The Elders Service Team seeks to continue fulfilling our role to bring focus and expertise in Elder and Eldership development to the International Churches of Christ. We are encouraged by the number of churches outside the US who are actively involved in training elder candidates for the role.

We anticipate as many as 12 – 20 new elders in 5-8 churches in the next year! With continuing increases in the US we should soon have over 200 elders in over 50 churches worldwide.

The Elder committee was asked to contribute to the planning of the Married Ministry track at the WDS in terms of both content and speakers. We are very excited about the hand of God moving among our fellowship as we gather to focus on “The Mountain of the Lord”! We want to see the families of our churches trained, nurtured and filled with the Holy Spirit and Word of God! Our prayer is that the messages, classes and fellowship will connect the hearts of the parents to the children and the families to our God!

The Committee set forth two proposals for consideration by the delegates at this year’s meetings. The first is a process for conflict resolution which sets forth a biblical call for efforts first on the local congregation level, then as needed seeking help from the leadership of the family of churches and if unsuccessful to then request help from the elder committee and the broader brotherhood! The second is a call for churches to function in the family of churches in closest proximity. This proposal recognizes the benefit of historic and/or new relationships among us but proposes that proximity of our churches be placed ahead of that in terms of which family we function in primarily. It is our prayer these will contribute to greater unity among us as every effort is made to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace!

Finally the elder committee continues to enjoy a great partnership and working relationship with the evangelists and teachers committees of our fellowship! In March of this year we met for several days in Ft Lauderdale to have separate face-to-face time to pray, study and discuss ways to encourage positive progress in cooperation among our churches. We are encouraged to see annual growth among our churches and hope to see it continue to pick up momentum. We are also encouraged to see increasing maturity, mutual respect and Godly synergy as we together with others of these different leadership roles share time, perspective and recommended ways to improve the function and affection among our churches! Using task forces composed of participants from all three committees was especially helpful in combining the benefit of each gifted role on specific areas or proposed next steps of cooperation! We believe each church should be aiming for a mix of these gifts in it’s leadership as we mature. We are excited to help in the appointment of more elders but never want to be seen to devalue the place of evangelists or teachers as we do so!

Current Service Team  for June 2012

Wyndham Shaw, Chair — Boston
Al Baird — Los Angeles
Bill Hooper — Dallas / Ft. Worth
Israel Ereola — Lagos
Dan Liu — Hong Kong
John Brush — S Florida
Ron Brumley — Seattle
Sam Laing — Athens, GA
Walter Evans — Philadelphia
Frank Kim — Denver
Larry Craig — New York