In our first article on the 3’s of eldership development, our Make Leaders Monthly discussion centred around the “three likes” of what we’re looking for in future elders, and how us current elders are praying we’d continue to grow. It was all about being like Jesus. What’s next then in the pathway of eldership development? Let me introduce you to the three C’s.

In many Aussie evangelical circles, saying the “three C’s” paints the picture of “character, competencies and convictions” that the MTS platform uses. The METRO platform that we engage with for apprenticeship training simply took those three principles and changed the language to make it pointedly about Jesus being like Jesus (in character), thinking like Jesus (in convictions) and serving like Jesus (in competencies). So then, what are we talking about when we say the three C’s? It’s something that we value particularly at Reforming, that we ask future elders to sign up to our Confession, Code and Culture.

Now you may think, “well that’s a given!” Yeah, but…

You see, every Presbyterian church requires that elders sign up to assert, maintain and defend the Westminster Confession of Faith. It’s a subordinate standard of the church that explains what we believe the Bible teaches in 33 chapters. There is more to say, and we will on this as we teach through the Confession in Shepherd Selection Course - but for now we can say that signing up for the Confession is a given.

What about the Code? Well what we mean by that is our PCV Code Book, a denominational book of rules and regulations that help us understand church polity and how we serve people in structures. Again there is more to say on that, and we will, but for now all potential elder candidates know that we need to know the Code.

Yet, what is most important and has increased in value over time at Reforming has been the “signing up for” our culture. Our local church culture. Reforming’s culture.

Culture is a whole bunch of shared values. No matter what you have as your strategy on your wall or website, it will be your culture that is most important - the heartbeat of your church community.

In the early days of Reforming, when we were tiny, we were just trying to survive. But then came the time when we became a church that could walk on our young feet and we needed to work out what kind of church we prayed to be, culturally.

Recently I heard a church-planting guru say that “working out what kind of church you want to plant is not important, but that you will do anything to evangelise the lost”. Yes. Kind of. Not really. And that is an article for another day. For now though, we worked out pretty early on that as baby Reforming was being pulled in lots of different directions, we needed to work out prayerfully what kind of church we would like to have as a people of shared values.

What this means for eldership development is so important that we make it part of our training. We want to see future elders who are like Christ, and who love a culture-of-Christ that is who we are of Reforming Church. This is not a tertiary issue for us, is core to the gospel, core to church, and therefore core to our leadership in the men who form our eldership.

Make Leaders Article by Russ Grinter | Pastor & Teaching Elder

Russ is weak, but Jesus is strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). Russ gladly boasts of his weaknesses by preaching, writing, and speaking the gospel - because Jesus changes everything.