The issue of leadership is an all important one in any institution including the church. You know, I’m sure very well that even in the family, the person who’s the head – the father dictates the prosperity and progress of the family. In any company, it’s exactly the same thing. Everything hangs to a large measure on who the chief executive is. It’s the same with nations. The presidents that are chosen often will bear the fruit in due season or not. The church is exactly the same. Leadership is vital as far as the life of the Church is concerned.
Unbiblical Selection of Leaders in the Church
Sadly, in a lot of church situations, leaders are not chosen based on their spirituality or godliness. They tend to be chosen because of their wealth. They tend to be chosen because of their status. And sometimes, especially in villages, it depends on whether the person is closely related to the chief or the headman in the village. That ought not to be the case because issues of the qualifications of leaders cannot be missed in the New Testament epistles.
Biblical Qualifications for Elders
For instance, in 1Timothy 3, we have the qualifications of elders. “The saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s Church? He must not be a recent convert or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace into a snare of the devil.”
What you notice in that passage are at least three areas of qualification for those who are going to lead the church who are called elders. And it is number one personal maturity. You would not have missed that when it was speaking in terms of one who is gentle, one who is not a lover of money and so forth. Including one who is a husband of one wife. And then you have the area of domestic qualification. How is this person leading his family? In fact, the Bible goes on to say, if a person does not know how he can manage his own household, how is he going to manage the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ? I think it’s obvious.
And then the third is in terms of the community testimony because if such such a person has a poor testimony out there, then obviously he was going to bring disrespect to the church. When you go to the book of Titus, you find yet another aspect that is mentioned almost in passing in 1 Timothy and it is their being able to teach and there you find the statement that it must be somebody who holds firmly to the trustworthy message. So these are the qualifications that must be there with respect to somebody who’s leading the church as an elder.
The Role and Qualifications of Deacons
But then there are also others who are brought into the context of the church in order to assist the elders in their work especially with respect to the more mundane tasks and it is those who are called deacons. How they came into office is something that is given to us by way of record in Acts 6. We read there, Acts 6:1, “Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number a complaint by the helenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.” Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we would devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
Well, that’s how deacons came into office. They were a result of the elders who at that time were the apostles failing to cope with the responsibility of giving food to the widows, those who had no other means by which they were going to sustain themselves. And so the apostles called the members together and said look we have more important things to deal with and that is the teaching and preaching of God’s word and also praying to God that he might attend this ministry with success. And so they recommended the choosing of other men to whom they could give this responsibility so that they would be the ones going around the widows enabling them to receive their regular supplies. Today you will find the deacons also handle issues of finances, issues of property and so on – a lot of the other administrative responsibilities.
They are not competitors with the elders. They serve under the elders dealing with those areas that would otherwise take away so much of their time from the work of oversight. That’s the way in which God ordained that his Church would be led. And even the deacons have qualifications that are mentioned in 1 Timothy 3:8, “Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double tonged, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them also be tested first. Then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless.” 1 Timothy 3:11, “Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober minded, faithful in all things.”
The point that is being mentioned there is that even the deacons must be qualified. You don’t just bring somebody in because you like them or because they are your ‘yes-yes’ men. You bring them in because they are also truly godly individuals who qualify as we have just seen in the scriptures. So that’s the challenge that we need to respond to in our churches. We mustn’t just appoint people to the position of elders because they are wealthy or because they’ve got a status in society or because they are related to a chief or a village headman. We must go to the Bible and say what does the head of the church say with respect to the qualifications of those who are to lead the church and then as individuals qualify we then bring them into the church to provide leadership. That way we preserve the godliness that is there in the church, the spirituality that is there in the church.
Servant Leadership as the Model of Christ
Putting it another way, leadership of the Church is servant leadership. It is recognizing that we are there in order to ensure that Christ’s sheep are well looked after. That they are being led according to the direction that the head of the Church wants them to be led in. We who are leaders must be servants. We must be genuinely humble instead of calling attention to ourselves or wanting to be people who are drunk with authority so that God’s people end up being ones who are serving us, carrying our Bibles and things like that, being the ones who are as it were rolling out the red carpet for us. It ought not to be so. We must be individuals who are like Christ – qualified as we saw earlier on. Are those the kind of leaders you have in your church? Let’s make sure we follow the biblical example.
