by Cameron Buettel
What
qualifies a man for pastoral ministry? Based on the abundance of self-appointed
and unaccountable leaders in modern evangelical churches, it seems many
church-goers either don’t know or don’t care. The fellowships they attend may
profess Scripture’s authority in their doctrinal statement, but their practice
reveals that it’s nothing more than a token badge of orthodoxy. Churches truly
submitted to the authority of God’s Word look for qualified leaders and hold
them to biblical standards.
The
apostle Paul could not have been clearer about what biblically qualifies a man
for pastoral work or leadership in the church. In 1 Timothy 3:2–3, he writes:
An
overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate,
prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or
pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
While
those qualifications seem pretty straightforward, many people in both the
pulpit and the pew have overlooked or ignored them altogether. They have
allowed their congregations to be overrun by pastors and elders who lack the
proper training, the proper accountability, and—worst of all—the proper
character to hold the position. And rather than follow Paul’s instructions,
these ecclesiastical mavericks have fashioned their churches in their own rogue
likenesses.
God’s
people need the protection that comes from knowing what His Word says about
what to look for in a pastor, and what to avoid. To that end, we’ve been
examining the qualities and characteristics Paul uses to describe a godly
shepherd.
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