Courier Conversations
This Podcast of Courier Conversations will be a conversation of topics with a variety of guests that concern, inspire and inform Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find our stories informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
Elders, Deacons, and the Net
What if the strain so many churches feel isn’t from weak people but from worn-out structures? We sit down with Phil Newton and Rich Shadden, co-authors of Mending the Net: Rethinking Church Leadership, to explore how biblical polity—rooted in a plurality of elders and distinct deacon service—repairs the holes that exhaust pastors, confuse authority, and limit pastoral care. Drawing from Scripture and Baptist history, we unpack why elders/pastors/overseers are one office, how deacons support the ministry of the Word, and why this model strengthens accountability, guards against personality-driven ministry, and scales care to meet real needs across a congregation.
Together we trace the decline of elder plurality in the last century and recover evidence from confessions and association minutes that show this approach was common among earlier Baptists. Phil and Rich make a practical, pastor-tested case: elder leadership within congregationalism is not elder rule; it’s shepherding under Christ and with the church’s oversight. We walk through the distinctions between elders and deacons, the benefits of parity and shared responsibility, and how multiple shepherds bring diverse gifts—preaching, counseling, administration—into a unified team that keeps the Word central.
For pastors and members ready to act, we lay out a patient roadmap: teach the Bible’s pattern across the pulpit, classes, and conversations; invest in faithful men as a pipeline for future elders; and implement changes carefully through bylaws and transparent processes. Whether you’re leading a church with a long single-pastor tradition or planting with plurality from day one, this conversation offers clarity, courage, and concrete steps to build healthier churches for the long haul.
If this episode helped you rethink leadership, subscribe, share it with your team, and leave a review so others can find it. Then tell us: what part of your church’s structure needs mending first?
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Welcome to Courier Conversations. I am Jeff Robinson. I am president and editor-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 Net, 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, uh Phil Newton, Phil pastored for 44 years in uh the Memphis area. Uh today uh Phil is the, I'll make sure I get your title right, 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 uh that that work. Phil, we're so grateful for your work. Welcome to the the episode.
Speaker 03:Thanks, Jeff. Could be with you. I pastored 35 years in Memphis and I pastored in Alabama, Mississippi as well for those other times. But it is uh uh yes, I'm an old friend in both ways.
Speaker 01:But we'll leave that right there. Uh right. Yeah. Uh well, with us also is uh Phil's co-author, Rich. Uh this is uh my new uh new friend. We determined we just met here uh this afternoon, but Rich Shadden. Uh 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 uh promoting solid biblical leadership. So, Phil, tell us why it is titled Mending the Nets.
Speaker 03:Yeah, the idea came from um thinking about the the word equip in the New Testament. Uh it it is a word that was often used not just on mending a broken bone, but also mending nets. And I think about how uh a net might be good, it's got good materials, good quality in it, but if a shark got hold of it, and I'm I speak out of a bit of experience, very limited, but a bit of experience, uh 50 years ago, uh being out on a shrimp boat, and the first thing we did was mend the nets before we we put them in. And and so we're using that analogy that churches often have really good people in place. Uh they have uh the kind of character that you want, they have the competency that you're looking for in leaders, but there's some some places that are torn, ripped up, just not in good biblical shape to put together for the the work of ministry. And so we're we're we're trying to help churches think through, okay, what does the Bible teach about polity, our whole leadership structure, decision-making, governance, and and if if we follow the Bible, what does that look like?
Speaker 01:Well, you begin uh with with one of your chapter on uh leadership polity. What is it, what is it about uh the leadership of a local church uh that that needs to be mended, do you think? And and what is leadership polity? Talk to me about that, because that's really the thesis of the book, isn't it?
Speaker 03:Yeah. Yeah, when we think about polity, we're describing how a church is governed. And we use that term. Uh I our folks on Capitol Hill will use the 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 how what kind of leadership structure do you have? So you you look biblically, you see uh elders, pastors, overseers, and deacons, elders, pastor, overseer being uh synonymous, and there's been lots of good stuff written on that, and my my friend Ben Merkel has done a massive work on that. And and then uh the uh there is that office of beacon. So are they the same? How do they differ? If they differ, how do they work together so that the the congregation is shepherded well, the needs in the congregation are met, and and the church has a track to run on, uh you know, instead of a helter-skelter idea uh of you know what what the church is, how church functions, or uh having a a loose idea of congregationalism, thinking that congregation means that the gathered body must vote on everything that the church does. Uh that is unwieldy. It's just not going to work well. Uh so you see that pattern in scripture, uh, see it from the old testament, you see 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 of the congregation. Uh and so when when we talk about this apology, we're we're talking about the whole how the whole church functions together, uh, including spiritual leadership that Christ has designated for the local church.
Speaker 01:Well, of course, throughout the book, I mean you you're 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 we've tended toward a single elder model. So, you know, this is something that may be new uh to some people. Uh some people might even say, as was said to me once when I pastored uh at a church many years ago, said, but isn't that Presbyterian? Is that a is that really a Baptist thing? Uh Rich, talk to me about uh the necessity of plural leadership and why uh there's such a you make a very uh very um excellent case here biblically. There's a lot of biblical material in here. Of course, it's the biblical book. So talk about that a little bit, if you would.
Speaker 02:Well, I think the first thing you have to do is go to the Bible to see what it has to say. I mean, we 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 uh a plurality of elders or pastors. And when we say elder, pastor, overseer, like Phil said, we mean that synonymous, we think the Bible says that synonymously. So you really have two offices in the local church, elders and past 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, um, 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, it well, 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 uh protection there as well. But then also, too, when you have a plurality of pastors, you have more accountability. Uh, 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 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 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 one another accountable, you maximize pastoral care. And so I think this is as I think about why would God prescribe this, those are some reasons that come to mind.
Speaker 01:Well, Phil, you write about uh Baptist history uh in in an early chapter here. Talk a little bit about uh have have was there a time when uh plural eldership was really uh the the dominant uh uh leadership uh structure in uh Baptist churches?
Speaker 03:Yeah, uh to to use the word dominant, we would have to be uh you know, when you're you're digging in, trying to say, I say this with absolute authority, uh, to use the word dominant, I would, I would not be a mistake because I haven't researched all of them. To say this was a prevalent, popular, uh strong practice among colonial Baptists and uh those uh Baptists leading up uh through the uh 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. Uh 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. Uh, we when you read through some of the historical documents and some of the the polities that that have been strung together by some of the writers in the colonial period and then the post-uh-colonial period when we became a nation, uh you you find them emphasizing elder plurality. The the the diminishing of it really started uh with Isaac Bacchus. I I think from the research that I've done with Isaac Bacchus, John Leland, and Francis Whalen who uh who had sentiments against uh anything that appeared to be authority. Well, the the the Bible says uh uh to obey your leaders, 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 some of Bacchus's uh issues, and then Leland was his disciple, and then Wayland, and they were the most prolific writers among Baptists, uh, with Bacchus writing a Baptist history uh in in the uh American colonies. So you're looking all that, and the emphasis was not on elder plurality, and it and then with the movement westward in uh establishing the nation and opening opening up new territories and states, uh a lot of times there were not many qualified men around. And so that that common practice that 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. Uh, but you know, you're you're looking at three or four generations and uh uh the the primary writers, and we we're all influenced by the writers uh of the the previous generation and our own generation, and that has greatly diminished it. But you you go back and read historically, and I I did this, I was doing research many years ago, and I I went to the to the uh the big library on Poplar Avenue in Memphis, the the the big Memphis City Library, it's huge, and it's really an amazing uh library, and I just started finding books on on uh churches in the uh 1900s, uh 1800s, 1900s in uh Tennessee, uh 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. Uh it doesn't strip away congregationalism. That's that's the distinction. We're talking elder leadership, not elder rule. That's right.
Speaker 01:Well, Rich, one of the one of the arguments I've heard uh being a pastor, being around the Southern Baptist most of my life, and especially these last 20-25 years, is this discussion about elders has become much more prevalent uh in uh in seminaries and among especially 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 you've been one of the on the leading edge of this among Southern Baptists. But Rich, one of the arguments here is, hey, we we have deacons. We don't need elders. What do what do we need elders for? What what do you say to that when uh you're a young pastor, you go in to think, I want to, you know, I'd love to see our public 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. Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 02: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. And then, you know, move away from that town and and end up being with Phil at Southwoods and and started realizing, oh, my ecclesiology hasn't necessarily on all levels been 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 we have to go back to the word to let it define and shape even our polity. We 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 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. The we use 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. I think Acts 6 is that great 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 01:Okay, now let's let's just say uh that I'm I'm one of the uh gatekeepers, for lack of a better term, at a local church. We know there are gatekeepers in uh a lot of Southern Baptist churches, right? Uh and uh you convince me, all right. I see that in the New Testament, but now we've got a senior pastor, uh, and you want the plurality of eldership. How do these things, do we need to get rid of him uh and let the elders share everything? How do these, how do these two uh how do they how how do these elders all work together?
Speaker 02: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 they kept us, we figured out how to make it work, but but Phil, go ahead, speak to this. I mean, it's it's so practical.
Speaker 03:This this is where you uh all right, let's just say a church decides, uh, all right, we're gonna go with this elder thing, and and the church brings on four four or five, six guys to serve as elders. All of those men, and I'll emphasize men because that's the the biblical practice, uh, all of these men will have different gifts and different abilities and different ways that they can best uh shepherd the flock. So you're gonna have some with strong preaching gifts, you're gonna have some with strong leadership gifts, you're gonna have some with strong counseling gifts, you're gonna have some with strong administrative gifts. Now the requirement in the in the deception in 1 Timothy 3, Titus when when uh Paul writes about older qualifications, he spends just about all of his time on character, character, character. And then he says, by the way, you got to be apt to teach or you gotta be able to refute with sound doctrine. So they 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 uh 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 I had some men that were wonderful elders that probably would have looked at me cross-eyed if I had said, Hey, I want you to preach in two weeks. Uh, 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 and loved doing that. Uh so you're you're learning the strengths and weaknesses of each of those men, and you're learning to play to the strengths. And you you you may have uh several guys on your your elder team or elder board, whatever you call it, uh, that uh that have really good capabilities in the pulpit. But maybe maybe one or two of those guys is uh is full-time compensated by the church, and others are uh 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, uh, but these other guys can give full-time to doing that ministry to word from the pulpit, and and the non-staff elders uh you you 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. Uh so what I would try to convince you as a gatekeeper is that if you want if you love that pastor and you want him to be able to finish the uh the responsibility of the Lord is 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. 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 uh with the congregation. If you do that, you're gonna extend uh your uh 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 I think that's absolutely true. I've 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. So what you're doing is uh 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 01:Well, we only have a little time, a little time left, maybe one more, and I'll let the you can both speak to this or either one of you. Um and by the way, the question I'm answering are answered in detail, in significant depth in the book. So uh if you want more of this, you need more of this, get the book. Uh we're we're just we're sort of teasing things here, which is which is good. Okay, let's say that I'm a young pastor. I'm convinced that the New Testament uh witness uh demands two offices, elders and plurality of 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 do this? How do we get a church moving in this direction? And and how how do we start this? Because, you know, maybe some of these people have never even heard of this and and still think it's Presbyterian.
Speaker 03:Yeah. Rich, go for it.
Speaker 02:Well, so 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, 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 uh to help me walk through these things, but you need that more mature voice speaking into your life who 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 elver plurality, which I think scripture prescribes for us and God wants from us, you've got to layer it. And I'm just parroting 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. 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.
Speaker 03:Phil? Did you add to that? And the the one thing Rich alluded to, you're going to be investing in a pastor who should do this from the get-go. Train men, do uh Timothy 2-2 kind of ministry where you're 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, uh church planners. Uh you are training up men, and and out of that, Lord raises up some of those men that will serve the congregation as elders. And uh you I think patience and gentleness, no club, no uh uh you know driving a freight train through the church. No, don't 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 ten years, it might be fifteen years. But during that time, you're not wasting time. You're teaching your congregation how to think biblically, and that that's the most critical thing. Teach them how to think biblically, and and then it generally just kind of naturally flows that way. And I've I've had this kind of conversation so many times with guys uh for for years and with the leaders in churches. I I was just in in a church up north last or weekend before last, having this conversation. I think they're getting ready to vote on a uh on a transition to elders in in the next week or two. And and I had a conversation with the whole congregation, two-hour Q ⁇ A, and it was a sweet time, great questions. And the the main thing is helping people understand this is not a foreign idea. This is who we are as Baptists. 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 1 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. Um you don't have you don't have to sidestep anything. Let the word speak, let the word, as Rich mentioned, let the word do the work.
Speaker 02:And I'm 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.
Speaker 01:Well, this is a a great discussion, a helpful discussion. And just on a personal note, I have uh had the privilege of pastoring two churches that had a plurality of elders. One moved to that uh plurality uh in Alabama while I was there. We elected elders and it went fairly well and it was very took a took a while. It was already in the works when I got there, thankfully, the previous pastor had put all that in motion and done the hard work of uh getting the public change in the bylaws, and then a church that was born in Louisville, Kentucky, that was born with uh plurality of elders that saw this already in scripture. And Phil Newton. Uh Phil uh Phil was uh my friend uh before that, but uh I think we met when I was a much younger and a seminary student at the time at uh Southern Seminary, and then Phil was on my what we called speed dial back then. We taught we had hours and hours of conversations about this. So Rich Phil was my my mentor in this as well, and uh was uh an expert help because I knew Phil had written the book on this as a Baptist, and so uh it was very very helpful. But this is uh a great discussion. You've produced a phenomenal resource here. The book is concise, but there's great depth to it. Uh, if you're a young pastor and you are tr wanting to see this in the New Testament, want to try 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 are have undertaken this wisely because it does demand a lot of wisdom and patience, doesn't it? Especially in in Southern Baptist life. And uh so this uh the book is Mending the Nets, Rethinking Church Leadership. Uh brothers, thank you for coming on today and I appreciate your time and uh look forward to seeing uh this uh resource through Baptist uh Courier Publishing at uh a wide, wide uh usage in Baptist life and perhaps beyond.
Speaker 03:We're thankful for the opportunity to publish it and uh hope it's useful. Thank you guys.
Speaker 01:All right. Well I alright, thanks a lot. Thank you for tuning in to Courier Conversations. Uh be sure and like us on all the uh the social media platforms and uh consider giving us a five-star review uh for more information about the Courier, the Baptist Courier, the the the monthly uh magazine. Go to www.baptistcourier.com, which is updated with news and features uh aimed at uh at serving South Carolina Baptists and local churches, promoting healthy pastors, healthy local churches daily, updated daily, so don't miss that. Uh again, thanks, brothers. Uh, we'll look forward to continuing this conversation and uh picking up it up uh perhaps again in the future.
Speaker 00: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 baptistCourier.com. 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 baptistcareer.com. This podcast produced by Bob Slone Audio Productions.
