Thus far in our study of the New Testament Christian elder we have limited our search to passages which explicitly include the English translated word “elder” (using the NIV 2011 edition). While the word “elder” itself does come up frequently, the concept of this role within the church is spoken of using a host of various other descriptive words.
Today we will consider the first of the synonyms for Christian elders in the New Testament (there are more than this one, but in attempting to keep this a more digestible read I’m limiting today’s discussion to one): Overseer. In future discussions we will examine other synonymous words and concepts for the elder (such as shepherd, and pastor).
Overseer
The first time we see this word used in the New Testament is in Paul’s speech to the gathered group of Christian elders from the church at Ephesus (Acts 20:28):
20:28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
We can make a few initial observations here about Christian elders. (1) the Holy Spirit is the one who has made the elders to be “overseers”. The Holy Spirit of God is intensely involved in the work of the church. One of those very tangible ways the Holy Spirit is involved is through elders/overseers. (2) The position of “overseer” is akin to one watching over, providing oversight. One of the tasks of elders is observational in nature. They are to “keep their eyes peeled” as it were with special focus on the special people of God. Christian elders should provide accountability in a Godly manner for the church. (3) The elders not only keep watch over the flock, but also themselves! This is sequentially the first thing Paul brings to the attention of the Ephesian elders. Not only is there an exercise of oversight from the Elders over the church, but there is also a duty of watching over themselves. Conceptually we see some overlap with Jesus’ teaching in Luke 6:42 and the parable of the plank and the eye. Before exercising another’s speck of a problem, one must deal with the plank of a problem in themselves. Christian elders are not free from oversight, they are established by the Holy Spirit and are held to a lofty standard (more on this later).
The second time we see the word “overseer” used in the New Testament is in the opening words of the letter to the Philippians:
1:1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: 
We see Paul and Timothy address two major groups, with one group having two subgroups. The first major group are “all God’s Holy People in Christ Jesus at Philippi”. The second major group we may call church servants, or church officers. This second major group is composed of both the overseers and the deacons. We’re left wondering at this point if “overseer” is truly synonymous with elders. Yet as we will see throughout our study, the work of elders is often described with words like “overseer”, and “shepherd”. There is no third group which is singled out or differentiated from elders. There is however a group differentiated from deacons. Therefore, we can conclude that throughout the New Testament there are at minimum two groups identified in church service – elders (frequently called overseers or other titles in connection with their responsibilities) and deacons.

The third instance of “Overseer” in the New Testament is found in Paul’s first letter to Timothy in chapter 3:
3:1 Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task.
We can make a few observations here. (1) The work of the Christian overseer/elder is something noble. This work is something which may be aspired to, desired, or hoped for. When I think of a “noble task” I think of one particular young man who I’m praying for at the moment. He’s someone I’ve gotten to know a little bit over the last year, and he’s generously signed up to serve in the armed forces as a marine. He’s dedicated himself to all sorts of various tasks and made himself subject to others in authority over him for the sake of serving millions who he will never meet and who will never know his name. That’s certainly a noble task! Paul says to Timothy that this work of the overseer is also a “noble task”! (2) The overseer/elder is a matter of “being”. It is not merely duties attached to a title, a role associated with responsibilities, but is also a matter of existing. It is not merely something to “do”, but rather the New Testament Christian elder is to “be” something. (3) In addition to “being” something, the Christian overseer/elder is also to “do” something as there is a task. We should not reduce the role and work of overseers/elders to only their tasks. Yet we should also not absolve or ourselves neglect the call to action in New Testament instructions for elders. There are things for the Christian elders to “do”.
Paul continues his discussion on elders with a lengthy standard and set of qualities for Timothy to put to use in the church (3:2-7):
3:2 Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. 5 (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. 7 He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

It is never pleasant to think about death. Yet death is real. It is not something we can afford to ignore, to wish away, to sentimentalize, or to trivialize. Scripture owns up to the reality of death and does so from its opening pages. Issues of “life and death” importance mark the first three chapters of the Bible.

We all have questions about death. What is death? Why do we die? Why do we all die? Why is death so scary? Why did Christ die? Why do Christians have to die? How can I face the death of someone I love? How can I prepare for death? How can I help others prepare for death? What happens after death?
To answer these questions, we need to go to the Scripture and see what God has to say to us there. The Bible is God’s Word and is completely reliable and true. If the Bible tells us something about death, then we can stake our lives on it.
We also have a lot of help. Our spiritual ancestors thought deeply and practically about death. Throughout the history of the church, pastors and teachers have sought to help God’s people face death in light of the riches of biblical truth. In the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago, the church recovered the gospel in its full biblical integrity. Martin Luther, John Calvin, the British Puritans, and their spiritual heirs have left us rich reflections on suffering, death, and heaven in light of the gospel.
But we don’t live in the halls of church history. We live in the twenty-first century. Every generation faces its own particular challenges in thinking seriously and biblically about death and dying. The challenges of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are not always our own. To begin, we need to think about where we are. Why does modern Western culture—and sadly, sometimes, even the church—make it so hard for us to think about death?
CHALLENGES FROM OUR CULTURE
What are some obstacles that our culture raises to thinking properly about death and dying? There are at least two. The first is that we live in a culture of distraction. Think about it. We have year-round access to sports—live and televised events; domestic and international; football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer. We have cable networks, talk shows, call-in shows—all devoted to sports. We have television and movie streaming—Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Apple TV+, for starters. In 2019, there were 532 original scripted television series broadcast in the United States; up from 495 in 2018 and 210 in 2009.1 And then there are the twenty-four-hour news channels. You couldn’t begin to watch all that’s offered. There is music streaming—Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. For a few dollars a month, you can stream or download hundreds or thousands of songs. And although social media is a relative newcomer, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok entice users to spend hours on their devices.
The point is not that sports, television, music, or social media are bad. They are not. I enjoy each of them. The problem is that our culture overwhelms us with entertainments and diversion. This multibillion-dollar industry keeps us from thinking about serious things—life, death, and eternity. Of course, diversion from serious things is not unique to our culture. It is part of our fallen bent as sinners to distract ourselves from the truth. Why do we do this? Blaise Pascal put it well nearly four hundred years ago: “Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things”2 and “It is easier to bear death when one is not thinking about it than the idea of death when there is no danger.”3
Therefore, our culture has not done something brand new in its pursuit of distraction. What is new is that we have taken distraction to new heights. The thought of death is so overwhelming that we would prefer not to think about it at all. Our modern industry of distraction helps us to do just that. We invest billions of dollars annually not to think about the unthinkable.
A second and related obstacle that our culture has raised to thinking seriously about death and dying is that we live in a culture of distancing and denial. We have all sorts of ways to try to keep death at arm’s length. Few young people, for instance, have had direct experience with death. They see dramatizations of death in TV and movies, often in shocking and gory detail.4 But many have never been to a funeral or memorial service, and even fewer have ever seen a dead body. It used to be that most people died at home. Now, most people die in institutions—hospitals and nursing homes, for instance.5 This is not a bad thing, of course, since these institutions are routinely staffed by skilled people who ensure that our friends and family members receive care and comfort in their last days. But this also means that families are often not with their loved ones in their last hours. Further, a routine experience of death in families has been mercifully stemmed: infant mortality. Parents, of course, continue to experience the tragic heartache of the loss of a child, but this is far less common than it used to be.6 The eighteenth-century Scottish pastor Thomas Boston, buried six children before they reached the age of two. The English Puritan John Owen had eleven children, but only one survived to adulthood. No one would want to return to the days when infant mortality was an expected, if not inevitable, part of family life. But that also means that fewer families today know what it is to experience death firsthand in the home.
We have also witnessed a revolution in the way that people mourn in our culture. Increasingly, funerals are called “celebrations of life.” This way of speaking serves to distance both the service and the mourners from the reality of death. One survey from 2019 found that the three most popular songs performed at funerals in the United Kingdom were Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” Andrea Boccelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye,” and Eva Cassidy’s recording of “Over the Rainbow.”7 It is revealing that these songs equip us to respond to death with sloppy sentimentality (“Time to Say Goodbye,” “Over the Rainbow”) or with bald defiance (“My Way”). The survey’s authors commented that “surprisingly no classical hymns made it on to the most popular top ten list.” Is this a surprise, though? Good hymns capture deep, substantive, biblical truths to bring gospel comfort to mourners. By and large, that is simply not what we want in the West today as we encounter death.
CHALLENGES FROM THE CHURCH
The culture is not the only place that we find obstacles to thinking seriously and substantively about death and dying. Sadly, the evangelical church has added its own set of obstacles. We may briefly reflect on three in particular. First, the church has embraced consumerism. The church too often treats attenders like customers, and these attenders too often act like customers. The church can present itself as selling a product in a competitive marketplace. Church attenders can demand to be kept satisfied or they will take their business elsewhere. If that model informs, even imperceptibly, our understanding of the church, then mortality and death will struggle to find a place in the teaching and songs of the church. If people are not made to feel positive and uplifted, the reasoning goes, they will leave and go elsewhere. There are incredible pressures to keep people coming and to attract more people to our services and programs. Why, then, would you put an unwelcome reality like death before them?
Second, the church has embraced an entertainment mentality. Often the buildings in which evangelical churches meet resemble stages with auditorium-style seating. A band is up front playing loud music (some churches even offer earplugs to attendees as they enter the building). Preaching reflects the influence of entertainment culture. Preaching is dedicated less to opening and applying a text of Scripture than to addressing the felt needs and concerns of contemporary hearers. It avoids being either serious or confrontational, and it is not particularly authoritative. Death and eternity, if they are handled at all, are handled sparingly and gingerly.
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“Number of Original Scripted TV Series in the United States from 2009 to 2019,” Statistica, January 2021, accessed January 19, 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/444870/scripted-primetime-tv-series-number-usa ↩︎
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin, 1966), 66 (=Pensée 169). ↩︎
Pascal, Pensées, 72 (=Pensée 166). ↩︎
Timothy A. Sisemore, Finding God While Facing Death (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2017), 19. ↩︎
Sisemore, Finding God While Facing Death, 19. ↩︎
Sisemore, Finding God While Facing Death, 19. ↩︎
Georgina Hamilton, “The Most Played Songs at Funerals Revealed—and Some Choices Are Bizarre,” Smooth Radio 97-108, May 2, 2019, accessed January 19, 2021, https://www.smoothradio.com/news/quirky/most-popular-funeral-music-songs. ↩︎

We must resist the disenchantment of the modern world, and instead maintain our grasp on the reality that we are deeply vulnerable – to the devil’s schemes, to the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil. And as we open our eyes to recognize this ‘classic’ vulnerability we will find that such an honest appraisal of our circumstances brings great blessings. 

“Vulnerability was the most basic reality – reinforced by every aspect of human experience and never forgotten in the sweat and labour it took to maintain a flourishing life in its face.”
Joseph Minich, Bulwarks of Unbelief
What Max Weber described as the ‘iron cage’ of modernity distorts Christian life and community in countless ways. But perhaps one of the most pertinent is when it comes to the idea of vulnerability.
‘Classic’ Vulnerability
As the quote above suggests, premodern existence was profoundly colored by a pervasive sense of vulnerability – that life was lived at the mercy of external agencies and powers to an almost unfathomable extent. This was an existence in a world that was beyond our comprehension and control – what I will call a world of ‘classic’ vulnerability. A world in which the edges of maps were marked ‘here be dragons’ – territories and geographies beyond the bounds of our knowledge, beset with unknown dangers.
Closer to home, as the father of three young children, I can hardly (bear to) imagine what it was like to inhabit a world where infant mortality was not a theoretical possibility but a lived reality. Where which of the children I loved survived to adulthood seemed to be determined either by brute chance, or the inscrutable providence of God. Where Job’s cry that ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away’ (1:21) was woven into the fabric of existence.
In this world, the basic reality of vulnerability provided a natural motivation for the building and maintaining of human communities and companionship, of structures of order and authority – namely to hold the forces of chaos and destruction at bay to whatever extent possible, and to provide networks of care and support when disaster did (inevitably) strike. And for most of its life the church has been more than, but not less than, such a human community. ‘Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress’ (James 1:27).
Post-Vulnerability
Many of us no longer live in a world where vulnerability accosts us as a basic reality of our existence. Indeed, the central thrust of the industrial project of science and technology is to extend human power into the world around us in such a way as to push back the forces of chaos around us, and create an ever increasing space of perceived invulnerability. As products of modernity our precognitive “take” on the world around us is that it is something that is, in all meaningful respects, within the scope of human comprehension and control. It is something that can be understood, managed and used for our ends.., This is what Weber meant by his much employed concept of ‘disenchantment’.
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