The Qualifications of a Pastor from 30,000 Feet

Leadership According to the New Testament

We are forging a bold Christian vision for America.

I am your host, John Harris. We are going to talk today about leadership according to the New Testament, specifically leadership in the church, which I think can serve as a template for broader leadership in terms of cultural stewardship.

I want to talk about this because I think we have a leadership crisis going on. We have managers, we have celebrities, but we have very few leaders in institutions that are very influential, and we need more leaders.

I think a lot of our social ills would actually be quite a bit better if we had leaders at the helm, people who exhibited masculine leadership that included virtues like bravery and temperance and fortitude and self-control, but we don't seem to have a lot of virtue.

In fact, virtue doesn't seem to be a big metric anymore for even determining if someone should be a leader. We see a very different model in Scripture. We see a model that is primarily about three things—desire, virtue, and competence.

That's what I'm going to talk to you a little bit about today. What does that look like in a church setting? Then maybe we'll talk a little bit about how that looks in the broader culture as well. I already wrote down a number of my thoughts on this, and there's a lot of Scripture in it in a Substack article entitled, Shepherds, Not Celebrities.

This may end up also getting posted on TruthScript. At the time I'm recording this, it has not been posted yet, but I think it probably will be by the time I release this recording because I'm recording it ahead of time.

Shepherds, Not Celebrities. The subtitle is Leadership According to the New Testament. As I'm recording this, I just did a podcast with Aaron Wren on evangelical influence in the broader culture. It was somewhat of a discouraging episode if you are enthusiastic about evangelical influence because there isn't much.

We have people who can preach sermons and be professional evangelicals in various places, but there's very few captains of industry or media or the legal profession or academia who are evangelicals. It tends to be even in right-leaning places like think tanks, Catholics, and then also perhaps Jewish people.

Evangelicals supply a large percentage of the Republican vote, but why are they existing in this atmosphere of less influence? Why do they inhabit more blue-collar jobs? Aaron Wren and I talk about this quite a bit, so I don't want to repeat that podcast, but I got to thinking it would be good if we reminded ourselves about what it is that constitutes good leadership because I think Scripture is our final authority, and it has a lot of wisdom to shed on this.

The New Testament gives us three basic character requirements, and I illiterated this. I before said it was desire, virtue, and competence, but if you want to make it catchy, craving character and competence, so craving character and competence, three Cs.

You should crave to be a leader for the right reasons, good motives. You should have the right character to match the position internally. You should govern yourself, and then you should have the competence to manage externally.

Sometimes I refer to this as external virtue, but there should be a know-how. You should be able to apply virtuous principles when it affects not just your own life, but the lives of other people and the institutions that God has placed you over.

So there's some prerequisites to this, and someone already pointed this out. Kruptos pointed this out on Substack today. It's also the fact that one has to be a man of God to inhabit the pastoral office, and I do say that, but maybe I didn't emphasize it.

I said if the man gifted by the Holy Spirit reflects these traits, so it's got to be a man for the pastoral office, and they have to be gifted by the Holy Spirit. So those two things, we're just going to assume that is already present, and then move on to the character traits.

Oftentimes these are the things that we actually see. When you are ascertaining whether someone is qualified for that office, you're looking at these things. These are the things in scripture we're told to look for.

Do they desire it? Do they have virtue or character, and are they competent? Can they actually do the job? Do they have the skills for it? Now by contrast, today's pastors that are iconic often seem driven by sales, style, and sentiment.

So there you go. The three C's versus the three S's. The three S's are sales, style, and sentiment, and this measure is calibrated to stage presence, which in turn creates broader opportunities for men of low integrity and fails to cultivate the kind of example necessary to inspire the disciplines required for other positions of responsibility, meaning that when you have basically theater boy, theater kid type qualities that are your main metrics that you're looking for, can they command a crowd's attention?

Do they look a certain way from the pulpit? Do they have a certain style? I'm not saying all of that is necessarily bad. That presentation, I think, probably needs to be focused on more in some places.

I've been in churches that seem unaware of the way that they can come across. I'm not saying it's all bad, but I'm saying if you have a heavy focus on that and that becomes the main thing or the only thing, and you neglect these other things, you're just really doing marketing at that point.

You're going to get people who are marketers, who are managerialists, maybe no good business techniques that are pretty much manipulation. You're also going to get people who are good actors, good at going on stage and really giving you a show.

Paul doesn't focus on those things. In fact, he doesn't really mention it. The closest you can come to saying he talks about it is that they have to be able to teach. You would have to smuggle in whatever those preferences are under that banner of able to teach.

Able to teach means explaining, applying the scripture to the lives of the people under the shepherd's charge. I don't think that that flies. I don't think that that's the metric that we should be looking at, but man tends to look at the external, the outward appearance.

God tends to look at the heart. I think what Paul is doing when he talks in Titus and in Timothy about these qualities of leadership, he's beckoning us to look at the heart. He's beckoning us to peel back the layers of the onion as best as we can to see what's the real man like.

It's only when you do that that you can tell if someone's actually qualified. A faulty understanding of leadership in the church translates into faulty understanding of leadership in general. I think if you are growing up in the church and you're looking at your pastor and you're thinking that's a leader and you're so exposed to that, and some people are.

Some people are homeschooled, Christian schooled perhaps, and then they go to church. This is one of their main leaders when it comes to their social outlets, if they're a committed evangelical Christian.

That leadership model is going to, I think, give them an example of what leadership should look like in other fields. Even if they personally do not go into the ministry, they're going to think of that ministerial figure they grew up with as the template, as what it should look like to be a leader.

Craving to Be an Overseer for the Right Reasons

Same goes for fathers. Let's start with craving. The heart of an elder is summed up in 1 Peter 5, 2 -3, This means a church leader should desire to do what shepherds do. Unfortunately, I know too many examples of men who occupy the pastoral office who just wish to preach.

That's all they want to do. They just want to preach the word or preach sometimes what they want to preach is not even the word. It's just the message they have, and they would like to do it every Sunday, or maybe they want to do it just at conferences and sometimes at church, but they want to speak in front of audiences and call themselves a pastor.

Yet the things like visitation, counseling, correction, discipleship, marriages and funerals, all these other things, this iceberg that lies underneath the surface that make up the day-to-day life of a pastor, and perhaps even the personal disciplines of cultivated spiritual virtue, those aren't the things that animate them, that excite them, that they like to participate in.

They would prefer just to take the limelight and see the approval of men out before them every Sunday. Some people are good at that. They can deliver speeches, but they're terrible as pastors. I can't tell you how many people with big platforms are like this.

It is very common. They lack either the personal skills or they lack the personal integrity to be able to actually be a real pastor that knows their sheep well and their sheep hear their voice. They can do good in a stage, but when it comes to actual people feeding real sheep in the trenches, it is a very difficult thing for them.

Steve Lawson was a good example of this. He famously harbored a desire for the stage without the desire to embrace the broader role that a pastor should be participating in. I think the greater the stage, the greater the online presence too now, I should say, the more temptation there is to just speak, to devote all your time to that, and to neglect the weightier, maybe I shouldn't say weightier, but just as important, just as part and parcel to being a pastor matters that there are in the job, in the office.

Alexander Strouch writes in his book, Biblical Eldership, that the biblical image of a shepherd caring for his flock, longstanding hours, ensuring its safety, leading it to fresh pasture and clear water, caring the weak, seeking the lost, healing the wounded, sick, is precious.

The whole image of the Palestinian shepherd is characterized by intimacy, tenderness, concern, skill, hard work, suffering, and love. I think we can forget this sometimes, that leadership is often presented as formulas, right?

You have ways of sometimes manipulating, but strategizing how to get people to do things. That's what a leader is. And it can be charted on a PowerPoint presentation. Here are the qualities, but we're given more than that, actually, I think it might even be more important to some extent, this picture we're given, this example that people of Paul's day would have been very intimately familiar with, which is a shepherd who cares tenderly for their sheep, that when they need the shepherd, because there's threats from wolves and bears, and those who would steal the sheep, the shepherd stays out there with them to his own discomfort.

The shepherd uses violence, uses force to ward off threats. The shepherd is tender when the sheep get hurt. The shepherd goes and looks for the lost sheep. This is the image that we're given in the New Testament of what a pastor should look.

Like.

Pastor is just a shepherd. So, I think understanding that goes a long way to understanding what the desire should look like. Why does a shepherd care for sheep? He loves his sheep. There's a bond, and there should be a bond.

There should be a love for the church that an aspiring pastor has. Paul tells Timothy, whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. The Greek word for desire is epithemia, and it can be translated as lust, desire, or passion.

So, this means you should have a strong desire to be a pastor in the first place and to do the job of a pastor for the right reasons. If you're just desiring the benefits of being a pastor, the money you could get perhaps, or the acclaim, the power, the stage presence, oh, I love feeling those eyes on me from all the people, that's not actually what being a pastor is.

Those are some of the side effects. I don't even know if I want to say benefits, but you should pay your pastor so there's a benefit in having that kind of a job, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you love sheep.

You love the people, and more so than that, you love God, and you want to be a good steward of God's sheep because they belong to him ultimately. This calling springs from the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep, and Christ the sheep shepherd exemplified this during his earthly ministry.

So, when a paycheck motivates the church leader, destruction is inevitable, and Jesus talked about such men as hirelings. When selfish ambition to build a personal kingdom motivates a church leader, he is portrayed as a wolf who seeks to exploit the sheep rather than to feed them, Romans 16, 2 Peter 2.

So, this is why Paul specifically prevents men who are self-willed, fond of sordid gain, so money, or lorded over others to become leaders in the church. So, people who are power-hungry for the sake of power, for building their own kingdom, that kind of thing, they are not to be pastors, and it's in the character qualities Paul outlines in both Titus and Timothy.

Virtuous Character and the Call to Be Above Reproach

Now, let's focus on character next, okay? Let's say the motivations are right. This person wants to be a shepherd, but they have a problem in their character. They don't match one of the things that Paul says you need in order to be a pastor.

Should that person be a pastor?

Well, no.

They need both things. They need the character, and they needed the desire. So, what should the character look like? Well, a broader social leadership models are characterized by an ability to manage.

So, if you have skills in management or skills in presentation, that's what gets you across the finish line for a pastoral search committee, but is that correct? Obviously not, because that's not what Paul focuses on.

Good management should spring forth from a virtuous character, and that's what I want to talk about, is virtuous character according to Paul. Paul describes his quality, and he sums it up as being above reproach, which is further defined by qualities like sexual fidelity, temperance, self-control, gentleness, peaceability, respectability, hospitality, righteousness, holiness, and loving what is good.

So, the quick-tempered fighter, the roving-eyed ladies' man, and the substance abuser are specifically gatekept from shepherding responsibilities. Let me say that again. The quick-tempered fighter, the person who can't work well with others, the person who's always ready to fight you, who's ready to assert his own dominance, that's an insecure person by the way, but that's a person that Paul says, we don't want quick-tempered men in this position.

We don't want people who aren't one-women men. We don't want ladies' men. We don't want roving-eyed men in this position. That's a problem too. We don't want substance abusers, those who are addicted to wine, those who can't manage themselves when there's alcohol or some kind of inebriating substance.

I don't care if it's prescription drugs. This is not the kind of thing that a man, any Christian man, but a man who seeks the pastoral office can be participating in. And unfortunately, far too many examples exist of this kind of thing, of people who have problems in these areas.

And I mean, names are flooding into my mind right now of people that they took this into the pulpit with them or this developed and they didn't tell anyone. They just kept going and then it eventually caught up with them.

And it's a shame when that happens, but it happens all too often. So this is a part of the problem. And Paul tries to head this off at the pass and say, those people aren't allowed. Benjamin Merkel states, a potential elder must be a one woman man, meaning he must honor, love and be devoted to his wife and her alone.

I think this is interesting that that's the first quality brought up after the overall characteristic of being above reproach. His character is to be such as will not leave him open to attack or censure.

And then the very next thing that Paul talks about is you got to be a one woman man. And how often do you have people with sexual indiscretions fall from grace, as it were, and they at least it's exposed that they've done this and it just topples the whole ministry.

So that would exclude things like polygamy, adultery, pornography, forms of sexual deviance. They can't be marked in the life of a shepherd. Unfortunately, when a pastor falls and I've noticed this, there are people who are waiting in the wings to say that they saw the signs, but did not speak up for the fear of reprisal or out of a desire to avoid inconvenience.

And maybe you're listening or one of those people, maybe you are aware of someone who is in your, your, your pastor perhaps is not qualified to be a pastor. And I realize every situation is different, but there is a problem in our society.

And maybe you need to take this to heart of people closing their mouth and saying nothing to see here. I don't want to say anything because if I do, it's going to cause me pain. I'm going to, I'm going to hear about it and maybe no one will believe me.

Or, I mean, there's a lot of ways to sort of tell yourself that you have no responsibility, but this always happens. It seems like when there's a major scandal, the revelations come out and then there's all these people saying, oh yeah, I knew, I knew that he had there, there was some, some things that didn't add up.

And, you know, to some extent, maybe we give the benefit of the doubt and that's understandable. But when you know that someone's not qualified and you care about the ministry they have, then you probably should confront them about it.

And if you don't, then it must not be that big of a problem, right? So, so I would say that this quality, this quality of being a one woman, man, especially is often violated and causes a great embarrassment.

It's not the only one, but it seems like one of the major ones. This is one of the reasons Paul emphasizes the need to filter out those who would put on an act at church by requiring pastors to be thought of well by outsiders, right?

So if you're someone who doesn't have good character and outsiders see that in you, but you put on a face when you come to church, you need to go interview the outsiders. You need to see what other people who know that person think of them.

What's their life like? Is it consistent in all these areas? Because it will come out. This doesn't mean, by the way, that you have to cultivate some kind of an agreement with political views or social views of the wider society, which is how I often see this misapplied.

I remember at the Southern Baptist Convention a few years ago, there was a debate over critical race theory. One of the main leaders, one of the main pastors in the SBC got up and said, look, the world is watching and you shouldn't do this.

We've got cameras here. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't go out against CRT as aggressive as you're doing. I just thought the world is watching. You want to be thought of well by outsiders in the wrong way.

You want the world to love you. That's a different thing. Being thought of well by outsiders in this context means that you are consistent in your character. If you have coworkers, you're not cheating.

You're not stealing. You're not taking unnecessary shortcuts that damage the company. You are performing your tasks well and they can see it. They have no cause to go after you for evil. They might not like your Christian views on something, but it's not that whatever disagreements that there are, they can't say, well, I know this, at least credibly, that this person is violating basic moral principles.

So there's a lot more that could be said about this, but basic virtue is in mind here in many of these qualities. And then there's competence. Competence, generally character and competence flow together, but there are examples of men who are personally virtuous while lacking the competence to meet leadership responsibility.

So think of a good lawyer. He has to have a good character if he's going to be a good lawyer, but he has to also know the law and a good doctor should know how to heal people, right? A good pastor should know how to apply God's word.

And also not, he should not, and this is a direct quote from first Timothy three, two, he should, um, if your pastor is not able to teach or Titus one, nine exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict, they're not able to do their job.

So there's, there's a communication part of this. You've got to be able to communicate and you've got to be able to engage in apologetics. Now, someone may not be able to do those things and make a perfectly fine deacon, have the other qualities, but a pastor needs to have this quality.

Now, if the crowning equality of a good character involves marital fidelity, the crowning quality of competence is household management. Titus one, six talks about the behavior of children. Um, Ephesians three, five talks about household management, including children's behavior.

And the word for management is Epilem, uh, Epilemi, and it is used only one other time in scripture. And that's for the good Samaritan story. Uh, it, in that particular story, it is used to describe the way the good Samaritan cared for the wounded stranger.

He had this management over the stranger. He was caring for him. So in the same way that the good Samaritan cared for the wounded stranger, so should the elder evidences care for his family as a example of the way he cares for the family.

Of God.

Shepherding Without Harshness or Domination

Now, this isn't lording it over. It's not provocation. It's not being, you know, hyper quote unquote, patriarchal to the point of, you just ask you just sort of put your foot down all the time, right?

Harshness isn't part of this. And I know there are some people who, um, for some reason, think of leadership that.

Way.

It's like this domineering thing. Yes, there should be, uh, a, a way of asserting yourself and speaking directly. But Paul specifically in the book of Ephesians tells fathers not to exacerbate their children, not to be harsh with them because you would discourage them.

And if the same care, tender care that a father gives to his children is supposed to be the kind of care they give to the household of God, then there are going to be times you have to rebuke your children, but it is a tender rebuke.

It is not being, uh, it is not exasperating them. So I think that is a crucial thing that I want to emphasize. Now, this translates into the cultivation of a healthy atmosphere where pastors are approachable, not self-willed, not quick tempered.

This was the chief charge level that Mark Driscoll, if you remember, it's, and it still haunts many elders meetings. I've seen it where the pastor is just, he's the head honcho. He's the CEO of the company and everyone must do what he says.

It's a character failure when you get to that point though. Um, but it's also a competence failure. Pastors must be able to inspire others for the work of ministry, which includes listening and delegating well.

And if you surround yourself with yes men, that is not what a pastor should be doing. That is, uh, that is the same thing. Just because everyone says yes to you because they're afraid of you. That doesn't mean you're a good leader.

Leadership Principles Beyond the Church

So my conclusion is there are many books and courses on leadership that tend to mimic business practices and specialize in manipulation techniques, but we do not see this in scripture. Yet many of our churches operate in similar ways to the ways these secular institutions.

Operate.

The word of God is powerful and its wisdom should be embraced, not just in the church, but out there in the broader world. And I'll take a minute to just talk about what that might look like in the broader world.

If you're going into business and there's no requirement, Paul's lays down for, uh, the, a barrier of entry when you enter the business field, it's not the same, but these principles I think do apply.

If you're a Christian and you want to be in business, you should be someone who desires to engage in business for the right reasons. What are the right reasons to engage in business? Well, part of the right reason is you do want to supply the necessary finances and, and what your family needs for food for resources.

You do need to do that. So that is a primary motivation, but you also need to see yourself as providing a service. You're providing a social service for the people that you engage with. You want them to not be ripped off and taken advantage of.

You want them to benefit just as you're benefiting from the relationship you have with them. Whether that's an exchange or a partnership or whatever it is, you want to be equally yoked with them. You want to make sure you're going in.

If you're in a long-term relationship with a business partner in a similar direction, similar vision, you don't want to be hampered your conscience dealing you blows every day because you have associated yourself with someone of low character.

So, so I think there's a motive there. It's not the same as a spiritual gift calling, but I think there should be a right motive. And then you should have the character to do business well, to be thought of well by the people you engage with, that they're satisfied, not just because of the quality of the product, which they should be satisfied with, but also the way in which you deliver that product that you show yourself as a caring person.

And I think Chick-fil-A actually does a pretty good job with the training, their employees in this, that you're going to treat the people like they're precious. I've seen many times at Chick-fil-A, they will freely give out things to people when they're inconvenienced.

They tend to say my pleasure, right? These are things that used to be more common that have become less common and they need to return. I think that's part of good business. Another thing would be the competence, right?

You need to know what business is. You need to excel. If you need to get an MBA, get an MBA, take a few courses, but you need to understand how ledgers work and how to file your taxes and all of that business strategy.

So you could apply this to any other field, to the field of law, to media, to in any of these fields that we can be involved with. I think these three things should factor in. You got to have a heart, you got to have a head, and you got to have a mind.

And I think of the heart as sort of like this motive that sort of colors everything you do. I think of the head as like the way that you think of what you're doing, how you prioritize, how you apply God's law to these situations.

And then what did I say? The mind, head and mind are pretty similar, I guess. I don't know if I should have said mind. What would be another? Well, I don't see another substitute for it. So I guess mind would be the, maybe soul should substitute for head.

So your soul is this sort of, that would be a better, let's reverse that for a minute. Soul is now head. So you have your heart, you have your soul, this internal quality about you that inspires the virtue.

And then you have your mind or your head. And the mind is that element of you that knows how to actually get things done and accomplish the task. So we want to have the right motive for doing whatever task it is.

We want to, completing whatever goal, we want to have the, be the kind of person that does it well, because we're managing ourselves well. And the things God has entrusted to us at earlier stages, faithful and little.

And then we want to be able to just be competent, be able to apply what we know, the principles we've learned to the situation. So that's what I think a good leader should be.

There you go.

Leadership according to the Bible in three easy steps, I guess. But this is not something that I see a lot out there. And it tends to neglect. If there's two things that are neglected, it's the motive and then the virtue.

And then everything becomes about the competence. And the competence ends up being oftentimes about, like I said, manipulation or taking shortcuts or inspiring people to do what they wouldn't normally do, but using tricks and gimmicks.

And I mean, advertising is full of this. So I think those first two things must be there before you really get to that third.

Thing.

And that's leadership according to the Bible. So there's much more that could be said. There's much more the Bible has to say. There's much more wisdom, especially in the book of Proverbs. But I think that this example we have of pastoral leadership is a great place to start in understanding what leadership is all about.

So I hope that was helpful for you all. This has been the Conversations That Matter podcast. And until next time, fear God, stand strong and love others. God bless.