Elders / Leadership

Lord, I don't think we are ready for elders yet...

Strikes me that what an elder does (good gauge): if something happens to the pastor, "We will step up and lead this church until we can get a new one..."

I'm pretty sure we don't have three of those in our church right now. Plus, people in the church have to be willing to follow... I think we are still 2-3 years away from this (and it is difficult for me to see even that happening unless we grow).

The need for leadership in a house church / bivocational setting setting is acute. More specifically, the importance of realizing the need for a particular kind of leadership...

• if you take someone who knows how to lead in a large, corporate setting or government job – if you ask them to step in an lead a private, bootstrapped startup, there's a very good chance they will kill it.
• So too with traditional church leaders (particularly in our denomination, where there's lots of things we're not good at) – if you ask them to lead / guide / steer a house church, and they simply try to turn it into a conventional institutional church, they're probably going to kill it
• (In the same way, if you asked me to lead a conventional church, it's likely going to be very difficult for them, me, or both)