The pastoral epistles¹ are best friends to a young pastor like myself. With only nine months of lead pastor ministry under my belt I find myself always turning to these friends for wisdom.

One particular area of focused study in recent months has been Paul’s instruction regarding the installation of elders. Everyone seems to know the qualifications Paul gives for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, but fewer know – or at least talk about – Paul’s wisdom about installing such qualified men. In Titus 1 Paul said to his young church planter, “This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might . . . appoint elders in every town as I directed you” (1:5). The first thing we see is Titus exhorted to urgency as Paul apparently doesn’t want Titus to be lazy in the appointment of elders. But Titus 1:5 needs to always be balanced by 1 Timothy 5:22, where Paul says, “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands.” So, be urgent and patient. From these two passages I get my conviction that churches should be patiently urgent in installing men for elder leadership.

At our church, this maxim has played out in us spending eight months observing which men are qualified and already doing the work of eldering. We identified those men and then put them in five-months of “elder candidate training.”² The training involves, on average, three monthly meetings³ along with many books to read, lectures to listen to, and response papers to write. I am always fascinated with and challenged by the resources other churches use for elder training, so I thought it could be useful to provide a list of the books we are using at IDC.

Most of these books are read in their entirety, but from a few we are only reading selected chapters.

BIBLE & THEOLOGY

• IDC Elder Confession of Faith⁴
• The King in His Beauty by Tom Schreiner
• God’s Big Picture by Vaughn Roberts (UR)⁵
• Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves (UR)
• What is Reformed Theology? by RC Sproul (UR)

ECCLESIOLOGY

• What is the Mission of the Church? by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert
• A Display of God’s Glory by Mark Dever
• The Deliberate Church by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander
• What is a Healthy Church? by Mark Dever (UR)

PASTORAL MINISTRY

• The Shepherd Leader by Timothy Witmer
• Faithful Preaching by Tony Merida        
• Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons by Thabiti Anyabwile (UR)

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

• The Practice of Godliness by Jerry Bridges
• Humility by CJ Mahaney (UR)
• The Gospel & Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever (UR)
• Sex, Romance, & The Glory of God by CJ Mahaney (UR)
• A Neglected Grace: Family Worship in the Christian Home by Jason Helopoulos (UR)
• Mortification of Sin by John Owen (UR)
• Rhythms of Grace by Mike Cosper (UR)
• The Secret Key to Heaven by Thomas Brooks (UR)

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