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The Cost of Having No Elders

The Cost of Having No Elders

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 Post URL: https://read.timschmoyer.com/p/the-cost-of-having-no-eldersLead a voice message: https://www.speakpipe.com/timschmoyerNow that I’m thinking about city eldership more intentionally, I’m starting to notice what we’ve lost by not having it as a normal part of our life. Kind of like how I don’t notice the humming of the ceiling fan until I turn it off, I didn’t notice the impact of missing city elders until I noticed we had none.I don’t mean we lack elderly people. We have those. I mean we have no one sitting at the metaphorical gates where their presence shapes the character of the people living there. (Literal gates would make this easier to wrestle with, but alas, we no longer have those.) No one whose judgment we trust enough to bring our hardest questions. No one modeling what a life well-lived actually looks like.The gates stand empty, and we’re all worse for it.I, for one, want to aspire to the noble task of being an elder (1 Timothy 3:1) and link arms with several other men in my city who have a similar vision.What We Lost When the Elders LeftWhen I think about the last time I had a major decision to make—a challenge at work, a marriage conflict, uncertainty about how to guide my teenager. Who did I ask? I sometimes go to an AI bot. Sometimes a therapist. Sometimes to a friend who is as confused as I am.We’ve created a society where everyone figures everything out alone, where wisdom has been replaced by expertise, and where the only models of manhood we see are either boys who never grew up or professionals who only show us their polished brands.The biblical pattern was different. When Boaz needed to settle the question of Ruth’s future, he didn’t post in a Reddit forum or schedule a consultation. He went to the city gate and gathered ten elders—men whose character and judgment had been proven over decades, men who knew how to weigh competing claims and render decisions that served both justice and mercy.These weren’t elected officials or credentialed experts. They were simply men who had learned to lead their households well, who had built businesses and raised children and navigated conflict, who had acquired the kind of practical wisdom that only comes from years of faithful stewardship. The community knew them, trusted them, and looked to them.When Boaz needed help, he knew exactly where to go and who to ask.Can I say the same?The Vacuum We’re Living InWithout elders at the gates, I wonder if our cities operate in a state of adolescence. We lurch from crisis to crisis with no long memory, no steady hand, no voice of seasoned wisdom to say, “We’ve been here before, and here’s what we learned.”Then a job change moves a young father across the country to a new city where he has no one to show him what fatherhood looks like beyond the terrible twos. He’s left to piece together manhood from Instagram influencers and lessons from his father who is hundreds of miles away.Even when he seeks a vision for manhood, he really finds only two options: perpetual boyhood or corporate careerism. The path from father in the home to elder in the city to ruler in the Kingdom—the progression that I think scripture presents as the normal developmental arc of masculine maturity—isn’t really on our minds let alone consistently modeled for us even in Christian circles.We’ve lost the infrastructure of wisdom.What Changes When Elders ReturnImagine living in a neighborhood with elders present and active. Not busybodies or enforcers, but men whose proven character gives them natural authority, whose homes you can point to and say, “That’s what I’m aiming for.”The new father down the street wouldn’t be drowning in sleep deprivation and parenting books. He’d have an older man who stops by, not to lecture, but to sit on the porch and share stories, to normalize the struggle, to help him see that what feels like failure is actually formation. And maybe even receive childcare support from the man and his wife so he can sleep.The high school graduate trying to figure out his next move wouldn’t be choosing between college debt and minimum wage work based solely on his guidance counselor’s direction. He’d have access to a community of men who’ve built different kinds of lives—the contractor, the business owner, the teacher—who could help him discern his actual calling rather than just optimizing for salary.The city itself would have a different character. Not because elders would be running everything, but because their presence would create a gravitational pull toward maturity, stability, long-term thinking. They’d be the living embodiment of what’s possible when you take seriously the work of becoming a Godly man with a Kingdom vision.The Gate Is OpenPaul’s instruction to Titus was explicit: “appoint elders in every city” (Titus 1:5). Not just in churches. In cities. Paul’s expectation was that every city should have elders:* Men who are...
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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.