How to apply elder qualifications

But Chuck just to wrap up this episode, what do I do if I'm listening to this and I realize oh no. My pastor doesn't meet the qualification or oh no, I'm a pastor and I don't meet the qualifications or.

Maybe I didn't like my preacher anyway, and so now I got ammo. We don't want you to take this podcast and say, you know. Well, I didn't like this guy anyway. And now I have a reason to bring to him a why I don't like him.

Because I don't think he does all these things. That that Chuck and TJ are talking about.

Yes a loaded question, I mean you could that's why I'm asking you thank you. Yeah, where's John when we need him. You know, one thing is to kind of check yourself. So if you hear that and with arrogance think now I've got ammo like you just said.

Well. No, you don't you need to back up a bit. Whatever conversation you might have needs to be one that is accompanied by humility. So if you're if you're coming with arrogance, you've already lost this fight, even if you might be right, you know.

You're not coming correctly. Another thing to consider is the scriptures say that we're not to Receive an accusation against an elder except by two or three witnesses. So if you are alone in your observations if by yourself you see this and no one else sees this Then do you really see this?

So you need to be careful with that also.

What's the rest of the question. Well, you know when we were talking about this before we recorded you had mentioned and I think this is such a perfect step but it is to say if if there's a question of qualification or of gifting or of character.

With your elder, you know Chuck you had mentioned one of the best things you could do is to go to that man and to say Hey, I've been thinking a lot about. About what the scriptures say about elders and deacons.

Would you go through a study with me on that?

Well, yeah, if there's something that's so you know, if it's something that's flagrant Immoral that might be addressed very different, right? Right. But yeah, if if you're thinking well, maybe he's not so gentle he could be more gentle than.

Rather than accosting him and saying you're not very gentle, you know in a very ungentle way you could ask him to help you understand these passages better and.

See where the Lord leads that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that'd be fantastic. So when Chuck when when we're done wrapping up this podcast, I need to sit down and have a study with you.

But no you want to wrap it up. Yes, we bring this episode to a conclusion. I would mention that a big help in looking at all of this. In these past months has been a recent series of books written by our Martin.

There are other books that address this but Martin's own life so clearly reflects these characters and then he writes about them three volumes. Massive volumes the middle volume the second volume is actually on preparing to preach so sermon preparation and delivery.

But the first and the third volume both kind of deal with this issue. The first volume the call to the ministry. So the pastor looking at this, you know looking at yourself as you're considering this the third volume more along the lines of the church.

Looking at this a lot of information much more than we've covered or we'll be able to cover.

Yeah, we'll make sure there's a link to that three volume set in the show notes. Yeah.