An Abundance of Counselors

Dr. David Allen, Executive Director of the Bible Fellowship Church, recent published an article in the BFC OneVoice magazine. It was titled “Proverbial Wisdom for Today: Proverbs 11:14.” (see article here) This verse reads “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” As he notes, “The Bible Fellowship Church takes this proverb to heart.”

My wife and I began attending the BFC in August of 1976. We have made Bethel BFC in Emmaus our church home for the past 48 years. We raised our two children here – in fact we stopped at the church on our way home from the hospital after they were born and held a private service of dedicating them to God – just my wife and I standing at the altar, praying and presenting them to God with outstretched arms. So they literally began going to church before they were in our home. While Chris and family are now living in FL, Kim and family continue to attend here.

[Bethel BFC]

 

David notes that all the BFC pastors and church representatives meet each year and that they have done so since 1883. Bethel was formed as a local church in 1882, so we have participated in this conference every year. I have had the privilege of being the representative of Bethel on several occasions, and I continue to watch it via livestream to keep up with the discussion of important issues each year.

I fully support David’s bold repeated statement in this article that “In an abundance of counselors there is safety.” I’d like to give a personal perspective of how that practice has also been my practice for this last nearly half-century.

It was not too many years prior to when we began attending that the BFC had changed from a governance practice of the District Superintendent – Pastor model where decisions were made by the denominational leaders and the local pastor was the key decision maker. This had been replaced by each church having local Elders, of which the Pastor was one of the Elders. Bethel had begun using this model, but many of the local church policies were either not well documented or were non-existent. As one who is skilled in policy writing, I offered my services in putting together a policy manual for the church. But as I was not an elder at the time, I was assigned to work with one of the elders who brought my recommendations to the Board of Elders for consideration and passage. I was happy to work this way so that the resultant policies were not just my words but had been considered by an abundance of counselors.

I was interviewed for the position of Elder in 1982 and presented to the congregation for their confirmation that fall. I served in that capacity for 40 years until two years ago when I asked to be considered for the position of Elder Emeritus (more on that below).

Over those 40 years I have had the opportunity to serve in a number of other positions as a representative of Bethel BFC. Many of these have been within the denomination, but some have been outside the BFC where I was a representative of Bethel. But in all these cases, I was only one of an abundance of counselors. As David says multiple times in his article, if you do not have an abundance of counselors then you have a good possibility of failure. I’d like to detail some of my involvement over the past 40 years.

Denominational Involvement

·       Board of Higher Education – 5 years, 4 as chair. This board promoted higher education within the BFC. Its duties were subsumed by another board.

·       Pinebrook Junior College Board of Directors – 3 years. Oversaw the operations of the denominational junior college until just before it closed.

·       Surrogate Elder – When a new BFC work is transitioning from oversight by the denominational Church Extension Board to being self-sustaining church, the BFC appoints surrogate elders to interview their local elder candidates and to recommend them to take that position going forward. I was privileged to be a surrogate elder for the BFC work in Newark, DE, since their first pastor was from our church in Emmaus.

·       Board of Church Health – There are sometimes occasions where a particular church needs to have elders appointed by the denomination. That happened to one such church a few years ago when due to some disagreement between the lay elders and the pastor the lay elders both resigned. Since it is not good to have decisions made by a single individual, the Board of Church Health appoints surrogate elders from elsewhere in the denomination so that decisions can be the result of an abundance of counselors. I was appointed to be one such individual. The other surrogate elder and I interviewed all the individuals involved and made the recommendation to terminate the current pastor and then to reinstate the prior elders – all with the approval of the congregation. We then resigned ourselves as the church could make proper decisions going forward.

·       Scholarship Committee – a local organization was collecting funds to be given to pastors in the denomination and wanted to have multiple men serving on their board to make the decisions on disbursal of the funds. I served a three-year term with them.

Bethel Representative

·       Collegiate Outreach Board - 22 years, 18 as chair. This board oversees the work of a local missionary who has an outreach to Kutztown University. The board has representatives from a number of BFC churches in the area.

·       Lehigh Christian Academy – 3 years. This institution, at the time a P-8 school, has a governing body composed of representatives from a few area churches. Bethel was one of those churches for a number of years and I was the first representative from Bethel to LCA.

·       Lehigh Valley Christian High School – 18 years, 15 as chair. LCA and a few other Christian elementary schools in the area jointly sponsored and supported a Christian high school. Having been appointed to the LCA board, I was then appointed by them to be one of the LCA representatives to the LVCHS board.

Elder of Bethel BFC

·       Naturally, over my 40 years as an elder, I have had the opportunity to serve on various committees – Pastoral Relations Committee, Finance Committee, Admin team, etc.

·       Some of my most memorable experiences have been the opportunities I had to participate in baptisms. The first of these was of my son-in-law who specifically requested that I do so when he was baptized in the swimming pool at Victory Valley Camp when we had a summer church meeting there. But in the fall of 2020, I had the pleasure of baptizing all four of our grandsons in the baptistry at church. You can read about that and see the pictures of that event here.

·       Elder Emeritus – As I mentioned above, I have recently moved from the position of active Elder to Elder Emeritus. While that means that I no longer have to attend our monthly elder meetings and participate in decision-making, it is not just an honorary label. I still have to have my name come before the congregation every three years for confirmation that I meet the qualifications of an elder. I am still a Shepherding Elder and have a list of a number of church families that I look after and keep in contact with. I still pray for those on my list on a regular basis. And I wear a nametag each Sunday so that people know they can come to me for prayer or if they have questions about the church.

David noted in his article that many evangelical churches go through an aging cycle where decisions are made by one person, where the various ministries are run by staff rather than volunteers and the church slowly ages and dies. That has never been true at Bethel. Our nursery and young children’s area was recently renovated, and we have many children to care for each week (my wife and I serve as greeters one Sunday each month). We just baptized seven people this month and there is another baptism service scheduled for next month. And we are in a period where there will be six weddings among our families in six months. All our outreach activities (such as running the local food bank, a widow’s ministry, our senior fellowship) are run by a team of volunteers. A comment that has been true for many decades is often made by new attendees who say, “this feels like a family!” When my wife and I visited on that long-ago warm August evening that’s what we said. And it’s still what’s being said by newcomers all these years later.

But it’s that way not because we have a modern church (our church building dates to 1932), or because we have a great location in the suburbs (we are in the middle of town and parking is at a premium). And it’s not because we have a dynamic young pastor nor because we have the latest in worship bands with flashing lights. Rather, it’s because we have a church with an abundance of counselors who are collectively attuned to the needs of the congregation, who pray regularly for them, and who make the best decisions we can for one another.

Just this morning I encountered a lady at church who had tears in her eyes because she had gotten an upsetting result from a recent doctor’s examination. I was able to put my arm around her shoulders and pray for her – right in the middle of the lobby with all the comings and goings. I told her that there were many other people at church whom she could also turn to. I checked in with her again at the end of the service and she was smiling. Yes, the church is a family. And in the abundance of counselors (Pastors, Elders, Deacons) we can be successful!