Your elder is not Jesus. They may be Christ-like, but the ultimate voice a Christian should hear and follow is Jesus’s, and not their elder’s. Your elder can pray for you, warn you, show you safe paths, and plead with you. But ultimately, every member is in the hands of the Lord Himself. We are God’s sheep, the people of His pasture.

I was talking to some elders of another church recently about struggles they were having, and they mentioned something I’ve heard countless times: A member is leaving the church and taking swings at the leadership as they walk out.
Please hear me out. The church needs elders. The church deserves to have good elders. God Himself demands elders to shepherd His flock well. However, the church can also be damaged by idealism. Sadly, we live in a world marred by sin. We live in a world where no elder on this side of heaven will ever live up to the ideal standard. Idealism, when it comes to either church membership or church leadership, will ruin relationships, destroy unity, and is deeply unbiblical. There will never be a perfect elder nor a perfect member.
I am not saying you should stay in an abusive church. I am not saying you should stay where the elders show blatant ignorance of your soul. I am not saying members should just put up with poor or sinful leadership. What I am saying is, elders will always fail you if the standard is perfection. Only Jesus, the chief shepherd, is perfect.
My hope from this article is that we, as a Christian community, may give and grow in grace. I’m not giving a pass to sloppy, neglectful, or even sinful shepherding. But, I am advocatign that we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. Why? Because your elders will fail you.
The Shepherd’s Heart
The church deserves to have a shepherd who shows Jesus’ compassion and love for His flock. Jesus routinely showed empathy and understanding to His people. He wept with Mary and Martha at Lazarus’s death. He understood perfectly the hearts of those around Him. Jesus, as the chief shepherd, knows our hearts better than we know them ourselves. My elders, and your elders, will never know your heart perfectly. Elders may be physicians of the soul, but it is Jesus who is the great physician. If a member expects the elders to understand everything going on in their hearts, they have expected men to do God’s work.
The Shepherd’s Vision
Jesus knew exactly why He was here. Jesus came to do His Father’s will. Jesus had a mission and accomplished that mission. Jesus then commissioned His Apostles to go and make disciples of all nations, promising them the Holy Spirit. But He never promised the Apostles they would have perfect mission vision. He did not promise Peter he would be right on everything. Sometimes the Apostles caught themselves off guard as they were prevented from doing things. Sometimes they would drift in the wrong direction and have to be rebuked by another Apostle.
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After her husband’s death, Katharina continued her works of charity, housing refugees and visiting prisoners and the sick, including a magistrate who had contracted leprosy. She also offered refuge to Bucer and Paul Fagius when they were banned from Strasbourg for their outspoken criticism of the Augsburg Interim – a compromise dictated by the emperor, demanding a hybrid of Roman Catholic and Protestant worship. To overcome her grief for the death of her husband and for the imposition of the Interim, she kept a journal of meditations on the Psalms, which she published in part in 1558.

Often described as “Church Mother,” Katharina Zell was one of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation and one of the most prolific women writers of her time. Unlike other well-known writers such as Katherine Parr, Marguerite of Navarre, Anne Locke, and Mary Sidney Herbert, she didn’t achieve a higher level of education, although her writings became widely respected and influential.
Born around 1498 to a middle-class family and orphaned at a young age, she exhibited early on an eagerness to obey the Scriptures, attending the sacraments, praying, doing good works, and reading the Bible (in German, a habit the church at that time didn’t encourage). Like Martin Luther, she could never find assurance of salvation in her actions.
She first found this assurance around 1521, under the preaching of Matthias Zell, a cathedral priest who had adhered to Luther’s teachings. Based on her understanding of the Lutheran doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, Katharina interpreted her calling as a “fisher of people” – bringing the good news of the gospel to others.
At that time, Matthias Zell was the only preacher in Strasbourg to present the gospel as it was recovered by Luther. Martin Bucer, Wolfang Capito, and Kaspar Hedio joined him in 1523. Bucer was married, and might have encouraged Zell to leave the celibate life.
Defending Marriage
On December 3, 1523, Matthias married Katharina, causing great scandal in the city and abroad. Soon, the couple became the object of slander and rumors. Katharina must have been aware of these consequences. Many Roman Catholics supposed that, if a priest married, it must be to fulfill uncontainable urges or to cover up a pregnancy. In Matthias’s case, some imagine a persistent lustful character that caused Katharina to catch him red-handed with their maid.
Katharina didn’t take these slanders laying down, and wrote to the bishop of Strasbourg’s to defend not only her husband’s character and their union but clerical marriage in general. She based her defense on Scriptures, showing the depth of her knowledge of both Old and New Testaments. This letter – the first of her known writings – was included in a second publication meant for the public: an Apologia for Matthias Zell on Clerical Marriage, published in September 1524.
Katharina praised marriage as a gift from God, emphasized the authority of Scripture over all others, and exposed the hypocrisy of the clerical law that allowed a priest to cohabit with a woman as long as a fee was paid to the church. She described her defense of her husband as a dutiful act of love toward a brother in Christ. And her love extended to her readers, who should be protected from falsehood.
To those who said that women should keep silent, she recalled Joel’s prophecy: “I will pour forth my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophecy” (Joel 2:28). This was a popular verse during the Reformation, when many believed the end of the world was at hand.
“I do not seek to be heard as if I were Elizabeth, or John the Baptist, or Nathan the prophet who pointed out his sin to David, or as any of the prophets, but only as the donkey whom the false prophet Balaam heard. For I seek nothing other than that we may be saved together with each other. May God help us to do that, through Christ His beloved Son.”[1]
Bringing Comfort
The Apology was not the first of Katharina’s publications. Earlier the same year, she published a Letter of Consolation to the Suffering Women of Kentzingen, a town near Strasbourg where Protestants were being persecuted. Many of the men of Kentzingen (150, including the pastor, Jacob Otter), had been forced to leave town, and the city secretary had been executed for possessing a German New Testament.
While the men found refuge in Strasbourg (80 in the Zell home), Katharina encouraged the women to stay strong and be witnesses to the gospel. Her letter is a long string of God’s promises, focusing on those addressed to barren women and widows in Isaiah 54.
“O you women, who are perfectly described in this chapter! Who would want a better description than this? Are you not now widows, called by God? All these things have happened to you for the sake of His word. Has He not hidden Himself from you for a little, so that you might think He had forgotten you? So that you could scarcely see Him through a window (that is, by faith), for He stands behind the wall, as also the lovesick soul wails in the Song of Songs in the second chapter. Are you not also insulted and left without comfort in the storm? Yes. Consider, however, what He says here: ‘Do not fear, you will not be shamed,’ and He says that His mercy and covenant of eternal peace will not be divorced from you in such a storm, for He will not divorce Himself from you as He does from the ungodly. …”[2]
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Rather than reveling in and catering to childish youthfulness, Christians must value the elders of the church, giving weight to their thoughts and views. Rather than viewing church life and ministries as a consumer, Christians must contribute to the life and health of the church for the glory of God. Rather than selfish individualism, Christians need to humble themselves in service and self-denial, like Jesus Christ.

Much of modern America’s Christianity is filled with immaturity. In Ephesians 4:11–17, Paul highlights several aspects of what spiritual maturity would look like: a measure of unity, growth in Christlikeness, spiritual discernment, loving discipleship, and selfless service. Unfortunately, personal and spiritual immaturity are keeping these kinds of things from happening in many American churches, leading to instability and division within churches. What contributes to this immaturity? I suggest four things for consideration.
An Accommodation with Pop Culture
Pop culture is what dominates the landscape of America today. Kenneth Myers writes, “popular culture, especially [since 1964], has become a more dominant cultural force than ever before.”1 This was true in 1989 when he wrote this book, and it is even more so today.
While Christians cannot escape the presence of pop culture, we must guard ourselves from adapting to its value system. The value system and philosophical views of pop culture are not in alignment with those of the Scripture. Nonetheless, pop culture continues to be, not only allowed, but embraced in American churches, which contributes to its immaturity.
An Overemphasis on Reaching Youth
While pop culture has been around in some form for longer, the early decades of the twentieth century really ramped up its appeal and power, particularly in the youth of the day. The 1940s saw the term “teenager” come into vogue,2 and various youth organizations formed that targeted the youth of the day as the hope of the future of America.3)
The youth were viewed as those who could save the world from various political threats and also be the leaders in the churches. This youth movement embraced the expressions and behaviors of the pop culture of the day. This has been perpetuated ever since at rapid speed. However, when a church’s dominating emphasis is on the youth, it will lead to the neglect and marginalization of older generations, the prolonging of adolescence, and ultimately perpetuating immaturity within the church,4
Reaching the youth is important, but it should not trump the church’s need to reach people of all ages. Titus chapter two highlights a multigenerational ministry, giving emphasis on the mature and older generation.
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