Book of Titus - Ch. 1, v. 6b (Pt. 2)

All right, we are still in Titus. You all can turn there if you haven't already.

We're going to get a little bit further in this kind of sub -study that we're doing on the children of elders specifically.

Of course, we're talking broadly about the qualifications of elders. But we have parked on Chapter 1, verse 6b for the past couple of weeks, well, last week and this week for sure, and then most likely next week as well, because this is really important stuff.

This is what we deemed last week is the neglected qualification. This is the one that doesn't get as much attention, if any attention at all, by the 21st century church.

Certainly in America, I imagine it's probably still an issue, other places around the world as well, perhaps in the

West. But for whatever reason, the qualification with regard to the children of elders is neglected to the point where we now have this proverbial saying, known as the preacher's kids, the

PKs, the pastor's kids, this cute little thing that everyone laughs at, but just moves on with their day without thinking twice about why all of a sudden this cliche has entered the picture.

When you read everything from the early church fathers, all the way up through early church history, all the way through the

Reformation, the Puritan age, the great awakening age of Jonathan Edwards, and all the way through Spurgeon, and then even the 20th century theologians, all of them took this very seriously.

At least the conservative ones did. And now all of a sudden in the last, I don't know how many decades that this cliche has entered the picture of the preacher's kids, where it's just the thing.

It's just, I'll never forget once taking a kid that I thought was my friend when

I was about 15, or I would have had to have been 16 because I had my driver's license. He was on my basketball team. And I drove him and my little brother

Matt out to our place, my parents' place, and we were just gonna shoot some hoops and hang out out there.

And he gets out there and was like, whoa, this place would be awesome for a party or something.

And Matt and I both looked at him really weirdly. It was like, why would that be your first thought?

And one of the two of us, I can't remember if it was Matt or me, said something like that. That's not what we do out here.

And he was like, whoa, y 'all aren't like most preacher's kids. And so this cliche again has permeated the cultural view of pastors and their relationship to their kids.

And it was not for the better, I will say that. Again, that proverbial idea is not a good one.

It is a bad one. And so let's read the verse really quick. And then we'll pick up kind of where we left off last week.

If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of riot or unruly.

Now, I want us to think about something. I'm literally just gonna flow right into where we left off last week.

For those who may be joining us for the first time in this study, you can check out our archive at parmentoschurch .com

and get caught up. But in verse five, when

Paul kind of begins laying things out, the purpose for Titus, the purpose for this letter, the things he intends for Titus to accomplish, he says, ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee.

So think about the immediate context here. And we tease this at the end of last week. Mimi brought up an interesting point.

Because we're talking about the qualification in general, we're talking about needing to keep your household in order and needing to keep your kids disciplined and things like that.

Just some of these general ideas and the importance of it. And Mimi, at the very end of the lesson, pointed out how they had a pastor,

I guess it was in San Marcos, maybe even back in Houston, where some 30 years into his ministry, he had an older child that was an adult at that point.

Well outside of the realm of the household of that pastor that I don't know the details.

She just kind of implied he was a wayward child at that point, not a believer, perhaps, or something along those lines.

And so I brought this up at the end of last week just to kind of start to address what she was mentioning, because her point was he's not disqualified because the kid was older, an adult out of his house, and so on and so forth.

And so that did bring to light a very important aspect of the context of these qualifications, and that being, what is

Paul telling Titus to do? He's saying to ordain elders in every city, as I appointed thee, to ordain them. He's not saying to go out and find veteran elders, veteran pastors that have been pastors for 30 years.

He's saying ordain them. In other words, they're brand new. You can think of these guys that Titus is to go look for as elder candidates.

They're not yet elders. And so when you keep the immediate context in mind, I think that is important as we go through some of these qualifications, because while some of them are very black and white, kind of the bedrock of what it means to be a good pastor in the first place, such as having a faithful marriage, having an orderly household, being hospitable, a number of other things we'll get to, there are some that no doubt have interesting theological implications the farther out into the future you go, such as the orderliness and perhaps even the belief of your kids in their adulthood.

We're gonna get to some of this stuff. We're gonna flesh some of what I was just teasing out a little bit more shortly, but just keep that in mind.

The immediate context is the ordination of elders, not the recruitment of veteran elders.

The first thing to note here is we get the immediate context of verse six in verse five. We're not talking about appointing someone as an elder, not about someone that's been an elder for 20 or 30 years.

For example, the qualifications have specially to do with the appointing of a new minister.

What Paul is talking about here is not necessarily firing a minister two years before his retirement, because maybe one of his adult kids went haywire.

So that isn't what's in view in Paul's list of qualifications here, but the ordination of elder candidates is.

So just to be frank with you guys, just to be totally honest, the Bible doesn't necessarily give us any explicit, and that's the key word there, explicit direction on what to do if the adult child of an elder commits a crime and maybe ends up in jail or something dramatic like that.

We're not explicitly told what to do if an elder's five biological kids are completely faithful servants of the

Lord, but the adopted kid from his brother's broken marriage, his sister's broken marriage that he adopted later in life because the home fell apart, what happens if that kid falls away from the faith?

His biological kids are all very faithful to the Lord, but the kid that he adopted in the graciousness of his heart, the desire to help that person, protect them from a broken family, then they go wayward later in life.

We're not told what to do in some of these particular situations that may come about.

So something that we must keep in mind when considering this qualification over against the previous qualification we talked about, which was to be a faithful husband, a one -woman man, is we have to understand the importance of having judicious, godly elders, and having them cannot be overstated because in many cases, these calls will rely on their

God -given discernment based upon the information that we do have from Scripture. So in other words, if you're ordaining a new elder and he's got a family that is in shambles and some kids that are unruly in his household, that is a telltale sign that he is not ready for ministry and perhaps not qualified for ministry at all, pastoral ministry specifically.

However, if you have an elder candidate who has five biological kids that are all faithful servants of the

Lord, but one kid that he adopted because that kid, perhaps it was a baby whose mother was addicted to drugs while the baby was still in the womb and is now dealing with the side effects from that.

Maybe it's a child that was maybe his nephew or niece, but then his sibling's marriage just totally fell apart, so he adopted his nephew or niece maybe later in life around the ages of 11, 12, 13, and then in adulthood, that kid went wayward.

What do you do about some of these things? These are very, they're hypotheticals, of course, but they're very particular as well, and I believe that it is situations like that that bring the emphasis of the local church to a whole new light, which, of course, we, again, tackled just a little bit at the very end of last week.

In other words, local churches with godly, judicious elders having god -given discernment for how to make calls based on situations that are brought before them for potential elder candidates that isn't just a clean -cut, black -and -white, perfect example of a guy with two young kids.

He and his wife have been in a faithful marriage for five, six, maybe 10 years. He meets all the qualifications, just sharp as a tack, and so, obviously, that is very easy, but what if it's an older man who just got called to ministry?

His kids are all older. Five of them are very faithful. One of them is wayward, but the one that's wayward isn't even his biological kid.

He did the best he possibly could. What do you do with that? Well, god -given discernment is where you start using the scriptural foundation that you do have, so that's a big, important aspect of this particular point in the study.

Now, this is in no way, as you guys can tell, just based on what we've talked about so far, this is in no way a simplistic issue, or a totally black -and -white issue, especially with regard to the children, with regard to the kids, and it's not one that you can adopt some premeditated formula in order to address.

Now, some local churches may do that, and frankly, it's their prerogative to do that. If a church wants to say, we are not going to ordain or appoint any elders in this local church unless they meet this formula, and maybe they base the formula off of what you might call a hyperliteral interpretation of this passage, again, that's their prerogative.

They can do that, but other local churches are not held to their interpretation, or the way they approach it, and so god -given discernment from the scripture, it's not simplistic.

You can't adopt a premeditated formula for it, but what do we have to do? What we do have to do is return to the

Bible as our sole infallible rule of faith, regardless of how unflattering it may be for some people.

There is a balance in spirit and scripturally -led discernment.

There's a balance between doing that and then showing grace, quote -unquote, because you like the guy. So yeah, you have to start with the scripture, and you have to let the spirit lead, but just because you like the guy, even though he has an unruly house with kids bouncing off the walls in a bad way, not that kids having fun is a bad thing, but bouncing off the walls in a bad way, they're rebellious, they're disobedient, everyone knows it.

Perhaps his marriage is not exemplary. Perhaps he's not all that hospitable. Maybe he's good at teaching the

Bible, but that's about it. You can't just give a guy grace, quote -unquote, because you like him, even though he obviously doesn't fit the qualifications.

So there's a balance between going straight from the scripture and then having God -given discernment in situations kind of like I laid out a minute ago.

He's got adult kids, five of them are faithful. He's got one adopted kid that went wayward. He did the absolute best he could.

After he adopted the kid, he and his wife in the teenage years, and they fell away. Discernment is absolutely a factor in cases like that.

For example, people will think about kids, just to kind of go back to the showing grace to a person, even when they don't meet the clear qualifications.

A lot of people think about the kids of the patriarchs, like Jacob or even David later on, and of course, the disaster that some of their kids were.

Think about Eli, the prophet, and his two sons that he got in trouble for. These guys had absolutely disaster scenarios with regard to their kids.

Jacob had terrible kids, and of course, that's where the tribes of Israel came from. The line of the Messiah came through Judah.

Go read his story if you want a disaster. You have David, you have Solomon that was crazy, you have

Eli with crazy kids, and so a lot of people will look at those, and they will actually use those stories as justification for either restoring a fallen pastor or perhaps ordaining a pastor that has obstinate kids, because they'll say, well, if David with his crazy kids was good enough to be king, or Solomon with his kids was good enough to be king, or Eli as a prophet, then surely, and these guys wrote the

Bible, surely our pastor or this guy that we want to be pastor will be okay, even though his kids are absolutely bonkers.

Well, here's the thing. For the same reason that we can't apply that logic to the previous qualification, you remember what the previous qualification was?

Being faithful to one wife. Obviously, David and Solomon don't fit that bill, and there were a few prophets that didn't either, some by means of God's instruction.

You think about Hosea, not that he wasn't faithful to her, but obviously, that was a very interesting scenario. Jacob, two wives, these were guys that had very, and of course, he didn't treat one of them nicely, and so you can't use these guys as your example for who to ordain as a pastor or who to restore, quote -unquote, as a pastor, because those men weren't pastors.

The prophets weren't pastors, the kings weren't pastors, they were not shepherds of God's household, and none of the guys

I've mentioned so far would have qualified to be such, and you think, well, goodness, Ben, if the prophets can't qualify, some of the prophets, if the kings can't qualify, then who can?

Well, we talked about this either last week or week before, and it would have had to have been last week, and I will say this, it is by God's grace alone that any man can fit these qualifications because of our depravity.

Any one of them, let alone all of them simultaneously, are a very tough job, but the reason why the standard is held so high in the age of grace, where the prophets and the kings are no more, is because we are now living in an age where the shepherds of a flock, of a local body of a local flock, are intended to be the type, or the picture, of Christ as the great shepherd of his flock, and so the standards were raised for this particular office of the church by Paul, by Peter, by James, by Jesus himself, and what's amazing about it is the qualifications, they are comprehensive, but they by no means require perfection.

In other words, we're not looking for perfect, sinless men to be our pastors. We are looking for men that fit this criteria really well.

In other words, they have good character. They are able to be faithful to one wife. They are able to, through love, lead their household to such a degree where his kids actually respect him, obey him, want to follow him, he is worthy of obedience, and therefore there's no riot or unruly going on.

He is hospitable, he's apt to teach, he is able to rebuke false teachers in the midst of his flock, so on and so forth.

These are very specific things that those Old Testament examples would not have fit, and yet it still doesn't require perfection in order to fit them, so it's all really amazing stuff.

The office of pastor, of elder, is truly an amazing thing that God ordained, and again, by his grace, that we even have men that can qualify, but you can't use those

Old Testament guys as examples for why you should be able to ordain someone even if they don't meet the qualifications.

So now the question is, if that is true, how do we start approaching this matter, especially as it relates to kids, having your house in order, kids that aren't subject to riot and unruly?

Well, for starters, we have to understand that not all disqualifications are the same, and I use the term disqualifications somewhat loosely here, just bear with me a little bit, because, well, you'll see what

I'm talking about in just a second, I'm using that term kind of broadly for just a second. Not all disqualifications are the same.

Some men are disqualified absolutely, and they have zero case for serving a pastorate ever again.

One prominent example just came out in the news three weeks ago this Tuesday. I won't say his name, because I'm not gonna get our minds on all of that from our

Sunday school table, but very prominent pastor, especially in the reformed world, in Fort Worth, or maybe the

Dallas area, I can't remember, he was absolutely disqualified, and is disqualified from the ministry forever.

So there's a good black and white scenario for you right there. And, of course, it is more obvious with the sexual sins, like that particular case was.

The sexual sins are about as black and white as you can get with regard to disqualifications and being barred from the pastorate ever again.

But there are some examples, believe it or not, where they do involve raising their kids, and that is somewhat obvious too.

There are occasions, for example, when the pastoral candidate is completely on board with all the other qualifications.

He's willing to be a faithful husband, he's willing to be hospitable, he's apt to teach, perhaps, so on and so forth, but he just doesn't get this one.

In other words, he just doesn't give the same reverence to raising his kids as he does the other qualifications.

For example, he may be a guy who's had, so picture yourself being on an elder board for just a second.

Okay, and so you're an elder of a local church, and it is your job in the midst of the other elders to ordain this particular elder candidate that has come to you guys, perhaps requesting a job or whatever it may be.

And you find out that this guy has had six wives, two of which were after he got saved, and the reasons for the divorces across the board in every case was just because the quote -unquote chemistry wasn't just right.

So you find out something like that, that's pretty black and white, or maybe it's a guy with six kids, all of which are so rebellious and unruly that no one ever wants them to even be around, and yet the dad wonders what the big deal is.

Why is everyone acting so weird around my kids? He might even accuse anyone that shows some level of scrutiny toward the way he's raising his kids as being a quote -unquote legalist.

And so you do have some black and white scenarios, even as it relates to not just marriages, but also raising kids and raising a family.

That is a person that does not meet the qualifications that Paul has in mind here, that Paul's giving Titus, and therefore, that particular elder board should not ordain that man.

Yes, sir, or yes, ma 'am, sorry, talking too fast, Emily. Okay, so if someone meets these qualifications, does that mean that they meet you?

Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, Emily asked, for those that may not have heard online, if a guy meets all these qualifications, does that mean he has to be a pastor, or does something have to precede that?

And the answer is yes, Emily, there are a number of great guys out there that a, someone like me, or maybe dad, or maybe

Pop Pop, or maybe even you. I mean, it could be anybody in the congregation. It's like, hey, he's a great dad.

His kids are in wonderful, obedient, orderly fashion.

His house is in order. He has a very faithful marriage. He seems like a great Bible teacher. Every time I've heard him talk about the

Bible, it is super solid. He's very hospitable. He's invited me over to, my family over to their house many times, they're great hosts.

You go down the whole list, he's met all of them. But just because all the qualifications are met does not necessarily mean he needs or has to be a pastor because you kind of, he does need to have that calling from the

Spirit, that conviction within him. Now, let me say this, and this is something

I learned recently. I wouldn't have agreed with this all that long ago, but I do think there's good merit to it.

And this is something that dad brought to my attention not all that long ago, is the thing that very well may initiate a man contemplating these things for the first time ever and thinking, huh,

I've never really even thought about it, is a person like yourself in the congregation or maybe another elder going to him and saying, look, you have all these spiritual gifts and all of these spiritual gifts meet the qualifications of an elder.

I think the Lord may have something in store for you like that. That very thing may, again, give rise to consideration that's never been there before and the

Holy Spirit could use that to resonate something in his heart, to stir up something within him, to then know, you know what,

I am supposed to do this. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I would say it can be dynamic.

It's not just a set in stone, this is how it happens every single time sort of thing.

But just to answer your question more simply, it doesn't necessarily mean they should be an elder even if they meet all the qualifications because they may not feel it.

They may not have the conviction to be one. But that's a fantastic question and a good thing to keep in mind.

So just kind of on the backside of that, the assumption in the study we're doing are men that do feel called and now the elders are having to discern is he, does he meet the qualifications?

And if there seems to be a little bit of a gray area for like some of the hypotheticals I gave earlier, how should the

Lord, how is the Lord leading us to handle this? So the assumption in this study is that they felt called and it is now the impetus of the elders to go in there and make sure he's right for the job, discerned by the word and by the spirit.

And so really, really good question there, Emily. Okay, so I gave you guys a couple of black and white scenarios there, but there are going to be some scenarios that aren't as crystal clear and those must be considered as well.

It's the exceptional scenarios that have to be weighed in a particularly careful manner.

They have to be discerned by the church and especially its elders and by what standard?

Using the scriptures that we have is the foundation for any approach taken. It has to start there.

It may be a scenario that the Bible doesn't explicitly refer, us to, for example, the hypothetical

I gave earlier where the guy's biological kids are all awesome faithful servants of the Lord and his adopted kid is now wayward.

That's where the discernment factor comes in. I keep repeating myself on that because I just want, I want to emphasize to everybody that God, this is another great testimony of how

God desires to work in and through his people. So he gives us, the

Bible is sufficient. It's everything that we could possibly need pertaining to our faith, life, practices, philosophy, everything is in this word.

But at the same time, God delivered in such a way that still requires our relationship to him to be solid.

In other words, a legalist by biblical standards would love nothing more than the

Bible to be four times bigger than it is with way more specific rules and regulations and law so that they can use that as their source of life rather than a relationship with the

Lord. The way the Lord did it is he did give us a book that's infallible, that is sufficient, that is our rule of faith, but he did so in conjunction with a relationship with him so that he can do it with us because he loves us and he wants us to be, he wants to be a part of it with us through his spirit.

And so the reason I'm being somewhat repetitious in this lesson is because I want to emphasize that important factor,

God -given discernment. It's there so that he can work with us and through us so that we can rely on him to get the job done in a manner that is pleasing to him.

So let's say that a pastor has five faithful kids and this is a little bit different than the hypothetical

I gave earlier. They live exemplary lives all the way around. He's got five kids that are just wonderful servants of the

Lord, wonderful testimonies, living faithful lives through and through. But he has one black sheep in the fold.

So he has six kids total, all of them are biological. So this, you know, earlier I used a hypothetical where you have an adopted kid in mind where he was perhaps adopted later in life, maybe in the teen years.

But no, here we have six biological kids, five are wonderfully faithful, and there's one, let's just call it the black sheep of the family.

Still a biological kid though. You have six total kids, one of them is questionable by these standards.

Maybe whether it has to do with riot and unruly, whether it has to do with obedience, discipline, or maybe it has to do with having a disdain for the word of God and church and walking a

Christian life. He has a disdain for God's moral standards and he couldn't care less or she couldn't care less about following in the

Lord's footsteps, letting his word be a lamp for all of their paths and for being faithful like the other siblings are.

Is the pastor in that situation disqualified? That's the question. Turn to Luke really quick.

The book of Luke chapter 15. Luke chapter 15, the

Bible actually gives us an idea because this particular context has its own context, it has its own historical context.

God, Jesus, here had a very specific thing, a very specific message he was coming across.

But I believe from these words of Jesus here, from these words of Jesus, we can get an idea of what the father is the shepherd of his own family should do in this particular scenario that I just gave.

Five faithful kids, one black sheep that is not living a holy life.

They are turned off by religion in general. And again, they're just the black sheep of the family for whatever the reason may be.

Look at Luke chapter 15, start in verse four. Jesus in giving a parable says, "'What man of you, having a hundred sheep, "'if he lose one of them, "'doth not leave the 99 in the wilderness "'and go after that which is lost until he find it?

"'And when he has found it, "'he layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing. "'And when he cometh home, "'he calleth together his friends in his neighbor, "'saying to them, "'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep, "'which was lost.'"

So think about that for just a second. And I'm just gonna tease this idea and we'll pick it up here next week.

With that in mind, let's take this in two different steps. Let's think about not just the elder candidate, which again is the immediate context of these qualifications, but let's also think about the veteran elders too.

Because you have to think, even though it may be different for an elder of 15, 20, 30 years, and he has an adult child that goes wayward and is denying the faith all of a sudden, for whatever the reason may be.

That may not be disqualifying in and of itself. However, does that mean that it's just to be a situation ignored?

Maybe not. And so let's think about it in two steps. Let's think about the veteran elder and the elder candidate with this passage with Jesus' words in mind.

For the veteran elder, I do not think he is disqualified from the ministry outright. In other words, he's been an elder for 30 years.

He's got five, he's got six kids, five wonderful adult children that are faithful, have their own families. All of his grandkids are faithful servants of the

Lord. Come on in, Russell. Y 'all aren't interrupting anything. We'll be wrapping it up in just a sec. And then he has the one adult child that's wayward.

I don't think that's a disqualifying factor outright. However, what I do believe is that as the shepherd of his household, first and foremost, even above being the shepherd of the flock of God's house, and that can be substantiated in a number of passages,

I believe his responsibility is to go get that lost sheep back, and the other elders can help him do that.

The other elders of his local church can actually help him go do that. How is that possible? Well, they can watch over the flock, the other 99 in the local church, while the shepherd goes after the one, the one sheep that has gone astray, the one sheep that is missing.

He needs to try to go get that sheep, and he needs to try to get the sheep that can't take care of itself for whatever reason.

There are spiritual things going on where the life of that person, of one of his children is tough, and things aren't going right.

And so what should the veteran elder, what is the veteran elder to do? Well, it's not a requirement.

It's not a biblical qualification. This is me taking some of these ideas, along with Jesus's words here in this particular parable, and extrapolating it into the household of a pastor.

And I think he has every right. He has the responsibility, I would argue, but certainly every right if he feels convicted, to let his local congregation know,

I'm gonna leave you in good hands. I'm gonna take a sabbatical, a brief sabbatical from the pastorate, and I'm gonna leave you in the able hands of my fellow elders to shepherd the flock so that I can go get the one, so that I can go after the one.

Now, obviously, salvation is of God. I'm not saying that that man has the ability to go out and save, meaning the eternal salvation of that person, of that child.

That's not what I'm getting at here. But rather, in the evangelistic sense, going out and figuring out what went wrong, having conversations, dedicating his time away from the pastorate, where otherwise he would have been really busy and focused on all of that, to focus in on his kid, and to figure out where are some areas maybe

I went wrong so that I can apologize. Where are some areas that I could have been better?

You know, did you feel neglected? Did you feel this? Did you feel that? Open up a little bit in these intimate conversations with your kid, and the

Lord very well may use that as a means, as a witness to your kid to bring him into the fold, to bring him back into the fold with the other 99.

Again, salvation is of God. And after so long, the father will need to, in this scenario that I'm giving, again, this is just me talking.

In that scenario, after so long, the father would have to rest easy knowing he has been faithful in planting the seed for the

Holy Spirit to water. You get what I'm saying there? So I'm not saying that the pastor needs to take an indefinite sabbatical for perhaps as many years as it takes to get his kid saved, because salvation is in the hands of God.

But take some time to plant seeds and to let your kid know, I do care about you more than anyone else, as much as all of your other siblings, right alongside your mother.

Of course, you know, there should be a hierarchy there. You should love the spouse more than the kids, but letting them know that along with your siblings,

I love you more than anyone else on this earth other than your mother, more than anybody else, and I am gonna give you some dedicated one -on -one time for as long as you want so that we can grow close together and figure some things out because I don't feel like you're on a path.

In fact, I know you're not on a path that is going to be any good for your soul. And so let's spend some time together.

And you do that for as long as you feel convicted to do so. And then the Holy Spirit will give you the peace to return to your duty as a shepherd over the rest of the flock and let the

Holy Spirit do the rest. So is that straight from the Bible? Not necessarily.

There are some inferences I'm pulling there. I'm extrapolating Jesus's words how the shepherd should view his flock.

And the kids of a pastor are the most integral part of his flock as well as his spouse.

And I'm applying that to some of these interesting hypothetical scenarios that an elder may face at some point in his pastorate.

And so that is the standard that I will personally be living by as my kids grow older.

But does that mean that every elder has to do exactly what I just laid out? Absolutely not. These are just some things that I feel a personal conviction regarding and how

I will approach my own pastoral ministry as it relates to my children. So let me end it there.

We're now a couple of minutes over. I was a little bit too verbose there with that part at the end, but we'll pick it up where we left off next week because there's still some more good things to talk about.

I will probably try to round down the study on verse six next week if I can.

There's so much that I could cover, but I think we're getting a really good idea of this particular qualification.

So I think we can finish it up next week. Does anyone have any thoughts? No, feel free.

You can go ahead. When you mentioned at the beginning, you mentioned... Right.

Maybe I'll do the first week. Sure. So there's two different ways you could look at it.

You could look at it, firstly, as a guy that is saying, hey guys, I feel called to the ministry and I would like to be considered for the eldership at your church.

And the other elders look at his household, which they should do. They should examine his household closely. And they see that all of his kids who all still live under his roof are just kind of all over the place.

They're not in just that they're kids having fun. That's not what I mean. I mean, they are rebellious. They are disobedient.

They're slow to obey, if they obey at all. They're unnecessarily rude and unruly and maybe a little bit rebellious.

That is a disqualifying factor because it means he does not yet have his house in order. So that's one way to look at it.

What if he's already... So if he's ordained, maybe he's ordained before he has kids or when his kids are babies and then they grow up to be unruly.

It would be a little bit different there. And it would, you, the congregation would have to rely on the other elders to go to him and let him know that your house is not in order.

And if you don't get it in order based upon the standards that God gives, because if his kids are under his household, it is his responsibility, not just prerogative, but his responsibility to make sure his house is in order, to make sure his kids are not rebellious and unruly.

And so that would be a disqualifying factor if he didn't do anything about it. That's the key. So, okay,

I'll end with this. And I think I'll address this more next week, but let's say a pastor's kid slips up and sins.

Are we saying here that the pastor's kids have to be sinless? Absolutely not. In fact, they will mess up and sometimes they'll sin pretty bad.

They may get caught behind Walmart smoking a cigarette just because they thought it'd be cool at the age of 12 or 13 with some of the kids around town and someone in the pastor's congregation saw it and let him know about it.

That is not what's disqualifying in and of itself. What could potentially be disqualifying is what does the pastor do about that situation?

That is the potential disqualifying factor. He's like, oh, so what? That could be an issue.

That could be a disqualifying factor. Yeah, and he is actually supporting the sinful lusts or desires or perhaps rebellious tendencies of this kid.

That could be disqualifying, even if he's already an elder. But it all has to do with his attitude, his character, and his ability to get his house in order.

So that's a big one. And we'll pick up with that thought next week too. So I have some more things to say about it.

That was just a nutshell version. All right, let's go ahead and dismiss just because we are late at this point and we'll move on to the next service.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this wonderful day. Thank you for bringing us together once again. We ask you to continue to be with us today.

We ask you to bind and rebuke the spiritual warfare that may be around us, to bless our services with no distractions.

We ask you to bless our technology as well and ensure that we don't have any hiccups or anything that just throws us off.

Bless the next service. Bless our time together. We ask all these things in your name, amen. Thank you guys very much.