New African Church Leadership

What’s a church to do when it’s committed to rule by a plurality of Biblically qualified elders, yet God has not placed such men within it?  It’s a dilemma that often accompanies church planting in societies not yet penetrated by the saving gospel of God’s grace.

When my director planted our church here in Africa in 1993, no member besides him met the requirements for eldership according to the church’s interpretation of I Timothy 3 and Titus 1.  So all ten men involved in its founding served as provisional leaders, intending to hand over leadership to the first two elder-qualified men in the congregation.  But for 32 years, my director remained the only one!

By the time I arrived in 2018, only three of the founding men remained in the church.  One of them, Arnaldo, subsequently stepped down from active leadership as his health declined.  My director is now 72 years old and will undergo a cardiology procedure in a neighboring country this week, so questions about his own future here prompted his urgency to add more provisional leaders to the church’s board to avoid its potentially being reduced to only one man.

Though our congregation lacks other married men with children old enough to prove their faithfulness, God has blessed us with mature believers who meet the spiritual qualifications for eldership.  The three founding leaders who remain in the church (my director, Arnaldo, and Gustavo) proposed six of them as provisional leaders.  Two declined the nomination because they have moved to other cities and are currently unable to return to our town, and one declined for other reasons.

The three who accepted the nomination are Calton, Jeremias and Zarito.  This Sunday, our congregation voted on whether to accept each one onto the provisional leadership board.  All three were approved by majority vote and are now leaders in our church!  My director remains in that capacity as well, but both Arnaldo and Gustavo decided to definively relinquish to the younger generation the baton they have carried for the past 32 years.

The meeting on Sunday was historic for our church, marking the first time ever that new leadership was selected.  As it ended, I snapped this photo of the outgoing and incoming leaders, showing (from left to right) Zarito, Gustavo, Jeremias, Arnaldo, and Calton.  Pray for the three younger men as they assume joint servant leadership of Christ’s body, and for the two older ones as they counsel their successors.  Pray too that God will grant my director many more years of fruitful service to His Church in Africa.  And pray that He will soon give us a plurality of Biblically qualified elders.