Who should go into full time Christian ministry?

This transcript has been automatically generated

Let me just say, first of all, by way of introduction, for those of you who don’t know me, that I’ve got very bad eyesight indeed. So if I need to glance surreptitiously at my notes, I will do something like that. And would you kindly be very British and ignore it completely?

Are we short of chairs? There are a couple at the back which we can just pull out to the ends of the rows if you want, rather than falling asleep on the sofa.

What I want to do with this morning’s session is to think about who should go into full-time Bible teaching. That’s a subject we need to think about and look at because I hope that one thing which has become— begun to come across to us from the weekend so far is there’s no such thing as a special call to full-time Christian ministry. The Bible really only recognises one sort of call And that is the call to become a Christian in the first place. Once you’ve become a Christian, once you’re called to be a Christian, the decision as to whether to go into full-time Bible teaching or not is not something where God calls you generally. Obviously God can, but it’s not something which God normally does.

It’s not something the Bible talks about at all. Rather, it’s something we have to decide on the basis of wisdom. By the way, do open the window so it doesn’t get too warm in here. If somebody would, that would be brilliant. Thanks.

Thanks. Before going into what it means to wisely decide whether we should go into full-time Bible teaching or not, I’ve got 4 introductory points. I hope you all have a copy of the handout. If you haven’t, there are A few more down here. Does everybody have a hand up?

Sophie at the back.

Is it just one? You sure? There’s a stack more down here. Right.

4 introductory points before we get into the meat of this morning’s session. The first is that over the weekend so far, one of the things I hope we have seen is that teaching the Bible full-time is something we should all want to do. It’s hugely important if God’s kingdom is to grow. The one thing that Christians have been left in this world to do is to spread the good news of Jesus and so glorify God and rescue people for eternity. Let me say that again.

The one thing that we Christians have been left in this world to do is to spread the good news of Jesus and so glorify God and rescue people for eternity. When we became Christians, God could have taken us straight up to heaven waiting for Jesus’ return. Why hasn’t he? Why has he left us in this world? The answer is to work alongside him in the one task that the Bible says he is at work doing.

What does the Bible say God is doing? All the way from Genesis 3, where mankind falls after Adam and Eve sin in the Garden of Eden, right through to Revelation 21:22 and the end of the storey when God’s new creation begins, the one thing God is working towards is establishing that new creation with Jesus Christ as Lord and his people rescued to be with him and to be his bride for all eternity. That is the thing God is working towards, and that is the thing that God has left us Christians in the world to work alongside him towards.

The way that God’s kingdom is extended, the way that people are rescued to be with Jesus for eternity, is when God’s Word is preached. In comparison with preaching God’s Word, teaching God’s Word so that people are saved, nothing else matters. This does not mean that every Christian has to spend every moment of every day telling people about the gospel. Life isn’t like that. We have to sleep, we have to eat, we have jobs to go to, we have all sorts of other things that need to happen.

But everything that we do should be directed towards this end of telling people the good news that God has revealed in his word so that people are saved for eternity and so that Jesus as Lord is proclaimed.

It’s not just that it’s a hugely important task, it’s also a huge privilege. I hope that’s something which came across clearly yesterday. It is, and in the interviews on Friday night. It’s such a joy to be involved with God in teaching people the Bible, in seeing people who don’t know God have their eyes opened and come to recognise that Jesus really is God, Lord and Saviour, and and come to submit to him. It is such a joy to teach the Bible to young Christians and see them grow as Christians.

See them— see the penny drop, the light come on, and then think, yes, that is what the gospel is about that I’ve believed, isn’t it? And change the way they live. So it’s hugely important. It’s a huge joy and privilege. Teaching the Bible full-time is something we should all want to do.

Secondly, Teaching the Bible full-time is something we should all be prepared to do because it may be hugely important and a huge joy and privilege, but it will not be easy. I think that came across very clearly again, didn’t it, yesterday? It will be very, very hard work indeed. It will be full of frustrations. It may very well involve suffering.

We will feel very weak and very inadequate. And that is not accidental. God has designed service to be like that so that we depend on Him and glorify Him. If anything gets done, it’s not because we have been great and strong and powerful and clever. It’s because we have been weak and powerless and pathetic, and God has been great and powerful and strong and clever.

And He has designed Christian service so that our noses get rubbed in that truth the whole time, because we are sinful people and given half a chance we will all start thinking, I did that in my strength, aren’t I clever?

But if we are genuine followers of Jesus, we will do anything and we will go anywhere for the sake of his name and his gospel. We will shape our lives around the gospel. It will be so important to us. He will be so important to us. He, our Lord and our Saviour, our friend and our master, is so important that we will shape our lives entirely around him and his gospel.

And for some, that will mean teaching the Bible full-time despite the cost. So first, teaching the Bible full-time is something we should all want to do. Second, teaching the Bible full-time is also something we should be prepared to do. But thirdly, teaching the Bible full-time is not something we should all do. For many people, in fact for most people, the best possible way to serve the gospel is to be missionaries in the workplace and to work alongside those who are teaching the Bible full-time.

Our job as Christians, as I’ve said earlier, is to extend God’s kingdom by teaching what he has revealed. But this is our job as a church, not our job as individuals. This is our job corporately, not our job as individual people. It has to be a team effort. And again, that is not an accident.

That is the way that God has designed his church to be a body working together towards a common end. The common end, as I’ve said, is to extend God’s kingdom by teaching the Bible. But different parts of the body have different roles to fulfil in achieving that common end. Some need to fund the work. The way the world works is that money is needed.

God provides the money, but he does it through people.

Lots of people, vast numbers of people are needed to be missionaries, bringing outsiders in to hear the Bible. There’s no point in somebody teaching the Bible full-time to a row of empty chairs. Somebody needs to bring people in. People need to do all the other tasks that are necessary to reach people with the good news of the Gospel. And to build them up.

The practical tasks, the getting alongside people tasks, the admin tasks— they all need to happen. And the task, our common task of extending God’s kingdom, is best done if the people who’ve got the gifts, the people who God has given the gifts to do these other tasks, do those other tasks and don’t think, I want to be a full-time Bible teacher, when in fact God has given them the gifts to be a missionary or somebody who funds the work or something else. The way that God’s kingdom is best extended is if every part of the body does the job it’s meant to do. If the ears hear instead of trying to see, if the eyes see instead of trying to hear. Let me give you an example.

Imagine a runner running a race. What makes a fast runner? Well, you could say it’s the legs. If you don’t have decent legs, you’re not going to win the Olympics, you’re not going to win the marathon. But the legs without the heart, the blood supply, the nervous system, the lungs, just won’t function.

It’s not the pair of lungs that’s going to win the Olympics, it’s the legs. But the lungs are absolutely essential. So it is with the job of extending God’s kingdom. The way it’s extended is by the Word being taught, but every part of the body of Christ can play a role in that which may not involve them directly teaching the Word. It involves them contributing towards the work of the Word being taught.

Now, at this point, I want to put in a few caveats— well, one caveat. The first thing is we must be careful We don’t deceive ourselves. It’s very easy to think, phew, I’ve just had a let-out clause. I don’t have to teach the Bible full-time, do I? I can stay in my secular job and earn a million and live in a lovely rose-covered cottage in the country.

No.

If we are staying in the secular world because we think we can best serve there, then we need to make sure we’re really doing that. Are we really evangelising and reaching out to the people we work with? Are we really supporting the work of the gospel financially to the hilt?

Or are we deceiving ourselves and really just trying to further our career and spend money on ourselves? Can you see that lots of people are needed to stay in the workplace, to be involved with the church in all the roles necessary for the common end to be fulfilled. But it’s so easy when you’re doing these other things to deceive yourself and take your eye off the ball, and for the lungs to start not pumping oxygen to the legs but to, I don’t know, pump oxygen around just for the sake of having a nicer pair of lungs.

We’ve got to make sure that we are focused on what we’re trying to do And wherever God has put us in the body, make sure that we are seeking to achieve that common end.

So the goal of every Christian should be to maximise the amount of Word ministry that is being done, but not necessarily to do it ourselves. But the danger is that once we see the need for Bible teaching, we will want to do it full-time. We will think that is the glamorous bit, that’s the exciting bit, that’s the bit that I want to be at.

And I think we need to see that is what is necessary, but I might serve it in a slightly different way. Think of it, if you like, as a spear or a sword. It’s the edge of the blade, isn’t it, that cuts with a sword? But you can’t have an edge of a blade without the middle bit. Which makes sure that the edge of the blade doesn’t crumple.

Having a blade without a hilt is not very much use. You can’t actually wield the sword. The hilt doesn’t do any cutting. It’s as blunt as they come. But a sword without a hilt isn’t a sword.

The same is true in the church of God. Preaching the word may be the cutting edge of the way that God’s kingdom is extended. But we need the other bits as well. Badly need the other bits. Fourthly, however, having said all of that, full-time Bible teachers are desperately needed.

There is a huge shortage of good Bible teachers throughout the world. It’s a key bottleneck to God’s kingdom being extended and his name honoured. As you look around the world at the present moment, Yes, the church badly needs people who will fund it. Yes, the church badly, badly needs people who will evangelise in the workplace and at the school gate and in the neighbourhood and everywhere else, in the classroom. But probably the greatest bottleneck at the present moment to God’s kingdom being extended is good Bible teachers.

If the main church we know is St. Helen’s, this may not be at all clear to us. You look at St Helen’s and there’s a big staff team of people who look as though they know what they’re doing when it comes to teaching the Bible. Those of you inside might think differently, but from the outside it looks as though we know what we’re doing when we teach the Bible, and you sort of think, we don’t need me. For those of you who know other churches around the country, you will know that that is not really the case. There are huge needs.

There are large swathes of the country where it’s hard to find even half-decent Bible teaching church. And that is even more true of many other places in the world. The biggest bottleneck to God’s kingdom being extended at the present moment is good Bible teachers. And the most direct way that we can increase Word ministry is by doing it ourselves if we have the gifts. So the aim of this session is to explore what sort of people should go into full-time Bible teaching.

What sort of people have the temperaments and the personality and the gifts and the ability to go into full-time Bible teaching. Now we’re going to explore that subject by looking at the books of 1 Timothy and Titus. They are books written to Paul’s lieutenants Timothy and Titus, obviously. And the aim of both those books is to tell these lieutenants what they’re to do to make sure that the churches in Ephesus and Crete, respectively, function smoothly. So churches have been founded in Ephesus, churches have been founded in Crete.

Paul has left Timothy and Titus in those places, and he’s writing to them to tell them what they must do to make sure the church runs smoothly. Smoothly. As we look at those letters and see what they’re told to do, we will understand something of what’s necessary if a church is to grow. In other words, if the Bible is to be taught, what sort of people do they need to be to teach the Bible? But even more directly, one of the key things they’re meant to do is to appoint people to head up the church after they’ve left.

And as we look at the instructions Paul gives Timothy and Titus about the people they’re supposed to choose That’ll give us a lot of information about what sort of people ought to be church leaders. In other words, what sort of people ought to be full-time Bible teachers.

Let me at this point pause and have an aside to people here who don’t think they will be church leaders, who might think they want to teach the Bible but don’t think they’ll be church leaders, particularly perhaps women who know that the New Testament says that the job of being the church leader is a male job, but they want to teach the Bible. And it’s quite right that they do. The Bible is very explicit that women have a really important job in teaching the Bible to other women and in some way or other, not clear, teaching even in a mixed context depending on how you understand the word prophecy in 1 Corinthians 11. But it’s not just the women who are in that position. Anybody here who, for instance, sees themselves as a youth worker or a specialist member of a team like myself training other people rather than heading up the church is in exactly the same position.

We are not directly being addressed in the passages we’re about to look at, but I think the passages we look at extend very naturally to all these other people. The passages are explicitly about the church leader but I think extend very smoothly, very naturally to the whole church leadership team which involves the women who are working with the women and the people who are working with the youth and the children and the people who are working with specialist groups. So whatever position you’re in, whether you see yourself as a pastor-teacher or you see yourself working as part of the leadership team in the church, I think this passage or this morning’s session has a lot to say to us.

We’re going to be looking to some extent at both the books as a whole, though obviously just from this one angle of what’s involved in being a church leader Bible teacher. But the place we’re going to start our thinking is with the 2 passages where Paul tells Timothy and Titus what sort of people they need to appoint as church leaders. The passages, and they are there written on your sheet, are 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9. And I’ve asked Caroline Mercer if she’d read them for us.

Page 194, the first one, 1 Timothy 3:1-7.

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 quarrelsome, 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 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. And then the next one is Titus chapter 1, if you take us on.

Titus 1, verses 5 to 9. This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination— for an overseer, a good steward, must be above reproach, he must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but affable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. Thank you, Caroline.

I hope you can see, even at a very superficial glance, that those passages are remarkably similar. The qualities are very, very much the same. There are 3, I think, distinct elements to Paul’s teaching about who should be a church leader, or I’m going to use it almost indistinguishably, a full-time Bible teacher. First, the leader of God’s church must be above reproach. Secondly, he must be able to teach.

And thirdly, He must be managing his own household well. Let’s look at those 3 in turn. First, the church leader must be above reproach. 3 times in these 2 passages Paul says that he must be above reproach. So you’ll see that in 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 2, in Titus 1, verse 6, and again in Titus 1, verse 7.

But the qualities Paul lists when he says that somebody must be above reproach are very ordinary qualities. So, he must be a husband of one wife. Now that doesn’t mean he has to have exactly one wife, but it does mean that he mustn’t have more than one wife at one time. He mustn’t have an affair.

I take it, though it’s not explicit, that nor must he have a divorce. But if his wife has died, he’s allowed to remarry. I think that’s clear from elsewhere in Scripture. Nor is it saying that a single man is excluded. Again, Paul is explicit elsewhere that that’s fine.

So he’s saying you can’t have an affair, that’s all. He’s saying you mustn’t be a drunkard. You mustn’t be a lover of money. You must be self-controlled. You must be disciplined.

These are not super high standards. These are the standards that every Christian should be living up to. Being above reproach is not a quality only some Christians have. Rather, it’s a standard for all Christians, but it is a standard that full-time Bible teachers must be living up to. Let’s think a little bit further about what it means to be above reproach, having said all of that.

In 1 Timothy The reason why a church leader must be above reproach is so that he is respected by other people. Have a look at 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 2, and you’ll see that one of the qualities he has there is he must be respectable. Look again at verse 7, and you’ll see that he must be well thought of by outsiders.

So what’s the reason given in 1 Timothy for why the church leaders should be above reproach so that other people respect him. Why? It does so much harm to the gospel if people see church leaders living in a way that dishonours the gospel. I think it was Nigel yesterday, wasn’t it, who quoted Richard Baxter about preaching a sermon on Sunday and unpreaching it Monday to Saturday.

You can’t do that. If you’re going to be a church leader, if you’re going to be a Bible teacher, your life has to be consistent with your message. You have to be thought of well enough by other people to— so people say, yes, that life does commend the gospel. We’re not saying he has to be sinless. Far, far from it.

The Bible is clear no one is sinless, certainly not the church leader. But he can’t be living the sort of immoral, debauched life that is a scandal to the gospel. You just have to look at some of the scandals that are rocking some parts of the Roman Catholic Church in, say, North America at the present moment with the paedophilia cases to see what a scandal it causes when that sort of thing happens within a church.

In Titus, however, there is another reason. So flip across to Titus. First reason is so that people respect you and you’re not a disgrace to the gospel. Titus, however, is slightly different. It’s not that clear, but I think it’s quite illuminating.

And the clue comes in Titus chapter 2, verses 11 to 14, where you see very much the same sort of qualities listed. So have a look at Titus 2, verse 12, where it talks about renouncing ungodliness and worldly passions, living self-controlled, upright, godly lives. Verse 14, redeeming us from lawlessness to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good works. We’re talking very similar qualities. What’s happening there?

I think Titus chapter 2, verses 11 to 14, give us the clue as to why these qualities are needed in the church leader. Why don’t you spend 5 minutes with your neighbour looking at Titus chapter do, verses 11 to 14, and trying to work out what do they show about a person? What do these qualities of being self-controlled and disciplined and upright and keeping the law, what do they show about a person? Why does Paul think they are essential in a church leader? You’ve got 5 minutes to think about that.

My eyesight is so bad, there’s no point just raising a little finger. I won’t see it. Either wave an arm or just speak up. But what did you see? Why these qualities?

What do these qualities show about a person? If you are upright and self-controlled and disciplined and godly, what is it showing about you?

Philip? It shows that the grace of God is at work in you. Yes, exactly. What else does it show?

It shows you’re waiting for the greater hope. Yes, exactly. What does all that mean? What does it mean for the grace of God to be at work in you?

It means you’re a Christian. Exactly. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s not that difficult, is it? It’s not rocket science.

All that Paul is saying in Titus chapter 2, verses 11 to 14, is that if you are genuinely converted, if you really are a Christian, if God’s grace is at work in you, This is what will happen. You will live like this.

Living like this shows you are a Christian. It shows not just that you’re a Christian, but more specifically, that you’re a Christian who is doing what Christians ought to do— living for the world to come, not this world. So why is it so important that church leaders have these qualities? It’s obvious, isn’t it? But all Paul is saying is, I want the church leader to be a real Christian, a genuine convert, somebody whose life shows that God’s grace is at work in them, that they really are living for the world to come, not this world.

If the Bible teacher hasn’t taught himself the key truths of the gospel, the key implications of the gospel, how on earth can he teach anybody else in the congregation that? If he hasn’t learned what the gospel is all about and that it’s not living for this world but the world to come, how can he help anybody else learn that? So what does this mean for those of us who want to go into full-time Bible teaching, those of us who are thinking it might be possible? Well, what it means is there has to be some evidence, real evidence in our lives that the gospel is changing us. Particularly changing us so that we live for God and his coming glory and less for this world.

This passage is often taught, I think, as saying that Christians who want to be in leadership shouldn’t be committing any blatant sin. And it is, but I think Titus 2:11-14 shows it’s doing more than that. It’s showing It’s saying that somebody who’s going to be in Christian leadership needs to evidence true love for God and his new creation. And that is crucial in a Bible teacher if we’re to be genuinely and passionately pointing people to God and his new creation.

Again, let me stress, this is not a requirement for us to be sinless. This is not a requirement say we are never tempted by the things of this world. This is not a requirement to say that we spend every minute of every day looking forward to the new creation. All this is saying is that there has to be some evidence that God and his new creation is gripping our lives, has begun to grip our lives. We have begun to learn and teach ourselves the lesson of the gospel.

So if you are thinking of teaching the Bible full-time, are you in practise saying no to worldly passions? And are you saying no to worldly passions not because it’s a rule and a regulation, but are you saying no to worldly passions because you can see that this world is not what matters, but rather the world to come is? And we are now waiting for and looking forward to God’s new creation. Let’s unpack that just a fraction further. What does saying no to worldly passions mean?

It does not mean denying everything that’s good in this world. We are not ascetics. We are allowed to enjoy a good meal, a holiday, some of the nice things of life. So saying no to worldly passion does not mean saying no to everything good in this world. That’s important.

But saying no to worldly passions does really mean something. It means saying no to seeking the lifestyle this world is seeking. It means saying no to seeking the pleasures and the hedonism, if you like, that this world seems to be devoted to. It’s realising that though we can enjoy the good things of this world when God gives them to us, they are not what life is about.

Life is about the new creation.

That is what we should be heading towards, seeking for, not the things of this world.

If you in your life are not seeking God and his new creation, if you are seeking to be just like the people in the world around you, you should not be thinking of full-time Bible teaching. But more than that, obviously, if you think about it, like Andrew Sachar’s point, yesterday morning, that isn’t a 9:38 point, is it? That’s a CE point.

If you call yourself a Christian and you’re living just like the people of this world, for the things of this world instead of for God’s new creation, why? What’s wrong? The whole gospel is about living for God’s new creation. That’s something which you should have learned when you first became became a Christian. We may need to relearn it, but it is not an optional extra for the Bible teacher.

It’s an essential part of being a Christian at all, that we live for God and his new creation and we say no to the worldly passions that so consume and dominate the world around us.

So that’s the first point then. The first element of being a full-time Bible teacher is that you’ve learned to say no to worldly passions. You’re self-disciplined and controlled in this world because you’re focusing on God and his world to come. God’s grace is at work in your life. Secondly, the church leader must be able to teach.

This is the one gift Paul mentions in 1 Timothy And the whole of the rest of the letter of 1 Timothy shows why this is so important. It’s also the one gift mentioned in Titus.

Let’s look at what being able to teach means in these letters.

Paul doesn’t explicitly describe what the gift of teaching involves, but he does say what teaching is to achieve. He does say what Timothy is to do as he teaches. He even says what bad teachers do and therefore, by implication, what good teachers should. In other words, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that will help us understand what the gift of teaching involves. It’s scattered throughout these letters and we’ll look at them.

There are 4 passages. You’ll see them in the next little box I’ve I think it’s just over the sheet if you haven’t turned over your sheet yet. Now why don’t you spend about 7 or 8 minutes looking at those 4 passages: Titus 1:9 and 1 Timothy 1:3-7, 4:11-16, and 6:2b-5. And the question that you’re thinking about is, what does the gift of teaching involve according to these 4 passages? What does the gift of teaching involve according to these 4 passages?

And you’ve got about 7 minutes in pairs to work on that.

1 Timothy and Titus, these passages, what does being able to teach mean? What qualities are needed of Timothy and the teachers he’s supposed to appoint? And conversely, not being like a false teacher.

You’ve got to teach it faithfully so that people are taught false teaching is rebuked. Yep, excellent. What else?

Yep.

Good, excellent. There’s no liberty to change the message. You’ve got to stick with the original one. Yes, what else?

Good. What do you mean by that, Sophie?

Yeah, good. You need good motives. You mustn’t have the wrong ones. Yes, very helpful. What else?

There are a few others lurking there still.

Philip? Be committed, devoted to it, persist in it. Yes, exactly. Devoted to it, persist in it. That’s from 1 Timothy 4.

Helpful. Yeah? Any others that people spotted? You’ve got to set an example. You’ve got to set an example.

Thank you, Tim. Exactly right. Any others? To love out of a pure heart.

Yes, again, that right motive. Yep, thank you. You need to understand God’s word. Exactly right. Where do you get that from?

1 Timothy 1, verses 6 and 7. Yes, because that’s what characterises the false teachers. They don’t understand. Thank you, exactly right. Did I see another hand over there?

Yep. Yes, you have to major on the majors and not kind of get caught up in, you know, controversies surrounding minor doctrines. Brilliant, exactly right. Okay, let’s pull together. I think we’ve put most of the pieces of data on the table.

I want to suggest that we can group all of those under 3 headings. Firstly, we need to know and hold firmly to what God has revealed in his word. That is stated explicitly in Titus and is implied in all 3 of the Timothy passages, isn’t it? You have to know what God has said. You’ve got to, as Andrew Sachs said, not— you don’t have liberty to deviate from it.

As Chris was saying, you don’t have the liberty to focus on the minor. You’ve got to know what God has said. As Mike was saying, you’ve got to understand it. If we don’t know what God has said, we will not be able to instruct and teach others. How can we help somebody else understand God if we haven’t understood what He has said ourselves first?

How can we correct other people if we haven’t understood correctly what God has said? If you try to correct somebody when you haven’t understood what God has said, you will either end up not correcting them when they are wrong because you haven’t seen that they’re wrong, or correcting them when they’re actually right and you’re the one who’s in error. It’d be dreadful, wouldn’t it? If we’re going to teach others, if we’re going to correct others, we have to understand what God has said. We have to know it clearly and fully and with real understanding.

And as Mike said, from From 1 Timothy 1:6-7, you can see that it’s not just a case of knowing the facts. We have to understand. What was wrong with these false teachers is they had no understanding of the law, of the things revealed in the law. What does that mean?

Well, I think what it means is that we need, if we’re going to teach God’s Word, not just to know this is what this verse says and that’s what that verse says. But to understand the connections between them, to see the patterns and the structure. In other words, to understand the theology that the Bible is talking about. You cannot be a good Bible student without being a good theologian. Theology is essential to teaching the Bible well.

But we don’t just need to know what God is saying— this is still part of the first point— we need to hold firmly to that knowledge.

It’s very easy to be swept away by heresy and false teaching, to know what God has said but not well enough to be able to stand when heresies come along. Wrong teaching and heresy is very persuasive. Once it’s been in the church for 20 or 30 or 40 years or 300 or 400 years, and people have understood it and analysed it and explained why it’s wrong, it’s easy to see it’s wrong and you can say, ah yes, how on earth did anybody ever get deceived by that? But when you’re in the middle of it, when it is happening around you, it is much, much less clear. Heresy is very attractive and very persuasive.

That’s why somebody invented it. Somebody didn’t invent a heresy which sounded silly and was really horrible. The reason why heresy is invented is because some man or woman thought, this sounds nice, this is attractive, this is appealing, people will follow this. And they will. Heresy doesn’t come with a label either.

It doesn’t come and say, I am a heresy, avoid me.

It comes along saying, surely this is what the Bible says, isn’t it? And doesn’t it sound nice? And isn’t it attractive? It’s just like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Did God really say?

If you eat, you’ll be like God. Your eyes will be opened. It’ll be wonderful. And heresy always comes like that. And worse than that, if you look through the history of the church for 2,000 years, when heresy has come Apparently good people have always been swept away with it.

When heresy comes, good people— your friends, your colleagues— will be swept away with it.

How will you stand?

Only if you know and understand and hold firmly to what God has revealed, so that even when good people around you are saying, come join us. We’ve been friends for 20 years, haven’t we? We’ve been colleagues together. We’re on the same side. Now come follow me down this heretical route.

How will you know that? Only if you really know and understand what God has said and are holding firmly to it. And heresies seem to come along at least once a generation. Sometime in your lifetime, a big heresy will come along. Will you stand?

I think I ought to say that every Christian has a responsibility, obviously, to be clear about what God says and to stand against false teaching and heresy. But I don’t think we realise within a church how much we shelter beneath the umbrella of the church leader.

If you’re just a member of the congregation, it’s very easy to think, ah yes, I’ve spotted the heresy and I can see the error. But that’s often because the man in the pulpit or the woman who’s teaching in the Bible study group has told you about it, has explained to you, has pointed out Bible passages you should be looking at. So yes, you do have responsibility. Every single one of us has a responsibility to be guarding against and watchful for wrong teaching. But the church leader is very exposed.

He, and to some extent she within the context of teaching women, is the person who needs to work out for themselves what the Bible is saying. People you’re teaching may well be saying, that church down the road is teaching this, and isn’t it fantastic? Why don’t we adopt that as well? And you’re the one who’s going to need to say, no, that’s actually not what the Bible says. We’re not going to do that.

And the danger is that sometimes it will be what the Bible says. We haven’t exhausted all that God has revealed in his Word. There’s still more light to break forth from God’s Word, as the Puritans said. Our problem as Bible teachers, church leaders, is to work out when a new idea comes along whether that’s just a better understanding of what is in God’s Word which we must adopt, or a heresy that we must reject. And how will we do that?

Only by understanding really clearly what God has said and holding really firmly to that. So the first and most important criteria for being a Bible teacher is knowing and holding firmly to what God has revealed. Secondly, Being able to teach means being devoted to teaching what God has revealed and so working hard at that. And you see that in 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 11 to 16. So in 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 13, until I come, Paul says, devote yourself, Timothy, to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

Do not neglect the gifts you have. Verse 15, practise these things, devote yourself to them so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and your teaching.

The teaching— if you are able to teach, being able to teach means not just teaching God’s Word as one of several things we do, not just teaching God’s Word because we know we ought to do it and so let’s get on with it. But teaching God’s Word because we are devoted to it, because we are passionate about it. And this is not a peculiar obsession either, a slightly weird and oddball thing that some people have, so they better be Bible teachers. God’s Word is where we get to know God better. Well, it’s where we get to know God at all, really, isn’t it?

God’s Word is where we get to know what he has done for us. In creating us, in rescuing us, in sending us his Spirit, in sustaining us, and in many, many other ways. God’s Word is where we know what he has in store for us, the new creation that our hope should be set firmly on.

It needs to be some— it is the thing that everyone needs to know. If you know God’s Word, that’s how you are saved. So how does Paul conclude that little section in 1 Timothy 4:16? Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. Why do we— how do we save ourselves and our hearers?

By sticking to God’s Word. Because God’s Word is where the message of salvation comes. If we’re passionate about it, devoted to it, we will save ourselves because we’ll be sticking with God and what he’s revealed. And our hearers will be saved because they’ll be sticking to God and what he’s revealed, and what he’s said and what he’s doing.

The Bible teacher therefore is someone who is devoted to God’s Word because he can see the importance— he or she can see the importance of it. And we must be devoted to it. Or else we will start teaching our own ideas and lead people away from God. And not just must we be devoted to it, but we must be devoted to it to the extent that we work hard at it and make progress. Timothy, by this stage, has been Paul’s lieutenant and right-hand man for quite some time.

He is a very experienced and very able teacher. And what does Paul tell him to do? To make progress in his teaching so that everybody can see he’s making progress in his teaching. It is so important that it is something we all need to be working at to get better. You can’t say, I’ve been teaching the Bible for 20 years, I’ve been through theological college, I got a first-class degree at it, people have said— I’ve written a couple of books and everybody thinks I’m a great Bible teacher, I’ll begin to coast.

It doesn’t work like that. It can’t. If you’re a good Bible teacher, if you’re a Bible teacher, you will be devoted to God’s Word and passionate about it so that you constantly try to understand it better, to make progress in your understanding and your teaching of it.

And the third quality I think that makes a Bible teacher, the third facet of the gift of being able to teach, is being an example. So you’re teaching by your example as well as by your word. I won’t say too much on this because we’ve touched on it already. We mustn’t preach a sermon on Sunday and unpreach it on Monday to Saturday. It will undermine our teaching if our lives don’t demonstrate that we believe what we are teaching.

Again, like being above reproach, the standard is not perfection. But again Timothy is told to make progress in this. We in our lives need to be teaching ourselves the gospel, the Word, even as we teach others.

The Bible teacher isn’t somebody who’s completely sorted when he starts. The Bible teacher is somebody who’s devoted to God’s Word and is applying it to himself as well as his congregation. So he or she is growing in it. Making progress in it, and as an example, is teaching it by their lives to the people they’re teaching. This is what believing God’s Word means.

It means making these changes. It means growing in these areas. It means realising that you’re wrong in this way. And that’s what I’m doing for myself, and that’s what you ought to be doing as well.

So let’s pull some of that together.

Those of us thinking about teaching the Bible full-time need to know our Bibles really well. And not just know them so that we could, if you like, have committed the entire Bible to memory. That won’t be really knowing it. But knowing it so we really understand the truths God is revealing in it. Knowing it so that we hold on to those truths firmly.

Knowing it so we live out those truths and we are passionate about teaching those truths to others. This is absolutely indispensable and is the key to being able to teach. Isn’t it interesting that when we come to being able to teach, Paul doesn’t mention anywhere the things that we would think of as able? He doesn’t say you’ve got to be eloquent or articulate or good with words or able to get alongside people or, or any of that. In fact, in 1 Corinthians he says the opposite.

He says, I wasn’t very good with words and I wasn’t very good with rhetoric.

And I didn’t have the wisdom of the world. Being able to teach biblically means that I am so passionately devoted to the Word and I understand it so well myself.

And if we understand it and are devoted to it, we will find a way of communicating it. There are lots and lots of different ways of teaching. You can teach in a sermon. You can teach in a seminar. You can teach in a group, you can teach one-to-one, you can teach by writing, you can teach by speaking, you can teach by asking questions, you can teach by giving answers.

There are all sorts of different ways of teaching, and if you know God’s Word and are committed to it, you will find a way of teaching that suits you.

But if you aren’t— if you don’t understand it and you aren’t committed to it, then you should not be seeking to teach the Bible full-time.

Nothing, absolutely nothing makes up for not grasping God’s Word and being committed to it. If you don’t understand God’s Word and you’re not committed to it, then having good people skills or good communication skills is positively dangerous because what will happen is you will get alongside people people and communicate wonderfully and teach them error. It’s worse than useless. However, obviously, if you do understand God’s word and you are committed to it, then having people skills and having communication skills is an asset, but it’s not an essential asset. Paul doesn’t talk about those.

Let me just put in 3 caveats to all of this. First, leading an RML group or something like that gives you some indication of whether you can teach, but it’s actually not enough. An RML leader gets a lot of support from a SLOB group and leaders’ notes and things like that, which you will not have if you’re teaching the Bible full-time in most churches. If you can’t lead an RML group, you probably can’t teach the Bible full-time. But if you can, you still may not be able to.

The question is, can you teach it without all that support and help? Can you stand when you’re not in a supportive church like St. Helen’s where everybody’s on the same wavelength, driving towards the same goal? Can you understand God’s Word and be committed to it when you are the church leader in a small church, very isolated, facing a lot of pressures? It’s a different situation. Second caveat: I am not saying that all full-time Bible teachers have to be great Bible handlers.

You have to be competent.

You have to see its importance so that you’re prepared to work really hard at getting better at it. You don’t have to be great. It’s wonderful if you are, but you don’t have to be. But you do have to see its importance so you work at it, and you do have to be competent. And third caveat, you don’t have to be a good Bible handler before taking the first step.

A lot of understanding God’s Word and understanding it better and knowing how to go about understanding it and seeing the connections and seeing how everything fits together can be taught. But you need to be committed enough to it, and able enough that you’re teachable.

Let’s move on to the 3rd facet that Paul gives, the 3rd element that Paul gives of the qualities needed to be a church leader. And the 3rd quality is that the Bible teacher must be able to manage his own household. This gets a surprising amount of airtime in both 1 Timothy and Titus. I don’t know, as you read it, whether you noticed just how much airtime it gets relative to some of the others, which is slightly odd. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody spend much time on it.

I suspect it’s because we don’t understand it, and I may not understand it now either, but I’ll tell you what I think and you can decide whether you think that’s right. 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 4 5, I think, gives us our clue. 1 Timothy 3:5, if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?

Being able to manage a household gives an indication of a person’s ability to run a church. Why? And the answer is, to understand that, we need to realise that households then looked different to households today.

Households then didn’t comprise 2.2 children and a Labrador. That is not what you were being asked to keep control over. Particularly for the sorts of people who would be asked to lead a church in that sort of culture, the slave would not have been asked to lead the church. It would have been a free man with some responsibility. They had much, much more substantial households.

A household then had your family, possibly an extended family. It would have slaves. Many people ran a business out of their household, a trade or something more substantial, an estate.

You didn’t have all the aids that we have now to making running a household easy. You didn’t have a school you could farm the children off to, or a youth group that would teach them the gospel for you. You didn’t have everything else by way of labor-saving devices that made your life easy if you were running a household. Running a household was a major occupation. If you could do that, you’d shown that you had some real leadership managerial skills which you could transfer over to running the church.

A well-run household was a very good test of a person’s general competence as a leader, their ability with people, their overall managerial skills. And the test of having children who obey shows that you have the people skills with your family that mean that your children are not being driven away.

So that’s why I think so much airtime is being given to running your own household. It shows that you have leadership and managerial skills. And the parallel for us today, where we don’t have that sort of household, is not to say you’ve got to have 2 believing children.

Rather, I think the parallel is that church leaders should have proved themselves in the secular world, which will include their immediate family, but it will include their jobs. Particularly if you’ve got a job where you have managerial responsibilities at work. The skills and the gifts needed to run a church in many ways are similar to those to run a position— a secular job, a good secular job.

So it’s good to see in the secular world whether you’ve got the gifts to hold down a good career. It’s good to be trained by the secular world in the basic gifts of management, people skills, general competence. Teaching the Bible full-time, in other words, is for those who have the gifts to have a really good career, who could rise up in management, run a department, run a business, make a success of it. Get people to follow them, market a product in such a way that people think, yes, that’s a product I want to buy. But though they could do that and they could make a real success of their lives, they can see that the Bible and God’s kingdom are so important that they’d rather devote those skills to running God’s church.

The people who should go into Christian work are those who have, as I said, the ability to have a good career, to make a real go of life outside, and to some extent who have demonstrated it. It could be demonstrated simply to the extent of what you can do at university, when you have run a CU, when you have run a club, when you’ve done something there but you’ve made a go of it. Or it could be that you’ve made some sort of demonstration in the first few years of your professional life. And then you think, yes, I could, but this is more important. This is what I can do.

I’m so committed to God’s Word and God’s kingdom and God himself that I’m going to give all that up in order to teach the Word. So those, I think, are the 3 qualities Paul lists and seeks in the people who are to be church leaders. They have to be above reproach. They have to be able to teach in the sense of knowing and understanding and being devoted to his word. And they have to be generally competent people.

Any questions?

Philip. At first glance, some of what you said about the last one could seem worldly and aspirational, and so that you think if by the world standards of what it looks like to be a good manager, if I meet those standards, then I have that particular quality which is necessary. How do we avoid that? That kind of thinking?

I think by not taking that third quality in isolation of the other two. You’ve got to be a— first of all, you’ve got to be above reproach in the sense of God’s grace has to be at work in your life. You’ve got to be a genuine Christian living for God’s kingdom, God’s new creation. Secondly, you’ve got to understand what God has said and be devoted and committed to it. And only if you’ve got those 2 in place already does your general competence in being able to run something then have a part to play.

Andy. Michael, have you got any advice about how we can kind of calibrate our assessment of these gifts from the Bible? Because I think what we can do, certainly what I used to do, is look at people, say, at St. Helen’s and think, a good teacher means I have to be as able as William Taylor. Yeah. Um, and a good manager means I have to be as confident as Gordon Duncan or whoever.

And we tend to, especially in a church where there are particularly gifted people, some of them particularly leader, unusually gifted, how do we avoid kind of calibrating by that? So I know for myself, my mindset, like I was saying on Friday, was that I’ve got a big difference I looked at the people who were new and thought, no way. And then I went to a very small Southern church in York and thought, well, maybe. So how do we get the celebration from the Bible and not by simple habit? That’s such a good question, isn’t it?

Because I don’t think there’s an easy answer either way. I think the danger is you look at some really struggling, bad churches. Well, the one danger on the one hand is what you’ve just said. You look at St. Helen’s where there are some extraordinarily gifted people and you think, I’m not as gifted a preacher as William Taylor. I’m not as well-read and articulated and thought-through as Andrew Jones, or whatever.

I can’t be a Bible teacher. Which can’t be right. You can’t— if we did that, we wouldn’t have many churches in this country because there aren’t many people that gifted. You have to say, I don’t have to be that good to be able to run a church. However, the other side of the danger is you go to some really small struggling churches, you listen to the liberal vicar make a complete shambles of not even trying to preach God’s Word.

I think of some of the sermons I have heard, my toes curl.

Genuinely, I remember a Christmas sermon I went to some years ago when I was visiting a friend where the minister was saying, did Jesus have a birth canal experience?

And you sort of think almost— well, everybody in this room could do better than that, I’m sure.

There’s no question about that. You could do better than that. But he was the minister. However, just because you can do better doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right thing to do because Unfortunately, you just have to look back over the last generation and people, evangelicals have gone into the church because they thought, I can do better than that dreadful person over there. But they’ve not actually had the convictions and commitment to God’s Word and they themselves have then drifted away 10, 15 years down the line.

It doesn’t help the cause of the gospel if we send people in who in 10 years’ time are going to drift away themselves because they don’t understand God’s Word and they don’t hold firmly enough to it. Or we have sent people into the church, people who have gone into the church over the last generation I know, whose organisation and managerial skills are so poor that even though they’ve tried to teach the Word faithfully, they have basically alienated everybody in their church. Again, that doesn’t help anybody. So we mustn’t go to the one extreme of saying you must be a William Taylor, but we mustn’t go to the other extreme of saying just because I’m better than that dreadful vicar, therefore I should go. Where in the middle we draw the line is a much harder task.

I think it’s a case of this is where we need to think and pray and take counsel from other people. It is absolutely right to say we don’t have to be William Taylors, but I think we need to say we are competent. We need to say we need— we don’t need to be wonderfully organised, but we do need to be competent. Sophie. I’m seeing that one of those qualities you had in one of the videos, that he had this gift, they laid— the elders laid their hands on him, they somehow recognised by the elders.

To what extent does it have to be recognised? By the people in the church? Could you keep pushing forward if it’s not recognised? What about that whole issue of call to the church? How important is that?

Thank you. That’s a very good question again, isn’t it? In an ideal world, you see that you have the gifts and would like to do it, and the church sees you have the gifts and would like to do it. When both of those come together, go. Don’t wait.

Occasionally people do have the gifts but they don’t really see it and they aren’t that keen and the church says to them, go on, go. And occasionally people really have the passion and the desire but the church doesn’t quite recognise them. I think in both those second cases where the church thinks you ought to go but you’re not convinced, or where you’re really convinced but the church isn’t, you need to think 3 times before you go. It doesn’t mean don’t. There are exceptions.

As you look in the history of the church, there have been people who have gone against the advice of the church, and they’ve been right to do so. We wouldn’t have had a William Carey, we wouldn’t have had Protestant missions if William Carey hadn’t gone against the advice of his church.

But that, I think, has to be very much the exception, not the rule. I think you’re right, Sophie. In general, for most of us, We need to want and the church needs to recognise some gifts. So if you’re thinking about it, talk to the church leaders who know you, the person who heads up your RML evening, and say, what do you think? You’ve seen me in a group, you’ve seen me as a leader.

Should I be thinking about this or is this a bit of a silly idea?

Any other questions? Yeah. And you talk quite a lot about being above reproach, Robert there, above reproach, and but then emphasise that you don’t have to be sinless. Yes. To what extent should a church leader be honest about his sin or her sin?

I think, as I said, above reproach, that doesn’t just specifically talk about sin. I think it means that you are working hard enough at your sin. You’ve got your eyes focused where they ought to be, on God and his new creation. You see this world’s not what it is and you’re working towards it. Do you need to be honest about the places you’re failing?

You don’t need to wear your heart on your sleeve. I don’t think it helps everybody if I wash all my dirty linen in public. But I think I need to be honest about the fact that I am not perfect. I’m a million miles from perfect. And just because you aren’t perfect doesn’t mean that there’s something especially wrong with you or that you shouldn’t be in Bible teaching.

If you knew how dreadful I was, you wouldn’t be listening to me now. If I knew how dreadful you were, I’d be telling you you shouldn’t be here.

We are all dreadful sinful people saved by grace. We need to recognise that, but I don’t think we need to go into gory detail.

No, exactly. You said these 3 principles are a good way from a point of view, but how can you— I mean, they’re still not totally in parallel. What about people like Roger and NCA?

How do you give people the freedom to grow and to work things out and test things for themselves, but also, and to guard against error without being overly defensive? And how do you guard— you know, Roy Cummings was a very, very well-respected scientist. Yes. I think the answer is we are never ever going to get it right. All we can do is we can use the wisdom and guidelines God has given us to do the best job we can in selecting people and in working out whether we ourselves are the right people to go.

God sovereignly overrules and people are sinful who can fall away at any stage. You just have to look at the pages of the New Testament to see that, starting with Judas Iscariot, one of the 12 obviously who betrayed Jesus. You just have to read the letters of the New Testament to see the lists of people who have fallen away. So Paul, at the end of his life, in 2 Timothy 4, talks about people who’ve deserted him, who have not supported him in his trial.

That is going to happen. And I think the answer is we mustn’t be thrown by it. But that’s one reason why, as far as we can, we need to make sure that we ourselves and the people we choose know and understand— know God and understand his word, are committed to God and are committed to his word. Because that is the best guard that we can find. It’s not infallible, but it is the very, very best guard.

But that’s why I think it’s so important that those are the qualities chosen identified in a leader.

Any other? Yeah. What about people being able to stick to truth, to God’s word, without all the support of swap groups, etc., etc., St. Helens? Is there any way you can— any advice on being able to determine whether that’s true? Because most of us are at St. Helens with all that support.

Should we leave? No. Well, the answer is, it’s not— sometimes that is necessary. I mean, Andrew Sachs, as he said to us on Friday evening, it was when he went to York and away from the cosy confines of a good Cambridge church that he suddenly began to firm up in his convictions and see the need. So sometimes the answer is, you will see when you leave.

But I don’t think we have to leave, and I’m not a fan of people leaving. But I— you’ll be pleased to know. But I think what we need to do is to learn not to rely on the support we get at St Helen’s. It’s slightly like when somebody is learning to ride a bicycle with their trainer wheels. You know, when they first begin to ride, you’re relying on your trainer wheel, you’re leaning over to one side so the trainer wheel is actually taking quite a lot of the weight.

But later on, you’re riding so that the trainer wheels only touch the ground occasionally. And I think it’s the same in leading RML or anything like that. I think the test is not so much can you teach the line given you by the slop group, but can you come to your slop group with an understanding of the passage which is right? Not that you stubbornly stick to it regardless of the evidence given to you in the slop group, but have you come with the answers so that when things I discussed in the Slob Group, you’re not having to change your mind and throw it all out, but actually say, yeah, that was exactly what I thought before I came in, because you’ve worked it out for yourself.

Any other questions?

Right, let’s draw thumbs there. Let me pray for us before we wrap up.

Father God, thank you so much indeed for saving us and for involving us alongside you in this fantastic task of bringing honour to Jesus’ name by proclaiming him and saving people to be with him and with us and with you in eternity forever. Father, help us as we think about how best we can work to this end. Help us as we think about whether we should be the ones teaching the Bible Help us if we decide we aren’t to continue serving you, continue supporting those who do. Help us if we think that we are to be wise and not just be proud in going forward. Help us not to be unrealistic, Father, but to know what are reasonable skills.

And Father, we pray that by one means or another, you in your grace would use us to bring honour to Your name and to help other people come to know You. Help us, Father, as we think and as we talk, to come to wise and right decisions. In Jesus’ name. Amen.