EPISODE 193 1 TIMOTHY CHAPTER 3 "So you want to be a church leader..."

Welcome to Share the Word. As I mentioned, Paul's letter to Timothy holds a special purpose in my heart, as it should for all church leaders. And as I listen to Paul's words, I'm reminded of the timelessness and weight and importance the Bible and God's Word holds in our lives, giving us critical guidelines that we should follow. Paul, 1 Timothy chapter 3. So you want to be a church leader. In chapter 3, Paul continues to give his lieutenant Timothy, who he's placed in charge of churches in and around the large population center of Ephesus in Roman Asia, important instructions for how the early churches should be organized.

Make no mistake, from the outset of the Christian era, the local church has been the focal point of what God is doing in this age. In fact, theologians often call the age we are in now, which started at Pentecost 33 A.D. and will run until Jesus returns, this whole time the church age. It's the church age because God is building His universal, invisible church right now, one human brick at a time, one new believer at a time. But it's also the church age because the local church is the primary organ God has designed and intends to be central in getting His work done during this time. What exactly is it that local churches are supposed to be doing, you might be thinking? Well, let me briefly summarize, because I feel sure we've covered this at some point in our podcast series.

There are five important things local churches should be doing. First, they are a place believers gather together regularly for corporate worship. That means gather for prayer, for singing praises to God together, to listen to public reading of Scripture together, and so on. The purpose of worshiping together at a church is to regularly refocus our minds and hearts on God and on the most important things, the things which are above, as Paul would put it, the things of eternal value. Another purpose of the local church is to be the principal place believers get instructed in God's Word. That happens as knowledgeable and hopefully gifted pastors and teachers open up the Bible and explain and apply its truths to their flock, because the Bible is the milk new believers need and the meat older believers need to keep spiritually growing strong.

Beyond those two things, the church is also a place where Christians can connect with one another in deeper life relationships, build important relationships with fellow believers who share their worldview. Christianese for this is fellowship. Real fellowship happens as members bond like a spiritual family through their time together, whether in church services, through taking meals together, joining classes together, participating in ministry teams together. Many churches have special times where smaller groups of people meet together on purpose in homes to facilitate building valuable relationships among members. A fourth purpose of the gathered church is so the body can serve its members' needs as well as its community's needs. This happens as individual believers serve each other with the abilities, resources, and time God has given them.

The New Testament teaches every Christian needs to be a part of a local church body so they can function together with others, just like parts of the human body function together, with each body part contributing to the health and growth of the whole. And fifth, final purpose of the church is to evangelize their community. That means to both live out their faith before and share the gospel message with unbelievers in their community, so they can come to know Christ as Savior too, and then join in that local church where they can worship together, be taught God's Word, build relationships, serve each other, learn to share their faith as well. The better a local church is at accomplishing those five purposes, the healthier it will be, and the more the body will grow in faith, in hope, and love, as well as in numbers, hopefully.

At the beginning, in Paul and Timothy's day, the local church was it for Christians, the spiritual hub of everything for them. By our time, things have diversified with a lot of other, sometimes called parachurch ministries. These are Christian ministries which operate alongside the church. Share the Word is an example of a parachurch ministry. But still, biblically, from God's point of view, the local church is His primary means through which to get what He wants to get done, done in this world. So our advice is always become a functioning member of a healthy, Bible-believing local church in your community that understands God's purposes and is intent on accomplishing them in its members' lives.

Now, for a local church to be healthy, they need good leadership. This is so important, and this is one of the major themes in the pastoral epistles. As Paul continues with practical instructions for Timothy, he spends most of chapter 3 describing who Timothy should entrust with leadership of the individual congregations he is over in and around Ephesus. As we mentioned last time, local church leaders were sometimes called elders, a title borrowed from the synagogues of the Jews. That title stresses the required maturity and wisdom church leaders need. A more common title in the Greek world was overseer.

Elder and overseer are interchangeable titles in the New Testament for church leaders. Today, where I live, we most often call church leaders pastors, which stresses that spiritual leaders should be doing things like shepherding God's flock. That's what pastor means, which includes teaching them His Word, feeding them, providing good leadership, protecting the church from wrong ideas promulgated by false teachers, counseling people, encouraging people, correcting people who need that kind of personal ministry. Church leaders, by any title, need to be examples to their congregation of what a mature Christian life looks like. I've noticed that in the New Testament, church leadership was entrusted to a council of elders, a team of people, a team of men, as at Antioch, where we saw Paul and Barnabas functioning as leaders among four other men. Besting too much power in one man is not wise.

That can get even the best of men in trouble. Everyone needs accountability and input from peers. If you're the lone pastor of a growing church, it can soon also become overwhelming, as demands on your time and energy keep increasing. Later in 1 Timothy chapter 5, I think it is, Paul says that elders who rule well should be worthy of double honor, especially those who excel at preaching and teaching. And then he goes on to explain that those exceptional leaders and teachers should be paid for their ministry work. If a church can free up a really gifted leader and teacher to devote themselves to the ministry as a job, so they're working at it full time, the church is going to benefit from that.

This is the origin of the ministry as a profession. So it seems that, even in the first century, there were church leaders who we would call professional pastors and others who were lay leaders, but they functioned together as a leadership team, as spiritual overseers for the congregation. But who could be a part of that team? That question brings up these instructions in our chapter. This is a trustworthy statement, Timothy. If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it's a fine work he desires to do.

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, skillful in teaching, not overindulging in wine, not a bully, but gentle, not contentious, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity. Because if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God? And not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into condemnation incurred by the devil. Also, he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into disgrace and the snare of the devil. In secular organizations, leaders or officers are often chosen because of who they are rather than what they are.

By that I mean, if they are prominent in the community, they're someone. If they're successful in business, or the son of a senator, or something like that, they're the preferred candidates to be president of the Kiwanis Club or whatever. But Paul stressed to Timothy the leaders he selected to oversee churches should stand out foremost for their good character. Did you hear all those character qualities he told him to look for? Above reproach kind of is the overarching summary. It describes a man who does not have obvious character and behavioral flaws that would cause others to not respect them, obvious weaknesses people can see in their lives that would hinder them from being effective as leaders.

Then he breaks that down into several specifics. He must be the husband of one wife. That probably better translated into a man of one woman, because the word husband and man is the same word in Greek. The word wife and woman is the same word in Greek. I think it's much better to understand him saying a man of one woman. It means a man who is faithful to his wife if he's married, a one-woman man, as we might put it.

Some understand that qualification as simply a prohibition against polygamists serving as church leaders, but I think that's too narrow. Others think it disqualifies anyone who's ever been divorced, but that would rule out an awful lot of people then and now. Realize this qualification is in a list of character traits observable in a man's life, that is, how people view him. Paul is saying a church leader cannot be a skirt chaser, to put it bluntly. He must be morally upright, and if he's married, no one questions whether he's devoted to his wife. He is, and everyone can see that.

He goes on with temperate, self-controlled, and respectable. Timothy, look for men who are even-keeled, not given to excesses in their life, and men whose lives are orderly. Then he adds hospitable to his list. That means someone who likes people and enjoys having them in his home. That was especially important at a time when there were no dedicated church buildings, when most gatherings happened in people's homes. Someone qualified to be a church leader has a welcome mat on his front porch, and he means it.

He's ready to share what he has in his home for the benefit of those he is called to serve. Not overindulging in wine. That's a pretty polite way to say not a drunk. Probably more than that too. A man whose personal habits are a good example to younger Christians who will be looking to him as a role model. Then he says, not a bully or contentious, but gentle.

A church leader can't be someone who pushes other people around to get his way, or certainly whoever gets physical with other people in confrontations. He needs to be a peacemaker, someone who knows how to graciously get along with others, someone who is a consensus builder. Next, free from the love of money. This is important, as we've seen, God's Word equates greed with idolatry, and church leaders could have access to money. People have given to special projects or just given to cover the ministry's expenses, so they absolutely have to be trustworthy around money. No one should ever get into the ministry for money, by the way, but only because you believe it is God's call on your life.

The enemies of Christianity love to shine a spotlight when some religious scammer gets exposed whose living an extravagant lifestyle off of the money people have given him, naive people have given him. That's terrible. Those people are frauds. They are false teachers. And we have to combat that false idea because that has shaped the opinion of many people about churches and the ministry, that it's all about money. We have to combat that idea.

Sure, there have been, since Paul's day, fakes in counterfeit ministries who see it as a way to financially take advantage of people. But there should be no hint of that connected to a real overseer of God's people, Paul is saying. He also tells Timothy, never put a new Christian into a leadership role. They're unprepared for it, and chances are good they will get the big head and, by fall into the condemnation of the devil, he means, like Satan fell from heaven in his pride, they're going to have a big fall. Don't set up a new convert for a great fall, giving them too much responsibility too soon. The chances of that not ending well are not good, and then their downfall is going to affect many other people negatively.

Leadership needs to be in the hands of people who are proven and who have earned respect over time. Finally, on the character front, he tells Timothy, someone you appoint to be a church leader must have a good reputation outside the church as well as inside. He meant someone respected by the community or at his job and so on. Unbelievers looking on who may not understand our faith should never see men become leaders in the church who they know, in the rest of their life, are dishonest or are lazy or who like to tell off-color jokes or who use a lot of foul language and so on. You know, people who have obvious character flaws. What a turnoff to Christianity and negative impression for your church that is.

Instead, a church leader's life Monday through Saturday in the community needs to be just as clean as it is on Sundays before congregation. They are a positive advertisement for Christianity and for your church, if that's true. That's a lot of considerations, isn't it? It underscores how important a role being a church leader really is. I've learned the hard way why this is all so important. If a church is making spiritual progress in a community, people are getting saved, lives are being changed, and the enemy sees ground being taken from his kingdom, he will look for cracks he can exploit, especially in church leaders' lives and in their families.

And he will exploit those if he can. He knows that if he can damage and weaken the church's leaders, he can destroy the unity and effectiveness of that ministry and discourage many, many people in the process. So do not underestimate this. He's very, very good at it. This is why church leaders must be the most spiritually developed and spiritually alert members of the congregation. Maybe you noticed I skipped over a couple things there in Paul's list, didn't I?

That's because those were not character qualities, but rather needed abilities. As far as abilities go, Timothy, put men into church leadership positions who are skillful in teaching, he wrote, and those who have already proven they are good leaders by managing their own households well. To be skillful in teaching God's word to people, you first have to have a good handle on understanding it yourself. A pastor absolutely needs to understand biblical theology and then also needs to be good at communicating it to other people so he can keep them engaged and awake during his sermons. I had a woman in my first church who fell asleep all the time, every Sunday, about five minutes into my sermon. I remember thinking, man, am I really that boring?

I was relieved to find out later she had narcolepsy. I mean, not a good thing for her, but I was relieved that it was not my fault. Very few churches do well who have leaders who can only preach shallow messages without substantial and useful biblical content, or whose communication skills are so poor people just tune them out and long for the service to be over. There's another needed ability too, Paul says. How can a man manage a church's affairs if he cannot control his children and manage his own household well? To be an effective church leader, you need to have your wife on your team for sure, and if you have children, they must respect you and reflect well on you too, because managing the different aspects of a church as an overseer, and especially trying to manage people who will join that church, will be a much more challenging job.

Paul empowered Timothy to evaluate and then appoint men to be pastors and elders of the churches he placed him in charge of. In many churches today, spiritual leaders are elected. Members have the opportunity to elevate men from the congregation to serve on the leadership team, or vote to call a pastoral candidate who has applied to fill a professional ministry role at their church. If you are ever involved in that process, be sure you consult what Paul says here about who gets into these important spiritual roles. Poor leadership leads to church problems, and they can be painful and damaging, especially to younger people who really need to see authentic Christianity exemplified in their local church. Further on in this chapter, beginning at verse 8, Paul gives similar qualifications for another office in the local church, which he calls deacons.

For the origin of this role, we can go back to the first church at Jerusalem, which grew quickly and exponentially. The apostles were its leaders at the very beginning. But as the church expanded to thousands of people, they needed help with practical things. They said, It's not good for us, or right, that we should neglect our spiritual oversight responsibilities to take care of these physical needs, these more mundane tasks. We need somebody else to do that. So they asked the congregation to choose seven men who they trusted to take care of those things.

Deacons, by the way, just means servants. All Christians should look for opportunities to serve at their church, and pastors should see themselves as servants too. But this office was a special entrustment for special tasks required to keep the church functioning smoothly. These tasks will change as the church's needs change, and from generation to generation. In Jerusalem, deacons were at first needed to organize and administrate the church's food distribution program. Maybe today they are needed to be put in charge of maintaining the church's property and facilities, or maybe trusted as a financial secretary or treasury for the organization.

Whatever practical needs arise, this is a role that's subordinate to spiritual leaders and frees up spiritual leaders to be able to concentrate on the things God has given them to do. But it still, Paul says, must be filled only by very trustworthy and dedicated church members. Notice I didn't say must be filled by very trustworthy and dedicated men, because it says at verse 10, following Paul writing, These men, referring to deacons, must be tested first and then serve in this role if they are beyond reproach. He says, Women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate and faithful in all things, before adding. For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a high standing and great confidence in the faith that is in Jesus Christ.

When he says likewise women in the midst of a section describing deacons, that means women can also function in that office. At the end of Romans, when Paul is sending personal greetings to a lot of people he knew in Italy, he gives a shout out to a woman named Phoebe, who he calls there a deacon of the church of Cenchrea. Even if you are a younger believer, not ready to be in a church leadership position yet, these lists of qualities in 1 Timothy 3 are great to keep going back to and measuring yourself against. They define what Christian maturity looks like. But for Christian leaders, church leaders, these are qualifications for the job. Over many years of being a member of and being a leader in local churches, I can't stress strongly enough how important the things Paul has written here are to a church's long-term success.

However your church chooses its leaders, choose them carefully, because you're putting them in charge of very important things on God's behalf. As it says in Hebrews chapter 13, have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority because they keep watch over your souls, and they will give an account to God. Do this so their work will be a joy and not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to anyone. Thanks for listening. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul.

I'd like to expand beyond just church leaders for a moment, because leadership is about influence, and every single one of us holds influence over someone. So whether you're a mom, carpenter, plumber, or an executive, we all work for God. So with that in mind, everything you've heard today is important to every single one of us in our daily and our work lives. So how do you measure up? But as church leaders, pastors, we hold a greater responsibility and are held to a higher standard, as it should be. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.