning signs that you would encourage people to also be paying attention for?

Mickey Klink
This is tricky because I feel like it can be tempting here in this kind of a question to be critical or negative toward other aspects of Christian evangelicalism. My own concern would be an overly attractional focus of churches that would springboard from the text because the content of the text doesn’t seem exciting enough or as relevant to people—the various other topics that are prevalent in their minds and daily lives rather than the thickness and truth of God’s word. And not even just from the New Testament, but from the Old Testament. I heard a stat a few years ago that 75% of conservative churches on Sunday morning preach from Paul’s letters. Paul’s letters are 25% of the New Testament, and the Old Testament is bigger than the new. Are people hearing from the Old Testament? Are they hearing the full counsel of God’s word? Are pastors able to communicate that? Are seminaries training our people to know and explain those things to God’s flock? That’s the question. I would just hope that there would be a seriousness to God’s word that would be there, and I would be leery of finding just the attractional event as the healthiest version of what it means to do church.

33:55 - Engaging with the Leadership at a New Church

Matt Tully
You talked a little bit about when leaving a church, the value of sitting down with the church leadership and having a conversation with them about that before you just disappear. Would you say it’s also valuable to do that same kind of thing on the front end when you’re visiting a new church? If so, what kinds of questions would you want to be asking a leadership team with a new church?

Mickey Klink
I think so. We experience that. A lot of people will want to sit down. In my experience, usually those are the people that have a level of maturity and that know, or have an idea, of what a healthy church looks like and know that it’s not going to be visible just from an hour on a Sunday morning. I would want to be asking questions about the history of the church, the community in which it’s ministering, especially if I’m new. Like, how are we serving as an embassy of the kingdom in this place of which I’m going to be a part? How are we raising up disciples? The individual Christian may have some ways that that’s been done before, but may also be able to learn from the new pastor. But also just being known. I want to be faithful to the Lord. Help me know, pastor-elder, what that looks like here, how I can be a part of it, and what faithful Christianity looks like in this body? I would hope there would be a lot of overlap between churches, but the reality is that’s a very good meeting to have in moving toward the discipleship mechanism of membership, which would seem to be required not only just for the process that the Bible prescribes, but then also for the relational dynamic that a local church family has to have.

Matt Tully
You have already said that you are in a baptistic church that has a congregational model of leadership. Obviously, there are lots of different churches that have a variety of approaches to formal, spiritual leadership in the church. Even in the midst of that variety, are there things about the leadership of a church that you would consider to be non-negotiables that Christians should be paying attention to?

Mickey Klink
It can be hard to list certain specific things. Here are a couple of things I would say. I would hope that there would be a system of governance that reflects the plurality of leadership of elders. I think that’s important and I think that reflects the biblical model. A level accountability both to the congregation—at least for us as a congregational church—but then also among the elder board. I’m leery of the CEO approach. I just think there’s too much room for human error and pride. One thing I have learned is God created a variety of people with a variety of gifts, and the church needs all of those. So, a healthy plurality of leadership and accountability is significant. Those can be questions that people ask: How is the senior pastor held accountable by the elder board? Who makes the decisions? Who are the power brokers? Are there those? Those are questions I asked even as I was interviewing at this church. I asked, Are there some power brokers that aren’t even going to be on an elder board that are really trying to make decisions and influence the church? Basically, various forms of cancer or unhealth that you kind of want to PET scan to find out if it’s present. You’ll never know for sure and you’re asking the Lord to reveal that, but having a conversation, seeing a level of humility, seeing procedures that allow for a plurality and accountability of the pastors and elders is very important.

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