Luke writes in the book of Acts to remind us of how God instructed the church to be ordered. I don’t read it to mean structure it like a corporate business in which the responsibility of the elders changes from focusing on ministry to the congregation to protection of the lead minister. I don’t understand it as saying the elders job is to make the lead minister successful. I interpret it to say one of the elder’s responsibilities is to look out for those who come seeking God, to work for prospering the work of the gospel. The change in the bylaws in conjunction with the actions of leadership to protect the lead minister at the news of the conviction of a former youth pastor led to the loss of almost 90% of the membership of FCCF. I don’t think they banked on that turn of events while they were discussing the bylaw changes.
“It reminded me of the comments allegedly said in an elder training session about the willingness of leadership to lose hundreds of members in order to gain thousands as part of the new industrial complex model. The outcropping consequence turned out to be that FCCF lost their building, as they could not make the annual payment on the building’s loan.” (Taylor, Joy S., A View from the Pews — The Inside Story of a Broken Church, 2022 Lily of the Valley Publishing, Santa Claus IN, p. 37.)
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