One of the biggest APE’s (Anxiety Producing Events) for Churches of Christ is the Shepherd/Elder selection process. When this process is handled poorly–as it sometimes is–the direction of a church can change almost over night as a new wave of shepherds find themselves leading a church. They start making the changes they’ve been longing to make or they put an end to all of the changes that have been giving them (or their wives) heartburn.

How many church splits have occurred because of a poor shepherd selection process? How many ministers have found themselves needing to find a new job and fast because a group of new shepherds have come on board and taken a hard right turn? How many good men have signed on to be an elder without having a clue of what they were getting into and find themselves three years later disillusioned and broken-hearted by the whole process? How many churches have been unable to build any kind of momentum at all because of shepherd wars that occur because the wrong people have been asked to serve the church in the wrong capacity?  Too many to name.

We’ve had our share of heartache and pain at Garnett because of a poorly designed and implemented Shepherd selection process. In fact, you might say that we’ve spent the last two years recovering from one that went horribly awry.

Last fall, our Leadership Team, which consists of Shepherds and Staff Ministers, decided to try a new approach. We worked it over for several months before the existing shepherds gave it their final approval.  We’ve been implementing it for over six months now.  You can take a look at the process here (pdf alert).

It’s not a perfect process. We expect to have to tweak it as we go along. So far, it’s worked well. Yesterday, I announced that two of our Shepherds-in-Training were ready to be given a final approval from the congregation. Our hope is that in a month or so, we’ll officially add them to the Leadership Team. Right now, we’re looking to fill our leadership pipeline with ever an growing number of potential shepherds and Shepherds-in-Training.