Why are the Qualifications for Elders and Deacons So Important?

Why Character Qualifications for Church Leaders Matter

Teddy, it's Sinus season in Mississippi. It's also baseball season. That's a good thing. It is a fantastic thing, which is why I had to wear my Braves shirt. John wore his goofy New York Yankees cap a few weeks ago.

I was off-camera. I couldn't say anything, so I thought, I have an opportunity here. I'm gonna be on the podcast with Chuck, and I'm kind of sad you didn't wear your Cardinals. I don't own any Cardinals gear.

Okay, there you go, listeners. But yeah, so I had to do something to represent my Braves. There you go.

Well, last week we began talking about elders and deacons, and the importance, really, last week, the importance of considering this and the importance of a life. We looked at qualifications for elders, not individually, but the necessity of those qualifications of character over against giftedness.

Giftedness being important, but we tend to, it's easy for us to look to that first and give undue weight to that and forget about the character of the life. A few quotes, very briefly. John Boyes said, he doth preach most who doth live best.

Joel Beeky, throw him in there, our hearts must be transcripts of our sermons. Robert Murray McShane, a minister's life is the life of his ministry. That's so good. That's good. That's so good. My best, my favorite, is Athanasius.

The life should command, and the tongue persuade. Mm-hmm. And it does.

Reflect the reality, a biblical reality, that it is that the life carries the.

Weight of the words. Yes, yes, both of those must be there. And I've heard John say a number of times that you can say the best things in the pulpit in a moment of silliness. Out of the pulpit, unwind.

Everything you just said. Yeah,.

Absolutely. So that's why we talked, you know, last week we even briefly mentioned what's at risk, right? If we choose a man based on his giftings or based on his personality or based on some other criteria that we decide, well, what's at risk in following that rather than following the standards that God has given us?

So let us encourage you, if you missed that episode, if you didn't listen to it, go back. You can listen to this one first. That's not necessary, you know, to understand what we're talking about today.

But we do recommend go back and listen to that episode because there is some good stuff in it. So now before we get into the qualifications, Chuck, we do want to mention we're not gonna hit every qualification.

We're not even gonna really dive to the depth of a single qualification. So we're just kind of.

Hitting those mountain peaks, right? Right, right. There's too many. We spent, what, four weeks? I think three, four weeks on this. So yeah, there's no way we could do.

That in the few minutes we have. One thing that I meant to do last week, and I really want to say thanks to a commenter on YouTube, he commented and just said, hey, where can I get the series that Chuck preached?

And I should have put that link in the description. I will not fail this week. The link to the series that you've been preaching on the church will be underneath this episode, whether you're listening or you're watching on YouTube.

And it'll also be on.

Our show notes. Well, and if you're going to listen for this, I should also add that one of those is missing. The audio just did not work. Oh, yeah, I remember that now, yeah. Yeah, one's missing. So as we think about this tonight, or tonight, I'm thinking Wednesday night.

As we think about this today, there are areas of Scripture where we have to kind of work by principle. There's not a clear command. This is how it is. But there are principles, and we can look at Scripture and say, you know, this says this here, and this says this here, and clearly the principle is this.

There are other places, though, where there are very clear commands. This is how it is. And there is, as we look at what a minister should be, it's not just principle. There's edict. There's command. Here's what he must be.

The Scriptures say pretty plainly, several times, he must be this.

Yeah, and I think that shows, too, it shows us exactly how serious God is about who these men should be. Not should. Who these men must be to lead and to serve the Bride of Christ.