Equipped to Serve: Part 1

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of pastoral ministry from 1 Timothy 3:1-13.

It is an enormous privilege for me to be with you, and I earnestly hope and pray these few hours together will stimulate all of us to think more acutely about the nature of the gospel ministry, not least here in the north of England. Before I plunge into this passage, I want to suggest to you the view of what a minister of the gospel is, what pastors, elders, ministers, and bishops are, has changed enormously over the years and is today viewed very differently in different parts of the world.

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The very diversity itself prompts us to think, but if we’re taking our cues from Scripture what should we learn from Scripture to be a little more self-correcting? For example, if you go to many, many parts of south-of-the-Sahara Black Africa, many, many ministers of the gospel were trained in rural Bible institutes with a minimum of education. Meanwhile, there has been a huge migration to the cities, massive urbanization in very large numbers of Africans now with university education.

Nairobi, for example, had no university as recently as 1963. Now it has four major ones, so everywhere in south-of-the-Sahara Black Africa you hear the plaintive cry, “The pew is higher than the pulpit,” because you still have a majority of pastors with minimal education now trying to address a new generation of university graduates.

The families themselves don’t want to send off sons to go into the ministry. That’s despised! They’d much rather try to get them a job with the government or something like that with a decent income, prospects for advancement, maybe become part of the coterie of national leaders.

Now go to South Korea. Until about a dozen years ago when there were national polls that asked the question, “Which religious group do you respect the most: Protestants, Catholics, or Buddhists?” the Protestants won hands down. They had been shaped by massive suffering and persecution. Many, many had given their lives, but in all the recent polls it’s just the reverse. Buddhists come first, Catholics next, and Protestants last, and you ask, “What has happened?”

Partly the church there has begun to be spoiled by its own success. Not that many years ago (just a few) I was speaking at a large church in Seoul that will remain nameless of about 30,000 people on a Sunday morning. Four congregations of 7,500 each. Don’t you wish you had that problem in Sheffield or Leeds?

When we were finished the minister and I forged our way through the crowds within a wedge of (I don’t know what else to call them) bodyguards who sort of made a way for us to a chauffer-driven limousine that whisked us away, and for streets and streets around the police stopped the traffic so our car could go by and saluted as we went by. Then we went off to the poshest restaurant in Seoul.

I’m sure that minister was a godly man full of genuine piety. He’s doing a great job. (Who am I to criticize a man who preaches to 30,000 people every Sunday morning?) But I have to tell you, if that were me I’d be corrupted in about two weeks. Suddenly, you have this sort of popularity and this sort of number, and then a couple of scandals and suddenly, the whole reputation of confessional evangelicalism is down the tubes in the press.

How about this country? It’s not that many decades ago where you could send off one son to the military and one son to the ministry. That was sort of the normal thing for an awful lot of middle class families, but nowadays the ministry is very broadly despised, isn’t it? At best, a coterie of ineffective people who wring their hands and say pious things and look somewhat silly when they’re put on the BBC, and a vision of robust, full-orbed, genuinely human, hearty, Christian grace and triumph of the cross has nothing to do with our perception in the press, does it?

Then, of course, along come a whole lot of creative types who want to stylize the ministry either by massive, intellectual attainment or, on the other hand, a back-slapping, “Meet you down at the pub” sort of camaraderie, and we begin to ask ourselves, “What does distinguish Christian ministry? What does it mean to be a minister of the gospel? How do we take our cues from Holy Scripture as we start thinking of planting churches and gospel ministry in Yorkshire and beyond? What goes into the making of a minister of the gospel?”

In this first session, I want to spend all my time thinking that one through with you. I need to confess one or two biases right at the beginning. If you want to pick them up in Q&A later, that’s fine, but I hold that in the New Testament a pastor is an elder, is an overseer/bishop. From about the second century on, you had a three-fold office (deacon, pastor/elder, bishop), but I hold with that most illustrious bishop, J.D. Lightfoot, who argued very convincingly more than a century ago that in the New Testament there were only two offices: a deacon and an elder/pastor/overseer/bishop.

The notion of a bishop being a separate category is a second-century development that can’t be traced to the New Testament. That’s not particularly innovative, but if you want to argue with me I’m more than happy to do so in the Q&A hour. The reason I mention that is because I’m going to refer to quite a number of passages which in due course skirt back and forth between these three as if they are all of a piece.

For example, read the opening verses of 1 Peter 5 and all three labels crop up. In Titus 1, likewise, all three labels crop up and refer to the same individual, so if I use these terms indistinguishably, you must understand that as the frame of reference out of which I am coming. Take a look, then, at 1 Timothy, chapter 3. What shall we make of this list of qualifications?

1. The unexceptional character of most of these categories

Take a look at it again. He’s not supposed to get drunk. Well, that doesn’t really sound as if it’s high IQ stuff and formidable theological training, does it? He’s not supposed to get drunk. He’s supposed to manage his family pretty well. He’s supposed to be above reproach. In other words, there is nothing said here about being in the top 10 percent of the educated elite. There is nothing here said about being a natural leader, having an extrovert’s personality. Nothing is said along those lines.

When you read through this list of qualifications what strikes you about the list is that it’s rather remarkable for being unremarkable. Doesn’t it strike you that way? I am not suggesting there is nothing distinguishing in all of this. There is. We’ll come to that in due course, but it is a list that is full of things that do not suggest Christian leaders, Christian pastors, Christian ministers are first and foremost an elite crowd.

2. The primary characteristic of the Christian pastor is that his life constantly reflects biblical mandates.

To put it differently, the primary characteristic of the Christian pastor is that he or she be consistently Christian. To put it differently, the primary characteristic of a Christian pastor is that this pastor be spiritual.

I don’t mean that to be a truism. The fact of the matter is that, with only two exceptions (we’ll come to them in a moment) absolutely everything said in this list is mandated of all Christians somewhere else in Scripture. For example, we’re not supposed to be given to much wine. Does that mean the rest of us are allowed to get drunk regularly? We’re supposed to be gentle. Does that mean the rest of us are allowed to be harsh? We’re not supposed to be quarrelsome. The rest of us can be cranky as can be?

Somewhere or other in Scripture every one of these, with two partial exceptions, is mandated of all Christians. We’re supposed to be given to hospitality. That’s mandated of all Christians in Hebrews 13, for example. Go through the list. In every case, with these two partial exceptions, what you have is something that is mandated of all Christians, which is another way of saying what must dominate the Christian leader, not least the Christian pastor, is he reflect the virtues that are to be inculcated in the entire congregation.

In other words, the things that are preached to all Christians he himself must best exemplify, and in that sense, he must be consistently Christian himself. In that sense, he must be consistently spiritual himself. If he’s going to talk about these things, he must live these things out himself. Do you see?

In other words, the primary characteristic here is not that he be massively different from but that he model what all should be. We must not think of ourselves as the elite of the elect. We must think of ourselves, rather, as called to exemplify what all ought to be with a couple of minor exceptions here we’ll come to in due course.

Within that frame of reference, go through the list rather quickly. We’ll come back to verse 1 in a moment, but for now go to verse 2. He’s supposed to be above reproach, blameless in that sense. That is, there is not to be some massive inconsistency or flaw that everyone agrees is there and reproaches the man for.

Secondly, he is supposed to be husband of but one wife. This is one of the hardest ones in the list to understand. It has generated quite a lot of quarrel over the years. Some have argued it means he must be husband of but one wife. That is to say he must be married, but that is singularly unlikely.

After all, the apostle Paul himself at the time of life we know him is single, although he may well have been married earlier. In 1 Corinthians 7, he himself can write about the advantages of being single. The Lord Jesus was single. The apostle Paul says he has the right, in 1 Corinthians 9, to be married, to have a wife, like Peter, but he himself has not used that right and sees some advantages, likewise, in being single. That’s not very likely and it’s a very, very strange expression, too, to argue for merely being married.

Some have thought it means that he is forbidden to remarry if his wife dies. Well, I suppose that’s barely possible, but it is not the most obvious way of saying that either. Elsewhere, in 1 Corinthians 7, hinted at in Romans 7 and elsewhere, Paul seems to argue if a spouse dies the surviving Christian partner has the right to remarry, certainly only in the Lord.

Moreover, to argue along those lines would suggest there’s a kind of elitist stance that is imposed on Christian ministers that you don’t find throughout the rest of the list: other Christians are allowed to remarry; Christian ministers must not remarry. That sounds singularly out of touch with the thrust of the entire list.

Others have said simply not a polygamist. Well, perhaps, although you need, then, to put a caveat around that. In the early church, no one was permitted to take on more than one wife, so if no one was permitted to take on more than one wife, what’s the point of making this an additional restriction or a restriction that is articulated in particular for the minister? What’s the point of all of that?

There, it seems to me, some knowledge of first-century social dynamics helps. In the ancient Roman world, ordinary folk like you and me didn’t have more than one wife, but the elite (the aristocracy) often did. Herod the Great, for example, had 10. He never had them all at the same time because he bumped off one or two of them, but he had quite a few at once, and it was not uncommon in the Roman aristocracy, in fact, for the rich, the well to do, to have more than one spouse.

The trouble is those people were so used to leading that if they became Christians they start thinking they have the automatic right to lead in the church, too. That is not a problem most of us face here in the West today, but in parts of Africa, this is still a singularly important text where you find many tribal leaders, not least if they have Muslim backgrounds, having more than one wife.

In Islam you can have up to four. Because they are tribal leaders, they think they then have the right to lead in the church as well, but Paul seems to be saying, “No. You may be a tribal leader and a polygamist, but you cannot be a Christian leader and a polygamist.” I suspect the reason is bound up with the massive biblical typology inherent in marriage itself.

After all, in the Old Testament the relationship between Yahweh and his people is likened to the relationship between a husband and wife, and in the New Testament Christ and the church becomes a kind of counterpoint to husband and wife. After all, Christ does not have many churches. There are some things to be learned in the context of marriage that are to be reflected in the context of the church and vice versa.

There is a structure to human existence that God himself has imposed that has a bearing, a typological bearing, a modular bearing on the relationship between Christ and the church. I suspect, although this may not apply immediately to us, it certainly has bearing in many parts of the world and certainly did likewise in the first century.

The next three all have to do with orderly life. Temperate, which means clear-headed, self-possessed not a fanatic extremist. This has nothing to do with what later became the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement which abolished all alcohol. That’s not temperance; that’s abolition. This minister is to be temperate.

Self-controlled. After all, we find out elsewhere that God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of self-control. That does not merely mean a strong personality, but self-controlled, empowered by the Spirit of God so the passions of life just don’t rule in some undisciplined way.

Respectable, we’re told. That word sounds a bit too bourgeois for my ears today, but I don’t know exactly how else to translate it. Well-behaved perhaps? Dignified, so long as there’s no element of pomposity to it. Dignified can be merely pompous, but respectable in that sense. The next two have to do with the ability to communicate the gospel.

Hospitable. In other words, the Christian pastor, the Christian elder, the Christian bishop is not supposed to be a hermit or a recluse. There are some ministers of the gospel who really love the study part. They love their books; it’s just people they don’t like. I mean, the church would be a great place if there were no people in it!

Thus, they are very good at ideas and theological debate, but when it comes to loving people for Christ’s sake, “Well, quite frankly, they really do get under my skin.” Such a person is really not qualified for Christian ministry. Hospitable. In fact, we have seen already in Hebrews, chapter 13, that is something that is mandated of all Christians.

Able to teach. We’ll come back to that one. It is one of the distinguishing marks of the elder. There is a sense in which all Christians are to teach. That needs to be said. There is a stance in which, for example, Paul can be upset if people are too immature for too long and unable to pass the gospel on to others. If we’re to make disciples, using the language of the Great Commission in Matthew’s gospel, of others and that’s a mandate on all of us, there is a sense in which all of us are teaching.

Likewise, the writer to the Hebrews can tear a strip off his readers at the end of Hebrews 5 and the beginning of chapter 6, when he says to them, “By this time you ought to be teachers and you still need the milk of the Word.” There is a sense in which all of us are to be teachers, aren’t we? We’re teachers in our families. We teach in Sunday school classes. We teach our neighbor. We’re leading Bible studies. We’re sharing our testimonies. In that sense, we’re all passing on something.

Yet, at the same time, James 3 can say, “Don’t be too many teachers.” In some distinctive vocational sense, don’t be too quick to be a teacher knowing that you shall bear the more severe judgment. I find that one of the most frightening texts in all of Holy Scripture. “Don’t be too many teachers. You’re going to be faced more severely.”

So I spend my time wandering around the world teaching people. It’s a scary thing to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Don’t you ever forget that. In that sense, then, there is a peculiar calling to be a teacher if you’re an elder. That is not mandated of deacons, as we shall see.

The deacons roughly have the same characteristics as the elders, but they are not required to be teachers. It’s not part of the definition of the job. That doesn’t mean deacons can’t teach, and many times deacons begin to teach and ultimately become elders in due course, but there is something bound up with being a teacher that is tied to the role of elder/pastor/bishop. It means at least two things. It means, first of all, you have something to say, and secondly, you know how to say it. That is, it presupposes content and it presupposes ability to communicate it.

Occasionally you’ll find people who are very good students, very good thinkers, and if you get them in a quiet corner in a pub, they are very good at talking about ideas and so on, but quite frankly, they can’t be teachers. They’re too nervous, they’re too jittery, or they trip over their words endlessly, or they are such hermits by disposition. They know a lot. They might be able to write some books now and then, but they really can’t be public teachers.

Then there are other types who really have the gift of the gab. They’re sort of born with the ability to communicate. Give them a story to tell and they can hold you in dramatic suspension as they work through the story. They really are wonderful communicators. It’s just they don’t have much to communicate.

If you really are going to be a teacher of the Word of God, what is presupposed, then, is first, you become a student of the Word of God. You learn the gospel. You learn, you grow, you study, you have a great deal to teach, and then you learn also how to communicate it, how to share it, how to organize it, how to present it. You work at that side of things as well. That’s what is presupposed by being able to teach.

Then verse 3. Not given to much wine, which suggests not only freedom from drunkenness but freedom from addiction. The slave of Jesus Christ must not be a slave of anything else. Not violent but gentle. Patient, kindly, forbearing. Genial in that sense. Not bad-tempered. Not quarrelsome. Not contentious.

There are some people who not only contend for the faith but like to be contentious about the faith. Their whole vision of what faithfulness means is arguing with all those stupid people out there who don’t get it. Instead of being winsome, they’re always putting down outsiders, they’re always putting down the lost. “They’re stupid. They’re perverse. They’re corrupt.” Well, yes they are but no more than I am.

In that sense, it becomes important as a matter of winsomeness for the gospel’s sake to be able to learn how to contend for the faith without being contentious about the faith, not being quarrelsome. There are quite a few texts (we’ll read some of them in due course) in these Pastoral Epistles that tell the minister, that tell a Timothy, that tell a Titus how to win old people, how to be soft-spoken here, how not to be argumentative there, how not to quarrel about genealogies and so forth. There is a kind of winsomeness that is strong without being in any sense mean.

Not a lover of money. Well, I’m going to say a little bit more about that in the second hour, but it is important to remember Jesus has promised all of his disciples enough for their needs and no more. Christian leaders must reflect contentment with that precisely because they are commending contentment with Christ to all to whom they speak.

If they are not really contented with Christ but seem to have a kind of visceral lust for more, whether more power or more prestige or more money, then they communicate that sooner or later, don’t they? They lose any claim to contentedness with Christ as soon as deep down people begin to suspect they have a real consumerist mentality themselves. It’s a horrible thing to watch.

If I may venture a quiet testimony to my own parents in this regard. My father was in the ministry. My parents really were working cross-culturally. They were both born in the United Kingdom, but eventually in their 20s and 30s they learned French in order to plant churches in French Canada, which is where I was born, and in those days salaries were pretty awful.

I can remember situations in our home where we really literally didn’t know where our next meal was coming from, and we would gather together and pray and thank God for his provision, and in one way or another things showed up. That is the way we lived, but I never knew we were poor by the standards of our culture. I never knew that until I went to university.

The way I found out was quite remarkable in and of itself. This was a long time ago. People wouldn’t do what I did then, but I needed a suit for some occasion, so I went and bought my first suit before I went to university. I can’t imagine any university student going off to buy a suit. I know this already dates me. I understand that.

Nowadays they go off to buy another pair of designer jeans, but in any case I went off to buy a suit. Of course, I couldn’t afford a new suit. I had bought it second-hand off a rack somewhere off some poor shop. When I got to university, I wore it on some occasion where we were supposed to be dressed up, and various students laughed at it. It suddenly dawned on me for the first time in my life that I came from a poor background.

What’s remarkable about that.… It’s not remarkable I was so slow. I was slow in all kinds of things. What’s remarkable is that I hadn’t learned it because my parents never allowed us to think of ourselves as being poor. We were so rich in all that mattered: in love and laughter and the gospel and eternity and service.

If we ever tried to moan that we didn’t have this or that thing that other kids had, they would insist we look at the 95 percent of the world who had a lot less and maybe a billion people who go to bed hungry. “How dare you think of yourself as hard done by?” Do you see? Which is no testimony to me, but it is a kind of testimony to my parents and the kind of heritage they left us with. That’s a gospel heritage. Freedom from lust of money.

Then, verses 4 and 5. He must manage his own family well. Graciously and gravely. Verse 5 really articulates the principle of the talents in Matthew 25, verses 14 and following. That is, the person who is faithful in the small domain is ready to be given responsibility in a much larger domain.

The minister of the gospel who has a certain primary responsibility for his family.… If his family transparently is not disciplined, not loved, not cherished, not controlled, and not directed in any sense, that minister is certainly not equipped to handle things in the church. This does not mean all of the children must be super saints. It doesn’t mean that.

There is one passage that is sometimes translated to suggest that the children of Christians must be Christians, but I’m not sure it’s well translated. It is Titus, chapter 1, verses 5 and 6. There Paul writes to Titus, “The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe …” That’s the NIV. “… and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.”

This is not the normal expression for the believer in the New Testament, which is usually a participial expression, pisteuo. Rather, this is pistos. It means something like, “A man whose children are faithful.” That is, they are reliable. I’m not even sure it is saying they must be believers in the sense of being regenerate. They must be the kinds of kids who are brought up in a frame of reference where they learn accountability and faithfulness and that sort of thing.

In the normal course of events, they do become believers, but if you start insisting the children of a minister must all be believers, then pretty soon you’re also going to start putting into further caveats at what age and a whole lot of other things. What interests me in a minister of the gospel is what happens if one of the kids has a wheel come off? How does he handle it?

Because, you see, that’s exactly what happens in the church, too. Sooner or later a wheel comes off somewhere in some family or other. The question is how do you handle it? Do you handle it with firmness and faithfulness and love and insight and discipline, if necessary, putting on boundaries where it’s necessary and so forth? If you don’t do that in your own family, if you’re not producing faithful people there, you certainly can’t do it in the church. That’s the kind of issue that is uppermost in Paul’s mind here.

Verse 6. Not a recent convert. That’s the other context where, obviously, it can’t be applied to absolutely everybody in the church. You have to put in a footnote there, but when you say an elder must not be a recent convert, that is a relative term, isn’t it? After all, when Paul goes on his first missionary journey on the outward sweep he plants churches everywhere and on the inward sweep back in, he is actually appointing elders in every place where he has been.

That whole missionary journey is not more than two years. It’s probably a little less, which means as he comes back, he’s appointing elders in churches where no one has been a Christian for more than months on the return sweep as he starts appointing elders. Obviously, if you’re talking about Saint Helen’s, Bishopsgate, or you’re talking about Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh, you’re not going to appoint as an elder in the church someone who has been a Christian for five months. It’s not going to happen. It shouldn’t happen.

On the other hand, I remember what happened in French Canada. In French Canada as recently as 1972, we had a grand total of about 35 gospel churches in a population of 6.5 million. That’s it. When I was a boy in the early 50s, the only gospel churches were either Baptist or Brethren, and gospel ministers alone of the Baptist streak spent a total of eight years in jail. We kids were regularly beaten up as maudits Protestants, damned Protestants. That was the ethics of the day. It has all changed now.

When I was growing up, the average French Canadian family had eight children. That was the average. Today it has the highest abortion rate in North America. Things have changed. It’s a very secular place now. For better and for worse it has changed. Suddenly, between 1972 and 1980 we grew from 35 churches to almost 500 in eight years, and suddenly we had church after church after church where nobody had been a Christian for more than 18 months.

That was an old Christian, so we were appointing elders very fast amongst people who were real babes in Christ in many respects and tried to establish systems of oversight. What do you know? Baptists with bishops. The systems of oversight over regional districts precisely because we had all these baby Christians and immature elders. It was very exciting. It was also somewhat dangerous.

What you discover is you have to make a judgment call on what “not a novice” means according to the situation. You have a church that’s growing really fast and “not a novice” is a much more flexible term than if you’re talking about a church that has been stable for decades and decades and decades. My prayer for Yorkshire is that pretty soon “not a novice” means not somebody who has been a Christian for less than six months. It is still an important principle. You are supposed to test people and give them some measure of testing before you actually appoint them to public office.

They must have a good reputation with outsiders. That is, among non-Christians, both Jews and pagans. This doesn’t mean “one of the boys” sort of thing. It means a reputation for integrity, for friendliness, for courteousness, for a kind of ability to chat back and forth. If instead the minister of the gospel gains a reputation for standoffishness, for being different, for being slightly odd, how on earth can he be a minister of the gospel?

That’s not right! We have sometimes had churches that are so upright that they’re uptight, and Christians then get a reputation for being just weird. Different is one thing; weird is another. Righteous people of integrity may be not always liked for it (that’s is one thing), but self-righteous, pompous, square, odd.… That’s another thing, isn’t it? We must have a good reputation with outsiders because our whole growth, our evangelism, our outreach depends on it.

That means we must spend time with outsiders. If all of your friends are Christians, God help the church, because the church will never grow under those sorts of conditions. Somewhere along the line, the leaders themselves of the church of Jesus Christ must have a good reputation with outsiders.

One of the giants of the faith, in my view, today is a Presbyterian minister in New York City named Tim Keller. He has become a good friend over the years. I think very, very highly of him. About 10 days before the towers fell a few years ago, I was in Princeton doing something or other and took the fast train into New York City to spend time with Tim Keller.

One of the things Tim has done over the years as that small church of 50 people has grown to just under 4,000 plus planted another 25 churches in the metro area and is now leading a network of planting urban churches of about 200 around the country.… As that church has grown, he himself has insisted that he himself run a Bible study for outsiders, a Bible study for unbelievers every week as part of his own discipline to make sure he is keeping in touch with people.

Otherwise, as the church grows, you become more and more insulated from contact with outsiders. Then how can you be a minister of the church of God? I have to do that myself. I teach in a seminary, for goodness sake. I’m with Christians all week. Then I come and speak to you lot, and presumably most of you are Christians, too. I spend all my time with Christians. Do you see? Pretty soon I can find myself in a place where I’m so removed from non-Christians I don’t know how to talk to anybody but Christians. They just make me nervous!

One of the reasons why I discipline myself to make sure at least a certain percentage of my talks are either with the secular media or university campus evangelism or other things of that sort is not only because evangelism is important but it’s also good for me. Otherwise, I lose the ability to talk to people who don’t already agree with me, and this text says we must have a reputation, a good reputation, with outsiders.

I asked Tim that on that occasion when I went to see him. “What’s your group like now?” I almost hesitate to tell you because these tapes go all over the place and strange things can be said. This was a group of really outside people, let me tell you. It was a group of really outside people, way off the beaten track, but the fact of the matter is Tim could lead that sort of group in a Bible study, too.

Think through where you are located. Think the most outside-the-track group. Whether they’re people who are deprived in your area or a group of lesbians, whatever, and see if you can start a Bible study group with that lot just because they’re outside your comfort zone. That’s what it means in due course, you see, to have a good reputation with outsiders.

Then, of course, we need to reflect on the fact that the one distinctive characteristic of the elder/pastor/overseer is that he be able to teach. Let me give you some references you can read in due course. I’m not going to take time to read them now, but I would like you to take this down as homework. Copy these references and read them through yourself, the different elements that go into teaching just from the Pastoral Epistles.

Chapter 4, verses 11 to 13. Chapter 6, verses 17 to 19. I’m going to come to that one later in the morning. Second Timothy 2, verse 24. Second Timothy 4, verses 1 and 2. Titus 1, verse 9. Almost all of Titus 2. As far as I can see in the New Testament, every single elder ought to be a teacher. Every single pastor ought to be a teacher. Every single bishop ought to be a teacher.

That does not mean everybody stands up at 11:00 and does it. There may be contexts in which some elders/pastors/bishops are, in fact, primarily responsible for small groups or teaching the Word of God one on one, whether in counseling or personal discipleship or the like, but part of the distinctive requirements of what constitutes a pastor is, in fact, the ability to teach the Word of God. There’s no particular venue that is specified, but if you can’t do that you can’t be a pastor by definition.

Now let me come to a number of other elements. I wish I could take the time to go through all of these passages, but in addition to the qualifications for elders/pastors/bishops listed in 1 Timothy 3, there are several others that are mentioned. Let me list two or three of them and then focus on just one.

In 1 Timothy 5:21, we’re told, for example, at all costs to avoid favoritism. Partiality is the older English word. I know when you’re a young man you hear that and you think, “Oh yes. That’s easily done. I can have my own special friends in the church, and everything will be fine. We’re all human beings, and we have to have our own circle of friends and so on.”

Leadership is a lonely business. There is a sense in which you want to be a friend of everyone, and there is a sense in which, inevitably, you’ll be more drawn to some than to others. That’s all true, but sooner or later, you will get into a doctrinal dispute or a governance dispute or a moral dispute where, if you are perceived to be very tightly tied to some people in the congregation and you are perceived at all to be treating them differently from the way you treat other people, your entire credibility as a leader is called into question. You cannot afford to be seen to play favorites.

In the church of Jesus Christ there is a kind of mandated mutual integrity. I love to see Christians who, for example, in the context of the local church treat everybody they greet with the same courtesy and warmth. The church of Jesus Christ for all its many failures is still the most tolerant, in the very best sense of tolerant, social grouping in the world, which is one of the reasons why churches collect more than their fair share of misfits, awkward people, twits. We collect them! Every church has a few. Some churches have quite a few!

They should be seen as badges of honor, not as sort of our embarrassing bits. Somebody comes to church and you don’t want to introduce them. “They’re the twits. We’ll introduce them to this posh person over here.” No, no, no. The church of Jesus Christ is a place where we all remember every human being is made in the image of God, and we treat people carefully and wisely.

That doesn’t mean we allow the awkward people to take over or to consume all your time. No, no. It doesn’t mean that. It does mean you love everyone in the church with the same sort of openhearted, evenhanded, fair-minded, generous spirit, and although you may well be drawn to certain people for certain kinds of conversation and certain kinds of socializing (that may well be), guard your heart because sooner or later crises do come in the church where, if you’re a leader responsible for others, you must be seen not to be playing favorites. Avoid partiality.

A second one is 1 Timothy 6, verses 11 and 12. Pursue all godly virtues. Because I’m going to be dealing with that one a little more later, I won’t say more about it now. Then expect difficulties and be persistent in the face of them. In fact, if you are going into the ministry because you think it’s romantic and dramatic and it would be great fun to be a leader and plant a church, go and do something easy like learning scuba diving or an astronaut or something, but stay clear of the ministry. The ministry has difficulties and discouraging moments.

Listen, for example, this selection of texts from 2 Timothy. Second Timothy, chapter 2, verses 3 and following: “Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a solder gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying …” In other words, “Persevere, persevere, persevere.”

Chapter 2, verse 15. Again, we’re told, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth,” which presupposes long hours of study, care, and watchfulness.

Chapter 3, verses 10 and following: “You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love, my endurance, my persecutions, my sufferings—what kinds of things happen to me in Antioch and so forth.” We’ll come to that passage a little more this afternoon.

Chapter 4, verse 5: “But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.” Do you hear the overtones there in passage after passage of difficulty, challenge? Be persistent. Keep on. I’m going to focus on just one more. Just one more.

First Timothy, chapter 4, verses 15 and 16. Paul writes to Timothy, “Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them …” Watch your life and doctrine. Let everyone see your progress. In other words, if you stay in your church for five more years, five years from now people should see the progress in your life of discipleship.

They should see increasing conformity to Christ and in your ability to handle doctrine, to handle truth from your knowledge of Holy Scripture. You are to watch your life and your doctrine and others are to see the progress. If that is not your passion, if that is not your aim, for people to be able to see the progress in your life in both doctrine and in your conduct, get out of the ministry. We don’t need you. You’re dangerous. I say that with all the passion of my being.

You know, those of you who are homeowners, if you have a house it’s never just staying where it is? It’s either deteriorating or it’s improving. You’re either putting time in it to paint again or change the plumbing.… It’s either improving somewhat or it’s deteriorating. It never just stays where it is. The same is true of Christian life and existence. You never stay at the same plateau. If you think you’re at a plateau, in fact you’re declining. You’re not pursuing God and holiness. You’re not pursuing in grace. You’re not pursuing in knowledge.

Part of Christian notions of growth turn, then, on this pursuit of truth, pursuit of doctrine, pursuit of God’s gracious self-disclosure, not only so we understand it but so that we live it out. Watch your life and doctrine closely. That’s supposed to be true of all Christians. It must be true of the leaders of the church of Jesus Christ, so much so that others are to see it. Let all see your progress, the text says. Unless that is your passion, stay out of the ministry. You’re disqualified.

A couple of final further reflections on Christian leadership in the New Testament, especially pastoral leadership. First, it is intriguing that two other themes are often interwoven with passages about Christian leaders. Those two themes are doxology, that is praise to God, and eschatology, that is anticipation of the end. Let me read you just two passages and you’ll see what I mean.

First Timothy 6, verses 11 and following: “But you, man of God, flee from these things. Pursue faith, love, endurance.… Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called …” Then we read, “… I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time …” That’s eschatology, you see, serving in the light of Christ’s return.

Then the mention of God prompts the apostle to write, “… which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.” Doxology. But it’s not just here. You find this sort of thing throughout the New Testament.

Consider this passage, for example, from 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, beginning at verse 7, although we’ll skip down pretty quickly to the end of the chapter. “We have this treasure in jars of clay, this treasure of the gospel, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

Paul is talking about leaders here. He’s talking about how they carry around this gospel context with them even when they’re brutalized. Then we read a little farther on in verse 16, “We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen …”

Do you see? That’s eschatology, living in the light of eternity. As for doxology, look at verses 13 and following. “It is written: ‘I believed; therefore, I have spoken.’ With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence.” That’s more eschatology.

Then this: “All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.” There’s doxology. It’s remarkable. When you work through the passages of Christian ministry in the Bible how many of them are tied in one fashion or another to eschatology and doxology? The eschatology theme is a way of reminding us we live in the light of the end. I don’t think you can maintain orthodoxy, spirituality, godliness, self-discipline, and maturity without living with eternity’s values in view.

I don’t think you can do it, and that becomes a major theme in 2 Timothy as well. We’ll come to that one this afternoon. It is a very important theme, but doxology is no less important a theme, is it? Because, after all, there are dangers of seduction in the ministry. There are not only dangers of being marginalized or brutalized or attacked or persecuted, dangers of hard work and all the rest, there are also dangers of compliments, being revered, honored.

Suddenly you begin to think the whole work of God depends on you, but if instead you are passionate about seeing God lifted up and exalted, hungry to see Christ praised, if you live your life with thankfulness to God, every time someone is converted, every time you see progress in holiness, then your whole ministry becomes an exercise in fanning doxology, praise to God, and your motives are checked. God-centeredness becomes the byword of your entire life and existence. Do you see? Anything else ultimately makes everything revolve around you, which is another form of idolatry through the back door.

Let me say now one more thing before we close. I should say at least a little bit about the call, because, if you recall, I skipped chapter 3, verse 1. “Now here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task.’ ” There have been many attempts over the years to define the call to the ministry, and many of us come from a tradition, I’m sure, where we begin to think, “Unless you’ve been called by God, stay out of the ministry.”

What this call is is a bit ill-defined. It’s sometimes bound up with a kind of semi-mystical sense of duty somehow. “Oh, I’d love to do the ministry but I haven’t been called.” Uh-huh. What does that mean considering Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all creatures”? You’ve already been commissioned; get off your duff! “But I haven’t been called.” What does called mean exactly?

Shall we just pooh-pooh this tradition entirely? Is there nothing to it? Do we all have to have some sort of special feeling of transcendent, mystical connection somehow? What’s the biblical mandate for that? One of the remarkable things, when you read through the New Testament and think, in particular, of those texts which are not “called to be a Christian” but “called to ministry, to vocational ministry, to full-time ministry …”

One of the things that strikes you about them is how diverse they are. Look at this one. “Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task.” In this case, the initial call to the ministry is from within the individual man. He wants to do it, and then God’s Word says, “All right. I’m glad you want to do it. Now these are the things you need to think about in this respect.”

Then you find another sort of call in 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 1. “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” Here there’s a call from a more senior person to a more junior person, somebody tapping him on the shoulder and saying, “You know, I want you. I think you’ve got potential for being part of the next generation that passes on the gospel to others.”

That was one of the insipient steps in my own call to ministry. My first degree was chemistry and mathematics. I was heading on to Cornell to do a PhD in organic synthesis. I was not planning on gospel ministry at all, and the minister of our church in Montreal tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I want you to be my assistant this summer between your third year and your fourth year. I want you to help me.”

I said, “This is a big church, and you’ve got me confused with somebody else. I’m sure you really don’t know who I am. I’m a chemistry student. I don’t do stuff like that. I mean, I’m faithful, and I lead a Bible study in the university dorm, but I’m not heading in the ministry. There are some theological students here. Ask one of them.” Whereupon we had a good argument for about an hour and a half, and I won. I didn’t help him that summer. I won.

On the other hand, he got under my craw, too, didn’t he? That became one of the steps, which in the Lord’s peculiar timing, led me eventually to reconsider everything and head for the ministry, but it began with somebody tapping me on the shoulder. It didn’t begin with 1 Timothy 3:1. It began with 2 Timothy 2:2. Do you see?

Then sometimes you have people called for particular kinds of ministry where the Spirit himself leads the leaders in the church, in Acts, chapter 13, to send two people off to do particular forms of missionary work: cross-cultural, evangelism, and church planting. Off go Paul and Barnabas to do their thing. There are other passages as well.

Let me end by telling you one of the most interesting meetings I ever had. At Trinity where I teach we have something like 50 full-time faculty and another 30 or 40 adjuncts. Once a year, we have the district superintendents (that’s our equivalent of bishops) come in from the Free Church of America and spend a day with us (about 40 or 50 of them too) and we pray together, we listen to each other, we talk about certain things, we sometimes have particular projects we’re thinking through just to make sure the seminary is not too far removed from the church and vice versa.

On this particular occasion, we were broken up into groups of eight sitting around tables, about half faculty and half district superintendents. We were all supposed to talk about how we were called to the ministry. We all told our stories. There was one scribe at each table taking all these stories down as fast as they could.

Once all this had been done, then the scribe at each table was supposed to give a succinct summary of all eight from his table before the whole crowd, so in the course of one long afternoon, I heard between 80 and 100 different calls to the ministry. What an eye opener! They were just about as diverse as you could believe.

“I’ve always been called to the ministry. I can’t remember any time when I wasn’t going in the ministry. At the age of 3, I planned to be a minister.”

“Well, I was an automotive engineer, and I was shaving one day. As I was shaving, the Lord just said to me just as clearly as if there was a voice in the room, ‘I want you for the ministry.’ ”

“I was in the military for 25 years, and I came out and I realized I had all this time, and I wanted to make something useful of my life, so I used the GI Bill to get a decent theological education, and I’m just so excited to be using the rest of my life to serve God.”

Then you’d push again and another story. They were all over the map. I couldn’t cubbyhole them anywhere. I just couldn’t, but I did find one or two things in common. Without exception, these people all had a passion for the gospel, so much passion for the gospel that at some point in their lives they couldn’t imagine doing anything else. It’s dangerous to say that (I know that) because there’s a sense in which all Christians should be passionate for the gospel.

Some of us are called to pack pork to pay expenses, to drive a street sweeper, to do plumbing jobs, to teach in a secondary school, to write books, to program computers, or whatever, but amongst genuine gospel ministers, regardless of the mechanics of the call, whether somebody has been tapped on the shoulder or it has come from inside or whatever, there really has been, there really must be, a passion for the gospel that says, “Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel! I cannot do anything else.”

It picks up on a Jeremiah theme. “I wanted to be silent, but the word was within me, and I could not be silent.” Let the call to the gospel never, ever descend to merely wanting privilege or place, authority in a group of people. Let it be gospel driven, hungry for the glory of Christ, hungry to proclaim the gospel of Christ, hungry to bring in, as it were, the Lord’s return, hungry to build up the people of God. Let it be gospel driven. Let us pray.

Our Father, it is a marvelous thing that we should be called, not only to be sons of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, but some also at different levels of service in the church called to teach the Word of God to fellow sinners, fellow regenerate sinners, fellow sinners who are not yet converted, but still teaching and preaching the whole counsel of God, and some of us are called to do this vocationally, supported by the church so we are freed up to be able to do this work of the ministry.

We know all kinds of people around us who hate their jobs all their lives and wonder if working in a factory is really significant work. We have no doubts about the significance of this work. What an enormous privilege it is, and yet, as we think through all of its dimensions, we also are driven to say again and again and again, “Who is sufficient for these things?”

Not for a moment do we want to imagine people are converted because of our rhetorical skills or because of the clarity of our thought. You use these means, no doubt, but men and women are converted because your Spirit comes along and brings conviction and brings illumination and brings regeneration, for the natural person does not understand the things of God. They’re foolishness to them.

So we beg of you, Lord God, as we think of these qualifications for ministry, we will never think of them abstracted from the empowering, enabling, dynamic work of the blessed Holy Spirit working in us and through us to build up the people of God and to bring conviction of sin and regeneration amongst those who do not yet know him.

With all of our getting of these characteristics, Lord God, give us one more thing as well. Give us, we pray you, unction, the anointing of your blessed Holy Spirit. In these dark times, Lord God, give us, we beg of you, the Holy Spirit’s unction. For Jesus’ sake, amen.