The Stewardship Collective
Caring for the priesthood of all believers
Embedded Files
The task of the community as a whole is one of keeping: we keep our eyes on Jesus Christ, we are keepers of one another, and we help keep the world and all of God’s good creation. In this sense, we are all stewards. Yet while we are all called to steward, we are called to stewardship in different places and in different ways.
The Stewardship Collective is made up of those within the community who are entrusted, in a particular season, with stewarding the faith and stewarding the unity of the church. Their work is not to possess or control the life of the church, but to tend it faithfully: to guard what has been entrusted to us, to cultivate what God is growing among us, and to help the community remain attentive to Christ and to one another.
This calling involves character qualifications who they are becoming; gifting qualifications who God has created and equipped them to be; and timing qualifications where and how they are called to serve in this particular season.
Stewardship is therefore not simply a position or office. It is a responsibility received for the good of others and exercised for a time.
The Collective brings together different forms of stewardship within the church so that responsibility can be shared without becoming fragmented. Elders, deacons, and others entrusted with particular areas of the church’s life serve from different callings and with different responsibilities, but together they seek to preserve the church’s faithfulness, strengthen its common life, and create the conditions in which the whole community can flourish.
Their posture is therefore one of attention, care, and accountability: paying attention to what God is doing, caring well for what has been entrusted to the church, and remaining accountable to Christ, to one another, and to the community they serve.
Calling
Calling
Calling is both personal and communal. Elders and deacons are not only discerned before they begin serving; their calling is continually discerned throughout their service as the church attends to character, gifting, capacity, relationships, and season of life.
The character expected of elders and deacons is not a separate or elevated form of Christian character. The qualities named in Scripture are qualities toward which all Christians are called. They are the starting point, not the summit, of Christian maturity.
What distinguishes elders and deacons is therefore not spiritual status, but a particular calling and responsibility recognized by the church for a particular season.
The fuller theology of calling, discernment, ordination, and the particular ministries of elders and deacons together with the processes by which they are discerned, appointed, reviewed, and released is set out in the Church Handbook.
We continually give thanks for the elders and deacons and planters who have served this community in past seasons.
Their faithfulness, care, leadership, and service form part of the story we have received and continue to shape the life of the church today.
Planting Team, Past Elders and Deacons (since 2016)
Page updated
Report abuse