Yesterday marked the fifth week we didn’t have our usual weekly elders’ meeting. I know for some churches that is the norm, with elders’ meetings kept to a minimum, sometimes only a monthly basis. But for us, this is unusual. Not that it is anybody’s fault. Summer being what it is, one of us was away, then another for a couple of weeks, then the other again. It just so happened for the last month that no sooner than one of us returned from being away, the other one left. Such is life.

In one sense, it didn’t matter that much. As I have mentioned before, we have a regular summer slow down where our usual ministries go on hiatus for 6 weeks. It is an opportunity for all the volunteers to take a break, it accounts for the various holidays that might be going on and it allows us to build the fellowship in other ways. It’s not so much that we stop doing anything as we build time in for different, often less formal, things. But when there is considerably less going on, there is less to have an elders meeting about.

But in another way, I really miss not having them. Obviously, when I’m away, I’m away. I don’t miss the habit or the meeting itself per se. It is not altogether unpleasant not to have it. But when I am here, I miss the routine of meeting, the opportunity to review what has been done and the ability to organise myself by the things that will be done this week as they have come up.

For me, the elders’ meeting is the very thing of my working week. Whilst formally Sunday is the first day of the week, due to it being the start of the work week, for many of us Monday is our de facto day one. But as a pastor, my week essentially builds up to a crescendo on Sunday followed by my single day off on a Monday. Monday is actually my Day 7, making Tuesday the first day of my working week. Every Tuesday morning – after organising the children and doing the school run – I get on my computer and start writing an agenda for the elders’ meeting that will happen an hour later. The elders’ meeting on a Tuesday is the first matter of my working week.

For me, this is good. It is at the elders’ meeting we have the first opportunity – with a day’s breathing space in between – to review Sunday. It is our first opportunity to bring up various matters that we have become alive to amongst the membership. It is where we can review what we have done about the things we raised the previous week and, if we haven’t been able to do anything as yet, keep it on the agenda and remind ourselves to do it. It is our first opportunity to address the various things we need to start moving on this week.

It’s not quite the case that I don’t know what to do with myself if we don’t have an elders’ meeting. It’s more that there are things that I will miss, that other elders pick up, to which I am oblivious. It’s that the drive to address particular things may not be there because, until we are able to speak and agree what to do, we cannot do anything. That is if I am aware of the need to deal with that thing at all. It’s that I am able to organise my week around the things that need doing as highlighted by the elders’ meeting. Of course, there are always sermons to prep, studies to write, people to see, but the elders meeting helps to clarify the pressing matters and helps me to organise my week around the things that really matter.

And so, whilst from time to time our elders’ meetings don’t happen – and entirely legitimately so – I miss them when they’re not there. Things will still happen, of course. But it feels sub-optimal. Even if pushing in a right direction, it feels more like a shaky hand on the rudder; not so much aimlessly drifting as not quite specifically setting a particular course. I will be very glad when we are able to meet again.