Leadership is an important issue in the practice of the church life. Without leadership it is impossible for a group of people to work together to accomplish anything. Proper leadership is a great blessing for God's people but leadership that is impure or off track has the potential to lead many astray (Acts 20:29-30). Thus questions about leadership touch some very crucial issues.
We do not have any kind of organizational structure to keep churches in various cities in order. We believe that each church is responsible to the Lord (Rev. 2 & 3) and should be under the Lord's leading directly. In practical terms, the elders are the leading brothers of a local church. Their responsibility before God is to continually seek His will and to shepherd all the saints according to His leading (1 Pet. 5:1-4). We consider the words elders and overseers to refer to the same group of people. The word elder refers to his person and implies maturity in life. The word overseer refers to his function in the local church and implies leadership. Specifically, we do not consider these two titles to refer to two classes of leaders.
So an obvious question is, "How can a group of brothers find the Lord's leading?" As far as we know, the best way is through prayer and fellowship together. There are many things to take care of as the brothers are seeking to care for the church and lead it forward. So they need to bring these things to the Lord and then fellowship together about them. It is normal and healthy that they would feel somewhat differently at the beginning of the fellowship about a particular matter. Each one has his own knowledge of the truth, spiritual history with the Lord, depth of spiritual understanding, etc. Of course, each also has his own personality and disposition.
The brothers begin to openly express what they feel about the matter at hand. As a point is made there is a response in the others that either confirms or senses something wrong with it. On the one hand, no one should be so confident that his feeling is of the Lord that he insists on it. Any of us can mistake our own feelings and preferences for the Lord's leading. On the other hand, the elders should not proceed with a proposed action if one of them is uneasy about it. This is usually a sign that we have not fellowshipped thoroughly enough to find the Lord's leading. At the end of the fellowship someone usually sums up the fellowship and we decide who will take care of it.
There are a number of prerequisites for this kind of fellowship to actually reach the goal of finding the Lord's leading. All the ones involved must be spiritual, that is, they must know the senses of their spirit and the anointing of the Spirit in their spirit. They must all have the same spiritual goal fo the building up of the church. Then all of them must be open to both express what they feel and to let go of that feeling if it is not confirmed by the others. No one among the elders should dominate or be left out of the fellowship.