WWUTT 605 Q&A Plurality Multisite Churches and Unfaithful Retired Pastors?

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Isn't the model of church leadership supposed to be a plurality of elders? Are there conditions in which a satellite church campus would be acceptable?

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And can a pastor permanently disqualify himself? The answers to these questions when we understand the text.

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Greetings from your friends at When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast that we might help encourage your time in the

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Word. Tell your friends about our website, www .wutt .com. Now here's your host,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. This time next week, we will be in Atlanta, Georgia for the

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G3 Conference. Finally. Yes. We bought our tickets after last year's conference ended.

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Yes. Yes. I don't think I had even gone to ShepCon yet. And I went ahead.

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No, you hadn't. I went ahead and bought the G3 tickets for next year. We wanted to go to G3 last year.

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So badly. We wanted that to be our, the conference that we were attending for the 500th anniversary of the

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Protestant Reformation. We wanted to go to G3. It looked like a great lineup. But Becky, at the time of the

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G3 Conference, was nine and a half months pregnant. Yeah.

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We had the baby the next week. Isn't that right? Yeah. Yeah. Or you did. You did all the work on that one.

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But. Well, I don't know. You walked with me. I held your hand. This is true.

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I told the nurses, it's time and it's going to happen really fast. So. Yes. Flashbacks now.

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Yeah. Right. So we didn't get the chance to do G3 last year. And because Becky got pregnant and when she,

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I think it was even the same day you told me that you were pregnant, you said, now you can go to ShepCon because you can't go to G3.

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So anyway. So I ended up going to my first Shepherd's Conference, which was a wonderful experience.

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But this year we have invested in the G3 Conference, which Becky can go to. She can't go to ShepCon.

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I can't. But she can go to G3. So we hope to see you there. Those of you who are attending the

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G3 Conference, it's like South Atlanta, somewhere like that. Yeah. Yeah. By the airport. Yeah.

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My parents live south of Atlanta and then I have an aunt and uncle that live souther than that.

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Souther. And so we're staying with family while we're there. Nate Pickowitz. Yes. Also coming down.

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We'll be picking him up at the airport. And our friend Sonia is traveling with us. Yes. Sonia Walker.

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Those of you who know her on Twitter. So next week's program will be recorded. I think we're going to record it tomorrow night.

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So we have enough. Or tonight. Tonight. Yeah. At the time that you're hearing this program, we will be recording next week's

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Friday program tonight. But we have enough questions. I think we have enough questions off of email that I can put together some for us to answer for next week.

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And we're pretty chatty too. So. Yeah. We tend to be. We are taking that whole week off.

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I'm not doing any recording. So if anybody's thinking, hey, are you recording the podcast while you're here? Nope. Nope. We are there for the conference to learn.

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But you're pre -recording. So do listen in next week. Yeah. Still listen in. I just won't be recording while I'm there.

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Correct. Not on location. I don't want to take all my stuff with me. Oh goodness. That would be a lot. So if you have questions, you can send them to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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And if you're listening to this on Friday, you probably still have enough time to get a couple of questions in for next week's program.

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I don't know that I've narrowed down exactly what questions we're going to answer next week yet. So you still could get those in.

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Oh, yes. All of these questions today have to do with what we've talked about on the broadcast over the course of this past week.

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Going over qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy chapter 3. In fact, all these questions have to do with those three days.

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So I don't have any Old Testament questions today. All of this has to do with the study in 1

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Timothy 3. So this first one comes from Roger and he says, Pastor Gabe, hope all is well with you and your family.

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I have definitely been enjoying the new Q &A that you have been doing with Becky and I hope you continue this format.

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Thanks. I'm looking. I'm looking forward to continuing that format myself. I have a question for you regarding your criticism of multi -site churches from episode 602.

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So this would have been Tuesday's episode. The sentiment of your comments was that you need to be able to see the life of your pastor and ask him questions and have him in your house so you can see his life.

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Not directly quoting you, but hopefully this is a fair representation. It seems that people I listen to regularly use this phrasing.

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But shouldn't we be talking about the elders, plural, who lead a church, not just the pastor?

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The pastor is not the only one who is given the task of shepherding the flock. But the elders in plurality are called to that task.

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1 Peter 5. 1. I believe you agree that the Bible teaches a plurality of elders leading a church, not a single pastor slash elder.

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Using Mark Devers teaching, you said something like he has to know your face or your name. As an example, can this truly be said of John MacArthur and the 10 ,000 members of his church?

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May I suggest that your noted criticism of a multi -site church can be leveled against any large church?

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Pastor Dever makes the same criticisms of large churches and those that have multiple services. I see the point and I think it is a valid concern.

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But why is the emphasis placed on only the lead teaching pastor and not on the elders as a group?

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And then after that, Roger has something more specific concerning his church that he asks about. So I'm going to respond to that in an email.

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But as a kind of a quick response to your question here, Roger, you're correct that I should be approaching this matter from the perspective of plurality eldership and not just talking about the single pastor.

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But as we're looking over the qualifications for an overseer in 1

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Timothy 3, it's singular. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

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Therefore, he, an overseer, must be above reproach. So we're talking about the qualifications of this one man.

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And when it comes down to the leadership model in a church that we have given to us in the

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New Testament, it should be plurality eldership. On every occasion, we see a plurality of elders.

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There's never just one person that's leading a church. And when you see the qualifications for elders in Titus chapter 1,

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Paul says to appoint elders in every church, plural. So Titus's task, as he's being sent to the island of Crete to accomplish, is to raise up elders in every one of the churches that has been planted there.

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It may be that in the planting of those churches, that there was not time or an opportunity to appoint elders in every single church.

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It may have been the sort of a thing like where Paul was ministering in specific areas and then people went from those areas back to their hometown and planted a church, but there was not elders appointed in that church.

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Does that make sense? So like with the church in Colossae, it was Epaphras that planted that church.

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And Paul had never been to Colossae before. So Epaphras likely had heard Paul in Ephesus or in one of the surrounding communities outside of Ephesus, was transformed by the gospel, had the message of Christ that he took back with him to Colossae, and then planted that church.

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And so would it have been when the church was first planted that there was only one guy,

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Epaphras, that was leading everything? And then as men were matured and they came up in the training and the instruction of the

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Lord, there were guys who were more equipped to kind of fill in those elder roles, and so then you had a plurality eldership?

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So it's not like if a church only has a pastor and there isn't a plurality eldership, we should immediately disqualify that church.

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It has to be plurality elders or not at all. Oh, definitely not. Yeah, your congregation has to have enough maturity for there to be men that meet those qualifications.

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Yeah, because appointing someone to that leadership position in any form, like not just elders, but any form of leader position, putting them up on a pedestal before they're ready to be there.

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And then you've totally taken the seed out from underneath them, really, because they're trying to be what you expect them to be, but they can't.

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They're not ready for that yet. They're not ready yet. Right, exactly. So this has to be men who are qualified for that. It's not appointing men for the sake of having men filling those positions.

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We're talking about qualified men that are filling those positions. So hopefully the desire of that church would be that they would mature to a place where now we have more men that can fill in those elder roles.

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But until we get there, we've just got one guy. We've got the pastor that's kind of helping to lead the teaching and all of that.

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But yes, as Roger is kind of approaching this from his perspective of plurality eldership,

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I should be teaching this from the same way. I don't know if maybe in that particular episode on Tuesday, I didn't.

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I was only singling out the pastor. And that's mostly because that's in the American evangelical and largely

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Baptist churches. That's what we think of as the church leadership, just the one guy, the pastor, that's kind of leading the teaching over everything else.

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Our church is a plurality eldership. There are three. But it just recently happened. Yeah, only in the last two or three years.

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So the three men, the three other men that I share that position of eldership with, and I would be considered the one who is worthy of double honor, as Paul talks about.

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So you have that elder who's worthy of double honor because he has devoted his life to the service of ministry.

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So I'm the one who is full time and I get paid for that particular spot. And then we've got a pastor who's part time.

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And then we have two lay elders. And so this, but when it comes to making decisions for the church, when it comes to overseeing the spiritual needs and care for the church, all four of us are equal in that.

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I do not have any more authority than any of the other three men have just because I'm the one that was hired to this spot.

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And I'm the full time paid pastor. So there are other examples that we have from the scriptures in which you have one person who's kind of like the main overseer of the church or the one that's considered the face of the church, if you want to look at it that way.

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Like in Jerusalem, James, the half brother of Christ, you might consider him the one who was the elder that was worthy of double honor because he seemed to be the overseer of that church.

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Doesn't mean that he had any more authority than the rest of the elders had, but he was the one that was kind of the head shepherd of the under shepherds of that church.

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Yeah. It's not really under shepherd, not really a proper terminology for it.

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So I hope that makes sense. But anyway, so yeah, I appreciate that correction, Roger, we I should be approaching this from the perspective of of a plurality eldership myself.

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But just because we have this mentioned as the qualifications for a particular man, whether that's a man who's serving as a pastor or he's serving as an elder, because we're talking about it in the singular, that's the way

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I approach it. And since our mind typically goes in the direction of pastor, then that's that's how I argue it as well.

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But we should be thinking about this in terms of anyone who fills a role of elder in the church, whether that would be as a pastor or as a lay elder, they must meet this list of qualifications also agreed.

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This takes a tremendous amount of pressure off of the pastor when you have plurality elders, even in a church of 120 people, which is kind of the size of our congregation, our membership is about 80, attendance is about 120.

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Even in a church our size, it's difficult for me to even remember everybody's name. And I just don't have that gift to remember everybody's name.

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To be fair. On top of that. To be fair, we have such a big turnover because of the military.

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Real transient church. So we may have an attendance of 120, but over the course of the year, the attendance is probably more like 300 or more.

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Right. Just because people are moving. Yeah. Because it's kind of like a revolving door in our church because of the military.

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But anyway, so those other men, they have particular families that they look out for and some of their giftings make them better equipped to reach out to certain families in a certain way.

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And one of our elders lives in a different town, and so he can even reach out to people in that community.

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So things like that. The plurality eldership, I really think, is the model that should be exercised in a church.

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And it's not exercised in most Southern Baptist churches. I realize that we're outside the norm, but that's the model that I believe that's being presented there in the

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New Testament. That a church should be a plurality eldership. And I got that conviction from Mark Dever myself, who is a

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Southern Baptist pastor. Thank the Lord. Thank the Lord. And he convicted me over even our two different services.

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We had an early service, which was our traditional service, and then we had a later service, which was our contemporary service.

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And I asked Dr. Dever about that. And he said to me, no, you're pastoring two different churches.

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And I said, well, we have one that's traditional and one that's contemporary. And he said, see, that's even worse. Yeah. Because not only are you pastoring two different congregations, but it's two completely different styles.

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I mean, it's different churches. They're segregating. Yeah, right. We're not partaking in the

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Lord's Supper together. Right. And by the way, I actually found a church online, a Southern Baptist church just recently who had two split services.

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They had a traditional early, contemporary, later service. But they said that once a month or once a quarter,

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I can't remember what it was. But anyway, once a month, just for the sake, I'll say once a month. The time that's in between, that's devoted to Sunday school time.

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Once a month, they will dedicate that to the Lord's Supper. So both of those congregations are coming together.

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That way, they're joining together at the same table and partaking in the Lord's Supper together. Whether or not

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I agree with that model, I don't know. But I thought that was a great way to do it. That way, you're not having two different Lord's Suppers and that church is not at that table together if you're doing it at two different times.

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So that made a little bit more sense. But yeah, I'm with Dr. Dever on those two congregations should be melded into one.

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Now as Roger pointed out, what about John MacArthur's church with 10 ,000 members of his church?

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I'm not a big fan of churches that size. Now, however, John MacArthur's church divvies those responsibilities up among the elders.

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I don't know. I assume that it is functioning as a sound church should because it's

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Dr. John MacArthur. So that would be my assumption. But like I said, I'm not really a big fan of churches that size anyway.

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I kind of feel like you get to a certain size, maybe you should break it up a little bit more. You should plant another church.

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You should raise up another pastor, another plurality eldership within that church. Right. Wasn't it

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Mark Dever who said that you're supposed to bring up the next person to replace you or whatever?

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Oh, yeah. Yeah. He talked about, right, in his congregation, he said,

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I'm just making, I'm not making the way for the next guy. I can't remember how he worded it.

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I'm just getting things ready for the next guy who's going to come along and do this. So he's remaining faithful to what it is that the

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Lord is having him do at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. Raising up disciples. Yeah. Raising up. And he, the way that he raises up some of those other elders, and I've seen that work, even though I've never been to Capitol Hill Baptist Church, I see the way that he interacts with those guys and they work together and it's awesome.

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It's wonderful to see. It is great. And he won't ever plant a multi -site campus. So there's not going to be another

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Capitol Hill Baptist Church. And now Mark Devers face is being beamed in there. In fact, we had a family that went from our church to Washington, D .C.

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because it's military. The husband was working at the Pentagon. And so I told them as they were going out there,

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I said, check out Capitol Hill Baptist Church. Well, when they went on the Sunday that they chose, the church was full and they actually had to turn people away.

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And they have a list of other churches that they will direct you to that they consider to be sound teaching churches and you can go there instead.

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And I remember her saying that. I thought that was great. That was terrific. And she felt like she was even a little intimidated of the size and Capitol Hill Baptist isn't even a mega church, but the size of it, she felt a little uneasy about anyway.

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Small town to big city. Yeah, small town. Right. You go from a church that's a hundred people to suddenly you're at a church with multiple hundreds of people.

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Right. But but that is that's the way that Capitol Hill Baptist handles their overflow.

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They also don't want to be a church that people just come to because they read nine marks or they've heard

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Dr. Dever. So it's like, well, we're going to go to Capitol Hill Baptist Church. We're not going to be members there, but it's a famous church, so I'm just going to attend there.

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Well, they discourage that. They want you to go to a church and become a member of that church. And if you struggle with membership at a place like Capitol Hill Baptist, then maybe you want to go to this other church that's down the road and you would find a better place with that particular congregation.

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And they're plugged in. Right. And they're all right with that. It's not like, well, you don't want to come fellowship with us.

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It's very realistic. It's that we're not the only game in town. We're not the only sound church that you can find.

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And so I very much appreciate that approach. I like Dr. Dever's approach a lot, even to the point that I don't know that I would want to pastor a church as large as Dr.

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MacArthur's is, but I don't know enough about it and how the structure works at Grace Community Church to be able to say, yeah, they're doing it right or they're doing it wrong.

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Like I said, I trust Dr. MacArthur. So I would expect that they're probably doing that right.

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But yeah, I do think that a church can get too big to a point that you really should be breaking it up.

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You could have churches in other locations, smaller congregations where it's easier for the elders to focus on members of those congregations, easier to not get lost in the scrum.

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People can fellowship with one another and develop those relationships. And plus, you're putting a church in another place that is easier for people to get to instead of just having one church that everybody's trying to fight to get to that location, you know.

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Can you imagine parking? Yeah, no joke. I can't imagine that. No, thank you. We've had spells where our church was full and that was difficult enough trying to find parking even for our congregation.

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So anyway, I kind of rambled a lot there, Roger, but I hope that makes sense.

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Yeah, and then there was another portion of his email that I mentioned that I'll respond to a little more privately.

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But yeah, I'm against the whole multi -site model. I just don't think it's a good idea.

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And when I came at this on Tuesday from the perspective of, hey, you need to be able to meet your pastor.

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You need to know him. He needs to recognize you and things like that. And so then Roger's comparing that to, well, what about a megachurch because you could have the same problem there that you have at a multi -site church.

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How is the pastor expected to know 10 ,000 people? And my response to that would be that it's not necessarily about the pastor exactly knowing who you are, knowing your name and the names of all your kids and all this kind of thing.

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But is there an opportunity for you to be able to do that? In a multi -site campus where you're watching a pastor on a flat screen, you can't.

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You can't know that man. You won't ever be invited over to his house. Shake his hand.

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Right. Or get to see the way that he interacts with his family and with his kids. So as what -

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Suppose if they go visit every now and again. Yeah. And you have those multi -site campuses where the pastor will move around to different churches.

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I know Tim Kellers is like that. Well, he's not the pastor there anymore, but he would be at a different location every

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Sunday, but no one would know which location he was appearing at live. Oh, interesting.

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Because I actually had a friend that went out there and wanted to hear him preach, but he didn't know which church he was at.

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And so unfortunately, he ended up going to the one with the flat screen. And like I said, there are some great sound ministers out there who have multi -site campuses.

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I'll just use an example, Matt Chandler. I enjoy listening to Chandler. I don't know if I was living in Dallas that I would attend his church, though.

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I do not agree with the multi -site model. And I know there's different pastors at different campuses, and sometimes those pastors will preach.

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I've listened to the podcast, so I've heard some of their preaching and things like that. I just don't like the whole multi -site thing.

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It feels like too much is built around a particular name or personality, and that name is Matt Chandler.

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And that's nothing against Village Church. I just don't think it's the way that we should be doing church.

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Village Church can get to a point where it's so big that now we need to plant another site and there needs to be another pastor there, and he's teaching that group of people.

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And I think that's more the model that we should follow for church planting, not multi -site.

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And not everybody's going to agree with me on that. Maybe I have somebody listening to me that attends

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Village Church, hey, I attend there and I'm just fine, and I have wonderful relationships with the people

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I go to church with. Hey, God bless you. And I pray that you learn and grow in the

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Word and in fellowship with one another, with the saints, as you receive the teaching that is there.

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For me personally, I just don't agree with the model. I just don't think that that's the way that we should be doing church plants.

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And on that note, we have this next question here that comes from Avery in Kansas. Oh, hello.

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Not too far away. I don't know where exactly in Kansas, but he did say it was from Kansas, and he knows something about our geographical area because he uses a town nearby.

23:01

So he says, Dear Pastor Gabe, love your podcast. I had a question about today's episode.

23:07

So this was on, I think this was Tuesday, where you talk about multi -site campus. Let's say for the sake of arguing that there were a group of Christians in Alta Vista, Kansas, who wanted to attend a church with sound doctrinal gospel teaching, but no such church existed in Alta Vista, nor was there a pastor who was willing to move there and teach them.

23:30

That's common in Kansas. Very common. Little bitty towns. Pastor just doesn't want to move to one of those small towns and pastor church, especially in today's age of where I'm trying to make myself big.

23:41

How can I do that? Right. Yeah. No offense, but that that does seem to be the approach of too many people.

23:48

But OK, Avery goes on, but they really liked your teaching and they got all the equipment at their own expense to point a camera at you in your church so that they could watch you teach on Sunday morning in Alta Vista.

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Would you still have a problem with that? Answer to that question? No, I wouldn't have a problem with that at all.

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But my expectation would be that they would learn and grow and mature to a point where they're not watching me anymore.

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They have raised up a man who can be the elder or the teacher in that church, and then he can teach that congregation.

24:22

I think a better model than this. So a better model than the technological pointing a camera at somebody beaming his message into another church.

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I think a better model than that would be for somebody who can pastor a congregation, but maybe struggles, maybe they have never attended seminary.

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So they don't even know how to go about delivering sermons on their own.

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But they do have an ability to teach. So they've got the knowledge. They can do it. They've never been to seminary, but don't really know how to get their feet on the ground to get rolling on pastoring a church, if that makes sense.

25:02

I think a better model then, instead of doing the whole multi -campus thing, would be for that pastor, because for all intents and purposes, that's what he is.

25:12

He's a pastor. Even if he's not yet received an ordination, he's shepherding that group of people. For that pastor to watch another pastor and listen to his sermon, learn it, go through the notes, labor over it, toil with it in your heart, pray to the

25:30

Lord, study more, study more, go back to your church congregation and do the message that you heard that other pastor preach.

25:38

I think that would be a better approach than doing the whole, we're going to point a camera at you and then watch you over in our location.

25:46

Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, just making sure I created that scenario the right way. Well, to me, yes.

25:54

I think that's a better way to go about it. If you do have somebody in your church, maybe 20 people or even less, but you're in a small town, you want sound teaching, there's nobody who's going to come here that we could pay full time to be able to do that.

26:11

How do we get that sound teaching in our church? Maybe we could point a camera at Gabe. If that's what you want to do, that would be fine with the expectation that you've got somebody in your church that's in training to be able to handle that particular task.

26:25

You have to have somebody who is able to shepherd you and grow you and kind of lead and administrate the teaching that's there in that church because I can't be your pastor.

26:37

As much as flattered as I would be that you would want to listen to my teaching in your church,

26:43

I don't know you, we don't interact, I can't even know you unless you invite me,

26:49

I come down to Alta Vista, I wonder if Avery's from Alta Vista. I wonder too,

26:54

I was kind of curious. But anyway, so for starters, I see that as being fine and that's one of the advantages to living in the technological age that we are in.

27:05

Oh yes. But I would hope that eventually you get to a place where the church isn't that anymore.

27:11

You've got a sound man who has been trained up in the word, who is able to shepherd the teaching at that particular church.

27:18

And I think that's more important for that church than watching somebody else's face beamed in.

27:24

And let me kind of assume somebody else's comment or email before I get it.

27:32

Well, what's the difference between this and a Bible study on Wednesday night where we're watching through a video series?

27:37

That's a decent argument, I understand the point, but I would still say that you're watching that Bible study on a

27:44

Wednesday night through a video series because you've got sound teaching on Sunday morning from a pastor that's leading the teaching at your church.

27:52

So the video series that you're watching is an extension off of the main preaching that's coming from the pulpit.

27:59

So that's what makes it more permissible. The main preaching should actually come from a man who is a shepherd over that flock, that gathering of believers in the town, community, place, wherever you happen to be.

28:13

So I hope, Avery, that answers your question. If you want me to come down to Alta Vista, I would be happy to.

28:20

Since we have... It's not that far. It's not. It's not really that far. What? 30, 40 minutes or something?

28:26

Yeah. I mean, I used to travel an hour to go to church every day. Oh, yeah. There's people who live in major cities,

28:32

I'm sure, that travel. They probably live fairly close to the church, but the traffic takes an hour to get through.

28:39

And the parking. Fighting through all that traffic. Because we have plurality eldership, that actually does permit me to be able to hand the teaching over to somebody else on a

28:51

Sunday, and then I can go preach somewhere else. So that's another benefit to plurality eldership.

28:57

I used to do that a lot. Ever since grounding myself in one place, I haven't been on the road as much.

29:04

I think since we started having kids, I've hardly been on the road at all. Yeah. Occasionally, I will respond to an invite.

29:11

Yeah. Yeah. I'll go to a conference or something like that. But that's pretty much it. A week here or there. Yep. Maybe a handful of days.

29:17

Okay. So this next question comes from Michael Coughlin. I love Michael, love the evangelism work that he does there in Ohio.

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So this was a question that he asked on Twitter, and I said I would respond to it on the Friday episode. He said, are there sins you can commit before you become a

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Christian that disqualify you permanently from eldership? So as I mentioned on the program

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Wednesday, there was a particular pastor at a church in Memphis who got in trouble 20 years ago, having had sex with a teenager in his youth group when he was 22 and she was 17.

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He got in trouble 20 years ago? Yeah. He got caught. Oh. I mean, he confessed to it.

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20 years ago. 20 years ago. Okay. I'm sorry. But it didn't, I mean, like criminal charges weren't filed or anything like that.

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I was under the impression that it just recently came about. Well, yeah. It just resurfaced?

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Yeah. This is, I didn't really want to go into all this. Oh, that's fine. I was just confused.

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Okay. Yeah, I know. That's all right. Okay. The church that he left in Texas 20 years ago did know about what he did.

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Check. That's all I needed. But whether or not you could say that amounted to him getting in trouble, I don't really know.

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I just misunderstood earlier. But now it's come out because he's co -founded this other church, which is a mega church, and he's just about to publish a book through Bethany House.

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And then it comes about, you know, this becomes a major media thing. It's international news that this pastor had done this with a teenage girl in his youth group 20 years before.

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So anyway, I mentioned that I believe that man is permanently disqualified. And I don't, I would not have otherwise gone and looked for an example and then singled out a person.

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Right. Sometimes that's part of the difficulty of singling out a person or using a person's name in those kinds of situations.

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It tends to get distracting. You think it's just about that person, but really I'm only using that as an example.

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The understanding of the instruction as we have it in scripture should be this. So so anyway.

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But so related to that, because that's been the controversy and that's been the news that folks have been talking about over the course of the past week.

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What about a person who has committed such a sin before they became a Christian?

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Is there any kind of sin that a person can commit that would permanently disqualify them from ever becoming an elder?

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If they had committed that sin before they became a Christian. And my answer to that is, I can't think of anything.

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That would be my answer. I can't think of a sin that a person could commit before they became a

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Christian that would otherwise disqualify them permanently from eldership. I can't think of anything.

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Because the whole point is supposed to be that we're brand new now. We have become someone else in Christ.

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That's not who we were before Christ. So whatever you did before you came to Christ shouldn't be all that shocking because of course you did those things.

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You were you were a sinful man with a fallen nature, all manner of evil with with no guilt about the things that you were doing because the spirit was not convicting your heart in that way.

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And yet when you heard the gospel of Christ and you were convicted, you became aware of your sin.

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You were filled with sorrow before God. You asked for his forgiveness. The Holy Spirit came into your life, ransacked the temple in your heart where you had idols raised up to these false gods.

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And instead, Christ has become the exalted one there. The one whom you worship, the one whom you are being transformed into, you've become a new person.

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This is what Jesus meant when he said to Nicodemus that if anyone wants to see the kingdom of God, he must be born again.

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You are born a brand new person in the spirit. And so who you are now on the other side of that transformation is a different man than who you were before you came to Christ.

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If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is passed away and the new has come.

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And so whatever you did prior to coming to Christ, I don't think should have any bearing on whether you would be allowed to become a pastor or not.

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And somebody might say, well, he must be above reproach as far as his

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Christian condition is concerned. Yes, that's what you should be testing. Is he above reproach in his presentness?

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In his Christian walk. In his Christian walk, right. Not who he was before, because he's going to have all manner of reproach.

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Oh, yeah. Remember the verse that I quoted from Isaiah, that Christ has taken away our reproach.

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So we stand before God as justified. So you were under reproach before you came to Christ, but you should be above reproach in Christ.

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And that applies to everybody. That's not just the man who desires to serve as a pastor and he is being tested as someone who is above reproach.

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But as I mentioned, this should be something we all aspire to. All of us should aspire to mature

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Christianity. Right. So that of any of us, it could be said that we are above reproach. Pursuing holiness.

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Right. Desiring to live as God has instructed us to live. But if they're holding a shepherding position, then.

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There's a higher standard. There is a higher standard. Right. But if they're not saved and they like, you know, the people that are confused and they think they're saved, but they're not.

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And they have that shepherd position and they do something that is.

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Boy, you know, that's tough. And I don't know that we've got time to go into all of that. I just thought it was a short answer.

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No, because you're talking about what if a person was in a position of pastor before he was saved.

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Right. And then he got saved. Yeah. What was he doing as a pastor before that?

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Right. See, I still think if he was in the position of pastor and he committed a sin like adultery that would disqualify him from the pastorate.

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And that's a level of sin that I would say permanently disqualifies you from the pastorate. If you had an affair with another woman, you as a pastor were married.

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You had an affair with another woman. You're permanently disqualified from the pastorate. And I'm going to get to that quick because that's the next question we've got coming up.

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Well, hey, there's the segue. So I'm getting I'm getting to that. But what if what if the man was serving in the position of pastor and yet he wasn't a

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Christian when he was in that position? I would still say he's permanently disqualified because the reason why.

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See, that's what I was thinking, too. Yeah. The reason why he was given that role, which I would imagine would have been, you know, granted to him by members that elected him into that spot.

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Now, it could be the sort of a thing where he planted his own church. And, you know, recruited people to join him.

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But it's still it's still the congregation that has agreed he is our pastor, regardless of however that came about.

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So he knows the truth. He knows what God's word has said.

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And yet he's deliberately gone against it. He has not sinned in ignorance. He has sinned knowing what the truth is.

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So therefore, I would say even if that pastor could say, well, I wasn't a Christian, then I still think he's he's permanently disqualified himself.

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Now, that's only given that he has committed that sin. I'm not saying that a guy who has been in the pulpit, but then becomes a

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Christian like he realizes, whoa, I never actually believe the gospel before. Right. I finally get this.

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And I'm a Christian now. I don't think that's permanently disqualified him from the pastorate.

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John Wesley, this actually happened with him. So really, he was a pastor.

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And he was he was actually reading through Martin Luther's introduction to the book of Romans.

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This is what he was preaching on. This was part of his sermon notes was reading Luther's introduction to Romans.

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And as he was preaching it, he became a Christian. Oh, wow. And he went and found his brother,

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Charles, Charles Wesley, the hymn writer. He did Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I think that was a

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Charles Wesley hymn. Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing. Those are Charles Wesley hymns. He went and found his brother and said,

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I got it now. I'm a Christian. And there's like a big celebration. And I don't think that disqualified him from the pastorate.

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I think he should certainly be honest about that. Right. Guys, the whole time I've been preaching this to you, I thought

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I knew it, but apparently I didn't. And the spirit is now truly convicted my heart to realize the center that I am and the truth that I had not been clinging to.

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It was just religion for me until that day when I read what Luther was preaching from Romans and then

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I became a Christian. And that's the power of the gospel. That was the power of the gospel of Christ that changed the heart of John Wesley into a man who was a fallen sinner, even as he stood at the pulpit into a man that had been born again in Christ.

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So I don't think that a pastor who suddenly realizes that he's never been a Christian at all, and now he's a

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Christian. I don't think that transformation disqualifies him as a pastor. But what did he do when he was representing the gospel in the pulpit?

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And if he had committed a sin like adultery, then he has disqualified himself.

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And so anyway, so that goes into our next question here. Let me respond to that from the question that we're asked.

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This one comes from Celia. Hi. Hearing from Celia again. Gabe and Becky, I have two questions today. The first one is, is it okay for a pastor to return to the pulpit after cheating on his wife with someone at church?

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For example, his wife forgave him and the lady. Would that be okay? Also, how would one fix this problem?

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In the past, I have been to a church where this occurred and know three people where this has also happened at this church.

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And likewise, I've had friends this has happened to. I've had a pastor friend. Not this church.

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Not this church. Not what? Yeah, you said happened at this church. At their church.

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At their church. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, right. Different churches. At different churches. There we go. Whatever I said in my little language flub as I was trying to read the email.

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Sorry. It makes a big difference though. It does. I don't want to bring some church into guilt that this didn't happen.

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Extra guilt. Anyway, so like I said,

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I've actually had pastor friends that this happened to. They fell into sin and had had an affair and committed adultery.

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And my advice to them was even though they were convicted over it, they had apologized to their wife. They apologized to their congregation.

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I said, no, you need to step down and you've brought reproach against yourself, your ministry and the gospel.

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Not all sins are the same. And we tend to have this idea that we try to excuse sin as being the same.

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Well, you've sinned. I've sinned. And the Bible says that all sin is the same before God. So you can't throw a stone at me and I'm not going to throw a stone at you.

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Let's just admit we're all sinners and get along. But the Bible is actually very clear that some sins are worse than others.

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And whether or not you want to admit it, you believe that even though you may not confess it.

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So I steal a pack of gum from the grocery store or I kill your neighbor.

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Which one of those sins is worse? You're going to say it's the same.

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They're all the same. They're all the same. And the Bible in particular singles out sexual sins as being worse than any other sin.

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This is the Apostle Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 6. Every other sin that you commit, you do outside the body, but sexual sins you do with the body.

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Furthermore, adultery is the only sin that God allows divorce to take place.

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Right. That's true. So when it comes to differences, disagreements between a husband and a wife, there is no biblical basis for you to get a divorce except that one of you has been unfaithful to the other.

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And then you have the right biblically to divorce your spouse if they have had adultery with somebody else.

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So you can read about that at the start of Matthew 19. There's a couple of other places in the Gospels where that is mentioned also.

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But because that's the one sin, and God who hates divorce does not want that to be the result of a marriage.

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What God has joined together, let man not separate. Yet he would allow divorce in the event of infidelity, of marital unfaithfulness.

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So because that sin is so egregious, I do believe that it is a sin that will disqualify a pastor permanently from ever being able to hold the office of pastor again.

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So let me read you this from Todd Pruitt. And this is from his Mortification of Spin website.

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Well, it's him, Carl Truman, and Amy Bird that kind of share that site together. Pruitt says,

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While it is true that all sins are equally damning, not all sins do equal damage in this life.

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We know this both from Scripture and experience. For instance, there are certain virtues that must characterize the lives of overseers, 1

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Timothy 3 and Titus 1, precisely because there are certain moral demands placed upon those who exercise oversight in the household of God.

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Gloriously, a pastor who commits adultery, if he repents, can and should be restored to fellowship within the church.

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Indeed, to refuse restoration to a repentant sinner is itself a grievous sin.

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But fellowship and service within the church are quite different from having the responsibility of spiritual oversight.

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Restore the repentant adulterer to fellowship by all means, but he has disqualified himself from being a pastor.

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Jesus has removed the curse of sin, but so long as we are south of heaven, we still must bear many of the temporal consequences of sin.

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Adultery is a moral disaster. It brings ruin to refutations.

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It is, in the words of John Armstrong, the stain that stays. The pastor who falls to adultery has disqualified himself by virtue of the fact that he is no longer of good repute, that there are many who believe adultery does not disqualify a man from the office of pastor or elder reflects more on their discernment than on the real nature of adultery.

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So I think that Mr. Pruitt is on to something there, and that is very good advice.

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OK, so then the next question that Celia had, she said she had two questions here. Second one, can a pastor retire?

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If so, how and when would it be appropriate for him to retire from being a pastor?

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Whenever he wants. Yeah. Whenever he so feels that the spirit is saying to him, you have done the work that you have been called to do, and now it's time to step down, that he is certainly welcome to do that whenever he wants.

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Typically, that doesn't happen. Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, right. Pastoring is something that you can do until your dying day if you have the energy and the strength to do it.

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Now, you may have certain mental faculties that won't allow you to handle that kind of role anymore.

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Maybe the energy level just isn't there. Physically, you can't meet the demands of being a pastor anymore, in which case you probably should step down.

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Right. Remember that one of the requirements for an overseer is that he must be able to teach.

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Well, you can get to a point where you just can't do that anymore. If I were to be in some sort of disfiguring accident that takes away my ability to speak and teach and communicate to people,

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I would have to step down. Now, I believe that my church would still take good care of me in that, if in the event that something like that were to happen.

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But I can't feel that obligation anymore of being able to teach, nor does the church revolve around me.

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Right. Hey, if Gabe can't teach, we just can't be here anymore. That's not the way that - That's what the elders are for.

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That's right. There are certainly other elders that can do that, which is, by the way, another problem that I have with multi -site campuses.

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It's because it's kind of like, well, there's nobody else to teach us but this guy. Right. And so we've got to have another multi -site campus where we can extend his face over here.

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That sounded like large plastic surgery right there. Extend his face all the way over here.

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Anyway. Oh, dear. Now that the questions have come full circle. But yes, a pastor can retire.

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That's at his own discretion, whether he feels like he can continue to serve in that particular office or can't meet the demands of that office anymore.

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I like the whole thing of Pastor Emeritus. That seems to be like a very honorable title to me.

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So you have a pastor who has served in that church for so many years, but he knows it's time for somebody else to take the reign.

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So he kind of steps aside, let's another pastor or elder fill in that spot, and then he receives a title of Pastor Emeritus.

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So it's kind of like an honorary title. Right. And he may still even be there. He may be that church, but he's be that church.

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He may be at that church, but he's just not the senior overseer anymore.

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Anyway, that's always kind of like, I love seeing a church that kind of honors somebody who has given so many years of service to the church in that way that he becomes the

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Pastor Emeritus. Right. I like it, too. And that's all we have for today.

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Thank you so much for your questions. Yes. And again, next week's episode will be recorded while we are enjoying the

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G3 conference in Atlanta. If you're going to be there, let us know because we'll look for you.

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I'll be wearing blue. I don't know. I'm just sure one of those days I'm going to have a blue shirt on. I have no idea.

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I'll be dressing warm, though. Yes. All right. Let's pray. Yes, let's.

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Dear Lord, we thank you so much for this time together that I can share this with my wife, even though we have two microphones between us.

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But I love to be able to respond to these questions and read from God's word that we all may learn together and continue to be equipped and grow according to the instructions that you have given by your

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Holy Spirit. So I pray that we would consider these things well and wisely, that we would commit ourselves to the authority of God's word and that we would know that it is sufficient for our every need.

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The Bible has spoken into our lives. And even though we live in a different time and in a different culture than the times in which these things were written, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double -edged sword penetrating to the heart.

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And so it is still working, still active, still doing its thing even today.

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This Bible that we have, that has brought together all of the words of your prophets and apostles over the years that you spoke through them.

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May you continue to speak through them to us even now as we commit ourselves to this way.

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Help us to live upright and godly lives in the present age. Help us to pursue holiness and godliness and encourage one another in that as well.

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Encouraging and admonishing one another the instruction that Paul gave to the Colossians. Let us be that way with each other that we may all grow together in maturity into the head of this body and that is

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Christ Jesus. In whose name we pray. Amen. Amen. I couldn't resist.

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Do you have a plug -in for this? No, I don't. Why? Why am I supposed to have portals for you to plug your stuff into?

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Because you love your wife so much. So I'm just supposed to have extra portals around.

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I can plug your devices into. Yes. I don't. I don't have anywhere for this to go.

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Why wouldn't you? I've got my wireless mouse plugged in.

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I almost said wireless mice. I've got my wireless mouse plugged in. Okay, so you need that. I've got the soundboard plugged in.

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You kind of need that. Mine has three or four. Mine has three. So where's your third?

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I don't want to. We're recording. I don't want to like overload the thing. You can't overload your thing.

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It's plugged in. No, not like, I'm not talking with... Charging?

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Yeah, like absorbing energy out of my computer. I mean that I don't want to stick something in there that's going to make the computer go, hang on,

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I got to run a whole other thing. You just have a thing against apples. I do have a thing against apple. You are absolutely right.

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Ever since Adam and Eve ate one and we have been steeped in a fallen world ever since.