Okay, we're back now with our third hour of five.

We have almost finished point number three on the outline called biblical principles of local church governance.

This is, for any of you who are new this morning, this is a Bethlehem Institute seminar entitled biblical

eldership part of a larger class called issues and spiritual

leadership and different ones of the seminars are given throughout the year, some on Wednesday night,

some on weekend, some on Sunday morning, and you're sure welcome at any of those, though we certainly

would not want to pull you away from your ministry or your involvement at your local church,

but rather strengthen you for it.

So those right there on the overhead now are the last three of the 11 principles of local church governance.

Keep in mind that these were all articulated back in the mid to late 80s as guidelines for how Bethlehem

would rethink our governance structure to move us little by little

towards a more flexible, lean, ministry-oriented, biblical governance structure. These were not the result of that, but the guidelines for it.

So let's take these last I'll say so but otherwise I don't want you to misunderstand or I don't want to make a

mistake that should be corrected. Number nine, spiritual qualifications should never be sacrificed to technical expertise.

For example, deacons or trustees or what we call now, and I added this yesterday. Financial and property administrators should be men or women and I do say that carefully because while we don't install women as elders at Bethlehem, we will and do believe it would be

biblical to have deacons or trustees or financial Administrators who include women.

Should be women or men with hearts for God, even more importantly,

than they have heads for finance and best of all both.

But I stress this because as I contemplated our change in government,

I saw it Bethlehem in those early days,

something that I hadn't seen in many churches,

namely that both our trustees and our deacons in those days who were governing

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