First Timothy 3:1-7 Church Leadership

From the New International Version of the Bible, First Timothy 3:1-7

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task.  The overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?)

Commentary

So, having finished his instructions concerning public worship, Paul moves on to discuss church leadership. His focus in on the personal and spiritual characteristics required to qualify someone for a leadership post. He begins with the overseers in the church also known as elders, and in some places, even pastors and bishops. At the outset, Paul says it's a noble thing to desire to be an overseer. People chosen for such a post should want to be there. A genuine desire to shepherd God's church in the Spirit of Christ would ensure that candidates were not reluctant or timid in their approach to service and leadership.

But there is more to it than just wanting the job. Paul lists a whole host of qualifications that the successful elder must have in order to serve. An elder has to be above reproach. His personal integrity and reputation must be unassailable. He has to be blameless in legal and moral matters so that the whole church membership can look to him as an example.

The qualified overseer must also be the husband of but one wife. This means he can't be a bigamist or a polygamist or an adulterer. Lifetime monogamy and fidelity are required.

Elders must also be temperate, self controlled and respectable. They must be disciplined in all things - models of moderation. Also, hotheads need not apply. Short tempered, angry, emotional men are a bad choice to lead God's church. Full control over emotional and mental faculties need to be assured.

They must also be hospitable; kind to strangers, the poor, widows and all those in need.

Elders must be able to teach. A thorough working knowledge of God's Word enables the successful elder to correct errors, stop false teaching, and instruct the flock in the truth.

Besides all these things, there are some things that an overseer must not be. They must not be drunkards. This is part of self control. If a man is given to too much wine, he cannot be an elder.

Elders must not be given to violence either. Correction of errant church members must be gentle and non-physical. In the same way, they should not be quarrelsome. This may refer to physical violence or it could refer to being argumentative. Either way, self control is again the issue.

Finally, an overseer must not be a lover of money. Christ said we could either love love God or love money, but we cannot serve both. This was especially important for church leadership.

Then in verse 4, Paul resumes his list of things that elders must be. First, an elder must manage his family well, ensuring that his children are respectful. A man that can't manage his family effectively probably will not be able to manage the church either.

Paul also says that recent converts should not be brought into the eldership. His concern was that they might become conceited or proud; and as we all know, pride goes before a fall.  

Lastly, an overseer must have a good reputation with those outside the church. His dealings in the world must reflect his Christian character. Failure in this could bring disgrace. It would make the church and the Faith look bad in the eyes of non-Christians.

Questions

1. Why is it important that a candidate for the eldership NOT be reluctant to serve? What makes desire for the job so important?
2. What can an over-eagerness to serve indicate about an elder candidate?
3. What does it mean to be above reproach and the husband of but one wife?
4. Can a woman be an elder?
5. What can happen if an elder comes up short in one or two of these requirements?
6. How can family dysfunction effect the ability of an elder to lead the church?
7. Can past family problems make someone more capable as an elder? Where do we draw the line?
8. Why is it important not to appoint a recent convert to the eldership?
9. Why must an elder have a good reputation outside the church? Why does anyone care what those in the world think of church leadership?
10. Do we tend to expect more from people in church leadership positions, than we do of ourselves? If so, is this appropriate?
11. Is there anything in the qualifications for the eldership that do not apply to every Christian? Does this mean that we all can or should be elders? 

P.S. I wonder why evangelical protestant elders don't wear snappy outfits and hats like these? Hmmm.

Spring Forward

Sometime around 2:00 AM we experienced our annual temporal shift forward in time. I hope it went well with you and that you did not experience any anomalies that might somehow change the time line for all of us. I especially hope that you are not an hour behind everyone else today, as you will be late for everything and change the time line in negative ways for all those around you. The best way to remedy that is to set you clocks forward one hour. I know that in the Star Trek genre time travel was always much more difficult. It involved moving a space ship into hyper-warp speed and moving faster than the speed of light at such a rate that time actually would move backward or forward. Getting back to your normal time on Star Trek was always pretty tricky too and there was always the concern that somehow your presence in the future or past would somehow change history. Fortunately, we are able to leave high technology out of the loop and simply turn our chronometers forward. It works rather well if we all do it together, but there are still those that don't get it done and invariably they show up late to church.

The times are definitely changing. We live in a different world today than our fore bearers did 100 years ago. I'm really not sure that it has anything to do with the quality of time however. It has more to do with the things we have abandoned because we have become more concerned with ourselves than we have the things of God. People do not have the time or the inclination to search out matters of faith. Men and women no longer raise there own children in the traditional sense. They leave it to daycare providers and the public schools. Families and marriages have become a matter of convenience. They are no longer the core of our society and the families that do exist tend to be dysfunctional, lacking proper role models. The result is that people never really grow up mentally and always require supervision even long after they have left what passes for a home.

What we get is a society that cannot take up the responsibilities of being a free people. Government then fills the void with more and more controls. Totalitarianism in one form or another then takes hold. We are experiencing this shift now in our society.

The cure for that lies in the people. A conscious decision has to be made that we will choose to take responsibility for our own actions, what ever those may be, and develop the maturity to deal with that on our own. A mature society does not rely on the government to take care of them. Rather, the people of a mature society contrive ways to take care of themselves rather than putting that burden on their neighbors.

Times are changing. Ultimately, I do not think we will like this new 'spring forward' and getting back to the way things were will become impossible.

These were just a few things nagging the Ground Hog this morning as he lay in his burrow with the alarm going off an hour earlier. He's at an age now where he can't afford to lose an hour. But then, if he lives long enough, he'll get it back in the Fall.