On November 12, we hosted our fifth annual Elders Q&A. We host these evenings becauase we love one another. Asking and answering questions is natural to any relationship of love and trust. We have plenty of both and we mean to keep it. Thank you for your thoughtful questions and your interest in our church’s good.
Read our invitation post for some more specifics on our aims and process heading into the event.
On this memorable evneing we engaged questions about the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day, about our philsophy of biblical counsling, how we go about praying for God’s global purpose among the nations, and everything in between.
Here’s a list of the questions we asked with the timestamps for the audio. We encourage you to listen to the entire Q&A for context and the spirit of the evening.
Introductory (0:00)
Introductions (2:12)
Overview of elder administrative team and responsibilities (7:05)
The Lord’s Day with the Lord’s People (9:14)
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What is the Elders’ interpretation of the Sabbath? Do we keep the Sabbath now? How does that relate to Sunday worship? And if God commands Sabbath rest, then what do we do about so many moms rolling into Monday frazzled and dads fatigued after a day of church activities? I’m confused about how to balance God’s command for Sabbath rest and the need to be physically rested for the week ahead. (9:41)
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What advice would you offer to introverts in the church? (17:50)
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What night do the Elders meet and have you thought about putting it on the church calendar so that we as a church can be praying for you? (23:46)
Counseling One Another (24:47)
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What is our philosophy of Biblical counseling? (25:11)
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Talk about Biblical Counseling now and down the road—the state of Biblical counseling from a programmatic and staff member perspective. (28:54)
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Are mental health issues sinful? (33:17)
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Elder trivia (35:09)
Shepherding Together (38:12)
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What is an elder-led congregational church? (38:22)
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What is the difference between elders and pastors? (41:12)
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What is the difference between a director role and an elder role? (44:44)
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What changes are upcoming for how elders work together and lead our church? (47:30)
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Elder trivia (54:01)
Our Times and Our Task (55:07)
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What have the elders been studying lately as a group? (55:15)
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Carl Trueman, in his book Strange New World, claims that the LGBGTQ+ movement is the most successful political movement of our age. What does Trueman mean by that? (57:07)
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Define expressive individualism and why does it have a problem with religion today? (58:13)
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How do we expose our kids to global missions? (59:56)
Open Mic (1:04:29)
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On the Order of Worship today it had a passage above it that said adapted from Ecclesiastes. Why don’t we just read the real Bible passage instead of putting it into our words? (1:04:29)
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What are the requirements regarding the timeframe for elder sabbaticals? (1:05:38)
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Why aren’t our missionaries listed on our website and is there a way that we can make all of our missionaries a little more visible? (1:07:24)
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Do I understand that when I hear the elders voted, it is all 14 of you rather than just the 11? (1:13:03)
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In a world where truth can be anything that you set it to be, how do we evangelize people with God’s authority being the ultimate truth? (1:14:54)
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What are the elders thanking God for? (1:17:17)
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What are the elders asking God to do? (1:20:06)
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Dinner instructions and closing prayer (1:21:59)
As promised, if you submitted a question and we didn’t answer it at the Q&A, we’ll be in touch in the coming weeks to initiate a reply either over email or in person. Of course, as questions come to mind across the year, you can always just email us at elders@heritagebiblechurch.org. This event is not the only venue for engaging our elders with a question. Rather, it is an especially public forum that we hope to set the tone and invite your engagement in more personal ways across the year.
For more Q&A engagement of this sort, review our recaps from previous years: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022.
