Church Family Meetings
In our understanding of church leadership, within the Salt & Light family of churches internationally, we see a clear New Testament pattern of local leaders (elders and deacons) working harmoniously with what are sometimes called ‘translocal’ leaders (‘apostolic teams’), and also with the people who together are the local church.
For example, 1 Thessalonians 2 describes beautifully the fatherly and motherly tone with which Paul’s apostolic team related to the regular people in the church in Thessalonica. 1 Peter 5 (and many similar passages) exhorts local leaders to shepherd God’s flock well, by example and with servant hearts. The letters from the apostolic teams to the churches (epistles) seem to have been read to the whole church (e.g. 1 Thessalonians 5.27), which tells us that apostolic teams related to the whole church not just to leadership.
So, we believe in leadership, both local and wider. We want wider leadership to have a healthy relationship to the local church, so that, especially at times of crisis or transition, wider leadership can come in and support, through good relationship. That’s what we see in Acts and the rest of the New Testament and that’s what we want to see working in all our local churches.
Within this ‘ecosystem’ of relationships, how are decisions made?
There’s a wonderful phrase in Acts 15 that can help us. After a heated debate, about the right way to include newly converted Gentiles in the Jewish-majority church, a wise decision is reached and a letter is sent to the churches including this phrase, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”
Which brings me to Church Family Meetings, which have been a habit across our family of churches since the 1980s: to gather the whole church from time to time, especially those who see themselves as committed members, to seek God together, to hear what he is saying prophetically, to consult with leadership and so to move forward together in faith.
That is quite different from the kind of members’ meetings or AGMs one finds in some church denomination. It is also quite different from other contexts where all decisions are made by professional church staff or the bishop or even, just the Pastor. It’s some kind of nuanced combination of all that, and so it’s important that we guard good relationship, and the tone of our Church Family Meetings.
In church family meetings we want a spiritual atmosphere of hearing God together and finding faith in what he says to us. So, as we come to church family meetings, please come with that mindset and posture. We will worship together. We will make time to hear what God is saying. We will hear updates from leadership, including on church finances. Together we want to hear God for his plan for his church as we move in his purposes.