Page 47 - Pastoral Epistles I & 2 Timothy, Titus

• How do you lead your family?

How is the Scriptural method of choosing church leaders different from the methods used in your
church?
• If you had to single out just one of these qualities in choosing a man for church leadership, which
one would it be? Why?
• Who has what you believe to be a unique way to choose leaders in their church?

J. I. Packer (A Quest for Godliness [Crossway Books], 1990, pp. 51-52) writes,

“Many churches had not had a sermon preached in them for years.” Many of the
clergy were biblically ignorant. In this spiritually bleak time, God raised up the Puritans. They
believed that pastors “are responsible for rebuking heresy and defending truth, lest their
flocks be misled and thereby weakened, if not worse. Biblical truth is nourishing, human
error is killing, so spiritual shepherds must guard sound doctrine at all costs” (ibid., p. 64).
Packer observes (p. 98), We all need to grow in understanding the Bible so that we can know
God better and follow His ways more carefully. Part of the role of elders is to know Scripture
well enough that they are able to keep the church in the truth in the face of Satan’s repeated
attempts to introduce error.

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V15. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe,
nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.

No elder will ever match every quality perfectly. But it’s the direction we need to be growing in. No elder should
be in obvious violation of any of these qualities.
A farmer had a team of horses in which one horse consistently worked harder than the
others. The farmer said, “They’re all willin’ horses. The ones willin’ to pull, and the rest
are willin’ to let him.”

Sadly, that’s how it often is in the local church. Everybody is willing: a few are willing to
work, and the rest are willing to let them.
That attitude carries over into the Christian life. When it comes to serving in some
practical way in the church, some Christians have a built-in reflex that causes them to run for cover.
The Greek word that is often translated as deacon comes from a word that means serve or servant. Diakonos …
servant of the king.
We have a saying in our church at home: yo – do something!

All Christians are servants; some serve in official capacities, but all are expected to serve.
We should all be known as servants to the Lord and His church.
While all Christians must serve in various ways, some are specially gifted by God for service in supportive,
practical, and often behind-the-scenes ways. So, while some Christians will have the gift of serving and devote
themselves to that area, all believers should be involved in a lifestyle of serving, because our Lord and Savior did
not come to be served, but to serve, and we are to be like Him.

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