Some Potential Questions for Elder Candidate

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By Tom Hicks

[Not comprehensive. Not in any particular order.]

How would you counsel someone who asked you how much they should give to the church?

What is your perspective on congregationalism?

Do you think it’s valuable for a church to have a prayer meeting? What do you believe about officers coming to prayer meeting? Would you come to prayer meeting as pastor?

Why are you a Baptist? What does it mean to be a Baptist?

What about Sunday afternoon service? How important is it to the church’s life and health?

Do you affirm our confession’s doctrine of the Sabbath?

Do you affirm the doctrine of “inerrancy?” [Familiar with the Chicago Statement?]

What does it mean to have “the ability to teach?”

Do you agree with our church’s confession of faith? Do you take any exceptions to anything in them?

What has God taught you over the past few years?

What is the mission of the church?

What do you believe are the most dangerous errors facing the church today?

What are the three uses of the moral law of God?

How would you describe the difference and similarity between the law and the gospel? Are we required to keep the law today?

Who should be permitted to take the Lord’s Supper?

What are your views on Christian liberty? Drinking, smoking?

What are some key things people need to understand about justification and sanctification?

What is the “order of salvation?”

What is the biblical definition of forgiveness?

Under what conditions, if any, should someone be allowed to get a divorce?

If someone was baptized as an infant, should we require that person to be immersed?

What if someone suggested that we use a dramatic presentation of a biblical story in public worship? How would you respond?

What is your testimony of conversion?

How does a pastor lead God’s people?

How would you describe your calling to be a pastor? Discuss the relationship between the internal call and the external call. How do you know for certain God has called you and that it isn’t self-deceptive presumption? How would you respond if the church chose not to call you to be a pastor?

Do you believe you will be able to pastor the other pastors and deacons of this church? What does that look like?

If no other called man were available, do you believe you could pastor a church by yourself?

Do you hold any position in theology that we might find unusual or controversial?

Would you say that you affirm the five points of Calvinism?

What would you do / How would you react if your church did not call you to be a pastor?

How would you counsel someone who repeatedly gives in to the same sin? Say you are trying to pastor a man who has regular outbursts of sinful anger. He knows it is a sin. He is grieved and sorrowful when he does it and wants to overcome it, but he fails over and over. How do you deal with him? What do you tell him?

As an elder, what will you do if you fundamentally disagree with the Senior Pastor on a practical issue not closely related to the gospel? [When should you submit to the leadership of the senior pastor and when should you not submit?]

What if it comes to your attention that a Senior Adult teacher is teaching against the doctrine of predestination? How will you handle it?

How would you handle an issue in which a deacon’s wife is gossiping and spreading rumors? What would you do?

What is the proper relationship between “shepherding” and “ruling?” Between “teaching” and “getting involved in people’s lives?”

How should a pastor/elder love the sheep?

What text of Scripture would you point someone to if you wanted to teach them the doctrine of sanctification?

Could you list 3 or 4 doctrines that our church should not divide over? Could you list 3 or 4 doctrines that our church should divide over?

Could you give us a brief outline of your pastoral theology? (Theology of the pastorate?)

How do you handle criticism? How would your wife handle criticism of you?

Could you describe/discuss how (and how often) family worship takes place in your home?

How do you define “success” in the role of the pastor?

What effects would you want to see as fruits of your pastoral ministry?

Smart Peace and Stupid Peace

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The transcript (with slight editing for refinement) is from Tim Keller’s sermon “Peace” (April 25, 2010), preached at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in the series The Real Signs of the Spirit, on Philippians 4:4–12:

… if you walk into a Barnes and Noble or a Borders bookstore, and you go to the section on anxiety, worry, stress, dealing with stress, how to relax, and you get out a book, here is what they will never do. None of these books will ever say, “So you are stressed, you are worn out, you know, anxious. Let us start by asking the big questions. What is the meaning of life? What are you really here for? What is your life all about? Where have you come from and where are you going? What should human beings spend their time doing?” Never.

Do you think that is going to relieve stress to a modern New Yorker? Of course not. Why? Here is why. They go right to the technique. They never ask you to think. They never say, “Let us think about the big questions. What is life all about? Let us put things in perspective.” Never. They go to techniques. They go to relaxation techniques. They go to work and rest balance. For example, they will say, look, a couple of times, you know, every quarter, go somewhere, sit on a beach, look at the surf, and just bracket it out, stop worrying, stop thinking about everything. Or they will give you thought control techniques for dealing with negative thoughts, negative emotions, guilt thoughts, and so forth. They will never tell you to think. They will tell you to go right to the technique.

Here is why. Let me read you two. You will not see where I am going for a second, but let me read you two interesting quotes.

Here is Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin said, quote: “A person who has no assured belief in the existence of a personal God, and no belief in a future existence with retribution or reward, such a person can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow whatever impulses and instincts are the strongest, or whatever seems to him to be the best ones.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the great Supreme Court justice, quite a formidable intellectual in the early to mid twentieth century, once wrote this to a friend in his personal correspondence. He said: “There is no reason for attributing to a man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand. The world has produced me and the rattlesnake, but I will kill it if I get the chance, and the only reason is because it is incongruous to the world I want, the world everyone is trying to make according to one’s own power.”

Now, by the way, Oliver Wendell Holmes got a lot of heat for this. He is a Supreme Court justice, you know, and he says there is no rational reason to say that a human being is really more valuable, more significant, than an animal or a rock. Oh my goodness. People have gone after him for it. But you know what his biographers have said? He is just working out the implications. This is what Darwin is saying too. If you do not believe in God, and you believe you are here by accident, and when you die you rot, that is it, and when the sun dies everything goes away, then nothing that human beings have ever tried to accomplish amounts to anything.

What are the implications of that? One of them is that there is no right and wrong. You may feel there is right and wrong. Darwin says you may have a feeling, but your feelings should not trump anybody else’s. You can feel it, but there is no right and wrong. There is really no way to tell people how they ought to live. Holmes is right. Ultimately, what a human being is, is that we are the product of these forces, and we are going to go away someday. And what is to say? You may feel more significant than an animal or a rock, but you are not. What the biographer said was that Holmes was simply thinking out the implications of not believing there is a God, or that there is a purpose in life.

Well, I know plenty of New Yorkers who have the same beliefs. Lots of people have the same beliefs. That is, they do not think there is a God. They think things are here by accident. But they would say that to think about it like that, to work out the implications, is morbid. Okay, fine. That is fine, to say, let us not think out the implications, it is morbid. But I want you to see what you are doing. You are getting your peace by not thinking out the implications of your beliefs.

Whereas Paul is saying Christian peace is exactly the opposite. Christian peace comes from thinking out the implications. Thinking. What is true and what is right? What is the Christian doctrine of God? There is a God, and He made us for fellowship with Him. He created a perfect world, a world in which there was originally no sorrow or disease or death, and He wanted to live with us in it. Of course it has all gone wrong. We have turned from Him and the world is broken. But He has sent His Son into the world to rescue us, and He is preparing a new heavens and a new earth, and we are going to live with Him forever. Look at your value. Look at the fact that the future is secure.

Now what does that mean? If you are a Christian today, and you believe all that doctrine, and you are not at peace, you are not thinking. That is what it is: you are not thinking. You see, there is a stupid peace and then there is a smart peace. Let me define the stupid peace. The stupid peace is, “Ho, ho, ho, to the bottle I go, to heal my heart and drown my woe.” Now what is that? I am going to pop a cork, I am going to sit under a tree, I am going to look at the surf, and I am not going to think. I am going to bracket it out. You see, if I think about all the things that are going wrong in life and in the world, I am just going to bracket it. I am not going to think as much.

But Paul’s point is this: if you are a Christian, you do not bracket out, you bracket in. You think big. Big picture. Everything is going to be okay. If you really believe just the basic Christian truth, and you think it and think it and think about it, you are going to get peace. And if you do not have peace, you are not thinking. There is a stupid peace and there is a smart peace, and the Christian’s peace is not by making yourself stupid. It is by making yourself as aware of your beliefs, as thoughtful, as possible.

The Consequences of Dispensational Zionism in Today’s World

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The transcript below is taken from two places in Voddie Baucham’s sermon “The Battle of Armageddon?” (Grace Family Baptist Church, June 23, 2013, Revelation 16:12-16, series “Revelation 6-16”), the first block running from 6:23 to about 7:25 and the second from about 29:45 to 31:51, both at https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermons/625132035572

The overwhelming majority in the Christian world not only hold to these views, but condemn others who don’t. This is huge, folks. This is a big deal. To not be a dispensational Zionist, and to not believe that the current nation-state of Israel is God’s centerpiece as it relates to end-time prophecy, is, for many people, completely unacceptable. Unfortunately, for many people, because of dispensational Zionism, everything Israel does is right, and we must support them in everything that they do.

Here’s the other problem with that. This idea limits our ability to examine and measure ourselves. See, here’s what’s interesting. I can be as much of an enemy of God as anyone else, worshiping at the altar of the beast and this world system, and at the same time hold on to this idea that this world system has to accept Israel as a geopolitical entity so that I’m not on the wrong side of the war. If it’s only about being on the side of Israel in geopolitical matters, they can do things that are ungodly. And by supporting those things that are ungodly, I’m an enemy of God. But because I have reduced this idea to just supporting a geopolitical nation, I’ve completely missed the point.

This is true spiritual warfare. That’s the great irony. If we’re not careful, and we’re watching the newspaper, and we’re watching what happens in the Middle East and trying to figure out what’s going on with Syria, what’s going on with Iraq, what’s going on with China, what’s going on with Russia, what’s going on with Saudi Arabia, what’s going on with Egypt, what’s going on with fill in the blank. And while we’re looking at it, this war is going on right under our noses. Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

That’s our war, and that’s this war. “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). That’s where this war is. Never mind that we out-Sodom-and-Gomorrah Sodom and Gomorrah. What matters is, when those armies come across the Euphrates, we are going to send troops and stand with Israel. And therefore God will overlook us out-Sodom-and-Gomorrah-ing Sodom and Gomorrah, because we fight on the right side of the Battle of Armageddon. God help us if that’s the way we think.