God has designed the church to be led by qualified pastors/elders. What are the qualifications? What kind of man does God desire to fill the office of elder? As it turns out, he is the kind of man every woman would want as a husband. Jeff Johnson’s Leaders Lunch Message on Pastors: https://churchandfamilylife.com/resources/62b4713cabdc5044b1bc5501

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. Today we want to talk about the sufficiency of Scripture for the government, for the leadership of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that Scripture is sufficient. It's all we need to help us to understand how leaders in the church function. And so we're here to talk about biblical eldership and the various callings and responsibilities that God lays upon elders.

One of the most wonderful things about the teaching about elders is that God is revealing to us the kind of culture that He wants to create in a church from the leaders. What should the leaders be like and what should they do to create this thing called the church, the body of Jesus Christ, the pillar and ground of the truth, the family of God, the Bride of Christ. So the Lord gives wonderful instruction to us. So Jason, that's what we're here to discuss. It's always great to be with Mike Davenport.

No kidding, we've got Mike Davenport. Say, oh hey yeah, Mike, Good to see you. Hey, good to see you guys as well. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, so good to be a fellow elder at Hope Baptist Church with you.

So, thanks for joining us in your busy day. So, let's talk about this thing about elders. I'd like to start with Acts chapter 6. I was just reading this in my devotions and ended up reading Matthew Henry's commentary on Acts 6. It's really good.

It's always a good idea. Always a good idea. And what you find here is that a major decision was made. I've heard Paul Washer say that the most dangerous moment in the history of the church was when the widows weren't being fed. And he says it was a dangerous moment because it was a transition point where elders could have been devoted to administration rather than the word of God in prayer.

I think he has a point. Yeah. A really important point. What do you think about that? Well, if I could start by offering a definition, I think it fits right into Acts chapter 6 and the other places in the New Testament that talk about local church government.

The definition I would offer for an elder is this, local church government by a plurality of biblically qualified men who are co-equals. So I think if you take that definition and you go to the different places that talks about local church government, you find that that's really what it's talking about. It is a plurality, more than one man. Alexander Strouk says you can look for the senior pastor until your eyes bleed in the New Testament and you'll never find him, you know. It's a plurality of qualified men who are co-equals governing the church.

By the way, you mentioned Alex Strouk. You know, he's still cranking really hard. He's in his 80s. I know he's amazing. He's pushing out really good stuff on biblical eldership.

Even now he's he wrote that book, biblical eldership, I don't know 25 or 30 years ago. More than that probably. I think it's the best book I've read on the whole subject, but his website still has, I mean, they're still pushing out really helpful things. Mike, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I think the urgency of that matter and the fact of what you were mentioning that Paul had said in terms of it being such a point that had lots of influence.

I think the result that it had shows us the importance of what was going on, that the result of what happened in the administration being given over to these deacons is that the Word of God spread and the disciples multiplied as a result of this. So if you look back and say, well, what would have happened if this had not been turned over to them? Maybe the Word of God wouldn't have spread and the disciples wouldn't have multiplied. Yeah, what they say in Acts chapter 6 is, we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. And it's really a beautiful, wonderful, wise structure because it sets up local churches to not have a competition between mercy ministry and prayer and the ministry of the Word endlessly at a tug-of-war for one set of resources, but it actually gives a set of resources to mercy ministry, which is always needed within the church.

God wants his people to be lavishly cared for in that way, but also to have men who can give themselves continually to prayer in the ministry of the Word. Yeah, that focus is so helpful for a church so that the Word of God is the center of it. Matthew Henry makes a funny comment in his commentary. He says that, observe that the first contention in the Christian church was about a money matter. Uh-huh, not surprising.

Yeah, and he says it's too bad that it happened, but it still happens. And then he makes this note, in the best ordered church in the world, there will be something amiss. Some maladministration or another, some grievances or at least some complaints that are the best that have the least. Those are the best that have the least and the fewest. In other words, it'd be nice not to have those kind of problems.

But that was a problem and it was dealt with by a division of labor between elders and deacons. The deacons who would be involved in serving and administration and the elders being completely focused on just those two things, the ministry of the Word and prayer. And so I'd like us just to keep talking about what the scriptures say. You have first of all the focus of elders, the ministry of the Word and prayer, and then you have the lifestyle and both lifestyle and doctrinal qualifications for elders in 1st Timothy 3 and Titus 1. So just anybody can't be an elder.

And like you mentioned, we don't have the language of a senior pastor. That's an invention of the modern church. But you do have a particular type of men. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about what we find in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 about sort of the lifestyle, character, doctrinal qualifications for an elder.

So we're given a very specific list, and it's actually not a short list. There's one in First Timothy 3 and there's one in Titus chapter one, where we're giving what elders have to be in order to qualify them for this kind of service in the work. Rather than go through a long list item by item, I think you can put them in three different buckets. The first bucket is Christian character. What's he like?

And if you were summarizing that and just cross-referencing to the fruits of the spirit, I mean, it would be really easy to do that. He has the fruit of the spirit, mature fruit of the spirit in his life. So he's like that. It really has to do with Christ likeness. Then secondly, you have household management.

What's his marriage like? What's he like as a father? Because if You wanna know if the church is going to flourish under his leadership, you need to look where he has the most influence. He'll never have as much influence in any church that he ever elders as he does in his own home. Okay, so is his wife flourishing or not?

Or is children flourishing or not? And then the final, the third bucket would be the ability to teach. And I think under that heading you would have defining, defending, and communicating sound doctrine, teaching sound doctrine, but also defending against unsound doctrine of the church. Right, it's interesting in those qualifications. They're heavy on character, and there are two basic skills.

He knows how to manage his household. It's a skill. And he is able to teach. Those are the only two skills. The rest of them really have to do with the whole core of his character and how it works out in his life.

Yeah, it kind of, when you look at the list and really study it out, it makes you stop and consider how many churches are actually using this. When they interview pastors or call pastors to their churches, so much of the emphasis in our day is on the giftedness and just those abilities and not so much character when you see somebody show up and their family's not maybe even with them when they're going to a church and ministering and they may minister a couple of times and a decision's made. And how can you do that and remain faithful to this kind of thing if character is so much more important than even that giftedness. You know, a dear friend of mine has said, hey, if God doesn't call gifted men, he gifts called men. It's those men of character that have been a work in progress that God has been working on for a long time.

This same friend often says that, hey, seminaries prepare pastors or preachers, but only God can really prepare pastors. And it's because of these characteristics of things that need to be in their lives that have to have been going on for a while. Yeah, the Apostle Paul addresses that directly in 1 Timothy chapter 5, where he tells the church not to lay hands on any man hastily. Why is that? Well, because so much of it is about character, and everybody knows we can all behave ourselves relatively well in public for a period of time.

And if you want to really know what someone is like in their core, it takes a lot of time and experience. So you shouldn't be thrusting a man into service as a local church leader until he's really been proven over time and in relationships that are not just surface relationships. You know, I was looking at these qualifications and I thought every woman would like to be married to a man like this. Yeah. And of course the church is the bride of Christ.

But if you look, every woman would want to be married to a man who is blameless. That's 1 Timothy 3.2. Of course, the husband of one wife, a one-woman man. She's secure. He's temperate.

He's sober-minded. He's of good behavior. He's hospitable. He's able to teach. He's not given to wine.

He's not violent. Every woman would like to have a husband who's not violent. And he's not greedy for money, but he's gentle, and he's not quarrelsome, and he's not covetous. And he's ruling his household well. Who wouldn't want to be married to a man like that?

And that's the kind of man that God wants to put in His church. Is the church business or a family? It's a family. So really, you find the best family men often are the best church leaders because We're not driving to corporate objectives. We're actually Relating to each other in a way that that promotes health among the whole body of believers.

Mm-hmm It would be interesting To look at how an elder treats his wife. You mentioned that at the very beginning, or just a few minutes ago, about how he's married, how is that man married. In the life of an elder, a marriage matters. And children matter. And things like that.

But these are just such remarkable qualifications. You don't find this kind of qualification in the corporate world. Men are hired for their skills. They ought to be hired for their character and their skills, but they're basically hired for their skills. So the church is a completely different animal.

There's really nothing like the church on the planet. No institution is governed as carefully as the church is. We talked about a continual devotion to prayer in the ministry of the Word that really is the work of an eldership. There's one other thing that ought to be added in that list, and I would go to Acts chapter 20, where Paul is exhorting the Ephesian elders. He tells them to shepherd the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.

And so it really is, it's shepherding work. Everything that a shepherd is and does for a flock of sheep, a church leader is to be and do for the people who've been entrusted to his care. And we find in 1 Peter chapter 5, Peter uses exactly the same language and makes the exact same exhortation, shepherd the flock. It's interesting there's this focus, the flock, right? The pastor's not called to change the whole city.

He's not called to change the whole culture. He's called to shepherd a flock. Well, that's a little city, you know, that's a little culture. But there's this focus that God lays upon shepherds, where they direct their energy. And then in 1 Peter 5 we find this great and really helpful, important phrase that Peter uses.

He speaks of the chief shepherd, and he's actually speaking of the Lord Jesus. So it helps under-shepherds not be so full of themselves, as if they own the sheep. They don't own the sheep. They're actually, they exist for the care of the sheep, not the sheep existing for their care. And there is a chief shepherd who they serve and who really sets the agenda that they're to walk by.

I was just going to say also, you know, you have the text there in 1 Thessalonians 2 where Paul is talking to the Thessalonians and he's kind of describing his ministry and what his ministry was like among them. And we have these other things that so weave together. They're perfectly what with the list we have in in First Timothy two and in or to First Timothy three there and in Titus one but it's you know not men please yours not covetous not glory seekers but as a mother and a father in the relation to that flock. And that goes back to what we were saying earlier, what you said, Jason, about family men, because this is a family and not a company. You know, there's this language among you, among you.

And you know, that's what you are in a family. You are among the members of your family and then you are among the members of your church, it's not a relationally disconnected world in the church where there are shepherds who are with the flock, they are among the flock. It's not the same thing as coming and hearing a sermon and departing. There's an actual relational connection that's necessary in a church. Yeah, the Puritans used to describe that as the shepherd feeling the wool of the sheep.

He had to be in there with the sheep where they are at their level. Could we talk about plurality for a moment? Sure. So in Acts 14 verse 23, it says that Paul went back through the cities where he had been evangelizing, and it says that he appointed elders, plural, in every church, singular. And I think one of the important things about that text is that's at the end of his first missionary journey.

In other words, his first planting of churches, that's what he was doing. Well, here's what you find in Titus chapter 1. You find an exhortation from Paul to Titus that he set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders, plural, in every city, singular. And so that is one of the last, one of the later, one of the late letters written by Paul. So, what was he doing at the beginning?

Elders plural in church singular. What was he doing at the end? Late elders in every city. So this was his pattern. In Acts chapter 20, he sends for the elders, plural, of Ephesus, that one city, that church in that city.

So this was Paul's practice. I don't think it's a stretch to say, you don't find another practice in the New Testament. Just by experience, I think all three of us would say, this is not an efficient way to govern churches. We slow each other down. You know what?

God would rather have good government, patient government, thoughtful, careful, prayerful government than efficient government. So if you want efficiency, put one man at the top, let him move with speed, but sometimes it'll be with way too much speed. If you want good government, you get a plurality of biblically qualified men who are co-equals and let them minister among the people. So the church doesn't get the king pastor or the Lord pastor. Right.

The church gets a plurality of qualified men. Yeah. When you look at the arguments made for the senior pastor, it often focuses around Moses being the model. No, no, no. Moses is a type of Christ, not a type of New Testament pastor.

And Christ is this chief shepherd and he places a plurality of under-shepherds to take care of for people in the local church. And that plurality of elders also establishes or reinforces the fact that, you know, first, we are sheep ourselves, even as pastors. We're first sheep, second we're pastors. And so when there's a plurality of elders, then each of the pastors are themselves being shepherded even by their brothers there among them. Yep, so helpful.

Yeah, and when you're in a plurality of equals, things happen slower because you're often, you're sometimes waiting for one another to consider certain things. And men's views are modified by their brothers. So you don't get just one man's view. And I think, you know, our practice over the years, you know, in our churches has been if there's not an agreement, then we wait. And we just keep working with each other.

And we make compromises along the way. And with a plurality, you get the gift mix. All gifts aren't consolidated in one man. Everybody knows that. So every man on the elder team gets to more often operate in his areas of strength, while his areas of weaknesses don't create vulnerabilities for the church.

It's very wise. It's really helpful. I would hate to have to pastor a church by myself. And it's just, I need more. I need more input.

I need more wisdom. So you have these qualifications. There's also a doctrinal qualification that he is holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. That's in Titus 1, verse 9. And so you have the doctrinal qualification as well.

He needs to have his doctrine fairly well in order. We know that doctrine can change over time, but the man must be competent to deal with the things that happen in the church, and that actually means to even contradict wrong things that are being promoted in the church. One of the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 is not a novice, not a new believer. It's because in the early years of our Christianity, our doctrine is sort of like a pendulum that is like swinging more, more variation, the changes are more, but as time goes by, the pendulum swings are less pronounced and you begin to dial in on what you really, really believe the Bible teaches after having read through the Bible multiple times. You know, one of the things I think is implied here is that God cares quite a bit about the kind of person that the church submits to.

He has to be a certain kind of person. And it's all defined in these passages. God cares about his flock, so he doesn't want his flock being uncared for or improperly cared for. So he presents these qualifications because God commands the people to submit to their elders in Hebrews 13, 17 particularly. So God wants to have certain kinds of men that people submit to, not just any old man.

So let's talk about this matter of protecting the flock. You have this idea in 1 Peter 5 and you have it in Acts 20 particularly, where you have their threats that arise, sometimes from within, sometimes from without. And so shepherds are supposed to protect the flock. Good shepherds are protective. They're always looking out.

Shepherds don't think like everybody else in the flock. Shepherds are looking out on the horizon. They're looking at what philosophies, they're looking at what teachers, they're looking at what vulnerabilities are there because they want to protect the flock. And shepherds don't think like sheep because they're looking out on the horizon. And there's much on the horizon right now.

There's, I ran across a quote from a pastor author here in our time. He was saying, hey, judging by the times that we're living in, he sees future pastors being in greater need of a higher quality of emotionally, intellectually, theologically, and spiritually. And he said, based on that, he feels the urge to pull back some men that are wanting to get into ministry and push others along. And I think it goes along with these things doctrinally, what we're facing today, the threat from the outside world and the pressures that are being put upon the church at every turn that we haven't had to deal with like we are now in the past generation. You know, I wanna recommend something that I heard at our national conference.

We had a pastor's meeting, a pastor's luncheon, And Jeffrey Johnson gave an exhortation to all of us to guard the flock. It was so powerful. We'll add a link to that message. It's a short message. It was outstanding.

Outstanding, really helpful, terrifying, you know, but needful. Along the lines of what you're saying, Mike, we need shepherds who will guard the flock. Any thoughts about guarding the flock? Just to borrow a phrase from Acts chapter 20 where Paul is exhorting the Ephesian elders, he said, savage wolves will come in among you. So shepherds can't afford to be naive because The savage wolves aren't naive.

They're calculating and they're vicious and they'll eat you alive if you're naive. They're all over the internet. They're doing podcasts. They're tweaking the minds of the people in your church. And the worldliness of the world is very dangerous to a church.

So that's one of the roles is to guard the flock. And then finally, I thought it would be worthwhile just to talk briefly about ministering to the sick in the church. You have James 5.14, if anyone is sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church, and then the elders pray. Now, and the elders are required to ask questions, is there any, have you fallen into any sin? You know, part of dealing with the sick is also dealing with sin, That's not the only part, but you have this responsibility of elders to care for the physical needs that are in the church, to care about them and to pray.

So what are your thoughts about this matter of caring for the sick. The first thing that jumps to mind is this is more than just preaching on Sunday. This is a very relational... Actually, when Paul talked about the ministry of the word when he was exhorting the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, he said publicly and from house to house. So the ministry of the word in Paul's mind wasn't just pulpit ministry preaching to the church with the whole church gathered, but it was actually going from house to house to apply the Word of God to everyday life.

And the responsibility is placed on the person who's sick to call for the elders. We don't just run around. We wait until we're called. We just had a young woman, a young single woman in our church call for us to anoint her with oil. And those are very tender and precious times, sometimes heartbreaking to hear the stories of their experiences.

But people in the church should call for the elders of the church when they're sick, when they think it's appropriate. Yeah, and it that goes back to the fact of feeling that wool of the sheep, of being among the sheep for that comfortability level that they want to call you, they want you to come. I know I ran across a quote that the good pastor makes affection for himself into sort of a road by which to lead the hearts of his hearers to the love of the creator. And so when they call for us, we come and out of a relationship that we have with them, we have these interactions with them, we are able to point them fresh to Christ, go to Christ, go to Christ, and cast their eyes upon Christ. And It's a beautiful thing.

You know, just wrapping all this up, you can just see God's kind intentions for His church, that you have men who are focused, highly focused, on the most powerful things, the Word of God, and prayer. They are certain kind of men. They're the kind of men you'd like to be married to if you're a woman, and they do certain things. They shepherd the flock, they feed the flock, they guard the flock, they care for the flock, They have compassion on the flock, and they also have accountability for the souls. And that's clearly stated in Hebrews 13 verse 17.

And it's just critical that we understand what a beautiful thing God has done for His church to design it like this. God is the designer of the church. Aren't you glad that He's the designer? Amen. You know, if we designed it, we would create some administrative coolness that wouldn't be all that great for everybody.

But God is wise. He's wiser than we are. So brothers, thank you so much. Great discussion. Really appreciate the comments.

Always a pleasure. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up.

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