Elder & Deacon Identification
How a church recognises, selects, installs, and releases its elders and deacons — the gift profiles, the qualifications in depth, and a ten-stage identification process.
Orientation
Read in order
Part One — The Two Distinctions
Before a body can identify elders and deacons well, four distinctions need to be clear.
Part Two — The Gift Profile
Document 2 treats each of the 18 gifts in depth.
Part Three — The Qualifications in Operational Depth
Document 1, Chapter 5, lists the biblical qualifications for elders and deacons in full.
Part Four — The Identification Process
Identification of an elder or deacon is not an event.
Part Five — Stepping Down and Transitioning
Faithful eldership does not end in office; it ends in stepping down well.
Part Six — Training and Development
Eldership is not a static office.
Part Seven — How an Eldership Functions Together
A team of elders is named in Document 1 (Chapter 5.2 and the Seven Key Principles of New Testament Church Governance).
Part Eight — Common Errors and Cautions
A summary of the failure modes most often seen in elder and deacon selection.
Part Nine — The Awakening Pathway
Part Eight named the most widespread of the failure modes — eldership not installed at all, or installed in name but functioning primarily as a board.
Part Ten — Eldership at Scale: The Flat Multiplication Model
Parts One through Nine of this Document set out the framework’s view of Eldership and Diaconate identification for a single body of Saints meeting…
Part Eleven — Elders, Deacons, and Membership
A short Part to close the loop on a question implicit throughout this Document: must an Elder or Deacon be a voting Member of the body?
Closing
The work of identifying, installing, and releasing elders and deacons is among the most consequential work a local body does.
The Elder & Deacon identification templates
The full set of working tools for this document — candidate observation logs, the initial-conversation and interview guides, a multi-month testing plan, and installation and stepping-down protocols — ready to complete on screen, save and print.
The templates come with the Elder subscription (and Engaged Church).
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