Courier Conversations
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Courier Conversations
Mending the Nets: Biblical Leadership for Today's Church
What does biblical church leadership look like? In this thought-provoking episode of Courier Conversations, host Jeff Robinson sits down with veteran pastors Phil Newton and Rich Shadden to discuss their new book "Mending the Nets: Rethinking Church Leadership" published by Courier Publishing.
The conversation dives deep into the biblical foundation for elder plurality in Baptist churches—a practice that may surprise many modern Southern Baptists but actually has deep historical roots in Baptist life. Newton, who served as a pastor for over four decades and now mentors pastors through the Pillar Network, explains how the metaphor of "mending nets" applies to church leadership: many churches have good leadership components but need biblical realignment rather than complete reconstruction.
Shadden, senior pastor at Park Avenue Church in Memphis since 2011, offers compelling reasons for why God prescribes plurality in church leadership: it maximizes pastoral care, prevents personality-centered ministry, and provides essential accountability. Together, they tackle common objections and questions: Aren't elders just a Presbyterian concept? If we have deacons, why do we need elders? How do multiple elders work alongside a senior pastor?
Most valuable for church leaders are the practical insights on implementing elder plurality in churches with different traditions. Newton and Shadden emphasize patience, consistent biblical teaching, and intentional development of qualified men—a process that might take years but yields healthier churches and sustainable ministry. Their wisdom comes not from theory but from having successfully navigated these transitions in their own pastoral contexts.
Whether you're a pastor considering this leadership model, a church member curious about biblical church governance, or someone interested in Baptist history and theology, this conversation provides both theological depth and practical guidance. Subscribe to Courier Conversations for more discussions that inform and inspire Baptists and beyond.
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Welcome to Courier Conversations. I am Jeff Robinson. I am president and editor-in-chief of the Baptist Courier, one of the longest-running state Baptist newspapers in the United States and 157 years old. I have not been here for that duration of that. Today, I am privileged to have an old friend and a new friend with me today, and we're talking about one of the excellent new books that has come out, has been published in the last few months through Career Publishing, which is another one of our ministries here that we're extremely excited about. The book is called Mending the Nets Rethinking Church Leadership. This book I can't recommend this enough, and so I'm going to talk to these two brothers. The authors are my old friend, and by that I mean we've been friends a long time.
Speaker 1:Phil Newton Phil pastored for 44 years in the Memphis area. Today, phil is the I'll make sure I get your title right the Director of Pastoral Care and Mentoring for the Pillar Network. So Phil is pastoring pastors, and I can't think of a better man to be doing that work. Phil, we're so grateful for your work. Welcome to the episode.
Speaker 2:Thanks, jeff, good to be with you. I pastored 35 years in Memphis and I pastored in Alabama and Mississippi as well, or those other times. But it is, yes, mississippi as well for those other times. But it is yes, I'm an old friend in both ways.
Speaker 1:But we'll leave that right there, right? Yeah, well, with us also is Phil's co-author, rich this is my new friend. We determined we just met here this afternoon, but Rich Shadden. Rich has served as senior pastor for Park Avenue Church in Memphis, tennessee, since 2011. They're both pastors, they love the local church and this is a book that is designed to benefit the local church by promoting solid biblical leadership. So, phil, tell us why it is titled Mending the Nets.
Speaker 2:Phil tell us why it is titled Mending the Nets? Yeah, the idea came from thinking about the word equip in the New Testament. It is a word that was often used, not just on mending a broken bone but also mending nets. And I think about how a net might be good. It's got good materials, good quality in it. But if a shark got hold of it and I speak out of a bit of experience, very limited, but a bit of experience 50 years ago being out on a shrimp boat and the first thing we did was mend the nets before we put them in and so we're using that analogy that churches often have really good people in place. They have the kind of character that you want, they have the competency that you're looking for in leaders, but there's some places that are torn, ripped up, just not in good biblical shape to put together for the work of ministry. And so we're trying to help churches think through okay, what does the Bible teach about? Polity, our whole leadership structure, decision-making governance. Polity, our whole leadership structure, decision-making governance.
Speaker 1:And if we follow the Bible. What does that look like? Well, you begin with one of your chapters on leadership polity. What is it about the leadership of a local church that needs to be mended, do you think? And what is leadership polity? Talk to me about that, because that's really the thesis of the book, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when we think about polity we're describing how a church is governed, and we use that term, our folks on Capitol Hill, we use the word, word policy, but we don't mean policy. We mean the whole structure of how a local church is governed. And a huge, huge part of that is what kind of leadership structure do you have? So you look biblically, you see elders, pastors, overseers and deacons, elders pastors, overseers and deacons, elders, pastor, overseer being synonymous, and there's been lots of good stuff written on that and my friend Ben Merkle has done a massive work on that. And then there is that office of deacons.
Speaker 2:So are they the same? How do they differ? If they differ, how do they work together so that the congregation is shepherded well, the needs in the congregation are met and the church has a track to run in, instead of a helter-skelter idea of what the church is, how church functions, or having a loose idea of congregationalism, thinking that congregation means that the gathered body must vote on everything that the church does. That is unwieldy, it's just not going to work well. So you see that pattern in Scripture, you see it from the Old Testament and you certainly see it in the New Testament, of godly men leading the congregation, and they are under authority both to the Lord and to that gathered body congregation. And so when we talk about this polity, we're talking about how the whole church functions together, including spiritual leadership that Christ has designated for the local church.
Speaker 1:Well, of course, throughout the book I mean, you're making an argument for a plurality of leadership in the church which probably the last hundred years or so in Southern Baptist life, if not longer, we've tended toward a single elder model. So you know, this is something that may be new to some people. Some people might even say, as was said to me once when I pastored at a church many years ago said but isn't that Presbyterian? Is that really a Baptist thing, rich? Talk to me about the necessity of plural leadership and why there's such a. You make a very, very excellent case here biblically. There's a lot of biblical material in here. Of course it's a biblical book, so talk about that a little bit if you would.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the first thing you have to do is go to the Bible and see what it has to say. I mean, I think we as humans have a tendency to lean on traditions, to lean on things that we're comfortable with. But you kind of highlighted it, jeff, it's really only the last 100 years that Baptists have kind of moved away from a plurality of elders or pastors. And when we say elder pastor, overseer, like Phil said, we mean that we think the Bible says that synonymously. So you really have two offices in the local church elders and deacons. But I think of it this way why would God prescribe for us to have a plurality of shepherds leading the church? Well, it maximizes pastoral care. If you have a plurality of godly men who are unified together in the gospel, share the burden and the privilege of shepherding God's people, you can actually care for the needs of that congregation far better than you could if there was one single pastor. It also prevents a church Well, it helps prevent, it's probably a better way to say it. It helps prevent, it's probably a better way to say it a church from leaning too much on one pastor and everything about the life of that church being shaped around his particular personality. So you have that protection there as well.
Speaker 3:But then also too, when you have a plurality of pastors, you have more accountability. When there's parity in church leadership, there's shared leadership, there's equality. That doesn't mean certain elders won't have more influence. I mean the elder or elders that give more time to the public, preaching and teaching of the word, I think will naturally have more influence. But you have to protect that, you have to guard that, because you don't want that to be perceived as authority. Like you have more authority, so you have elders that give accountability to one another. So you don't build a church around a personality, you emphasize building a church on the word of God. You hold one another accountable, you maximize pastoral care. You hold one another accountable, you maximize pastoral care, and so I think this is as I think about.
Speaker 1:Why would God prescribe this? Those are some reasons that come to mind. Well, phil, you write about Baptist history in an early chapter here. Talk a little bit about was there a time when plural eldership was really the dominant leadership structure in Baptist churches?
Speaker 2:Yeah, to use the word dominant, we would have to be you know when you're digging in trying to say I say this with absolute authority to use the word dominant, I would not be able to say it because I haven't researched all of them To say this was a prevalent, popular, a strong practice among colonial Baptists and those Baptists leading up through the 18th and 19th century. I would say absolutely. All we have to do is look at the Baptist confessions and you see that distinction brought out. If you look back at the minutes of the Philadelphia Association, which was the first Baptist association in the American colonies, you will see it peppered with evidences of elder plurality. When you read through some of the historical documents and some of the polities that have been strung together by some of the writers in the colonial period and then the post-colonial period, when we became a nation, you find them emphasizing elder plurality.
Speaker 2:The diminishing of it really started with Isaac Bacchus. I think from the research that I've done with Isaac Bacchus, john Leland and Francis Whelan, who had sentiments against anything that appeared to be authority. Well, the Bible says to obey your leader, submit to them, because they're keeping watch of your soul in Hebrews 13, 17. So there's some level of authority, but not authoritarianism, but because of Bacchus' issues. And then Leland was his disciple, and then Wayland and then Wayland, and they were the most prolific writers among Baptists, with Bacchus writing a Baptist history in the American colonies. So you look at all that and the emphasis was not on elder plurality. And then with the movement westward in establishing the nation and opening up new territories and states, a lot of times there were not many qualified men around and so that common practice that was so evident in the 18th century started slowly fading in the 19th century. Then by the time we get to the early 20th century we start seeing it just almost wiped out. But you know, you're looking at three or four generations and the primary writers and we're all influenced by the writers of the previous generation and our own generation and that has greatly diminished it.
Speaker 2:But you go back and read historically and I did this. I was doing research many years ago and I went to the big library on Poplar Avenue in Memphis, the big Memphis City Library. It's huge and it's really an amazing library. And I just started finding books on churches in the 1800s, 1900s in Tennessee, especially in Tennessee, and I kept finding these churches that had elders, these Baptist churches. So I thought, okay, this is not some oddball idea that a few people have conjured up to try to mimic Presbyterians. No, we're just trying to be biblical. It doesn't strip away congregationalism. That's a distinction. We're talking elder leadership, not elder rule, that's right.
Speaker 1:One of the arguments I've heard, being a pastor being around Southern Baptist most of my life, and especially these last 20, 25 years is this discussion about elders has become much more prevalent in seminaries and among younger pastors and we're not younger pastors but Phil and I aren't, but we've been around this discussion for a long, long time and Phil's written what this is maybe your third book on this. Phil is there on biblical eldership and yeah, and so this has been something. You've been on the leading edge of this among Southern Baptists, but Rich. One of the arguments here is hey, we have deacons, we don't need elders.
Speaker 2:What do we?
Speaker 1:need elders. For what do you say to that? When you're a young pastor, you go in to think I want to, I'd love to see our politics move in a much more biblical direction. But they say, well, you know, we've got, you know, seven deacons, we don't need any other elders.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really good question, and I think you have to with everything. We have to always go back to the scriptures, to let the scriptures define for us any of these things that we're talking about. And again we can lean on traditions and say, because I grew up in a church that I thought was a faithful Bible preaching, you know, great pastor led church, had deacons and the deacons in many ways functioned like elders. So I never thought anything different. That was my experience.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, move away from that town and end up being with Phil at Southwoods and started realizing, oh my ecclesiology hasn't necessarily on all levels been shaped by the scriptures. And so just going, shaped by the scriptures, and so just going back to the scriptures and letting them define elders and deacons or pastors and deacons, and began to really see the Bible actually says these are two different offices and serve two different purposes. And so we have to go back to the word, to let it define and shape even our polity. We might get to a place where we say, well, it's more efficient to have a single pastor, a staff, a board of deacons or whatever the case may be. But God is not necessarily concerned with our efficiency, he's concerned with our faithfulness. Are we doing it the way he prescribed in his word? And so we begin to see that in Scripture, elders are clearly the shepherds of the church. They are the overseers of the flock for the spiritual health of the church. They are given the responsibility to faithfully shepherd with the word. We used that word authority earlier. The word has the authority. Jesus Christ has the authority. He has given the responsibility of the shepherds to rightly handle the word in all the ways that it's ministered in the life of the church and to oversee that. So elders have the responsibility of leading with the word. Deacons then have the responsibility.
Speaker 3:I think Acts 6 is a helpful text in helping us see what those first deacons looked like. I mean, they were there to support the ministry of the word by caring for very important, tangible needs. It's not like the apostles were saying, hey, this is an unimportant issue here. They were saying, but if we give all of our time to addressing these widows' needs, we won't be able to do the work God has given us. So it's really a team effort and that's what's so important. It's not that you do away with one and only have the other. You actually need both in the life of a healthy church, but you have to understand the distinctions between those roles.
Speaker 1:Okay, now let's just say that I'm one of the gatekeepers for lack of a better term at a local church. We know there are gatekeepers in a lot of Southern Baptist churches. Right, and you convinced me. All right, I see that in the New Testament. But now we've got a senior pastor and you want the plurality of eldership. How do these things do? We need to get rid of him and let the elders share everything. How do these two, how do these elders all work together?
Speaker 3:Well, I think, Phil, we've probably both been in settings where we were the senior pastor without elders and then we got elders and they didn't fire us, they kept us. We figured out how to make it work, but, Phil, go ahead, Speak to this I mean it's so practical.
Speaker 2:This is where you all right, let's just say, a church decides all right, we're going to go with this elder thing and the church brings on four, five, six guys to serve as elders. All of those men and I'll emphasize men because that's the biblical practice all of these men will have different gifts and different abilities and different ways that they can best shepherd the flock. So you're going to have some with strong preaching gifts. You're going to have some with strong leadership gifts. You're going to have some with strong counseling gifts. You can have some with strong administrative gifts. Now the requirement in the Seek 1, timothy 3, titus 1, when Paul writes about elder qualifications, he spends just about all of his time on character, character, character. Then he says by the way, you got to be apt to teach or you got to be able to refute with sound doctrine. So they've got to be capable of caring for the flock through the word and exercising their authority by means of the word, as Rich was talking about. But not all of those men can stand in the pulpit. Maybe some of them don't need to be in the pulpit. I had two men that were wonderful elders that, uh, they probably would have looked at me cross-eyed if I had said, hey, I want you to preach in two weeks. But if I said, hey, I want you to teach this class or I want you to meet with some people to counsel them, they would have jumped in and loved doing that. So you're learning the strengths and weaknesses of each of those men and you're learning to play to the strengths.
Speaker 2:And you may have several guys on your elder team or elder board, whatever you call it, that have really good capabilities in the pulpit. But maybe one or two of those guys is full-time, compensated by the church and others are non-staff and so they're not being compensated. They work a full-time job. It would be pretty rigorous for them to be preaching every week and I know many guys do that in co-vocational settings. But these other guys can give full time to doing that ministry of the word from the pulpit. And the non-staff elders you play into their strengths. Maybe they're in the preaching rotation. They're certainly going to be involved in teaching. I was so thankful to have some of those guys involved with me in counseling, in administrative matters, in leadership matters.
Speaker 2:So what I would try to convince you as a gatekeeper is that if you love that pastor and you want him to be able to finish the responsibility the Lord has given to him in your church and do that well, then don't leave him hanging as the only set of shoulders upon which the burden of the congregation's care is resting.
Speaker 2:Let it rest on a number of shoulders and rely upon a number of mouths to speak and rely upon a number of feet to be engaged with the congregation. If you do that, you're going to extend your pastor's strength, energy, ability. You may very well extend his life. I'm not trying to be dramatic about it but honestly, having been in pastoral ministry for so many years, I think that's absolutely true. I've seen some guys that maybe did not last long or maybe they got just totally burned out because they didn't have that kind of support mechanism. You're helping that pastor to be able to fulfill his calling because he's got other pastors around him who have other strengths that maybe he doesn't have, and they're partnering together in a spirit of unity to serve the church.
Speaker 1:Well, we only have a little time left, maybe one more, and I'll let you can both speak to this, or either one of you. And, by the way, the question I'm answering are answered in detail in significant depth in the book. So if you want more of this, you need more of this, get the book. We're just sort of teasing things here, which is good. Okay, let's say that I'm a young pastor. I'm convinced that the New Testament witness demands two offices elders and plurality of elders and deacons. And I'm going into, you know, first, baptist church of bug tussle, georgia, where I grew up, and uh and uh. You know, I, I want to, I want to move to this. How do we, how do we do this? How do we get a church moving in this direction? And and how do we start this? Because, you know, maybe some of these people have never even heard of this and still think it's Presbyterian.
Speaker 2:Yeah, rich, go for it.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, this is the process I walked through, but I'm so thankful Phil's sitting right here in this conversation, because the first thing I would encourage a young man to do in that setting is one, be patient, seek the Lord was one be patient, seek the lord. And if god is pleased to do it, try to find a godly mentor who you can talk through this with. So I had phil in my life to help me walk through these things. But you need that more mature voice speaking into your life who it can just help you consider when I should push and and or pump the brakes and those kinds of things. Um, but then you, you have to let the word do the work. So if you're going to make that transition toward elder plurality, which I think scripture prescribes for us and God wants from us, you've got to layer it and I'm just parenting feel here Layer it with teaching upon teaching, upon teaching. And this happens in public settings, this happens in small group settings, this happens in many, many one-on-one conversations.
Speaker 3:And I don't think you measure how fast you go compared to other churches. You just can't do that. You have to continue to try to know the flock that you're serving, understand where they are, whether it takes two years or 10 years, and you just continue to help them. See from the word, this is what God desires for us, this is what he has for us, and we need to move toward this. And then, on top of that, you don't want to quickly put the wrong men in place. You want to make sure that, as you're working through the process, you trust also that while you're investing in men, you may see, as future elders, that God is also raising up those men. But don't speed up that process. You don't want to get in a situation where the idea of elders looked right and biblical and good, but the men were not ready. So you just want to be patient and walk through that with teaching upon teaching upon teaching, phil teaching upon teaching, upon teaching.
Speaker 2:Phil, do you want to add to that? Yeah, and the one thing, rich, you too you're going to be investing in a pastor, should do this from the get-go Train, men Do a Timothy 2-2 kind of ministry where you're training up faithful men and that becomes the pipeline that eventually supplies that need for elders and maybe pastors for other congregations, missionaries, church planners. You are training up men and out of that Lord raises up some of those men that will serve the congregation as elders, as elders, and, I think, patience and gentleness, no club, no, driving a freight train through the church, no, don't do that, don't you know? By all means, try to keep from doing something that's going to split the church and that may mean that instead of doing this in three years or five years, it might be seven years, like it was with Rich, or it might be 10 years, it might be 15 years, but during that time you're not wasting time, you're teaching your congregation how to think biblically, and that's the most critical thing. Teach them how to think biblically and then it generally just kind of naturally flows that way, and I've had this kind of conversation so many times with guys for years and with the leaders in churches.
Speaker 2:I was just in a church up north last weekend before last having this conversation. I think they're getting ready to vote on a transition to elders in the next week or two and I had a conversation with a whole congregation, two-hour Q&A. It was a sweet time, great questions and the main thing is helping people understand. This is not a foreign idea. This is who we are as Baptistsists. We are a people of the book. So let's just be a people of the book and that way we don't have to dodge those texts like first peter 5. I remember kind of sidestepping that many years ago thinking, oh how do I deal with this? I don't want to get kicked out right up front. You don't have to sidestep anything. Let the word speak. Let the word, as Rich mentioned, let the word do the work.
Speaker 3:And Phil, I'm glad you mentioned that part of training men. And so, jeff, if there was like a plan or a process, you're teaching the congregation, you're investing in future men, future elders, and then at some point you actually have to start to walk the church through the process. So that would maybe be a three-step plan if you were trying to practically put nuts and bolts to it three-step plan if you were trying to practically put nuts and bolts to it.
Speaker 1:Well, this is a great discussion, a helpful discussion and, just on a personal note, I have had the privilege of pastoring two churches that had a plurality of elders. One moved to that plurality in Alabama While I was there. We elected elders and it went fairly well and it took a while. It was already in the works when I got there got there. Thankfully the previous pastor had put all that in motion and done the hard work of uh, getting the polity changed in the bylaws and then a church that was born in louisville, kentucky, that was born with plurality of elders that saw this already in scripture.
Speaker 1:And phil newton uh, phil, uh, phil was my friend, uh, before that, but uh, I think we met when I was was much younger and a seminary student at the time at Southern Seminary, and then Phil was on my what we called speed dial back then. We had hours and hours of conversations about this. So Rich Phil was my mentor in this as well and was an expert help, because I knew Phil had written a book on this as a Baptist, and so it was very helpful. But this is a great discussion. You've produced a phenomenal resource here. The book is concise but there's great depth to it.
Speaker 1:If you're a young pastor and you see this in the New Testament, want to move your church toward this thing, read this book. If you're a veteran pastor and you've come to these convictions, get this book. This book will provide you much help from two veteran pastors who have undertaken this wisely, because it does demand a lot of wisdom and patience, doesn't it? Especially in Southern Baptist life, and so the book is Mending the Nets, rethinking Church Leadership. Brothers, thank you for coming on today and I appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing this resource, through Baptist or Courier Publishing, get a wide, wide usage in Baptist life and perhaps beyond.
Speaker 2:We're thankful for the opportunity to publish it and hope it's useful. Yeah, thank you guys.
Speaker 1:All right. Thanks a lot. Thank you for tuning in to Courier Conversations. Be sure to like us on all the social media platforms and consider giving us a five-star review. For more information about the Courier, the Baptist Courier, the monthly magazine, go to wwwbaptistcouriercom, which is updated with news and features aimed at serving South Carolina Baptists and local churches, promoting healthy pastors, healthy local churches. Daily, updated daily, so don't miss that. Again. Thanks, brothers. We'll look forward to continuing this conversation and picking it up perhaps again in the future.
Speaker 4:We're glad you joined us for Courier Conversations, where we are informing and inspiring South Carolina Baptists and beyond. For more information about these topics and more, subscribe to our e-edition or go to our website at baptistcouriercom. The Courier is located in Greenville, south Carolina, as a multimedia ministry partner of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. To comment about today's podcast, email us at conversations at baptistcouriercom. This podcast, produced by Bob Sloan Audio Productions,
