On eldership and walking with the Spirit: Lift Your Vision Higher

Having been recently installed as an elder in my church, I come to the position with an awareness of how all my prior experiences have prepared me for this. I have been an elder in churches twice before, once in my twenties, once in my thirties, and now in my fifties. I was unofficially a spiritual leader in my forties in a church where the official eldership were not the spiritual leaders of the church.

So why do I think these experiences have prepared me? Well, I'm in a young church with an inexperienced pastor, attended by young Christians, and I'm the oldest elder by a decade. The issues we are dealing with are all familiar ground for me. I've been through them before. Where others are worried and panicking, I am not concerned.

However, I am not serene because I can supply a tried-and-proven solution, it is because I am more keenly aware of how God intervenes in situations. My continuing refrain in elders meetings is, "What is the Holy Spirit saying?" When we stop following the ways of the flesh, or conventional wisdom, or what seems obvious or logical, we start keeping in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:25), and many of our problems and issues seem to fade away.

So my experience has not supplied me with answers, but with ways of thinking. Romans 12:2: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will." This verse has been a favorite of mine for a long time, but it continually surprises me afresh as God brings new revelation about what it means to be transformed. So that's where my attention is concentrated. The mind corrupted by the world vs. the mind transformed.

Even the charismatics, who to a person would claim to be led by the Holy Spirit, fall into this trap. After all, how many of them think that the move of the Holy Spirit must mean being slain in the spirit or receiving the gift of tongues? We are all stuck in these patterns, these paradigms, which become rigid ways of interpreting spiritual things. We become bound up by what God did yesterday to the point that we cannot see what He is doing today.

God recently gave me a Word, which continues to resonate through our church: "Lift your vision higher." This came to mind as I thought back to a song we used to do years ago with the same title. I realized that our eyes are fixed on the wrong things, and we need to lift our vision higher. We need to be ready to challenge our understandings and recognize what the Holy Spirit is doing today. 

So I watched in amazement as a critical issue of the church solved itself without human intervention. This has happened more than once. The elders, including me, were ready to knock some heads. Our list of complaints was long. But one by one, each item was checked off by the Holy Spirit. The people involved, while presenting their ideas for their ministry, repeated almost verbatim the things we needed to see changed. It was astonishing.

"Lift your vision higher." What are we looking at? What are we allowing to divert our attention? As Paul asks in Galatians 5:7: "You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth?" Lift your vision higher. What is God saying right now? Lift your vision higher. Does it violate your paradigm? It's probably the Holy Spirit.

I'm a little wiser (I hope) as time passes. I desperately don't want to become an old geezer stuck in my ways. I want to be on the cutting edge of what the Holy Spirit is doing today. I want to lead as an elder to places no one has seen, if that's where God is. I question everything. Why do we meet on Sunday? Why do we have a worship band? Why do we have an offering? Sunday school? Preaching? We might want some or all these things, but just because we do them doesn't mean we should keep doing them.

Lift your vision higher.