Have you seen those pictures that go around the internet with the text that reads, “When you lie on your resume, but still get the job”? You might see a dog with a shuttlecock on it’s nose, as it blends in with some ducks, or you might see a cat with a coat on that says security dog. They’re pretty funny, but knowing the right qualifications and actually having them are two different things. When I was first starting out in vocational ministry I looked at, and applied to, a lot of ministries. Usually I got interviews, and in most cases got to the last round before they went with someone else. That was a blessing in disguise, because it means I’ve had the honor of serving this congregation for almost seventeen years come this October. But one of the craziest ministries I looked, but never applied to, was one that was looking for a youth pastor. It was a full time position, but they were only paying a part-time salary in California. In addition, they were looking for a young person with five plus years of full-time ministry experience and at least a masters level degree.
It is still the most ridiculous set of qualifications I have ever seen. So knowing that was what they were looking for, I didn’t even attempt to apply.
But its this idea of knowing and having the right qualifications that brings us back to our summer study in the letter to Titus, where we’ll pick it back up in verse 5 of chapter 1. As we open our Bibles up to Titus 1:5, let’s look back on how the letter started.
In our first week in Titus, we talked about how Paul had sent Titus to Crete so that he could appoint elders in the local congregations there, and make sure that the churches were in order. In doing this, Paul starts off with helping Titus understand that, he was being called to know his role and purpose, in order to help bring about a greater experience of God’s grace and peace within the local body of believers. What we got out of that was, that, when believers understand that they have a role and purpose and embrace it within their local congregations, a greater experience of God’s grace and peace occurs. So Paul is telling Titus, and through him the Holy Spirit is telling us, that we need to fulfill our role and purpose in our local congregation, so that as a body of believers, we can experience a greater grace and peace. Something we should all want.
Moving from that understanding, Paul now gives Titus more details of roles in the local congregation, and through the fulfilling of those roles, how peace and grace can be experienced. Let’s read starting in Titus 1:5.
5 This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— 6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7 For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, 8 but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. 9 He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.
10 For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. 11 They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. 12 One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” 13 This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, 14 not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. 15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. 16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.
Paul begins his section on roles with that of the overseer, or elder. Every local congregation is to have spiritual overseers who tend to the overall needs of the congregation but especially the spiritual needs of the people. These overseers have some requirements, so let’s walk through them. Overall an elder is to be above reproach, meaning they are to have a good reputation. Now no one can please everyone, but in general, an elder should be known positively by most people.
Next, is family matters. They should be married to one wife, meaning, they’re not a polygamist. God’s intended marriage unit is one man and one woman, one can be celibate and be an elder, but one cannot be in any type of relationship other than a heterosexual monogamous one. This specifying of married to one woman and it’s corresponding passage in 1st Timothy 3, implies that elder is to be male. This is why we only have male eldership in our congregation. And there is a whole debate about this that happens within the Church on women eldership. If that is something you wold like me to take a Sunday and teach on, I will, but for now, we’re just reading the plain text of the Scripture.
In addition to this, again going off of the parallel passage in 1st Timothy, the children who are in the home are to be faithful. Meaning they are to be raised as believers, and have the faith instilled in them. The elder should conduct his household in such a way, that his children are known to not be insubordinate and they are not allowed to engage in debauchery which means not engaging in sensual pleasures. In other words, as long as the children are at home, they are reared to be respectful both to God and people. There are those that interpret this passage to say that an elder’s child should be a believer after they leave the home. However, though this should be the goal of a every Christian parent, when a child leaves that home, an elder can no longer be held responsible for the choices of the child. Instead the elder should strive to be an example of a godly parent and loving their child whether they remain faithful or not.
From the family, Paul reiterates that an elder should be above reproach. So he begins to give some personal details of what that means. There should be no arrogance, quick temper, drunkenness, violence, greediness. There might be moments of such things, an arrogant moment, a momentary loss of temper, a sip one to far, a hammer tossed across the room, a laps in desire to gain more, we all struggle with sin and sometimes, even the best of us, have those quick momentary lapses. However, Paul is talking about lifestyle. What’s being talked about here is a consistency issue, this is why Paul brings up the positive to these negatives.
An elder must be hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. The elder is more consistent in the positive areas of life, rather than in the negative ones. Paul’s not talking about perfect people, remember this is the same guy that in Romans 7:15 wrote, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Elders are those who hate the things of sin, and though they may falter like the rest of us, pursue the positive things of Christ. This is why Paul states they “… must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught.” An elder is someone that holds to the faith and moves further from sin as they lead others.
This is something we all should strive for. Though we might not all be called to be elders and overseers of a congregation, we should all strive to be moving closer to Christ and further from sin. Like we have stated time and time again, sin has no power over us, and any power it seems to have is power that we give back to it by not holding firm to Jesus and walking in the Holy Spirit. An elder is someone who is doing that consistently enough and loves people enough to make sure their spiritual lives are being pointed to Jesus. By an elder’s desire to pursue Christ, they give instruction. Showing what it means to be a redeemed person who falters and yet still seeks after Jesus. They rebuke and take rebukes when appropriate.
Right now I’m reading through the early history of the Church and time and time again one overseer of a large city will send letters of encouragement and rebuke to other overseers. The Church has always understood that we are all susceptible to stumbling in our faith. Yet an elder is to be the first to turn in repentance because they are solid enough in their faith to know, they can falter just like anyone else.
However, next to being an example to the people who are being watched over, the purpose of an elder is to watch over the spiritual condition of those God has entrusted to them. In our congregation, when a person becomes a member of the church, there is a section called “The Commitment of the Elders and Leadership of the Church to its Members.” In that section it states,
“We, as elders and the leadership, have committed ourselves to love you. Jesus said this trait would mark His disciples (John13:34), and we intend to live out that divine order of love. We will always be committed to you and we are here to serve and help you to become the person God created you to be.
“We commit ourselves to teach and feed you the pure word of God (John 21:16). We who pastor you believe in the absolute need of your knowing and growing in the Word. We will give ourselves to nourish you, with the goal that you become the maximum possible person according to God’s plan for you.
“We commit ourselves to stand by you in any time of need, burden, or personal crises. However, you must let us know when you are hurt if we are to function as God intends for us to function, when the need arises.
“We commit ourselves to pray for you and have been praying for you. The Bible says that we are to ‘oversee the flock’ and to ‘watch for your souls.’”
“Finally, we are committed to counsel and correct you, should you drift from the truth as it is in Jesus. The Bible directs pastoral and elder leadership to ‘reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine (2 Tim. 4:2).’ We are committed to doing everything as lovingly as possible to keep you in obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.”
It’s the duty of the elders to make sure the local flock of God is spiritually healthy. And it’s the duty of the elders to live out a life that is consistent with what it looks like to be faithful in both our victories and defeats.
But it is also the elders’ job to be protective of the flock from outside attacks. Paul mentions the circumcision party, who follow Jewish myths, and get people to turn away from the truth. In the case Titus will be dealing with, these are people that hold to a faith that says Gentiles have to put themselves under the Jewish law in order to be saved. But in his follow up on what these people look like, Paul gives us a glimpse into other things that would come against the Church.
Since a primary goal of the elders are to make sure that there is peace within the congregation, they have to deal with attacks from the outside by those who hold an unattainable litmus test for people. Last year I spoke on the core of Christian doctrine, which are those things that if a person holds to, I won’t disfellowship with them. I might not let them teach, because I’m pretty guarded when it comes to that, but I won’t simply turn them away. If I did that, then there would be a lot less people I would talk to, and that number would be ever shrinking, because, for those who see defilement everywhere, Paul is stating that, everything is defiled. It’s the job of the local elder to make those decisions. And not everyone will be happy about those decisions. But the elder answers to God, not to rogue parties. If God desires to remove an elder for their decisions, God will remove that elder.
The local elder is an important position that is not to be sought after for personal gain, but to be desired as a position to serve in. It’s a position out in front and judged by many people. I personal get emails and texts telling me how I’m leading people astray. How I don’t care for the people’s spiritual lives, how I don’t preach the Gospel, and that I don’t teach from the Bible. I do take criticism seriously, and bring it before God to see if I am indeed leading wrongly. However I have found that most attacks are from people who do not care for the local body of believers, because they come at the issue with venom and not grace. To combat this, the old saying is true, “water off a duck’s back.” Meaning, I try not take attacks personally.
The five men who lead this congregation love you. They are not perfect by any means. They falter. But they love Jesus, they love people, and they repent readily when they mess up. It took years for us to get to where we are, sometimes there was only two elders here because we did not have enough to qualify for the role. But now, there are a dozen or more men who I would call on in an instant to be an elder, yet at this time, God hasn’t called them. But they display the qualifications of that position.
That is something we should all strive for. Everyone of us should strive for the qualifications of an elder. All of us should be a good steward of what God has given us. We should all strive to be above reproach. We should all strive to not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain. We should all strive to be hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. And we should all strive to hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught.
We can easily get hung up on the men verse women thing that is such a hot topic. You know for years I knew I wasn’t qualified to be an elder, and even now, there are times when I still don’t think I am. To tell you the truth, if I wasn’t called to this position, I wouldn’t do it. The stress and attacks are not worth it if Christ wasn’t my prize. The man verse woman thing to me side tracks us from being faithful in what God has called us to. If I was an elder or if I was not, I am still called to the same level of faithfulness. No matter what my role, or my title, I am to be striving to be more conformed to the image of Jesus than I was yesterday. And there are people, both men and women who exemplify that image and yet are not in positions of eldership, and their calling is no less important.
God is calling us to himself. That means being faithfully growing in our walks with the Lord. Positions are meaningless if Jesus is not our goal.
My challenge for you this week, is not to seek a role in the church, but rather to seek Jesus. Walk back through these qualifications of an elder that are found in verses 7-9 and ask yourself, would I be qualified? If there is an area that needs improvement, seek the Lord to build you up in that area, not for the prestige of the title, but for the joy of being closer to Jesus.
If we were all of the maturity level to be qualified to be an elder, how great would be the peace and grace of God that we would experience.
Let us be a congregation of qualified people. Amen.
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