Qualifications for Pastors and Deacons

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of eldership in this address from The Gospel Coalition sermon library.

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Before I turn to the topic at hand, I would like to take just a couple of minutes to say something I purposefully left out of last night’s message which was already too long. Namely, some reflections on constitutions. The constitutions in our context seem to be of the nature of necessary evils.

If you had a church working the way it really ought to work, you wouldn’t need a constitution. After all, it’s very doubtful the church in Jerusalem or the church in Antioch or the church in Ephesus, before it was officially inaugurated, made sure it had approved a properly sponsored and sealed constitution. Especially, I imagine, they had never thought of putting in too many whereas and things.

Nevertheless, when things go amuck in the church, a constitution can be a bit of a blessing. It can provide a framework in which to work things out, but constitutions can damage us even there if, then, the rules of the constitution become a little game people play in order to control things through power politics. Somehow you use the constitution as the battering ram to hit people over the head, and that can come from any corridor in the church, of course.

What I suggest, therefore, given in most of our circles constitutions are going to be necessary, to minimize the danger, two or three principles ought to be kept in mind. First, a constitution ought to be kept as simple as possible. Secondly, a constitution ought to avoid laying down such norms as may contravene the Scripture.

No one is going to write a constitution that outright contradicts the Scripture, but it may lay down such norms as under a certain circumstance may, in fact, contravene the Scripture. For example, if you lay down a quota of how many deacons you must have given your number of members, and then you happen to have a church situation where you don’t have deacons, in fact, sufficient to fill those slots and meet the biblical criteria, the norm of the constitution has forced you to contravene biblical criteria for the deacon, for the diakoneo. Thus, by an unwitting constitution, the Scriptures may be contravened.

Thirdly, and most important of all, granted things are going well and the church is sparking along with good unity and a sense of the Lord’s blessing and presence, it becomes extremely important when meetings are conducted in connection with the constitution, in line with the constitution, to do so, nevertheless, in a way that transcends the atmosphere of a mere boardroom.

I think that is my biggest beef. Somehow, there is something essentially pagan (let me put it that way) in the feel of a meeting which proceeds this way:

The chair: “The chair recognizes John Smith.”

John Smith: “I move that …”

“Is there a seconder?” Then there’s a seconder.

“All right. Is there a question?” Then you have a proper debate, and then someone says, “I raise a point of order,” and then you proceed this way and so on. All of those things make good sense. They can proceed along a very spiritual line, but if they are merely procedural, merely machinery, they smack of exactly the same thing that could have happened if the Holy Spirit got up and walked out because you’d never miss him. The machinery would just keep cranking on.

Therefore, it behooves us, where we are following constitutional procedures and so forth, to work very hard to have the right kinds of intervening remarks and statements and attitudes and heart which, nevertheless, are using these kinds of things (yes, following the rules, fine), but transcending the rules with a kind of recognized need for the Spirit’s presence for a self-conscious searching for his mind and for a desire for a spiritual consensus in the group and so on which still uses the rules. Fine. It keeps things in order but transcends them lest we stoop somehow to corrupting what ought to be spiritual decision making with mere machinery.

Finally, if you have a constitution, the nastier the problem, the more important it is, then, that you follow that constitution. That’s the truth of the matter, because if things get difficult and then you do something that may in itself be right but which, in fact, contravenes that constitution, it can come back to haunt you.

Some little group will simply force a conclusion on the church that your action is to be annulled because it was unconstitutional. A further reason, therefore, for keeping the constitution simple. Those are merely some observations along the way. I cannot give you chapter and verse for them, although the underlying principles, perhaps, are not too hard to find.

We turn now to qualifications for pastors and elders. I would like to begin this morning by reading a number of texts. I’m going to begin with 1 Timothy, chapter 3. “Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to much wine, 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?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

Deacons, likewise, are to be men worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, and not pursuing dishonest gain. They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience. They must first be tested; and then if there is nothing against them, let them serve as deacons.

In the same way, their wives are to be women worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything. A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and his household well. Those who have served well gain an excellent standing and great assurance in their faith in Christ Jesus.”

Then chapter 5, verse 20. In the context of talking about elders, “Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning. I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism. Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.”

Then chapter 6, verses 11 and 12: “But you, man of God, flee from all this …” The sins mentioned in the previous verses. “… and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

Titus, chapter 1, verses 5 to 9: “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 and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer …”

Notice that switch from elder to overseer without any embarrassment. “Since an overseer is entrusted with God’s work, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to much wine, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.”

Let me begin, then, by outlining some of the characteristics of spiritual leadership, in particular, of the elder at various points.

1. The unexceptional character of most of these qualifications

It is really quite stunning. In 1 Timothy, chapter 3, we are told the elder is not supposed to get drunk. It’s encouraging, isn’t it? He’s not supposed to beat up on people. It doesn’t sound like an extremely high standard all together. He’s supposed to be temperate and respectable. Well, I should hope so.

There isn’t a thing said here about personality type. It doesn’t say he must be a whiz-bang extrovert. It doesn’t even say he must pray for at least an hour a day. In fact, when you go through these lists every single entry but one and a half I’ll mention in a moment is somewhere mandated of all Christians.

In other words, apart from this one and a half exception I’ll mention in a moment, there isn’t a single criterion spelled out in this list that is not mandated of all believers everywhere without exception. It’s a singularly unexceptional list, an exceptionally unexceptional list! How on earth this list has been used as a battering ram to impose a theoretical set of standards that raises the level to some kind of super elite group in the church I’ll never know, for this list is remarkable for being unremarkable.

When you look at the hospitality characteristic, for example, just to take one out of the stream, it’s explicitly laid on all Christians in Hebrews, chapter 13. Every single one of these terms crops up in lists of responsibilities for other Christians except one and a half. What must we deduce from this?

Simply this. Once again, these lists of qualifications do not suggest the leaders in the church are qualitatively different from other Christians. We are not an elitist group. We are just poor sinners telling other poor sinners where there’s bread. We have certain functions, certain callings, and certain responsibilities, but we are not an elitist group. We are not a priesthood distinct from other Christians.

This does not mean, as we’ll see in a moment, there is nothing of standard or challenge here. There is. We’ll see how that operates in a moment, but what must be said in the strongest possible terms is we should not raise a kind of artificial barrier to these offices based on personality, amount of education, IQ, or personality type or whatever.

As we shall see, one of those peculiarities (that teaching thing) requires a certain amount of gift in certain areas, so there are some things that need to be said to qualify this first main observation, and we shall say them in due course, but the chief point to observe at the very beginning is the list is remarkable for being unremarkable.

2. It follows that the prime characteristic is simply consistent spirituality.

What Paul has done here is simply given a list of behavioral standards (that’s what these are) that are, in fact, applied to all Christians somewhere and lump them together and said, in effect, whatever ought to be the standard in Christian conduct generally must be particularly exemplified in the leaders.

That’s the thrust here. In other words, if Christians are not to be beating up on people, if Christians are to be gentle, if Christians are to be hospitable, if Christians are to run their families well, if Christians are not to be lovers of money, if Christians are not to be given to strong drink and so on, then their leaders better exemplify all of those things.

Whatever ought to be seen as appropriate conduct in Christians must be supremely seen in their leaders. That’s the point. Moreover, these things must be seen in balance and proportion in their leaders. When we, then, go through these particular items one by a one, a few more things can be said.

A) Above reproach

We are told, in chapter 3, verse 2, “Now the overseer must be above reproach.” Blameless in that sense. There is no obvious and fundamental inconsistency or flaw in his character that everyone agrees is there and reproaches him for. He’s fundamentally a consistent sort of Christian.

B) The husband of but one wife

That is the most difficult one to understand in this list. There are many interpretations. Some have suggested this means the chap must be married. “He must be the husband of but one wife,” in which case, poor Paul wouldn’t qualify. Not only so, but it will be very difficult to make sense of the instruction of the Lord Jesus who taught, in fact, some make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom. Paul himself insists celibacy and marriage are both charismata given of God, and if one has potential, at least, for being higher in terms of service, it is celibacy.

When I was pastor at Richmond, I was single and often put in 80- or 90-hour weeks. I was out every night of the week visiting men. I discovered if you visited during the day, those far-off days a decade and a half ago when fewer women were working, you got the women. If you visited in the evening, you got the men, so I visited in the evening. I cannot put in 80- or 90-hour weeks today, and I cannot be out every evening of the week. I have a wife and two children.

There are certain things a celibate person can do that a single person can’t do, so the argument goes here Paul is justifying marriage as a criterion despite the celibacy thing, rather, because of the need for that kind of family maturity, but the truth of the matter is he magnifies celibacy itself elsewhere. Therefore, I find that one a very hard interpretation. Moreover, it does not do justice to the word one. A husband of but one wife. Why not just say, “He must be a husband?”

It has also been argued this means this person is forbidden to remarry if his first wife dies. There are some very fine Christians who have taken that interpretation. S. Lewis Johnson, for example, of Believers Chapel in Dallas, an excellent expositor, takes exactly that view, and when his first wife died, seven years later he remarried and he resigned the eldership. I think he is wrong. I respect his desire to be consistent with his beliefs, but I think he is wrong.

Not only because of a passage like Romans 7:1–4, but because of the entire biblical stream of though which argues marriage is for this age only, and when the spouse dies, there is no further tie that legally binds. To suggest this interpretation is correct would be to hint that a second marriage is somehow immoral or a lower state of spirituality or a second-class kind of Christian existence.

Whereas, in fact, the teaching of Scripture is the surviving spouse is permitted to remarry. There is no further binding in law, and in the new heaven and the new earth, in fact, there is no longer marriage nor giving in marriage, so there is no entailment, then, into the new heaven and the new earth. I find it hard to accept that one, especially in the light of Romans 7, the first few verses.

Some have thought this means not a divorcÈ who has remarried. The question of divorce and remarriage and its qualifications from Scriptures on this office is an extremely complicated one. With your permission, I am going to duck it. If you want to raise it in questions, I will sketch in what I think is the right answer then, but I would rather not distort where we’re going at the moment by spending a lot of time on something that probably doesn’t affect too many of you at the moment, although it will in your ministry. There’s no doubt about that. I do not think that’s what Paul has in mind here.

Some think it means not a polygamist. A bigamist or a polygamist. The answer is, surely that is an artificial interpretation since polygamy simply wasn’t practiced in the church. After all, was any Christian permitted to practice polygamy? Why lay this down? By itself, that is not an adequate response because, after all, all of these qualifications with exception of the one and a half to which we’ll refer in a moment are, in fact, laid down of all Christians, so the fact that other Christians do not practice polygamy does not mean, therefore, this could not have been inserted here as a criterion for this particular office.

The only thing that would have to be proved is whether or not polygamy was practiced in the surrounding society. There the answer is much more difficult, much more nuanced. Polygamy was not common in ancient Rome. It was not common, and in Jewish circles, it was, by and large, unknown, at least in the orthodox circles.

However, polygamy was practiced especially in the aristocracy and some of the provinces. Thus, Herod the Great, to go no further, had 10 wives. Ten! They weren’t all his wives at once. That’s because he murdered one, for example, and he murdered two of his sons as well, and they kept disappearing for one reason or another, but he did, in fact, have 10 wives. Other instances could be adduced from the ancient world, in which case in the fifth place, this restriction may be saying something like this.

Such a person must not be a polygamist at his conversion. As far as we can tell, polygamy was never permitted within the church. If a person became a Christian, he or she could not then marry two or more spouses, but granted that polygamy was practiced, at least in the boondocks of the empire and in some of the aristocratic circles, if someone who was a polygamist became a Christian, what then was the Christian response?

There is no evidence the Christian responded by saying, in effect, “Divorce all but the first one or all but the prettiest one,” or anything of the sort. Rather, the Christian response was, “Act responsibly and gently and fairly to your wives, but you must not become an elder of the church.”

I think that’s what the restriction means, and although it may not have immediate bearing in Western society today, it certainly has a bearing even yet in many parts of Africa, for instance, where in a tribal society, the chief who, precisely because he is the chief, is likely to have the most wives, is then ruled out from becoming an elder in the church. That becomes an extraordinarily powerful criterion.

When you examine this kind of thing, you can understand the undergirding theological reasons for it. It is this, and this does have bearing on us today. The link between the church-Christ structure and the husband-wife structure is an extremely powerful one. It is bound up with creation and with the new creation and becomes a major theme in, for example, the last part of Ephesians 5 and elsewhere.

There is a sense in which the home is to be a microcosm of the church, and in which, the head of the home is to be a microcosm (dare I say it?) of Christ himself. Not every man is eligible to be an elder in the church, but most men (those who become married and have children in the church) are eligible to become elders in their families. Thus, the family unit is, in a sense, a microcosm of what the church ought to be.

If, therefore, you have, instead of the groom and the bride model, the groom and the bride and the bride and the bride and the bride and the bride and the bride model, you have somehow broken down that typological connection between the church of Christ and its head, on the one hand, and the wife and her head, on the other.

I suspect that is the underlying reason for this particular restriction. I’m not quite prepared to go to the stake for that interpretation, but I think it is probably the best one. Its bearing on us is we must cherish and preserve our homes and work hard at drawing out the parallels between our families and our responsibilities as leaders in our homes and our responsibilities as leaders in the church.

The next three qualifications all have to do with an orderly life.

C) Temperate

Temperate has nothing to do with the WCTU. It means, rather, clearheaded, self-possessed, not an extremist. There are some people who are hip shooters. Every new fad, theological or otherwise, that comes along, they get on their hobbyhorse and ride merrily off in all directions, but the Christian leader is to be temperate, self-possessed, and controlled.

D) Self-controlled

E) Respectable

The term here is an extremely difficult one to translate, because the word respectable, perhaps, has somewhat bourgeois overtones for us. “He’s respectable. He has given in to the middle-class, bourgeois mentality.” The word simply means well-behaved. Dignified, if you like, but not pompous. It’s respectable in that sense.

The next two qualifications have to do with the extension of Christian witness.

F) Hospitable

The Christian elder-overseer is not to be a hermit nor a recluse nor someone who wants to be continually isolated from people, buried, perhaps, in his important library but somehow removed from peoples’ lives. That cannot be. Not in this kind of ministry. He must be hospitable, one who opens his home to people.

G) Able to teach

The first of the one and a half distinctive qualifications. Able to teach. I’ll say a little bit more about that in a moment. I simply want to draw your attention to this fact. This is the one criterion which is laid down for the elders-bishops-overseers-pastors that is not laid down for the deacons. This is a necessary criterion for the one office; it is not listed for the other. I will come back to what it means and what its entailments are in a moment.

H) Not given to much wine

Verse 3. Not only free from drunkenness but free from addiction. The idea is the slave of Jesus Christ must not be a slave of anything else.

I) Not violent, but gentle

The word here suggests selflessness, forbearance.

J) Not quarrelsome

Not contentious. Some people feel they are defending the faith only if they get angry. They fail to distinguish between contending for the faith and being contentious about the faith. They develop a kind of confrontational mentality. No matter what is said, they have a “Yes, but.”

We need, then, to remind ourselves of 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verses 23 and following. “Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel. Instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.”

Do you know how those two go together? Able to teach and not resentful? We hired on our faculty a few years ago someone in one of our departments. He’s reasonably well-trained. He has a PhD from a certain seminary and a PhD from the University of Chicago in philosophy of religion. He’s competent, but when he’s challenged in class or when a student comes to him, he becomes so defensive and so resentful that, in fact, it is affecting his ability to teach. This business of resentment is tied in with your ability to teach.

If you cannot retain a certain kind of dispassionate distance and deal with issues instead of turning everything into a personality confrontation, then you’re disqualified already from the teaching criterion. “And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel. Instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him, he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”

K) Not a lover of money

Jesus Christ has promised all his disciples enough for their needs and no more, and Christian leaders must reflect contentment with that, and that is not always easy. It is so easy for us to begin to lay out parallels. “A high school teacher now earns so much. I have at least an equivalent education (a little more); therefore, I should earn …” Likewise, I could say a chap who has had 12 years of post-secondary education.… “If he’s in nuclear physics, he earns so much. If he’s a full professor at a university, he earns so much. Half the pastors at the Free Church earn more than I do!” Is that the way you think?

I’m a long way from writing a book on how to bring up children. I won’t do it until my kids already have their kids, and even then I’ll probably put my hand to my mouth and marvel that God has been as mercifully with me as he has, but I am quite prepared to write on what my parents did, and in this connection, I have a great heritage.

When I went to university in 1963, my father was earning $2,700 a year in a parsonage. I already had an older sister in nursing school who was putting herself through. How did she put herself through? She worked for a year and a half first and got enough money to step in. When I went to university, my parents in the first year sacrificed and scrimped and sacrificed and scrimped and gave me $10.

I had been working from the age of 14 for 58 hours a week during the summer and 20 hours a week during school in order to start saving money towards university. When I got to university, the surprising thing was, the really astonishing thing was I didn’t know I was poor. I honestly didn’t know I was poor. I had bought my first suit the week before at a secondhand shop, and the students laughed at it. Then I realized for the first time, compared with most of my colleagues at university I was poor. I never wore it again.

The reason I didn’t know I was poor was because I was brought up in a home where there were no complaints. When I was just a little gaffer, my father took around a trundle trolley of Christmas booty that had been collected for the church for the poor people in the community in Montreal. Then he went home, and all they had in the whole house for that Christmas dinner was a can of beans, and my parents thanked God in prayer for the can of beans. Then a Christian family came out and invited us all out for Christmas dinner.

I just don’t remember complaints in my family. I just don’t remember them. Not about that. Oh, about other things, yes. My parents weren’t saints in the technical, modern sense of the term, but I don’t remember complaints of them either. I can remember many times when they didn’t know where it was coming from.

I was a sickly kid. I was in the hospital before the days of medical insurance and all of this sort of thing. I remember waking up after I had been in hospital for weeks, and then I was home and I woke up. My mother was there sitting beside my bed gently crying. I said, “Mum, you do love me, don’t you?” Of course, this finished her off. Ten-year-olds are heartless monsters.

It suddenly dawned on me as I was getting better, “Mum, how are you going to pay for this?” She’d say, “I don’t know, but God will provide.” God did. The specialist in the children’s hospital in Montreal wrote it off. The surgeon wrote it off. The hospital bill which was enormous.… Do you know how that came in? My parents prayed about it. They didn’t talk about it, but unbeknownst to them, a couple of pastors in the fellowship began to write to other pastors who wrote to other pastors who wrote to other pastors, and the bill was met to the cent.

Having come out of that heritage where at seminary I often went for two days drinking only water to keep my stomach from rumbling.… I had no money for food, and I was far too proud to ask for help. Then, just about the time I was ready to tell God to step off because his promises about looking after the dickybirds was all right, but meanwhile I was hungry, he’d come through and provide. He’d come through and provide, and he did it again and again and again.

Listen. I cherish that heritage. What I’m worried about for my kids is that I’m more comfortable than my parents were. I’m afraid my kids won’t suffer enough. Don’t complain. For the sake of your children, don’t complain. If you can’t make it on what you’re earning, get a job, but don’t complain. Take it to the Lord, but don’t complain. That will stand you in better stead as a model before the church and before your own family than anything else. You must not be a lover of money. If you are building up treasures in heaven, don’t worry about your bank account down here. Don’t you think the Lord will provide?

L) Must manage his own family well

Graciously and gravely we are told. The principle that is appealed to here is the principle of the talents. The person who is faithful in small things will be faithful in greater things. This principle, then, gives an impressive dignity to the Christian home. Not all men, then, are eligible to be elders in the church, but most are eligible to be elders in the home. Within that sphere, their responsibilities are similar.

His children, we are told, must obey him. Then there is an expression that is very difficult in the original, with proper respect. This might be better rendered with complete dignity, and it is unclear if this means the children exercise the dignity or respect toward the parent or the father, by his dignity, calls forth that respect. I’m not sure, but the point is, in any case, very clear.

Although we will as parents go through the mischief with some of our children (at least, many of us will), there must be a kind of control of the home, a kind of modeling in the home, a kind of result in the home, that shows the parents, whatever challenges we are facing from our children, and we will face them, are deeply committed to the home, basically in control, knowing how to give the slack and knowing how to pull in the reigns. If, at the end of the day, a person is making absolute shipwreck of his family, he’s simply disqualified from the ministry full stop.

There were three of us, three children, when I was growing up. None of us were saints in that narrow sense. I was probably the least rebellious, not because of increased virtue but because of timidity. I would have liked to have done far more evil than I did, but I was too scared. My sister, however, was more adventuresome, and I remember at one particular point when she was 16 or 17 and ticking the traces just a little bit, I can remember my father said to her with tears in his eyes …

This was after there was a mixture of punishment and letting go and pulling back and all of these kinds of things that go on in some homes in the teenage years. He said to her, “You must understand, Joyce. You must understand that your activity ultimately may affect not only you and our family generically, but the whole church of God, for if I lose you, I swear before God I will resign the next day. Do you understand that’s your responsibility, too?” He was right to say that, and he would have without a second thought.

M) Not a recent convert

 I have said enough about that already in a previous session and the relativity of that kind of criterion. The point, nevertheless, is clear. An immense danger in any high office in the church or outside is pride. Therefore, if someone is promoted too soon, the danger of being puffed up with the pride of the Devil himself is disproportionately great.

N) Must have a good reputation with outsiders

That is, amongst non-Christians, Jews and pagans alike. This does not mean being a good fellow, one of the boys, or that sort of thing, but rather, being known as a person of integrity regardless of whether or not you are always liked for it but being trusted, being regarded as a person who is honorable, not causing unnecessary offense before neither Jew nor Greek, to use the language of Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:32.

2. Other qualifications

If you stretched elsewhere, you could find other qualifications.

A) Avoid partiality.

In one of the texts I read, 1 Timothy 5:21, at all costs avoid partiality. That means the ministry can often be lonely. You must avoid even the appearance of partiality.

B) Pursue all godly virtues.

1 Timothy 6:11–12.

C) Expect serious difficulties and be persistent in face of them and utterly committed.

Let me direct your attention to a few texts. In 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verses 3 and following: “Endure hardship with us, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” Then a variety of images. Endure hardship. It is expected to be a tough road to hoe. Chapter 2, verse 15: “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.”

Then more tellingly yet, chapter 3, verse 10: “You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Again, in chapter 4, verse 5, we read, “But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.” The hardest things Paul ever had to face besides the actual physical difficulties and physical opposition were problems with the churches.

If you don’t expect that and are not prepared to face it, stay out of the ministry. It comes with the turf. I don’t know anybody who has been in the ministry for 20 years who hasn’t faced some kind of major difficulty in the church or in the denomination or whatever. Extremely painful things, and very often those painful things serve as stepping stones to bring the elders themselves to a more mature level of understanding and an ability to cope with even more difficult things.

I remember when I was going through a rather difficult time in one particular pastoral responsibility. It was extremely painful. I was still single, and I wrote home and told my parents a little bit about it, although I didn’t tell them much. My mother wrote..

The point of all of this, this entire list, is that the indices of spirituality that are here offered are in terms not of natural leadership qualities or IQ or the like. They are in terms of consistent Christian character. That’s what they are in a nutshell. Far more quickly, let me come to the other matters I’ve had to deal with.

3. The one distinctive characteristic of an elder-pastor-overseer.

The one distinctive characteristic is that he be able to teach. The half when I mentioned one and a half is that he must not be a novice. Obviously, you can’t apply that to all Christians because, when you are first a Christian, you are a novice whether you like it or not.

On the other hand, it’s something that applies to all Christians in one sense in that we are all supposed to grow and we’re not to remain baby Christians, but the one distinctive characteristic of an elder-pastor-overseer is that he be able to teach, and this means at least two things.

A) Knowledge

Such a person must know the truth of God, and he must be growing in knowledge which, in turn, presupposes either further training or self-study. It certainly presupposes continued growth and continued disciplined work. It presupposes a book budget. It presupposes reading commitments. It presupposes study habits.

You may be ever so good at working with people, ever so gifted with the gab, but if you are not equally committed to the study, stay out of the ministry. It presupposes knowledge, growing knowledge, disciplined knowledge.

B) A growing ability to communicate

Every once in a while, you find someone who really has a kind of mind that sops up biblical data, and you might become a pastor of a church where such a person exists. You are invited into their home for tea, and you look around, and lo and behold, they have all the commentaries you have, maybe more, and they’ve read them! Not only that, but they know them.

Then, after coffee, you can just see it coming. After coffee he sort of smiles and he’s just dying for a good conversation. He’s not a smart-aleck! This is a deep Christian now. He’s just dying for conversation. He says, “Pastor, I was reading the other day a new argument I have not come across before in favor of supralapsarianism. Have you noticed it in the third volume of Hodge? It was in the footnote on page 426.” You can’t be in the ministry in a large church very long without coming across a few like that.

Then you wonder, “Why isn’t this person leading the adult Bible class? Why isn’t this person teaching?” You discover very quickly he has no people skills. He can’t communicate. He just doesn’t open up. He gets behind a lectern and panics. A thousand reasons. The person just doesn’t have that kind of ability to communicate.

I want to go one stage further, partly because for the last 10 years of my life I have been involved in training people for ministry. I’ve tried to give more and more thought to what goes into making a preacher, and there are many, many things, but one of the things, it seems to me, where many of our younger preachers are lacking, especially if they have graduated from a better school, is something I think is often overlooked.

These bright young sparks who go through the better training know how to parch their Greek and Hebrew, and they know how to read the better commentaries. They know how to think theologically. They’re orthodox. They can sniff out evil, heresy. Most of these chaps are deeply committed. We’ve turned out a surprising number of really fine, thought-through, theologically literate young men. Then, some of these chaps get in the pulpit, and they’re so boring it’s appalling. Orthodox but dull. Why?

I listen to them, and I think, “Why are you so incredibly boring? What you’re saying is true, but why is it so dull?” I’ve come to the conclusion one of the chief reasons is we’ve trained these people so hard to work at their exegesis and their outlines and their introductions and their conclusions and their theological precision that they spend 95 or 98 percent on those aspects of the sermon and have given almost no thought to how to apply the Word of God closely to the human life, and that is part of communication.

Somewhere along the line, this chap will say, “This is a difficult text, for you see, in the little expression ‘love of God’ the of God could be subjective genitive or objective genitive. Let me explain to you what that means. If it’s subjective genitive, then it means God’s love for us, and if it’s objective genitive, then it means our love for God, and it could be one or the other. Now the considerations involved in making this decision are as follows …”

Everybody is very impressed, but the dear, little, old lady who is looking after her grandmother who is 96 or 98 when the woman herself is 56 and has arthritis and she has just lost her husband and her son is wayward doesn’t much care about subjective genitives. I strongly urge you who would be or who are called to pastoral ministry to read sociology, to read some anthropology, to read some psychology. Subscribe to some of the outrageously priced reports of the Princeton Institute on Religion. Find out what is going on in your culture. You have to know.

Did you know, for instance, the latest Princeton report from the institute puts together some remarkable findings that show, for example, whereas all of the indices in religion are either steady or going up, such as church attendance, number of people going to synagogue or church per week, number of dollars being given to missions, number of people doing this or that of a religious sort of nature, the indices that tie together religious observance with morality are all going down?

We are producing a generation, a continent, of Christian pagans, and there is now very little connection anymore in the Christian mind at large between morality, ethics, integrity on the job and off the job, and the professed Christianity. Once I worded it, you could have guessed the same thing, but this has been quantified, established, demonstrated, and you must speak to it, and how will you speak to it if you don’t know about it?

The ability to teach, therefore, is a high responsibility, and it presupposes both knowledge, on the one hand, and an ability to communicate, and that ability to communicate is not merely successfully completing a couple of homiletics courses. It is knowing how to apply the Word of God to the heart, making it sing.

4. A remarkable stress on discernable spiritual growth in both doctrine and life

Let me draw your attention to one passage, 1 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 14 and following. “Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you. 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, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

Notice we are told, “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Make sure you press on with these matters so that everyone may see your progress.” In other words, there is considerable stress on growth in the leaders. Ideally, the Christians in your church ought to see that you know more and you walk better this year than last year and the year after than next year and better this year than last year. Discernable growth in both doctrine and life.

5. There is repeatedly in the Scripture an intertwining of leadership themes with two others: namely, doxology and eschatology.

Let me simply read you a couple of passages and draw your attention to these themes as we go by. First Timothy 6:11–16: “But you, man of God, flee from these sins.… Fight the good fight of the faith.”

Verse 13: “In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ …” Eschatology. “… 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.

Again, in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 7 and following, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay …” This gospel treasure in our lives. “… 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. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”

Verse 15: “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.” Doxology. “Therefore 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.” Eschatology. It leads into the first 10 verses of the next chapter.

Our problem is, again, like that which I outlined on the first night. We can go through rules and characteristics of spiritual leadership and eldership and this sort of thing and miss the big picture that gives a context and a framework and a meaning to what we are doing. What this means is, as we serve, we must remember always these two perspectives, bear them constantly before our eyes.

We minister, we preach, we study, we give ourselves to people with eternity’s values in view that Christ may be praised, and our whole heartthrob is that on the day of his unveiling when he returns again, he will be praised amongst the people who we have led to Christ, and we will give them to him as his honor, his due, his glory. Our desire is not for eminence; our desire is for the praise of Christ, and we cry with the church at every generation, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Come, Lord Jesus.” Let us live with those eternity values in view.

That is why leadership is so repeatedly connected with eschatology and doxology in Scripture, because leadership is never merely professional. It is never merely a list of characteristics which a person either has or doesn’t have. It is, rather, a life lived out with a certain balance of responsibilities in light of the eschaton, in light of the Lord’s return and for the praise of his glory and the good of his church. Otherwise, the whole thing just isn’t worth it.

You cannot serve in the ministry very long without being asked to do some things you can’t be paid enough to do. I remember, when I was at Richmond, there was a chap who was dying. He lived across the street from one of our families, and the family asked me to go and talk with him. He was 44 and drinking himself into the grave. He was a millionaire.

I picked him up and took him out to a restaurant. He was still wearing a tux from the night before and reeked a profound stench. Not only of alcohol but of urine and feces. He was a filthy man. I took him out the restaurant, and he was so drunk he could hardly talk. I gave him some strong coffee and we started talking about this and that and the other thing.

Finally, I began to press him a little bit. I picked him up the next day and the day after. As I began to talk deeply with him about the things of Christ, he said to me, “I don’t care about what you’re saying. Hell has to be better than my existence. I can’t stand my wife, and I’ll drink myself into the grave, and I hope she goes to hell as well.”

He died. His wife phoned me. She was an alcoholic. Up to that point, I had never got in the door. I was always at the front door. She brought me into the house. I found dogs in this house, this millionaire’s house, this richly appointed house, that had not been let outside for months, and the house smelled like it.

The girl who was only 13 was already a sexual freak. Their 8-year-old son was already a kleptomaniac, and this woman was a drunk herself in her own rite that made her husband’s drunkenness look amateurish. She wanted me to take the funeral. She put big notices in the paper saying, “Nobody among the friends had better show up.” She didn’t want them to show up. This was her funeral.

She sat there in the front row of this big chapel, this funeral home, and she muttered half drunk the whole time. I started speaking, and I got about eight minutes through and I couldn’t hack it any more. I wound it down. When we got out to the graveside, she took me by the arm to show the grave of her other husband leaving the casket in the empty car.

You can’t pay me enough to do things like that, and every one of you who has served for a while you have similar stories. That’s not even exceptional. The only thing that makes sense of all of that is to live with eternity’s values in view and to live for the praise of Christ, to be committed to service, to hunger for the coming King. Let me leave these qualifications behind for a moment and very quickly sum up and move to another area.

6. The call to ministry

I think part of our problem here is we have often succumbed to stereotypes. One generation of preachers thinks the call in terms of some kind of felt emotional decision is absolutely basic to ministry. What I want to suggest to you is, in fact, the New Testament models are quite diverse. You find, on the one hand, 2 Timothy, chapter 2. “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.”

Implication: Timothy, an apostolic delegate, is to go hunting around finding people who will serve as good elders. That’s part of your job if you’re a Christian leader. Sniff them out. Find out who, in your church, should be going to seminary. Find out who has potential. Find out who can be tested and elevated within the congregation itself. Search them out. Give them things to read. Test them. Strain. That, too, can be part of their call.

Then there is the passage we began with, 1 Timothy 3. “Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task.” Paul says, “Good for you. You have a great job ahead of you, but here is the list of qualifications.” Here, there is no hint of some kind of spiritual enduement, an anointment that somehow comes along and becomes a kind of overwhelming vision.

Here, rather, is a person who says, “I’d really like to do that! I’d like to serve in this way.” And he sets his heart on the task. What Paul says is, “Fine! It’s a noble task, but here’s the list.” Then, of course, you also find something like Titus, chapter 1, verse 5. “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.”

Of course, you can point out that Titus was an apostolic delegate, but there is a parallel that goes on to some extent in our own churches today, especially in a place like Quebec where the church is multiplying very quickly and where there are many communities with small, unformed churches. Then general superintendents and district superintendents and the like tend to have an extra clout.

They find leaders in these various groups, and they say, “It seems to me in this group of 25 people meeting for a Bible study, it seems to me, you’re the person who is the obvious one to lead for a while. Try it for six months. Let’s see what happens.” Sorting things out in Crete in a young church situation where there is not full organization yet, where there is not full church autonomy, but where there is a responsibility, nevertheless, to get leaders. That, too, can issue in some of the call of God in a person’s life.

Then, of course, in Acts, chapter 13, verses 2 and 3, you get a different kind of situation. There the Spirit says, apparently through some sort of prophecy to the elders of the church as they are praying together, to separate out Paul and Barnabas for the work of the ministry, the missionary paths he has sent them to. That’s another model.

Then, of course, you have the Macedonian call which is another model. What I want to suggest to you is, in fact, in the Scriptures there is no single stereotype of the call, but in fact, there is often a concatenation of several different angles, several different perspectives coming together: the advice of senior counselors, the sense of the Spirit of God upon your soul and life, the testing of gifts before the congregation so the congregation is able to assess your gifts and callings, your ability to absorb further training and grow. All of these things can work together.

In my own case, I was studying chemistry and mathematics at McGill when Ellard Corbett, who was then pastor of Snowdon Baptist Church in Montreal, came up to me one spring and said “Don, I want you to be my assistant this summer.” I said to him, “Pastor Corbett, with all due respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m in chemistry and mathematics. You can go and get a seminary student, not me. Thank you very much. I’m going to give God my chemistry and I’ll give away lots of money and I’ll help in the youth clubs and so on, but frankly, I’m not going into the ministry. That’s not for me.”

He said, “I want you to be my assistant this summer.” I said, “But you don’t understand. I’m not a seminary student. I don’t know any exegesis and I don’t intend to learn any.” He said, “I want you to be my assistant this summer.” I said, “No,” and I won, and I’m in the ministry. That was not by itself the call, but it was the first breaking down of some barriers.

Here was someone who was challenging me as to the whole direction of my life. I had it made. By that time, I was on scholarships. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I was heading for Cornell to do PhD work in organic synthesis. Then, that summer, I worked in Ottawa in a science job and on the weekends I was out with another chap, a seminary graduate, trying to begin a Sunday school and a church in a little place up the valley, and it suddenly dawned on me that 50 billion years into eternity my chemistry wouldn’t matter that much.

That’s not saying it might not be important for somebody else, but for me, the chemistry didn’t matter that much. The little chorus I had been taught as a child kept drumming my brain.

With eternity’s values in view, Lord,

With eternity’s values in view;

May I do each day’s work for Jesus,

With eternity’s values in view.

Then I got back to Montreal for my last year of chemistry, and the first sermon I heard by a chap whose ministry I don’t particularly respect.… He had so many demonstrable flaws in his ministry it was painful; nevertheless, that sermon drills in my head to this day. He preached from Ezekiel 22. “I sought for a man to stand in the gap for me, but I found none.” It was almost as if the Spirit of God was directing that to me, and from my whole heart with tears I cried out to him, “Lord, send me,” and I’m in the ministry.

I tell that story not because it’s unique. Most of you could tell similar accounts. What I’m pointing out is there was a concatenation of things: the testing of gifts; an older, wiser person challenging me; a particular sermon; the application of particular texts to my own life. We must not stereotype the call of God.

7. The division of labor between deacons and pastors

I am simply going to lists points instead of expounding them. There is not time to do more. If you go through the list of qualifications for deacons in the passage I read in 1 Timothy 3, you discover it is much like the list for elders except there is no requirement to teach.

If I understand the balance of things, the elders, the pastors, are responsible for looking after the general oversight of the church, its spiritual direction, its doctrinal formation, its discipleship, its evangelism, its thrust, its aim, and the deacons are sent along to help in all kinds of secondary matters and in such tasks as may be assigned them.

This means, for example, the deacons may well be the ones who are almost exclusively responsible for such matters as the building, its cleaning, its maintenance, mortgage payments and the like, social intercourse, especially in caring for the needs of the poor, the disadvantaged and the like, ushering and all the matters that are related to that, organizing logistics for regular or special meetings, transport, PA systems, seating, the Lord’s Table, pianists, organists, the rental of facilities if you’re in a school, the renting out of your facilities if you’re not, general budgeting and fiscal matters in some areas of the church’s life, although more liaison is needed there.

Then there are also some areas where the deacons, it seems to me, do not have primary responsibility, but where individual deacons may be challenged and welcomed to certain responsibility by the elders. Counseling. It’s part of the responsibility of the elders, but they may assign in out and parcel it out to all kinds of people. General counseling, counseling for membership, for baptism, marriage.

Discipline but only in connection with the elders. I will say more about that tomorrow. Visitation and evangelism. Helping at the Lord’s Supper. Even some preaching. How is it that some people make the change over? But it’s not part of their required responsibilities. It is not part of the condition of their service, but they may be invited or challenged to help in these ways.

Helping and organizing such matters as the Sunday school, the young people, the library, and so on. All of these areas fall within the primary purview of the elders-pastors-overseers. I am persuaded, however, in such areas where the deacons have primary responsibility, the elders should back off and let them get on with it.

With your permission, I think I’ll pass on this matter of calling a pastor and come to a conclusion. What we need constantly as we think through these qualifications for pastors and deacons, some of the ways they are to be spelled out in our church and to be applied in our lives, what we need above all is a renewing of our own spiritual vision, our own spiritual dynamic, that kind of vital and powerful relationship with God so that what we are doing is never merely an extrapolation of certain rules, so we need the challenge to our lives constantly:

Rise up, O men of God!

Have done with lesser things.

Give heart and mind and soul and strength

To serve the King of kings.

Let us pray.

Lord God, who is sufficient for these things, even those of us who have walked with you the longest, we shamefacedly confess we do not know you as we ought to. In optimistic moments we look back, and we are grateful for what you have done in us and through us, but in more realistic moments we are also ashamed that we have not been more disciplined or more prayerful or have not been better students of your Word.

Our earnest prayer, Lord God, is that you would not cast us over but that you will use us and shape us and help us to grow and expand and serve you from the heart, ourselves growing in doctrine and in life, increasingly conformed to the image of God that others may see our progress. Grant that both by our service and by our example we may bring strength to the church of Jesus Christ.

Grant, Lord God, that if you put us in hard places where there seems to be little fruit, that all of our contentment and joy may turn, nevertheless, on the privilege of knowing you, for after all, the Master himself taught us, “Do not rejoice that the demons are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” Grant, therefore, that our sense of fulfillment, our sense of satisfaction, our enjoyment in the labor may not be contingent on mere success but upon self-conscious obedience upon the grace we have received in Christ Jesus and upon the forgiveness of our own sins.

If, instead, you place us in fields where there is much fruit and much growth and much prosperity, forbid that we should ever think we have done these things. Forbid that even a whisper of the thought should come to our lives, but help us to remember afresh the words of Paul. “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not receive it?”

For everything we know and teach and do, every success, every victory, if it is significant at all, if it bears fruit it is the work of your gracious Spirit in us. O, Lord God, cast us not aside but renew us afresh and grant that we may so walk in the Spirit as not to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. This we ask to the praise of your dear Son in whose name we pray, amen.