As I read Barbara Shields book Winners-Women And The Nobel
Prize, I was so impressed by the life and leadership of Agnes
Gunxha, better known as Mother Teresa. As I read of her life and
ministry I kept seeing her fulfilling the requirements that Paul lays
down for one to be an elder, or leader, in the church. We see such
words as blameless, not overbearing, not quick tempered, not given
to much wine, not violent, and not pursuing dishonest gain.
That is a lot of nots that are not to be, but Paul does not stop
with the negative, but goes on to add these positives: Be hospitable,
love what is good, be self-controlled, be upright, be holy, be
disciplined, hold firm to the truth, and encourage others. The ideal
Christian life is one of balance with much that is popular in the
world to be excluded, and much that is unpopular to be included.
Negatives and positives in balance is what the Christian life is all
about. I was impressed at how a nun could achieve this balance.
She had been in a convent for 20 years, but at age 38 she launched a
new ministry to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. The filth
and ugliness, and the daily death of babies and others starving was
beyond description.
For months she worked alone. She would gather children
between a hut and teach them the alphabet by writing with a stick
on the ground. She had no money, for she had taken a vow of
poverty. Some people became aware of what she was doing and
gave her a little money and some bars of soap. These children had
never seen a bar of soap. She taught them how to clean themselves,
and she told them of the love of God. She had to beg for medicine to
give to these people. Other women joined her. They would rise at
4:30 A. M. to worship and have a balanced breakfast. Mother
Teresa was strong on having a good diet for health and strength to
do the demanding work they were doing.
Their labor was all in vain she taught if it was not done in joy.
Cheerfulness and love did more for people than food and medicine
she taught, and so all her helpers had to join in the evening fun time
where they would laugh and shout, and play games and sing. It was
hard work, and it was often depressing, and so they needed this for
balance. They lived in poverty like the people to whom they
ministered. They would rescue abandoned and dying babies left in
trash bins. Mother Teresa had a vast collection of photos of her
children that had been adopted from her home to families around
the world. She built the Town of Peace with the help of the Indian
government. This is a town where lepers are treated, and where
they learn a trade, and live a normal life.
We can't begin to describe all of her work among the world's
poorest, and most rejected population. She touched so many lives
and received an avalanche of awards from all over the world. Vast
amounts of money were involved, and all of it went to building more
ministry to the poor. She lived in a small room with no symbols of
affluence. She could pack to move in about 10 minutes. Young men
began to join her Missionaries of Charity, as they were called, and
whole new ministries were started for men and boys in the slums.
So many around the world began to contribute to her cause that she
expanded and opened homes in most of the large cities in the world
from New York to Tokyo.
What she learned is that the greatest hunger in the world is not
for bread but for love. It is poverty of the spirit that is the heaviest
burden to bear, and even rich people suffer this kind of poverty. In
December of 1979 she flew from Calcutta to Oslo, Norway to receive
the Nobel Peace Prize. It was the tradition to have a great banquet
in the honor of the recipient of this great prize. She begged the
committee to forget the banquet and give her the money. This added
7 thousand dollars to the 190 thousand dollar prize. She used it all
to build homes for the poor and the lepers. That year she opened 14
centers outside of India. She has over 100 centers in operation with7
thousand people a day being fed in Calcutta alone.
The stories of her love and care for those rejected by the world
are endless. I share this description of her life and ministry because
it exhibits what Paul is getting at as he lists the requirements for
being a Christian leader. Excellence is the bottom line, and that
means a life that displays the spirit of Christ in attitude and action.
Here is a person who has over a lifetime demonstrated self-control.
She could have changed radically from her commitment to the poor.
She could have let the money she won lead her to greed. She could
have been overcome by the chance to live the life of the rich and
famous. But she was so disciplined and self-controlled that she did
what many other Christian leaders could not do. She remained the
same person with wealth in her hands as she was when she had
nothing. That is excellence of spirit.
Paul says this is what Christian leaders are to be. They are not
to be people who get captured by the culture, or by circumstances.
They are to be people who are stable and consistent in their
commitments regardless of changes in life. Christ-centered people
are not violent, overbearing, and self-centered, which disqualifies
one for Christian leadership.
There are many books today with studies that reveal that the
Bible holds women equally accountable for living up to these
standards of excellence. So as we look at the specifics we need to
keep in mind that these apply to both sexes and not just to men, just
because they were the vast majority of leaders in the early church.
We are starting where we left off in a previous message. The next
requirement to be a church leader is to be one who is-
NOT OVERBEARING.
The Greek word here is used only twice in the New Testament.
It is powerful negative word that describes a person who is so
arrogant and self-willed that they denounce any voice that it
disagrees with them, and that includes the voice of God. This person
who is so presumptuous as to think his view is always the only right
one is not qualified to be a leader in the church. Why? Because he
will be an offensive person who has no consideration for other
people's perspective. Being closed like this will make him
unsympathetic and judgmental, and this is a poor example of Christ
likeness.
Keep in mind, you can be a Christian and still be all the bad
things Paul says a leader is not to be. In other words, Christians can
be people who are not pleasant to be around. They are saved by
their trust in Christ, but they are far from sanctified, and far from
being qualified to be leaders. If all Christians were mature and
qualified, and living up to the standards and excellence that Paul
lists here, there would be no need to distinguish between Christians
who are qualified and those who are not. Anyone could serve as a
leader, and listing these qualifications would be unnecessary if one
was qualified simply by being a Christian. But it is not so. There
are Christians who are self-willed and arrogant enough to consider
everyone who disagrees with them as inferior. They are not good
leadership material.
Let me share some of the ways the two cases of this word are
translated. Peter uses it once in II Pet. 2:10: "Presumptuous are
they and self-willed." Goodspeed has it, "Rash, headstrong men."
The 20th Century New Testament has it. "Audacious and
self-willed." Here in Titus other translations stress words like
stubborn, arrogant, presumptuous, and overbearing. The reason
such a person is not qualified to be a leader in the church is that they
are not teachable, and so they are not open to the Word of God and
the Holy Spirit. They already know all that is worth knowing in
their mind, and such arrogance makes them unfit tools to help
others to grow. If you are not open to grow, you are not a good
example for others.
The philosopher Hume said something Paul and Peter would
certainly say amen to. He wrote, "When men are most sure and
arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving passion to views
without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from
the grossest absurdities." The vast majority of heresy and religious
nonsense that deceives masses of people comes from arrogant people
who exalt their pet ideas to the level of God's revelation. As Paul
goes on to say, the leader has to be able to encourage others by
sound doctrine. The arrogant person will be more concerned with
promoting his own ideas. A Christian leader is one whose primary
concern is the truth God has clearly revealed, and not his own
self-centered perspective.
The next negative quality the Christian leader should lack is to
be not-
QUICK-TEMPERED.
If you are arrogant and are convinced your subjective feelings
and perspectives should be shared by all, you will likely have a short
fuse when people disagree with you, and call your perspective
foolishness. Arrogance leads to the hot temper, for the self-willed
person feels that any attack on them is equivalent to an attack on
God. To disagree with them is the essence of evil, and such evil
needs to be smashed, and so the arrogant person is one who is
convinced that anger and violence are justified when dealing with
people who have the audacity to defy them.
Anger is a legitimate emotion for the Christian to have, but it
must be like the anger of God and of Jesus to be a virtue. They were
and are slow to anger, and always have it under control. The vice
that Paul rejects here is to be quick tempered, or hot tempered, or
short tempered. It is referring to those who are quarrelsome people,
and who are always looking for a fight. Charles Ashcroft tells of the
mountain guide who said to him as they climbed a jagged volcanic
mountain in South America. "This would have been our tallest
mountain if it had not blown its top." If you have ever seen pictures
of Mt. St. Helen after it blew its top, you know how radically a
mountain can be reduced by such an explosion.
That is Paul's point when it comes to Christian leadership. They
can be reduced so quickly to a low level if they have quick temper.
They are high risk to be in positions of leadership, for their lack of
self-control can do great damage. Listen to this testimony of a wife
who wrote to a counselor about her husband's temper. "I have a
husband who is 99% good and 1% rotten. He is a lovable mate and
a considerate father, but his one outstanding fault periodically ruins
all his good qualities. That point is his violent temper. He is like a
cow that gives a good, big pail of milk and with one, vicious kick,
spills it all over the place. The peculiar thing is this: These spells
come only once in a while and last for only a few minutes. But,
when they happen and while they last, he is like a raving maniac.
He snorts and cusses and cavorts until he is red in the face. Just as
quickly as the storm begins it subsides. Then he is apologetic;
admits he didn't mean the abusive things he said, and is really
contrite and penitent. But before the stage is reached, sometimes
almost irreparable damage is done."
That 1% of hot tempered violence in a 99% good man
disqualifies him from being an elder, for the elder must be one who
conveys a consistent testimony both in the church and in the world.
Of course, this is a standard of near perfection, and who can
measure up? Most of us have lost our temper and blown our top at
some point in life. But the point is that many of us have also come to
the place where we feel it coming on, and we have matured enough
to know it spells trouble, and so we find ways to control the energy
that threatens to explode. It is those who has reached this level of
maturity who qualify to be elders. There is always the risk that any
leader may still lose it under great pressure. Nobody can offer a
guarantee, but when it is known to happen in a person's life on any
sort of a regular basis, that person is not to be chosen as a leader.
A bad temper is a bad testimony. Some people never gain
control of their temper. Euthymius tells of the monk who joined the
monastery because he hoped that atmosphere would help him
control his bad temper. But he found the other monks irritating and
so he left. He went into a desert place to live alone, for that would
remove him from all irritation he thought. But one day as he was
using his only bowl to get water from the spring he bumped the bowl
on himself and spilled it. He dipped it in again and as he walked
away his foot slipped and he spilled the bowl again. In a furious
passion he dashed the bowl against a stone and smashed it to pieces.
When he cooled down he looked at his broken bowl and said, "What
a fool I am! How can I escape the temptation which is in my very
nature?" It was not other people, but his own hot tempered nature
that was his problem, and the only solution was not escape, but
self-control.
A mature Christian is one who has learned this. You often
cannot control other people and irritable circumstances. You can
only control how you react to them. Those who have learned to
control their temper are qualified to be leaders. Alligators are
harmless they say if you can just keep their mouth shut. This is true
for people in leadership positions as well. It does not always
happen, however, and you have the record of Moses, who was one of
the greatest of leaders of God's people, losing his temper. God takes
temper control so seriously that he punished Moses for his loss of
control by forbidding him to inner the Promised Land.
This is not a mere minor defect in God's eyes. I have to confess
that so many of the sins Paul makes a big deal about I have been
conditioned to think of as minor. I have had deacons in my churches
that I knew were hot tempered. One got so angry he tried to put his
fist through a cabinet and broke his wrist. I like the guy and never
dreamed this would disqualify him from leadership, for he was a
good friend. So what if he blew up once in a while? It seemed to
hurt him more than anyone else, and I just overlooked it as a minor
matter. I have a hunch most of us feel this way about people we
know with a quick temper. But Paul says we are to take it seriously.
There is a place for anger and righteous indignation. But this is
different from losing one's temper. That is a rational thought out
response to evil, and not an explosion provoked by some spark of
evil. Evil wins when it gets you to lose your temper and add to the
world more evil. The poet speaks truth when he says-
When I have lost my temper
I have lost my reason too.
I am never proud of anything
Which angrily I do.
When I have talked in anger
And my cheeks are flaming red
I have always uttered something
That I wished I hadn't said.
In anger I have never done
A kindly deed, or wise,
But many things for which I know
I should apologize.
In looking back across my life
And all I've lost or made,
I can't recall a single time
When fury ever paid.
Author unknown. None are more Christ like than those who learn that a quick
temper is the devil's tool, and that true strength of character is
found in self-control. David MacLennon in his book Making The
Most Of Your Best tells this story: "When the distinguished Negro
Roland Hayes was a boy, he heard an old Negro preacher contrast
two kinds of power confronting each other, Christ and Pilate. Pilate
irked by the silence of Jesus, cried: "Why don't you answer me?
Don't you know I have power?" The old preacher went on to say,
"No matter how angry the crowd got, he never said a mumberlin
word, not a word."
Years later Mr. Hayes stood before an audience in Berlin's
Beethoven Hall. The audience was ugly, hostile, resentful of a Negro
daring to sing in the center of Aryan culture. Hisses, growing louder
and more ominous, greeted him. For 10 minutes Hayes stood there
in silence, resentment and anger swelling up in him like an
irresistible tide. Then he remembered the sermon of long ago, and
One who answered his enemies not a word-"He never said a
mumberlin word, not a word." He shouted back no angry resorts.
Standing there silently, he prayed, knowing that ultimate power was
on his side. "The quiet dignity of his courage subdued the savage
spirits of his audience, and in hushed pianissimo he began to sing a
song of Schubert. He won; without so much as a mumberlin word."
Temper control is a requirement for a Christian leader because
it has always been a requirement for a mature person of God. The
next requirement Paul lists is, "Not given to much wine." Other
translations have it, "Not a lover of wine." "Not addicted to strong
drink." Not a drunkard." "Not excessive in the use of wine." Here
again we see a clear distinction between being successful and being
qualified for leadership in the church. Many successful people drink
to excess. If you could see the list of the patients who have been
treated at the Betty Ford Clinic, you would see many of the most
famous people in our culture. Many gifts people who are leaders in
their profession are not qualified to be leaders in the church, and it
is because they are often given to much wine. They may be superior
in many ways to those who do not drink, but this habit is not
consistent with the image that Christ desires His church to convey to
the world.
There are cultures where it is a common practice for Christians
to drink modest amounts of alcohol. But no where is it acceptable
for a Christian to be called a drinker, or one who loves to consume
alcohol to excess. The whole idea of self-control demands that a
Christian leader not be under the control of any substance. Paul
does not mention drugs, for that was not a major issue in his day,
but this would certainly apply in our culture today. A Christian
leader is not to be under the control of any drug. We are not talking
about medicine, for there is a lot of alcohol in many medicines. We
are talking about a life style where alcohol and drugs play a role in
people's lives. Christian leaders are not to be a part of that scene.
Paul's stress is not on being given to much wine. This leaves the
door open to the moderate use of wine. But elsewhere he says that if
it is offensive the ideal is to be total abstinence. In Rom. 14:21 he
writes, "It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else
that will cause your brother to stumble." Dr. Carl Lundquist,
former President of Bethel College and Seminary, did a through
study of wine in the Bible, and he concluded that Paul did okay some
moderate use of wine in the churches pastored by Timothy and
Titus. He also concluded that the wine was not mere grape juice but
was fermented wine. The evidence is over whelming that Jesus and
the early Christians did drink fermented wine. He concludes that
the New Testament clearly teaches moderation, but he taught total
abstinence. Why? Because for 28 years as President of Bethel he
saw a growing number of youth coming from our best churches who
developed drinking problems.
Moderation can lead to excess, but abstinence never does. Too
many people can take that first step and then not know how to stop.
He felt that Christians should be preventing those who cannot stop
from ever starting. Almost 10 million college students drink in
America, and 50% of them develop serious drinking problems, and
unfortunately many of them are Christians. I have known many
Christian leaders who are moderate drinkers, and Paul's words here
do not prohibit them from being leaders. But I have to agree with
Dr. Lundquist. Abstinence is the best, for it prevents the tragedy of
those who just cannot handle alcohol and tend to go to excess. Since
the goal of Paul is excellence in all areas of life, Dr. Lundquist
concludes that the risks are to high with moderation. Abstinence is
the better way. Moderation is a must, however, for the bottom line
of Paul's teaching is that excellence excludes excess.
