Elders’ Meetings that Do Something seems to have a very different view of eldership to anything I’ve heard of in Australia: it seems like an even tougher job – I can’t think of any volunteer role that would involve this kind of regular time commitment: can you?
We find meeting for at least four hours weekly is about right, 6-10 pm. Even then we find that we want more time. In fact, before one of our elders changed jobs, we would meet from 5-10 pm. The "once-a-month elders’ meeting" is the kiss of death for most elder teams. It usually means that the elders do not understand their responsibilities and are mere figure heads.