Video Transcript: Qualified to Lead

The first thing that I want to say is that if you're a Christian at all, there is a sense in which you are a leader, whether you're qualified or not, you are a person who has influence you are the light of the world. And if you can be called the light of the world as a follower and a disciple of Jesus, then in some sense, you are already a leader, every Christian is someone who has influence and to lead is to influence others. new believers, you may have only been a believer for a few minutes or for a few days, but you already have influence, you already are having an impact on the non Christians who might be in your life or on the other people you meet. And you're on track toward making a bigger and a better impact. The longer you walk with the Lord Jesus, you have a spouse, perhaps or if you're unmarried, you have friends and family members, and you have other relatives and you're all influencing each other. 

If you understand leadership as influence, then every Christian is a leader in some in some form, and to some degree, in Hebrews 10, verse 24, the Scripture says that all church members affect each other and need to spur one another on to love and good deeds, we can't just do it on our own, we need the influence the spring on the empowerment and encouragement of others. So you're a leader, you're a leader in relation to your friends, you're a leader in relation to your neighbors, you're a leader in relation to your co workers, every time you do something that influences them. And if you do something that wrongly influences them, unfortunately, you're still a leader, if the light of Christ shines from you, then you're leading in a proper sense. You're a leader, even if somebody else is in a higher position in the relationship than you are. At the time that the Bible was written. wives were under their husbands in almost a tyrannical form. But when the Bible was written, the Bible told husbands to treat their wives well, but it also still said to wives be subject to your husbands, but to do so not just because you're a doormat, not just because they're the boss. 

But so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be one without a word, by the conduct of their wives, when they see you're respectful, and pure conduct. So the Scripture didn't tell a woman to go be the boss of your husband, it didn't say, hey, just because in a certain sense, he's the head of the wife doesn't mean you have no influence. And if he's not a believer, if he's not listening to the Word of the gospel, you still have influence, you still have power, you can still lead him to Christ through the attractive power of a Christ like life. Slaves could influence their masters. Scripture says, Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted and why. So that in every way, they will make the teaching about God, our Savior, attractive, a slave could lead a master. 

I remember the story of a famous Hollywood actor who interviewed a woman to serve as his maid, and she was an immigrant from another culture. She was poor. She also happened to be a Christian. And he asked her well, what are your goals? Or why are you coming here applying to be a maid in my household? And she replied, I'm here to lead you to Jesus Christ. So the the actor was very, very far from being a Christian, and he laughed in her face. And he said, I'm hiring you to be a maid not to teach me religion. And yet he did hire her because there was something about it that he thought she'd be a good maid. And before it was all over, she had led him to Jesus Christ, same principle that the Bible talks about in Titus 2:9-10, the one who is the underlying the subordinate, the one taking the orders, actually, turns out to be the leader who made the teaching about God our Savior attractive and brought the boss to Jesus Christ. 

So even if you're not the boss, even if you're not the upper person in a relationship, you can be a leader by the power of Christ in you and by leading others. The Bible teaches that leaders are always learning. Learners are always leading. So even if you aren't already a lead In a recognized leader in a position of leadership, and in a sense of being the boss, you still have a lot to learn. And even if you're still in a learning phase, and you're not a particularly important person or the leader of a congregation, even if you're still learning, you already have influence and you're already leading. Scripture says, If you point these things out to the brothers, you'll be a good minister of Christ, Jesus brought up in the truths of the faith, train yourself to be godly. Now notice, he's speaking to Timothy, who is already a pastor who is already leading others. And this person who is already a leader is told to keep on learning, keep on training yourself in godliness. 

Don't let anyone look down on you because you're young. But set an example for the believers. Be diligent in these matters. Give yourself fully 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. So if you're a leader, you want to keep learning because it's so important for your own salvation, and for that of your hears. If you're just a learner, and you'd like to be more of a leader, but you're not where you'd like to be yet, don't give up because you already have quite a bit of influence and keep growing in godliness. Now all of us are leaders, we've made that clear, all Christians are leaders in the sense that we influence others. And we can keep growing toward a better and bigger influence. And by the way, I put it that way deliberately, and in that order toward a better influence first, and then a bigger influence, don't look for bigger influence, and try to be more important, and increase your network of influence. 

If you're not growing in your own personal walk with Christ. If your influence is not growing better, then it's kind of a waste for it to get bigger. Because you want to be leading people to know Jesus Christ and be formed more and more like him. So pray that you'll grow in godliness. And as you grow in godliness, then let God worry about how much your influence grows as well. Well, we're all leaders. But some Christians become leaders of leaders as you influence a wider and wider network of people you may find in a church life or in a community, a number of people start looking to you, you may not have an official title, but people kind of connect with you, they look to you, and they take some of their cues from you. 

Other Christians become leaders of leaders plus, and they become the leaders of an entire congregation, perhaps as a pastor, or as an elder. And this is obviously a smaller number than the other categories we've been mentioning. And these leaders at whatever level but especially the leaders of leaders, plus who have responsibility for a congregation, are to evangelize, to instruct, to pray with others, to evaluate what's going on, to equip people and, and make them more skilled and develop their abilities to serve the Lord to mobilize and motivate and get people going to coordinate the activities of various people to care for their needs. 

All of these things go into the various roles of leadership and the further you go in leadership and the wider your circle of leadership, the more urgent it is that you have some gifts in these areas as well. But as we talked about being qualified to lead, I'm not going to be talking so much about your gift for evangelism. It's important to have that and to develop it or your gifts for teaching, or these other things I'm talking about. I want to talk about what the Bible discusses when it talks about what to look for in a leader in the first place. As we go into that, we need to realize that being a leader as an elder or a pastor in particular, is a very noble task, and a very scary task. Scripture says if anyone aspires to the Office of overseer also could be translated as bishop or elder, someone who oversees or supervises a congregation. He desires a noble task, it's noble, to want to reach that kind of level of godliness and of influence, but it's also scary. 

James 3 says, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways. If you're going to be a person who's speaking God's word to others and directing them. You are judged with even greater strictness than just for how you manage your own life, because you're responsible not just for yourself, but for those that you're teaching. And so it's normal to desire that kind of teaching and enrolling leadership, but it's also kind of scary because you have a lot to answer to God for. So why should we learn the qualifications to lead as an overseer? One good reason is what do you look for in a church leader? Who do you want to be your mentor? Who do you want to be walking the path in a sense ahead of you that you can follow and and trust their example and trust their teaching and who they are, you want to find a church leader who is qualified so that you can look to them. But also, if you are one who aspires to be a pastor or an elder, then you need to know, what are you aiming for? What do I need to be to qualify to be someone that God approves of for that kind of position of leadership, and we'll call to that kind of position of leadership. If I have to summarize it all, and what we're going to talk about here, maybe one word is reproducibility. 

The kind of person that you want to reproduce? is the kind of person who's qualified to be leader, what beliefs and walk with God, do we need morons? Find a person who has such beliefs and such a walk with God. And that will be the kind of person who's qualified to lead, what character? And what relational patterns? Do we need more of? Find somebody with that kind of character, who relates to people in a healthy manner, and you'd like other people to relate in the same manner, and pick that kind of person? What family life do we need more of? This one is often neglected. When we think about qualifications for leadership. As long as somebody is skilled and talented and has the ability to do a lot of things. We think, Oh, they've got leadership qualities, well, maybe they do have leadership skills, but do they have the kind of family life you'd like to have a whole bunch more? In Christianity today? 

Sometimes, the popular and powerful TV preacher may be somebody who you say, Ooh, what a Christian. And if you know the truth about his family life, you know that it's a wreck. And yet, he's reproducing, we shouldn't be shocked if we pick leaders whose families are a wreck. And if our congregations have more and more families that are erect too, because what you put in leadership is what you reproduce. And what reputation with outsiders do we need more of is this person, someone who has lived for Lord now. Now a good Christian, of course, can have some people who don't like him, especially people who are in the surface of the world and not of Jesus Christ. But even then, there may not be any legitimate accusations that can be brought against him. And overall, they may be looked to as an honest, and reliable person of integrity, and character, we need people who have a reputation with outsiders that we want more of. So in short, leaders must be people who are reproducing. And those four areas are areas that we want to explore a little bit more. 

First of all, what beliefs and walk with God, do we need more of? Well, it's obvious that this is very important, because if somebody isn't walking with God, and doesn't have sound beliefs and sound doctrine, why in the world would you want them to be leading. Scripture says, Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching, speaking to a pastor here, persist in this for By so doing, you will save both yourself and your hearers. Scripture says to choose faithful men who will be able to teach others also they need to be men of faith themselves, needed to be able to teach the firm truths of the gospel to others, 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. He's got to be somebody with guts, somebody with a backbone, somebody who believes firmly in the truth of God and is ready to stand up for it. When somebody challenges it. We need people who have beliefs and hold them firmly and clearly and can communicate them to those who need to hear them as well as to defend them against those who would attack them. And we need people who walk with God in their personal life, and who's walked with God is in keeping with the Word of God. 

Remember what Jesus said to some Pharisees. He said to them, you cross land and sea to win a single convert, and then you turn them into twice the son of hell that you are. That's the danger. When your beliefs and your walk with God are bad. You can make converts, you can get good at making a big church or gathering lots of people. But because your beliefs and your own walk are wrong and out of touch with a living God, you can turn a whole congregation into sound a hell. So it's very important that our leaders be people who are sound and their doctrine, sound and their beliefs of who God is what Christ has done in his death and resurrection, how we are saved, how we're born again, how we're justified by faith in Jesus Christ, and who walked faithfully in the life of prayer and devotion to the Lord. Second, what kinds of character and relational patterns do we need more of? Because the kinds of people who we look to as our leaders are the kinds of examples we're going to follow the kind of life that's going to rub off on us and overseer of us above reproach the husband of one wife, sober minded, self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard. Not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. You don't want somebody who's just in it for the bucks, or somebody who's always ready to pick a fight for no good reason. Or somebody who's a hothead, and blows up at the least provocation, or somebody with a serious drinking problem. 

And the list there is not necessarily covering every possibility, if they have to summarize it is what kind of character do you want?. similar words come from Titus 1 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, but hospitable, a lover of good, self controlled, upright, holy, and discipline. What kind of character do you have? This is more important than many of the other things that are often listed as qualifications for ministry. Do you see anywhere in here must have seminary degree must have attended school for a certain number of years. Now we should be able to teach you should be knowledgeable in the doctrines of the faith. But the qualities of character are much more important than any degree that goes up on the wall. A third question to ask about qualifying for leadership, what kind of family life do we need more of? It's just devastating, to appoint to leadership, those who have the gift of gab, those who have a certain amount of charisma, those who can attract a following, but whose family is not one that you want more of? Here's the question, what occupations have the highest level of divorce, you could mention a few. 

There are some occupations that seem to be very tough on marriage, such as being in the military long term or being a policeman, those those can be kind of hard on family life. But here's one of the big ones. And occupation that has one of the very highest levels of divorce is marriage counselor. Now, the marriage counselor may have several plaques in degrees hanging on the wall behind him or her. The marriage counselor may have all kinds of academic qualifications and may be certified by every psychological organization under heaven. But when you go to that person for marriage advice, when they themselves have a collapsed marriage, are you really getting wisdom on how to relate to your spouse? Not very likely. Now, that's true in the whole realm of marriage, counseling and therapy. It's equally true in the realm of ministry. Scripture says that for someone to be an elder or an overseer, he must manage his own household Well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for someone does not know how to manage his own household. How really care for God's church? That's quite a question. If you don't know how to manage your own family. How can you manage God's family? appoint elders in every town as I directed you, 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. So if you want to know whether somebody is qualified for leadership, look at those who know him best. A man should be respected most by those who know him best anybody can put on a pretty decent show in public for a few minutes and put on a good performance if they have the talent for it. 

But if those who know you best, admire, you and I are walking with the Lord, that is a crucial test for leadership. Another thing that I want to point out about these verses is simply the fact that you don't have to be single to be a leader in the church, the Roman Catholic Church, several centuries into the development of the church after Christianity decided that married people couldn't be priests. That was just an unbiblical decision. read these verses here. The overseer of Bishop should be the husband of one wife. Now, that's not saying that no single person can be a church leader. We have the example of fall of Jesus Himself of others who have served the Lord mightily as singles but if a person is married, then they should have a strong family believing children, a godly wife, and certainly they don't have to be single in order to qualify for leadership in the church of Jesus Christ. 

Now, when we think about church leadership, we need to backtrack just a little bit and think about why is it that Jesus and the 12 apostles could not get ordained as leaders in a good many churches today? I'm not kidding. I am dead serious in saying that Jesus and a bunch of fishermen and former accountants and so on, could not get ordained in church leadership today, because they don't have the right degree. Now, why is that? Well, if you have different pictures of what the church is, then you also have different pictures of what a leader is like and what qualifications that leader has to have. And if you believe that the number one qualification for leadership in the church is an academic degree, then the underlying picture that you have as church probably is church at school. And we live now in a culture where most people go through school, go through lots of school, kindergarten, grades 1 through 12, often college often graduate degrees, we're a very school shaped society. And so we may think that the level of schooling that you have attained to is what makes you a leader. 

Another expectation for some people is that a pastor or a leader, somebody who's really good at starting things up and managing programs and overseeing them. And oftentimes, that expectation comes from seeing the church as a business enterprise. And certainly there is an aspect of the church that is business life, and that somebody who can get things started somebody who can coordinate things. That's a good skill and a valuable skill to have. But it's church as business. The main picture you want to have any more than church as school, the main picture you want to have a church does educate, it does teach it does a variety of things. But it's not primarily a school. A church may have as its main image, theater, you say, I know churches call itself a theater. Oh, yeah. An awful lot of people decide what church they're going to go to today based on how good the music show is. And I do mean the music show, because oftentimes, they're not even singing along with it, they've just got some great performers on stage, or they've got dramas going on, or they've got a spellbinding speaker. And so their image, even if they don't realize is that church is a production. And we want the best actors, the best performers that we can for that production. Some may visit, envisage the church as a support group, a place to get encouraged when you're down and, and then pastor an elder, their main skill is going to be provide therapy provide good counsel, again, an important part of church life, maybe not the central aspect of being a leader, because support group isn't the definition of what the church is.

If we picture church as government, then the main job of those who are pastors and elders is to regulate behavior, to set some rules to enforce some of those rules to make sure people will behave according to the rules. And again, there's an element of truth in that there is accountability, there is leadership and even an element of governing in the church. But maybe that's not the central image of the church in the Bible. The Bible does often speak of church as the household of God. And if you picked your church as a household, then all of a sudden you're starting to think, what kind of leadership does that mean for the family? And if a person can't lead his own family, then does he qualify for leadership in the church as God's household? 

The Bible speaks of the church as God's household. In this passage, we've read 1 Timothy 3:15. "If a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the Church of God. And then it goes on to say, you'll know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God". Other passages say similar things, where members of the household of faith, were members of God's household, we are the household of God. So again, and again and again, the church is pictured as God's household. Now, that's not the only picture of church in the New Testament, the church is also pictured as the body of Christ, as the bride of Christ as the assembly of God's people. And I could go on with a fairly long list of other images of church in the New Testament. So don't think of God's household as the only picture of church in the New Testament, but it is a major one, and it is one that has profound implications. Fourth question to ask whether we qualify as what reputation with outsiders do we need more of, because it's very important for the church to have a good image in the eyes of those we're trying to reach with the gospel. The fact is that when church leaders fall into disastrous scandal, it makes the church look mighty bad. In the eyes of the world. It gives unbelievers a chance to mock the church and to say, who pretty good at sitting on our own without any help from a bunch of hypocrites like that. 

So it's very important that leaders in the church be people who are much like, much less likely to bring disgrace on the cause of Christ. And that means their reputation matters. That means you need to have them time tested. Scripture says He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. It's very dangerous to take somebody who has an exciting testimony, and put them in a pulpit by next week and say they're a preacher. They may have talent, and they may have a wonderful way that God worked in their life. And they should testify to the grace of God and do so in various settings with their friends, but don't turn them into a major leader and into the public face of the church just yet, because they may fall into pride themselves, because they're not mature enough yet. And they aren't tested enough yet to know whether they're going to uphold a good name in the future. Moreover, he must work the well thought of by outsiders, so that you may not fall in, so that he may not fall into disgrace into a snare the devil a little later it says let them be tested first. So in order to be a leader, you need to have some miles on you. You need to be tested. You need to have proven that you can walk with God for a while and not fall into the major traps and disgraces of the devil. 

Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands. And that doesn't mean Oh, don't slap anybody on the back or don't give him a hug. It's talking here about the laying on of hands, in the ordination of someone or of the setting of part of them for the task of leadership. And the scriptures. Don't be in a big hurry to ordain people, make sure you've checked things out, make sure they're tested, make sure they've got a track record. Now, church leaders must be time tested in godliness. And as I say that it also has some implication for some of the earlier things I've talked about. I've talked about character. I've talked about what their family is like. And you may look back at somebody and say, you know, I know something about their character I know something they did eight years ago. Well, if it was eight years ago, maybe they've been time tested by now to serve the Lord. Or you may know that, actually, they had a divorce 14 years ago. 

But the question isn't whether there's ever anything in their past. The question is whether they are now time tested and walking with the Lord. There are people who did a lot of bad stuff before their conversion. The apostle Paul was a murderer, and a Christian killer, before he became a Christian. And that didn't disqualify him from becoming an apostle, once God changed him and called him. And so there may be people with some very ugly stuff in their pre Christian past, who may still qualify as leaders in the church, because after their conversion, they've been walking with the Lord faithfully. And there may be somebody whose family life was disturbed years ago, but now he's a faithful one woman, man, he's walking with the Lord, and it's time tested, and you know him to be faithful. So we need a reputation with outsiders, and we need to be time tested as we're walking with the Lord. Again, as we think about these qualifications, you can summarize them in terms of reproducibility, what beliefs and walk with God, do we need more of? What character and relational patterns? Do we need more of? What family life do we need more of? What reputation with outsiders do we need more of? Leaders have to be worth reproducing and that can be kind of intimidating to think about. But I do want you to think about it. 

Number one, what beliefs and walk with God do we need more of? There are people who are already leaders in the church elders and pastors who have never been born again, who do not know Jesus as personal Savior. One of the great Christians of about a century ago, entered his first charge as a minister without being converted. His name was Abraham Kuyper. He was a preacher in the Netherlands. He eventually became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, as well as the founder of a major university and a prolific writer of Christian teaching, and a preacher and pastor. He was one of these Renaissance men who could do almost everything. And he was very brilliant. And he had a great education when he went into the ministry. In one sense. I mean, he they were degrees from the prestigious college and seminary, but he had been educated in liberalism and not believing the Bible to be truly the Word of God and not even believing that Jesus rose from the dead. And in his first church, while he was preaching, a couple of the women just lowly housewives attending his church just noticed that he didn't have it, and that he didn't preach the truth of redemption and of being born again. And so they talked with him, and Kuyper realized he really wasn't a Christian, and these ladies were, and he came to know the Lord, and then he became mighty in the Lord service. So before you go into leadership, make sure you are born again and a child of God and then grow in the character that qualifies you to be looked up to by others. Develop a family like don't neglect your family in order to do great things for God. Because if you neglect your family, you're cutting out the foundation and the credibility In the eyes of others, and don't be in a huge hurry to become important and famous, develop a time tested reputation where you deal with people in a godly manner. 

These are some of the qualifications. And again, it's a noble thing to aspire to reach that level of leadership. It is also kind of a scary thing. And as we think about, what does it take to qualify, you might say to yourself, well, who in the world could do that who is competent? The Apostle Paul says, we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing, to one, a fragrance from death to death, to the other, a fragrance from life to life, who is sufficient for these things. If you're called to be a Christian at all, and especially if you're a Christian leader, you are either the sweet smell of life to people who are being saved, or you are the stench of death in the nostrils of those who reject the gospel. isn't that scary? That that's who you are as an ambassador of Christ, and as a messenger of the gospel, and who in the world would dare to even take on such a role who is sufficient for these things? Well, Paul answers his own question a little later in the same letter, not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us. But our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant. We've talked about being qualified to lead. And if you're going to be truly competent as a minister of God's new covenant and Jesus Christ, then your sufficiency must come from the work of God, the Holy Spirit, working in you, making you more like Jesus, and empowering you to lead others in the path of Jesus.