Faithful and Fruitful: Essays for Elders and Deacons

I’m just dropping a quick note here about this new book for office bearers published by Reformed Fellowship.  If you’re an elder or deacon, veteran or rookie, I think you’ll find something helpful in this volume.  It’s got twenty chapters with the following titles:

1. Training Church Officers
2. Practicing the Mission of the Church: Apostolicity in Action
3. Positive Leadership: Leading Like Jesus (Not Rehoboam)
4. Continuing in Prayer
5. Elders and Deacons as Hospitality Leaders
6. Ministering to the Sick and Dying
7. The Office Bearer and Household Management
8. Classical Christian Catechesis
9. Managing the Offerings of God’s People
10. Getting Acquainted with the Congregation’s Needs
11. Avoiding Burnout
12. Tending the Shepherd (1): Honorable Provision
13. Tending the Shepherd (2): Sabbaths and Sabbaticals
14. How to Evaluate Your Pastor
15. How to Be a Clerk
16. Navigating the Broader Assemblies: Serving at Classis and Synod
17. How to Serve on a Pastoral Search Committee
18. What Every Elder Needs to Know about Congregational Singing
19. Encouraging Lay Witnessing
20. Promoting the Work of Missions

As you can see, most of the chapters are practically oriented.  The book includes study questions for each chapter.  Most of the authors are United Reformed ministers, though there are also CanRC and OPC contributors.  Some of the content is specifically oriented to a United Reformed context.  However, much of that can be easily adapted to other contexts, or otherwise safely disregarded.

For the last 10+ years, over two churches, I’ve gone through John Sittema’s With a Shepherd’s Heart.  That’s still a great book for office bearer training, but recently I recommended that we give Faithful and Fruitful a try.  We look forward to reading and discussing it together at our 2020 consistory meetings.

Tags: deacons elders office bearer training