English service - July 21,2024
Messenger: Pastor Jim Allison
I Timothy 3:1-7
The Personal Character of a Leader
Happy Lord’s Day again, everyone here at Open Door and online. We are moving through a series of Bible messages on leadership in Christ’s Church. Part of our reason for focusing on this is our preparation to call our next lead pastor in the coming months. Last month we learned about the spiritual gifts of a leader. Today’s reading puts the spotlight on a church leader’s personal character.
The philosopher and Bible teacher Dallas Willard talked often about spiritual gifts, for example God’s giving someone the gifts needed to be an evangelist or a pastor. He pointed out that, though they are of course good things, they also come along with a certain danger. If you are a gifted person but do not have the personal character to use your gifts well, they can easily become damaging and destructive in your life and others’. Without a good character, your gifts can in fact lead to ruin. Tragically, we can think of a range of gifted Christian leaders whose moral failings cost them and their ministries dearly.
If I am gifted in something, there can be a strong tendency for me to think about myself and my gifts. If I have gifts in sports, music, writing, speaking, or whatever, I want people to see me using them. I don’t want someone else around me to be stronger, faster, or better at performing. I don’t want someone else getting a job with more prestige or getting promoted ahead of me. Without my even noticing, that can separate me from others. Eventually, it can make it impossible for me to function well as a leader.
On the other hand, if I have a mature character, hold my particular gifts with humility, and seek to use them to serve God and others, I can be free to turn my attention outward. I can learn to enjoy the gifts I see in others. I can grow in my capacity for joy and appreciation of the beauty and goodness I see in the people and happenings around me from day to day. I can pay attention to the people I am with and look for ways to meet their needs. That is the path to greater leadership in God’s name. That builds His Church in a way He can truly be happy with.
So for all of us, but especially for church leaders, character counts a great deal in the eyes of God. Of the some 15 characteristics of a church leader that the writer, Paul, lists in vv. 1-7, only one has to do with gifts or skills. People chosen for this work need to be able to teach, v. 2 tells us. But all the other “qualifications” are about the kind of people they are, not the particular tasks they can perform. We could make a strong argument that character counts even more than gifts in following Christ.
We have no control over the particular gifts we have been given by God. When we stand before Him on Judgment Day, He will not ask us in anger, “Why weren’t you more gifted?” Our cultures may place great expectations on us for being gifted in order to have “the good life,” but God never does.
What He does expect from us is to let Him grow us into people of strong character. His aim is that whatever few or many gifts we have, they will all honor Him and build up others. In that process, our needs will be met and we will find our greatest happiness, but not because we have made those our central goals. They are byproducts of a kind—gifts of grace given simply because God is by nature so loving and generous. Our aim is Christ Himself, and a big part of that is growing in Christlike character.
One of the reasons Paul writes the letter of I Timothy is to give guidance on this important practical matter of choosing leaders for the growing Christian churches that are being planted in various places. Paul is a kind of mentor and Timothy his protégé, whom he calls his “son in the faith” (I Timothy 1:2). Timothy is in Ephesus, and Paul tells him to stay there and keep the work of the gospel going (1:3). Acts 14:23 tells us about the many people becoming followers of Christ, “Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church. The elders had trusted in the Lord. Paul and Barnabas prayed and fasted. They placed the elders in the Lord’s care.” Paul is instructing Timothy in how to do the same kind of thing in I Timothy 3. Timothy is supposed to choose the leaders as he senses God directing him, it seems. It is not a democratic election, and certainly not a popularity contest.
Now if you are a Baptist, you might be feeling a little uncomfortable at this point. Don’t we choose our leaders in a more bottom-up style? Yes, our particular denomination does have the tradition of the members of the local congregation freely choosing who will guide us. We have near total freedom, and near total responsibility to support those leaders and hold them accountable to do their work according to the standards that God has set. We believe everyone is equal in the sight of God, so church members vote and choose things pretty democratically. Even the pastor has only one vote, we can often hear in churches arranged like this one.
But it sounds pretty top-down for Paul and a few others to choose the leaders, doesn’t it? Are we doing things in a way that goes against the Bible’s teachings? Oh no, that’s the last thing that “Bible-believing Baptists” want to be accused of!
This message is not the right place for us to go into this question in the detail that would be necessary to learn about it thoroughly. For now, I think it is safe to say that missionaries, especially in the early church, did many things that they would not do if the Church was larger, stronger, and readier to stand on its own feet. Also, a variety of organizational structures and patterns of church life is not necessarily a bad thing. God may be fine with some people choosing their leaders more directly and some having them chosen by others. He apparently enjoys working in a lot of different ways among His people in diverse places and times.
But in a way, as a Baptist church, we need to hear and thoroughly understand the teachings in today’s message even more than other Christians. That’s because in our particular system of church government, we are all directly responsible for choosing leaders like I Timothy 3 describes. We are instructed to be like this when it is our turn to lead, and God expects us to make sure that those who guide us follow the instructions that He gives us here.
Well, then, who exactly are the leaders that God has in mind for His Church? The translation we are using talks about “a leader in a church” in vv. 1-7. In vv. 8-10, then again in v. 12 are standards for “deacons.” In v. 11 are teachings for “their wives.” It’s not completely clear whether this means wives of deacons only, pastors also, or what. But it seems safe to assume that these teachings apply to all Christians, including all wives.
Let’s focus today on “a leader” (vv. 1-7), the word used here is episkope, the word from which the Episcopal Church takes its name. It just means overseer. In the New Testament, church leaders are also often called presbuteros, and you know about the Presbyterian Church. This word means elders. The idea is not that they are necessarily older than the others in the group, but through their years of living, they have become wise and are thus able to lead well. The word for shepherd (poimin), meaning pastor, is common in the Bible, as well. We can understand these words as basically the same in many ways as they are used in God’s word. Various denominations give them different meanings and roles inside their particular systems, but they all describe church leaders who do many of the same things in guiding God’s people.
Our Lord sets a very high standard for leaders of His church. We must be “free from blame” (v. 2), “worthy of respect” (v. 2) and “respected by those who are outside the church” (v. 7). We don’t understand God to be saying that only perfect people can lead His Church because then there would be no leaders—we all are weak, sinful people. He does not call us to pretend we are perfect when we aren’t, either. There may be some people who think pastors have our homes set up with a station of the cross in each room, so that we stop and pray every time we walk from the bedroom to the kitchen. But really, I don’t know any pastors who do that.
Still, our Lord does not excuse sin (“it’s OK if you disobey me a little, just not too much”?). And the teachings in today’s reading seem to be not a list of laws for leaders to live up to but descriptions of what is realistically necessary for the Church to succeed. They grow out of the wisdom of experience. There are people outside (and sometimes inside) the Church who are looking for a way to criticize, blame, or attack it. This will happen, and when it does, the group needs to have leaders whose lives are defensible.
It's not that non-leaders are OK to live by a lower standard. All are called to be like Christ, our perfect example of how to live as a human. But the effects of failure by a leader are different. You may remember a very powerful storm we had in Sapporo about six years ago. (It was actually soon before that earthquake that caused the whole island of Hokkaido to lose our electricity.) Near our home is a hillside covered with beautiful trees—white birches and other types. The wind and rain took down trees of various sizes, larger ones and smaller. But the damage from the big ones’ falling was clearly greater. When they came down, some of them fell on the smaller ones and took them out, too. Likewise, all God’s people make foolish choices sometimes, but when it is church leaders, more people and the Lord’s cause itself tend to get hurt in the process.
Church leaders are ordinary people, but we have an extraordinary calling. Leaders and followers have equal importance in the eyes of God, and one is not necessarily any better than the other. But leaders do have a unique privilege, opportunity, responsibility, and task. So God calls us to meet a higher standard.
Some of the expectations for a church leader relate to that person’s family relationships. In v. 2, “He must be faithful to his wife.” The King James Version and various others say that he must be “the husband of one wife.” Then in v. 4, “He must make sure that his children obey him and show him proper respect.” About just the requirements noted here, there have been many, many arguments over the years. They often have produced a great amount of heat and very little light. If you read these verses as a legal document, no church should call a leader who is single. (There goes the whole Catholic Church.) No leaders who are married but have no children. “Children” is plural, so no one with only one child should be in charge of a church, either. Of course, no women or divorced pastors, whether male or female.
Is that what Paul is saying in this passage? I can’t quite understand it that way. He is not trying to lay out a complete list of rules to cover every situation. This is not like a mathematical formula that you can apply in any context and expect to get the same results. Rather, he is speaking about the kind of situation that men in their time and culture are typically in and Timothy is likely to deal with in building up new churches.
For example, at this time there are a lot of men married to more than one woman, but Paul tells him to steer clear of them in choosing leaders. It’s not hard to imagine the kinds of problems that can form in church life if the pastor has two or three wives, is it? So the point of these teachings seems to be just what the writer says in v. 2. The pastor’s marriage relationship is to be marked by faithfulness. It’s what Paul writes in v. 4. The leader of God’s church is to be a good manager of an individual family first. Or, to put it a more negative way, as v. 4b does, if the family members of the church leader can’t stand each other, something similar is likely to be the case in the larger church family. If I go to a fitness trainer to get in shape, and that person is so overweight that he can’t get out of his chair, I might be going to the wrong trainer. The author seems to be saying something like that. He is arguing from the lesser to the greater. If this is true in a smaller matter, how much more will it be true in a larger one? His words make good sense when you read them that way, don’t they?
Self-control is another part of the good leader’s character that shows up again and again in this passage. In v. 2, “In anything he does, he must not go too far. He must control himself.” Then v. 3 gives specific examples. “He must not get drunk. He must not push people around. . . . He must not love money.” If the person Open Door calls as our next lead pastor is in the habit of drinking too much, getting into fights, and acting greedily, we might have the wrong person. We need someone who is as sober as a good airplane pilot in order to guide God’s family of faith well. We need someone who loves people more than money—the way God loves them—so that we can be together in peace.
Imagine you have a friend who runs a bar down in Susukino. You go to him and ask, “Hey, do you know Ken?” (I’ll just use a name you could find in Japan or English-speaking countries so you won’t think I’m talking about anyone in particular.)
“Yeah, I know Ken. He comes in here just after we open almost every day. He sits by himself and drinks like a fish until closing time. He mainly watches the stock market reports and then buys and sells using his phone. I think he has a good bit of money and spends all his time trying to get more. I don’t know how good the decisions are that he makes because he’s drinking most of the time, but he never seems to stop, so I guess he still has some money. Lots of people come in here and hang out with their friends, but not Ken. I doubt he has many, and he’s definitely not spending much time with his family because he’s here all the time. Pretty much the only time he talks to people is when they make noise or do something else he doesn’t like. He’ll get in fights with them pretty often. I’ve even seen him throw a chair at someone here. . . . By the way, why do you want to know about Ken?”
“Well, we’re thinking of calling him as the next pastor of our church.”
When you were a child, did you do puzzles called “What’s wrong with this picture?” That’s what we’re doing here, isn’t it. It should be easy, not difficult, to see the love of God at work in the life of a person called to lead His church. When the pastor teaches and preaches the word of God, his or her personal life needs to demonstrate that it is true, not contradict it and cancel out its positive impact on people.
Paul goes on in vv. 8-13 to give similar instructions about the kind of people that should be chosen as deacons, leaders further down in the organizational system. He also tells Timothy what kind of women are needed as the wives of church leaders. They often have a strong influence on the life of the group, whether they are in the position of official leaders of not. The teachings God gives all these various leaders in the church are basically the same as the ones we have already talked about. There is more in I and II Timothy, as well as Titus 1:6-9 along the same lines. We don’t have time to go into it in detail here, but please read through these in your quiet time as you pray for God to lead to us the next leader of our church.
Before we leave this passage, though, you may be wondering what is supposed to happen if a person being considered as a leader isn’t actually the kind God tells us to seek. Of course, it’s better not to call that individual as pastor, as Paul writes in 5:22 of this same letter: “Don't be too quick to place your hands on others to set them apart to serve God.” But as long as God makes us free, we church leaders can also make choices to do bad things even after we have received a call to leadership. The author lays down strict instructions for cases like that in 5:20-21.
Elders who sin should be corrected in front of the other believers. That will be a warning to the others. I command you to follow those directions. I command you in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the chosen angels. Treat everyone the same. Don't favor one person over another.
There are even cases of churches’ having to decide to keep a minister or not. The Bible does not go into specifics about how to make such decisions. But I think we could say that in line with the general principles in the Bible, the following would be guiding questions to consider in prayer and honest communication.
Is the leader’s behavior that is causing a problem. . .
something he/she has never or rarely done before, or one that person is in the habit of doing?
something out of character or actually part of his/her character?
something he/she is taking—or deflecting—responsibility for, for example by blame-shifting, trying to show how it was someone else’s fault?
something he/she has genuinely turned away from, or does he/she insist on continuing it (whether quietly or openly)?
something he/she is willing to accept discipline for?
One final thing Paul notes is that “The leader must not be a new believer. . .” (v. 6). Last year I had a student I enjoyed getting to know. He graduated and went into the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. I am thankful to have people like him working to protect us here. But if I heard later this year, for example, that he had become the head of the entire nation’s Self-Defense Forces, my feeling would change pretty quickly from thankfulness to fear! There’s just too much that he has not yet had a good chance to learn and prepare to do well. Being a church leader, too, comes with a great, great amount of responsibility—not only to the people of one’s nation but, even more, to the God of heaven and earth. So the overseer’s work needs to be taken seriously, and the church needs to give future leaders time and support as they grow into the position.
In closing, let’s keep in mind that a church generally won’t grow stronger and more mature than its pastor. If the leader is joyful, the church will strongly tend to be joyful. If the leader is judgmental, or lazy, or thoughtful and loving, or whatever, that is often the kind of people who will be attracted to the group and the way they will continue to grow after joining.
So as we look for our next leader, and as we each lead in various times and situations, let’s make our goal leaders who have not only the power of personality, gifts, or talents—but character. Let’s ask the Lord now to help us have leaders who, as Paul writes in v. 13 of this chapter, “serve well,” “earn the full respect of others,” continue growing in their own faith, and help God’s best dreams for His people to come true in us as we move ahead together.
God, help us every day to put our gifts again in your wise and loving hands. Grow us up into people of real character, so that we can use well all that we have, for you and for others. Help all of us in your church to use our abilities to lead in the various areas where you place us for service. And guide us as we seek the next lead pastor for your church, Open Door Chapel. Through that person, you be our leader. Guide us all, pastor and other church members together, to follow you and become more like you each day. This is our prayer in the name of the true Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
References
Begg, A. (2019, September 16). Elders – Taking Care of God’s Church. Exposit the Word. Line by Line Bible Study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l8PReSTp0U
Ortberg, J. (2024, June 14). Develop the Character to Bear Your Gifts. Become New. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waixJpZnTQk&t=441s