I remember seeing a bulletin board many years ago that talked about the different kinds of “ships” the church needed to be healthy. The “ships” were :
- worship,
- fellowship,
- stewardship and
- leadership.
I thought that was a solid concept.
You certainly can’t have a healthy church without worship—giving God the honor, praise, and glory due Him. Paul speaks in Romans 12 about us offering our bodies as living sacrifices, so worship is fundamental. You could say the same thing about fellowship. God created the church because He knew it wasn’t good for us to be alone. Then there’s stewardship—our faithfulness in using the gifts that God has given us to His glory. The final ship is leadership—and I will expand on that here as we think about Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 3:1-13.
Paul was writing to Timothy from somewhere in Macedonia (1:3). He had left Timothy there for the same reason he left Titus in Crete—that he might “put in order what was left unfinished” (Titus 1:5). Vincent tells us the word translated as “put in order” was “used by medical writers of setting broken limbs or straightening crooked ones.” The church at Ephesus was not ready to stand on its own. Timothy was to put an end to the false teaching (v. 3), cut through the noise, clutter, and distractions (v. 4), and advance “God’s work—which is by faith” (v. 4). Paul tells him their overarching goal was to produce “love which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1:4-5). This is a great text to guide anyone who teaches.
Closely related to advancing God’s work and producing disciples characterized by love is leadership. If the church is going to be what God wants it to be, it must be healthy in this area. With that in mind, Paul gave Timothy some things to look for in appointing men to serve as shepherds and deacons in v. 1-13. We tend to think and speak of these as qualifications, but I think we are better off thinking of them as qualities.
That might seem to be a difference without a distinction, so let me explain what I mean. When we hear the word “qualifications,” we tend to think about qualifications for getting a job, getting a loan, or getting into grad school. These things tend to be more about what you’ve done rather than what you are. We see this difference in the translations of a phrase in v. 2 that literally means “a one woman man.” The older translations give us “the husband of one wife” (v. 2). That’s very much a qualification approach as most men being considered for the eldership will have checked that box years ago. The NIV translates this as “faithful to his wife.” As you can see, this is more of a quality/what you are approach, and I think reflects how we are to look at the lists in v. 1-13.
The other thing I wanted to note about the things Paul tells Timothy to look for is the importance he gives to family (v. 4-5, 12). He uses the word “manage” for both the shepherd and the deacon (v. 4, 12). The word literally means “to be in front”—showing and modeling the way for his family. For the shepherd, Paul makes the point that if someone isn’t leading their family well, it’s not reasonable to expect them to do so with the church.
The big picture from the text is something like this: church leaders are those who have been molded by marriage, matured through parenting, and peak as a patriarch. There is no shortcut in leadership preparation—AI is not going to help you here! It takes place as a result of a long obedience in the same direction.
The church needs men like this—but so do our schools, our sports programs, and our places of work. The percentage of men in our culture who fit this description has dropped significantly over the last few decades and we see the fallout everywhere. Some have rebelled against everything God created—sexuality, marriage, the family—in essence telling God, “We will use these gifts you’ve given us the way we want rather than the way you want!” Then there are others who just don’t know better. They take their cues from their peers, social media, and celebrities. We need to model true manhood so they can see the beauty and functionality of God’s arrangement.
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 