I grew up with a pretty consistent exercise going on when our congregation was about to select elders. At some point, someone would pass around a list of “qualifications of elders,” compiled from 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. Any man wanting to be an elder had to meet all the qualifications on that list.
At that time, I knew amazingly little about what the Bible was. Such an exercise made perfect sense to me. It doesn’t anymore. When you’re holding a bound Bible in your hands, it seems logical to grab a verse from here, one from there, and a couple from there to address a subject. But the Bible didn’t exist in that form for years.
In all likelihood, Timothy didn’t have a copy of Titus. And Titus didn’t have a copy of 1 Timothy. If they needed to use both lists to have a complete list of elders’ qualifications, well, they were in trouble.
The lists are so similar that it almost seems a moot point. But let me give you one concrete example: when writing to Timothy, who was working with the church in Ephesus, Paul included the phrase “must not be a recent convert.” That made sense in Ephesus, where the church had been established decades before. But on Crete, where the congregations were fairly new, such a phrase would make no sense. And wasn’t included, when Paul wrote Titus. Different situations. Different needs.
So what do you think? Were we meant to cut and paste these lists together? Is it possible that churches in different places should look for different qualities in their leaders? What’s the best way to consider Paul’s words to these two men?
Paul often seems to provide a good model of situational ethics :-)
Shannon,
I don’t know if I’d call it situational ethics, but he definitely believed in “different strokes for different folks.”
Grace and peace,
Tim
Situational ETHICS is probably a bit different from situational APPLICATION.
But Scripture doesn’t shy away from this trouble — in fact the Law of Moses is full of problematic situations where you can be accused of situational ethics.
Priests and Levites aren’t allowed to touch dead or nearly-dead bodies.
You commanded to do *no* work on the Sabbath AND to rescue your neighbor’s livestock.
The whole point of the debates over “the greatest commands” was because commands conflict with one another in reality.
in HIS love,
nick
PS – I’ve wrestled with the elder/deacon lists, too, Tim — mainly because I’m not convinced that fertility or marital status prove anything about a man’s spiritual health.
I serve in a small church in central Minnesota. We have no elders, nor has the congregation ever had any in its nearly 50 years of existence. When I ask members who they believe would be a great elder in this church, there are two names that are consistantly mentioned by everyone. One of those men has served as an elder in another congregation before he moved to this part of the state. The other man, who lives a life “above reproach” and shows enormous comittment to the congregation, is married but does not have any children of his own. Though in his 50’s, he was a bachelor most of his life and the woman he married had an adult daughter of her own.
That is our hang up. If the qualifications of elders in the Pastoral Epistles are meant to be a strict checklist, then this man appears unqualified. However, if the lists are pointing us to find the man who is “above reproach”, who sets a great example for the congregation, etc… but realizes that a precise list of qualifications must be defined by the specific missional context, then it seems this man is qualified. I lean to the later rather than the former, just because I know the scriptures must be read as missional words written to specific historical situations that may not be the same as our own but knowing this is one thing, helping others to see it is very difficult (it is hard to reteach a view of scripture when people have been engrained for years to a “flat” view of scripture).
I know of one other congregation (in Texas) where there is an elder who has no children and he (along with his wife) is an excellent elder who sets a great example to the church and cares for the church the way an elder should.
Grace and peace,
Rex