The Christian Chronicle Podcast
The Christian Chronicle Podcast explores the news and stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world.
The Christian Chronicle Podcast
Episode 127: For the church to thrive, its leaders need to eat more pie (Doug Pell)
Could eating more pie lead to healthier and stronger churches?
Doug Pell says "yes." A longtime Church of Christ elder and retired senior executive from the U.S. defense industry, Pell recently authored Set in Order the Things That Are Lacking: Lessons in Biblical Leadership (Sain Publications).
In this episode, Pell shares the experience he gained from decades in church and corporate leadership and the knowledge he gained from his intense study of biblical eldership for local congregations.
Pell touches on the following themes:
- Why the corporate management model is not the leadership model that the Lord chooses for his church
- Why biblical leadership is harder than anyone imagines, but perhaps not as hard to attain as congregations might think
- How congregational leadership must happen in living rooms, not elders' meetings
- Why deacons and wives may be the most important people to a congregation's eldership
- And what does pie have to do with congregational health?
Link to Set in Order the Things That Are Lacking: Lessons in Biblical Leadership
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Family and friends, neighbors and, most of all, strangers. Welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast. We're bringing you the stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world. I'm BT Irwin. May what you are about to hear bless you and honor God.
BT Irwin:Last fall, the Barna Group released a study that found almost three out of four church leaders in the United States fear that their congregations will decline because of inadequate leadership. Half of those respondents went on to say that their congregations do not prioritize training and developing new leaders. What about you and your congregation? How would you describe the health and vitality of your congregation's eldership? How would you describe the intention and investments your congregation is making in future elders? Today we're talking about congregational leadership, with emphasis on how the Bible imagines that leadership coming from healthy and vibrant elderships. We'll hear from a man who brings decades of experience as both an elder and a leader in corporate America. Doug Pell is an executive coach and retired executive with decades of experience as a senior finance officer in the US defense industry. He also put in decades of service and elderships at two Church of Christ congregations in Ohio and Michigan.
BT Irwin:Now full disclosure Doug and his wife Kathy are longtime friends of my own family, my parents, going back to the days when they were starting their families in Akron, ohio, back in the 1970s. Doug's son, tim, grew up with me, was my roommate for two years at Harding University and is still one of my best friends, and Doug was my cabin counselor when I was eight years old and going to church camp for the first time. He took care of me that first night when I ate too much candy and threw up outside the cabin, and he comforted me on nights when I got homesick. So we go way, way back, but that is not why he's here today. Doug took all of his experience in eldership and leadership, added several years of intense biblical study and wrote Set and Order the Things that Are Lacking Lessons in Biblical Leadership now available from SANE Publications. It is 558 pages of Lessons in Biblical Leadership, which, doug, I will point out, makes it the longest book I've read for this show. How long did it take you to write this book?
Doug Pell:I'd been thinking about it for a long time, but the moment I set pen to paper started the research until publication was five years Now. The last year was searching for a publisher, but so I'll say three and a half to four years, you know, broken broken up by. You know vacation here and there and went and said hi to my wife and yeah, let's get into it.
BT Irwin:The title is Set in Order the Things that Are Lacking, which comes from the Apostle Paul's letter to Titus, chapter 1, verse 5. That verse comes up again and again and again throughout the book. Did you, or do you observe or perceive that something is lacking in more than a few congregations? And I'll just I'll hand you a quote from the book. Here's your quote the church that Jesus died for has been going through a test of leadership for a very long time. We have been failing the test, end quote. Tell us a little bit about the urgency that you perceive there and why you feel like this book is needed now.
Doug Pell:The quote was a reminder that it's been going. It's been going badly for the church ever since the first century. In Acts 20, 29,. Paul said I know that after my departure he's talking to the Ephesian elders in Melinus. After my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves he's talking to the elders men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. From everything we can tell from history, it really was Ephesus where this grand apostasy happened to the church. So Paul was right. Most all apostasies that we can see in the church started with the problem of the organization of the church, the leadership of the church. As the leadership goes, so goes the church.
BT Irwin:When I finished the book, I shut the book feeling a little bit overwhelmed and thinking, wow, who could ever become an elder? Who could ever become an elder? And so, in a time where it feels like we're struggling so much with a shortage of qualified men for many things in society, not least the Church of Christ, how is it that? Well, let me say it this way you know, when congregations read this book, or when people that are elders or may become elders read this book, they may think the standards are harder and higher to attain than I ever imagined. So what is a congregation to do when too few men meet the standard of eldership?
Doug Pell:I kind of got this same idea halfway into the book. I went man, people are going to read this and go. We cannot. We thought we could appoint elders and now we can't. I went. That's okay. I think it's important that we're slow to hire. This is just something we learned in business. Let's be slow to hire, let's be slow to put people in positions of authority, let's make sure. I've been through several appointments of elders and the process is not rigorous enough.
Doug Pell:We first of all want desire. Do you desire it? We don't do enough teaching on biblical desire and most men in today's culture, most people in today's culture, would say well, if a man wants it, there's something wrong with him. There must be something wrong with him because he wants to be in control, because that's who we see in business, right? And yet I appreciate someone who wants to be a fireman and they want to save lives. They want it so badly, they're willing to put themselves at risk and run into burning buildings to save somebody and they're willing to stand up in front of people and say I am qualified, I know what I'm doing, I want to help you, Please hire me. And I think that's the kind of desire that we need in men.
Doug Pell:Now, the first qualification before the list, the litany of qualifications that comes in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, is that a man should be above reproach, and we don't do enough teaching on that. What does that mean? It means that if he's sinned, he's forgiven. He can't be blamed, and we struggle with this in the church. There's this very legalistic view that the man has to be perfect and never have sinned. We look at all these qualifications and instead we should be saying, well, if he's lacking in hospitality, maybe we ought to help him, Because that's something that's important, you know. Or if he's not right with God, maybe we ought to help him, because he needs to learn that. And so let's take our time and let's develop these people, the husbands and the wives. Let's develop them, but they should be above reproach, that is, they could be bad people at one time. Yeah, Paul was a bad person at one time. You and I were bad people at one time, but you know we're above reproach. We've taken care that God doesn't blame us, and neither should the congregation.
Doug Pell:One of my beta review team members said you know what, Doug? Every one of these qualifications for an elder is also an attribute of every Christian, man and woman. Every Christian needs to have these qualifications. Yeah, there's a quote. I want to read a quote to you that I also put in the book, but it's from Charles Hodge Jr. He wrote a little book. It's a teeny little book. It's called my Elders. So it says Without qualified men desiring the office for righteous purposes, the push to form an eldership or add to the existing eldership only leads to trouble.
Doug Pell:God's plan is a man. 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 describe God's man. They involve character, maturity, spirituality, size. Don't put little men in high church places. There are few qualities in said listings, not true of mature Christians. No-transcript. Don't work at becoming an elder. Work at becoming a matured Christian. Be God's man for God's work. God calls men, not angels. Men can qualify. Perfection is not expected. Then he goes on. We know we should have elders in every congregation because it is God's will, Acts 14.23, Titus 1.5. We must cease devising other governing systems and spend more time developing qualified elders. Even though a church could temporarily exist without elders, we must never be satisfied with that condition and be persistent in improving. So what do I tell congregations that are afraid? I say well, every time the men get together. Every time the congregation gets together as a whole, one of the subjects ought to be how are we doing with developing the right kind of leadership here.
Doug Pell:I've been in too many meetings where we didn't talk about that. We have to start when Brad is young and we have to mentor him. Take him on a hospital visit. I tell that story about Bill Jones, one of the elders at Congregation where you and I were first at Brad a long, long, long time ago, and he just died recently at close to 100. Yeah, but he got to see my book, he got to see the quote. I visited him and shared with him the quote I had about him. But it's one of the things he did.
Doug Pell:He says, doug, let's go on a hospital visit. And I didn't like to do that. I didn't like to publicly pray, I didn't like to do a lot of things, I didn't like to put myself out there, but he said, no, come on. I didn't like to do a lot of things, I didn't like to put myself out there, but he said, no, come on. And he was sharing with me something that was rich but uncomfortable in a way, because you're visiting somebody and you don't know what to say, and he taught me. So that was kind of like a mini, mini, little eldership right there in the hospital room. That's what it's all about.
BT Irwin:A recurring theme in your book is that the Lord desires elderships, not so much elders. So your emphasis is on becoming an eldership. What do you mean by that?
Doug Pell:How many elders names do you know out of the New Testament? We know a lot of evangelists, right? Yeah, we know their names. I don't know. I mean, we know that Peter was an elder Peter, yeah, maybe John, maybe the men are kind of hidden in this thing called the eldership. This, this one body, someone kind of god, god help us. They need to spend more time together and try to figure out how they're going to be one instead of five. So that's what I mean. One of the first things they should do is figure out how they're going to approach every subject from a teaching, a doctrinal point of view. What is God's view of this? Not what my view is. What's God's view? I've also heard over the years that, well, it's best, when you appoint elders, to have an odd number of elders. Well, why is that? Well, it's best when you appoint elders to have an odd number of elders? I go well. Why? Well, because if there's a disagreement.
Doug Pell:You can have two against one or three against two, so you always have an odd number, so you don't have a tie and therefore you can move forward. And I go. Well, maybe those elders need to. Every time they get together, they need to read John, chapter 17, again and again and again. Jesus' prayer for unity to be one, to be the same as God. So I illustrate it this way If there's five elders, I think with every decision they make, the vote ought to be six to zero. And if you don't know how to get that sixth vote from five elders, then that's where you need to start. How are we going to figure out what God wants for this decision we're making?
BT Irwin:I bet some people listen to that and say, well, that's impossible, especially in this day and age where people seem to have forgotten how to get along and work things out. And there are places in the book where you are emphatic that we are going to stay here until we are all in agreement on this. So call your wives and say I'm not going to be home for dinner tonight. Bring dinner in. Or yeah, you actually said. I drew a smiley face next to it Call the congregation and tell them to bring in food, because the elders are going to stay in this room until they reach agreement. You've been a part of elderships. Was that the reality of the elderships on which you serve? That you would stay at something until you would have that unanimous vote, that, yeah, we are all in agreement on this and we feel like we're voting with God on this.
Doug Pell:How do we become one? We've got to work at it, and we got to do that before we try to do anything else.
BT Irwin:Well, how about this one In the book you wrote, quote the more pie I ate, the healthier the church became, end quote. What do you mean by that?
Doug Pell:I call it living room leadership. Yeah, living room leadership, living room leadership, yeah, living room leadership. When my fellow elder and I would sit down in living rooms and kitchens, that's something we purposefully did and we said we're coming to your house Thursday night, you know, because we just want to get to know you, we want to learn from you, we want to listen, we want to do the work of an elder because we care about you.
Doug Pell:So I would say, please don't feed us Our wives are waiting at home to feed us, but every time Peach pie was my favorite, the congregations I held in for knew that I got peach pie, peach, cobbler, peach, this, everything peach which is fine. One of the things we did in those living rooms was after we talked about their family, their experience, their experience. How were they converted? What's your? Story.
Doug Pell:And then we would turn and say, well, we're here for really a purpose and that is we know who we are and we know what we're supposed to be doing and we care about you. We want to help you get to heaven. How can we help you? That was the best part about being an elder, but there was that we found that just being in living rooms, whether we ate pie or cake or I just I kind of kind of grabbed onto this, this pie thing. But the more pie we ate, which means the more living rooms and kitchens we were in, the better the church was the contention, the hospitality grew. It had a far-reaching impact because we were in one couple's, one family's living room and, you know, sometimes with tears in their eyes, they would say we've never had an elder here, never had, we've never done this. We've been in the church for 40 years.
Doug Pell:But we discovered we ate pie and we discovered marriages that were in trouble, children that were out of duty, out of service. We found a family that had never been baptized. Everyone thought they had been baptized, everyone thought they were never in the church. They said, well, we just never thought. We, you know, you've been listening to these sermons for 40 years Wow, 30 years. Yes, you want to take care of that. 40 years Wow, 30 years. Yes, you want to take care of that. Found out why one brother never wanted to be called on the Bible class. Well, he couldn't read. We didn't know that he was faking. He was in his 50s. Isn't that amazing? Yes, which you can learn when you eat pie. I'm not the same size I was when I was at church camp.
Doug Pell:I'm a little bit heavier.
BT Irwin:Yeah, my parents. When I was a kid you know my dad being the minister at the church they went on a mission to host every household in our congregation in our home for Sunday dinner. And I think it took about three years for every household at our congregation to have Sunday dinner with us in our home. That's why I hate lasagna to this day, because my mom made so many lasagnas and just put them in the freezer the chest freezer in the basement, and every week it was lasagna. So to this day I don't like lasagna because I ate a lot of lasagna.
BT Irwin:But for elders to be in the homes of members I shared this with a couple of elders a few weeks ago after I'd read this chapter in the book, and they acted as if what he's saying is impossible. Who has the time to do that? Who has the time to visit that many homes? And it depends on the size of your congregation. But living room leadership, which is a phrase that comes up over and over and over again in your book, it sounds to me like when you think of eldership, that is essential. It is essential to be in the homes of the members. Is there an ideal eldership to membership ratio?
Doug Pell:I had met a fellow. I think he was a professor at Abilene years ago. He wrote a couple of books. Well, I think he was a professor at Abilene years ago. He wrote a couple of books. I met him. His name was Flavel Yakeley. I got a hold of one of his books on church leadership and organization. That's the title. It was published in 1986, church Leadership and Organization.
Doug Pell:He was almost like a statistician for the church. He would survey congregations to find out what works, what doesn't work. He had a rule of the best ratios for the best growth rate in a congregation. He called it the rule of one, two, four For every 200 members. The best ratio for growth rate for every 200 members is one preacher, two elders, four deacons. One preacher, two elders, four deacons. Okay, here's the short answer. I don't know. Again, I'm a small church kind of guy. If you can find two men that are qualified, that's good enough, right, and you make it work. And if you do it right and if you get the right, you appoint the right deacons and they do their work well, you can grow the church rapidly and not add another elder. You can do a lot with two elders.
BT Irwin:So it all depends. There is so much in the book about the trust that the congregation has in elders and the transparency of an eldership before the congregation and you just made the point yourself it's those personal relationships, it's that being hosted by the members that builds that trust and that transparency and allows the eldership to anticipate problems that may arise or to spot opportunities and to serve the people well and to love the people well. So that takes energy. You said it yourself several places. You talk about the lack of sleep and being. I think you said something like when you become an elder you're signing up for insomnia or something like that. So you don't hide from the fact that this kind of leadership requires giving up giving up sleep, giving up time with time, doing other activities that you might enjoy. But it's essential to the kind of relationship that elders and their congregations have. So just to do the math, you think the more elders, the more qualified elders, the bigger the eldership in a congregation, the better, because you have more elders and more living rooms.
BT Irwin:You write quite a bit about deacons in this book, even though it's about eldership, and here's a quote. It's a really curious one Quote local churches' most common fatal assumption is the comfortable attraction of elders to be deacons, end quote. That's a provocative quote there. So what do you mean by that?
Doug Pell:It's a failure of every leadership team and every organization church, government, business, family. It's not understanding your role, roles, responsibilities and authority. That's what I try to get across in this book For an elder. You have a role to play, you have responsibilities to take care of, you have authority. That's been given to you and you got to know that and you got to work towards becoming that person. Once the elders really understand here's what I'm supposed to be doing. They should be working towards that and it's being the visionary, being the overseer.
Doug Pell:The Greek word is episkopos, but it's two words. It's episkopos, but it's two words. It's episkopos, skopos, meaning you know, putting on field glasses or microscope, or you know, trying to find, to burrow in and understand. You know the sheep and over, scoping, overlooking we get our English word skeptical from the scopos. We have to understand what shepherding is, what a leader, what a caretaker, what a manager, what a instructor, what a steward, what a centric, what all those attributes of an elder are.
Doug Pell:But there's this tendency to want to go back because the deacons aren't doing their work, because we haven't trained them, we haven't told them what the problem is, our communication skills are poor, and so this happens in business all the time. I might as well just do it myself. I'll just do it myself. It's easier to be a deacon, and so we kind of gravitate to what we know we can do. We feel good at the end of the day. Hey, I did something, I'm tired, I did it, but we didn't do the work of an elder you tell a few times in the book is about as you were coming up in your career.
BT Irwin:You eventually reached the level of senior leadership and one of the discoveries you made when you reached senior leadership is that, oh, I'm not here to work in the business anymore, now it's my job to work on the business. And you apply that to eldership Elders their work is not working in the church, their work is working on the church. And the deacons work in the church and show the members of the congregation how to work in the congregation, show the members of the congregation how to work in the congregation. And so when we go back to that one-two-four ratio that you mentioned from Flavel-Yakely, it's interesting. I think some people might assume that there would be more elders than deacons, and I've seen congregations where there are many more elders than deacons. But you'll notice from that ratio one-two-four, there are twice as many deacons as elders, and I would guess that's because deacons are the ones who are working in the congregation, while it's the elders who are working on the congregation.
Doug Pell:If I wanted to start my own cookie business, because I love cookies, I love chocolate chip cookies and I'm really good at it, and I have an oven and I know how to do it and I've got my grandmother's recipe and I give my kids those cookies and they take them to school and they share them with their friends and their friends' mothers come over and want to know where did you get those cookies? And they encourage me to expand. And so I don't just bake cookies for my children, I bake them for the neighborhood. And then they say, well, you need to turn this into a business. And so you say, well, okay, and you kind of jump off that cliff and go I'm going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to start a business, and you bake cookies and you hire staff and you have quality control problems and you've got production problems. All of a sudden you realize the business is failing because you're not getting customers, you're not paying attention to the business, you're too busy making cookies.
Doug Pell:Most businesses that start today will fail within five years. The majority will fail within five years. The majority will fail within five years. Almost all of them will fail within 10. And that concept, I think, applies to the church. I think there are a lot of churches that are dead and they don't know it. I know that's kind of a drastic, awful thing to say, but it's because we're busy baking cookies and making cookies, which we love to do and we never step out and get to perspective and get to 20,000 feet to say, okay, where are we headed, what's the vision? Are we painting the right picture? Are we hiring the right people? Are we developing the right culture? And you can substitute church for business here, and I don't mean to be common or profane about it, but I think sometimes that's the best parable to use.
BT Irwin:I think sometimes that's the best parable to use. My dad said to me a few years ago when we were talking about elderships. He said in a lot of churches the minister does the work of the elders, the elders do the work of the deacons, and then the deacons don't know why they're there. And he was joking. But I thought of that joke a lot. It's not a joke, I know.
BT Irwin:as I read your book I thought this is exactly what dad was talking about. I didn't expect to read a lot about deacons when I picked up the book and started reading, but you devote quite a bit of time to deacons because I think your point is when deacons are working, then the elders are able to do their work on the congregation. And so at one point you say if deacons are the crux of the church's work, you go on to say the elders' wives are quote the crux or heart of the church's leadership end quote. And you go on to paint a picture of wives being quite intimate with and participative in the life and work of a congregation's eldership. I could summarize what you wrote by saying no wives, no eldership.
Doug Pell:Every chapter has a title and then it has one of my quotes underneath it and this is the quote I pulled out Is she an exceptional example of the Christian woman or is she just good enough to not disqualify her husband? Yeah, yeah, it's quite a quote. It's kind of in your face, isn't it? I've gotten some people coming at me going Doug, you should not have said that, no, no, I really should have said that. No, no, I really should have.
Doug Pell:The wife is not just this thing that hangs on to the elder. The wife is integral. I can't do the work of an elder without my wife. She just doesn't qualify me. She helps me. I'm not really good with you know, there's ewe lambs and ram lambs. Right, there's male and female sheep and I know how to talk to the ram lambs pretty well. I'm not that good at talking to the ewe lambs and she helped me.
Doug Pell:I was asked one time. It was a new eldership that we had formed and I was asked by one of the other elders well, let's talk about our wives? And he asked me bluntly what do you tell your wife after an elders meeting? And I knew what he meant. Do you reveal what we're talking about? And I know I get pushback from other elders that are out there teaching and trying to talk about the eldership.
Doug Pell:Some would say, no, you should be pretty secretive. The eldership is really a place where you have high confidentiality. I agree, but I told him, told the rest of the elders. I said it's my call If I think that my wife can handle a subject sometimes she can't she's very protective of me, right but if I think she can handle it and if I think I can, that the eldership would be stronger if I got her opinion, I'll talk about this with her. It's always been the case and that's what I recommend. I mean I trust my judgment in that matter and I tell the elders whether I'm going to reveal this to my wife or not. I mean I'm not divulging something that I haven't got pre-authorization from the elders. 1 Timothy 3.11 says Likewise their wives, elders and deacons this is 1 Timothy 3, must be respectful, not slanders, self-controlled, dependable in all things, dependable in all things, faithful in all things.
Doug Pell:That kind of encompasses everything that a Christian woman is supposed to be and she's supposed to know when to hold her tongue and when to keep private private and not be blabbering. And because that kind of a wife will destroy an eldership.
BT Irwin:You write so much about transparency in the book. You write so much about transparency in the book and it's refreshing to me because I've been a part of congregations where elderships went behind closed doors, made decisions and then announced those decisions to the congregation and the congregation never saw them coming. And so you write a lot about the lengths elderships should go to be transparent to congregations. One of the things you say an elder should never say is just trust me on that. Just trust me on that. Would you want to talk about why that's something an elder should never say to a member of a congregation?
Doug Pell:Well, number one it's dismissive. So right off the bat you know you've taken their concern. Their question is just an indication of their concern and you just turned it around on them and said none of your business.
Doug Pell:And you just turned it around on them and said none of your business. So that's why I said don't you know, just don't trigger. Don't trigger that problem. Many leaderships, many elderships, lead in secrecy. That's what you're talking about. They don't need to know. I've always believed that transparency just breeds trust. Secrecy leads to mistrust. Think about who God is. God is the most transparent leader we've ever known. He reveals his diary. He told some of the juiciest stories about the greatest people in the world. So my caution to every elder is to err on the side of transparency.
BT Irwin:Well, chapter three of your book is titled Read to Lead and you've given elders 558 pages of reading on eldership. The book is Set in Order the Things that Are Lacking Lessons in Biblical Leadership now available from Sane Publications, and the author is Doug Pell. Coach. Thanks for being on the show.
Doug Pell:It's been my pleasure, Brad. Thank you for the opportunity.
BT Irwin:We hope that something you heard in this episode encouraged, enlightened or enriched you in some way. If it did, thanks be to God and please pay it forward. Subscribe to this. Thank you and suggestions to podcast at christianchronicleorg. Don't forget our ministry to inform and inspire Christians and congregations around the world is a non-profit ministry that relies on your generosity. So if you like the show and you want to keep it going and make it even better, please make a tax-deductible gift to the Christian Chronicle at christianchronicleorg. Slash donate. The Christian Chronicle podcast is a production of the Christian Chronicle Incorporated, informing and inspiring Church of Christ congregations, members and ministries around the world since 1943. The Christian Chronicle's managing editor is Audrey Jackson, editor-in-chief Bobby Ross Jr and executive director and CEO Eric Trigestad. The Christian Chronicle podcast is written, directed, hosted and edited by BT Irwin and is produced by James Flanagan at Podcast your Voice Studios in the Motor City, detroit, michigan, usa. Until next time, may grace and peace be yours in abundance.