Godly Leadership for God’s Church

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I read an article this week about an airline that was in financial trouble. My wife sometimes laughs at me for the random stuff I am interested in reading about. But I read about this airline that was in some financial trouble several years ago.

Back in the mid-90s, they were losing about $50 million a month. And if you’re fiscally conservative or cheap like I am, I mean, that’s just how you could let that go on month after month is just beyond me. But they were losing $50 million a month.

More upsetting for a lot of people was the fact that luggage was frequently lost on the airline. The schedules were unreliable and unpredictable. You might get there, you might not.

You might get there the day you’re supposed to, or you might not. And customers were unhappy about the services. And as you can imagine, people were vocal about how people are usually more vocal about being unhappy than they are about being happy.

Right. And so the customers were mad and the customers were letting them know. And so this airline realized we’ve got a problem here and we’ve got to do something about it.

And nobody seemed to have an answer for them. And so they recruited an executive from Boeing to come in and be their new CEO. and he came in and he just kind of cleaned house and he brought with him a new philosophy about what they needed to do.

He came in with some big ideas. He seemed to realize that their job wasn’t just to fly airplanes between cities. If you ask an airline, what do you do?

They might say, well, we fly people back and forth. No, what you’re really doing is you’re making people’s lives better by providing a service of transporting them where they need to be. It’s a difference in philosophy here.

So he realized that, and so he changed the entire focus of the company to improving customer satisfaction. So if we take care of our customers, everything else will fall in line. And so he made a number of changes to the company that helped them do that, to actually take better care of the customers, to actually respond to the customers’ needs.

And within 12 months of this man coming on as CEO of the company, the airline’s bottom line improved by about $800 million for the year, and they began turning a profit again for the first time in I don’t know how long. And on top of that, they won a lot of awards, this airline did, for having the top customer service in the industry. Now, I’m not telling you the name of the airline, because I guess after he retired, things went back, and they’re no longer there anymore.

But this man came in with his big ideas and his charismatic leadership, and he turned the airline completely around. And I’m telling you this tonight because leadership is so important in helping any group of people, any organization get to where it needs to be, but it has to be the right kind of leadership. If they had just called in any random guy off the street to come in and lead their airline, the results might not have been the same.

You need the right kind of leadership for the right organization, for the right company. for the right country. You need the right person for the family.

You need the right person for the church. It has to be the right kind of leadership. And the Bible talks about the right kind of leadership to strengthen the church spiritually.

If your goal is for a church to grow spiritually strong, you need the right kind of leadership. And by the way, I’m just going to tell you, as the Bible addresses this, it specifically talks about the elders, it talks about the pastors. I think these principles apply, though, to anybody who’s in leadership in the church.

So I don’t want you to hear all this and think, well, yeah, the pastor needs to be that. No, anybody who’s leading among God’s people can learn from and apply these things. So if you would, turn with me to Titus chapter 1.

Titus chapter 1. I told you last week that on Sunday nights for a little while, we’re going to be in the book of Titus learning about what Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, told the churches in Crete about how they could strengthen their churches. If you would stand with me, if you’re able to, if you’re able to without too much difficulty, I should say, and we’ll read together from Titus chapter one.

We’re going to start in verse five and read through verse nine. Paul wrote this, for this reason, I left you in Crete that you should set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every city. As I commanded you, if a man is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or insubordination.

For a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled, holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. You may be seated. I just want to clarify one thing up front.

We’ll see different terms in here. Bishop, elder. Some people separate these out and say, well, these are different offices and you’ve got the bishop up here and you’ve got the pastor for each church and you’ve got the elders.

Based on my study, I tend to believe these are talking about the same office. They’re talking about men, in particular the pastor, who lead in the local church. Not that you’ve got a bishop up here as a hierarchy above the church.

But I tend to think these are referring to one office and just describing different aspects of that ministry. Because the pastor in particular is going to wear multiple hats. There’s a spiritual role, there’s an administrative role, and I think those words kind of hint at that.

But last week I told you the churches in Crete, they faced a lot of challenges. Some of those challenges were from outside, from the pagan culture that they were surrounded by. Some of those challenges were from within as they had an influx of new believers who came out of that culture.

And as we all know, if you’re a Christian, you don’t just overnight become perfect, do you? As a matter of fact, I’m still working on it. Or I should say the Holy Spirit is still working on me about it.

Now, I believe when we come to Christ, there ought to be a noticeable change. But there’s this process of sanctification that takes place throughout our entire earthly lives from that point on where God is continually refining and shaping us. So while there should be a noticeable change in the beginning, there’s still going to be rough edges that God’s going to be sanding off for the rest of our lives.

So these people didn’t come in immediately as mature Christians. They had a lot of growing to do. And so as a result, the churches were kind of young and kind of weak because the believers were kind of young and kind of weak.

And so Paul was concerned about their ability to grow stronger in the faith. And during his travels, he had tried to work with them and had tried to invest in them to help them grow stronger spiritually. But he had had to leave and move on before the work was finished.

And so he now told Titus that it was up to him to carry on the work in Crete, that he had started to work with these churches and help them grow spiritually. He said in verse 5 that Titus was to appoint elders in every city as I commanded you. He said these churches in Crete needed godly leadership.

He said put some people here in place that are going to be able to help these churches grow spiritually. Now, a lot has been written and said about leadership in the last few decades. As a matter of fact, when I was working on my bachelor’s degree at OU, I had to take classes on leadership.

And it always made me feel inferior and inadequate because they would tell us these stories about these big turnaround CEOs. And they’re saying, you know, to be a leader, you’ve got to have this big personality. You’ve got to be extroverted.

You’ve got to be outgoing. I’m not necessarily that. It shocks people sometimes when I tell them I’m naturally kind of shy, but being in ministry, I’ve learned to push myself and try to be a little more outgoing than I feel.

But there’s this idea that you’ve got to have these big personalities and you’ve got to have these big ideas to match and strong wills and you just need somebody charismatic. Now, those are not bad things necessarily. It’s not a bad thing to have somebody with a charismatic personality.

It’s not a bad thing to have big ideas. In some cases, it’s not a bad thing to have a strong will. They’re not bad things, but I think God is more concerned with some other spiritual attributes, with some spiritual qualifications when it comes to the people who lead his church.

And we’ve got to be careful about this because in some cases, churches, just like the world around them, instinctively turn toward these people with the big personality, the big ideas. they turn toward those people and sometimes will overlook the spiritual qualifications. And I’m going to tell you, as we look through here, there’s a whole checklist of things that he said look for in the leaders, but they all come down to one major qualification, and he uses the word blameless.

He says in verse 6, if a man is blameless. He says in verse 7, a bishop must be blameless. All of these other things on the checklist come back to this concept of blamelessness.

I want to tell you, that’s a pretty tall order. It’s a pretty big qualification to fill. If we take that term just as it sounds, I mean, to me, I don’t think I measure up to it.

I don’t know anybody who does other than Jesus. But that word there doesn’t mean perfection. Now, we hear somebody’s blameless, we think, oh, that’s a perfect person.

This doesn’t mean perfect. As a matter of fact, there’s a Greek word here that I think they use blameless because there’s not a great English word. There’s not just one English word that sums it up really well, and so they went with blameless, close enough, right?

But the Greek word here is a compound of several smaller parts that all together you take them apart and see what they mean. It means someone who cannot be called out. Now, I don’t mean somebody that’s so big that how dare we say anything to them, how dare we question them.

I mean somebody whose reputation is such that nobody can credibly accuse them of scandal. Somebody that, you know, you look at them and what you see is what you get. Growing up, my pastor described it this way, that he wanted to live in such a way that when he died, there would be no surprises at his funeral. All right? I think that’s a pretty good description, but there again, it doesn’t fit real well as one word, so they went with blameless.

But I think that’s a pretty good description, live in such a way that there are no surprises. You know, I’m not a perfect man, But my wife has my passwords to my phone and email and all that stuff. And if she goes and looks, I’m telling you, there are going to be no surprises.

Other than she may be surprised. I forgot how boring my husband was. She might be surprised by that.

But it’s looking for that kind of person. Somebody, when I say they can’t be called out, I mean that there’s no grounds to credibly accuse them of doing anything that even looks funny. It means somebody of unimpeachable Christian character.

Not somebody who’s perfect. but somebody who’s free from scandal. Now what’s the difference there? Because we all sin.

But somebody with this kind of character is expected to, when they sin, they don’t wallow in it. Instead, they confess it, they repent of it, and they ask God to help them move on and do better. And they’re not involved in any kind of scandal that disqualifies them.

Because leading among God’s people requires somebody to set an example. That’s true of the pastor. That’s true of the deacons.

That’s true of Sunday school teachers. It’s true of people leading us in worship, however you’re leading among God’s people, it requires us to set an example. And so I look at all of these things on this list here as part of this blamelessness, and it comes down to four categories of behavior as far as I can tell.

As I’ve grouped these together, verse 6, verse 7, verse 8, and verse 9, four major aspects of this idea of being blameless, of being scandal-free. first of all godly leaders have good reputations verse 6 tells us that a godly leader is going to have a good reputation some of you may say well that already excludes me because you don’t know what I was like when I was younger okay everybody you know the grace of god covers that I believe this is talking about who are you now okay godly leaders have a good reputation I want to spend just a moment on on this subject of a husband of one wife because it’s one that I’ve I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with to try to understand. People have different interpretations of this.

Some people say, well, somebody never divorced. I grew up thinking that, that somebody divorced never should be in church leadership. I got upset once upon a time.

Don’t be mad at me. I was a stupid teenager, all right? But I got upset because there was a divorced woman singing in the choir.

That has nothing to do with what God’s Word says here, okay? Don’t be mad at me. I’m over that, All right.

But some people will say, well, that means never divorce. No, there was a word for divorce in Greek. And if Paul wanted to say that, he would have said that.

The words here mean a one woman man. Okay. The word that is translated husband is the word man.

And the word for wife is translated. It’s translated from a word that means woman. This is a one woman man.

It’s talking about somebody’s character. All right. It’s describing the opposite of what they used to call a player when I was a teenager, somebody who goes out and plays the field, somebody who’s loyal to the woman that he’s married to.

All right. And some people have said, well, this means no polygamy. And that first group that says, no, it means divorce will say, well, polygamy wasn’t even legal in the Roman empire.

Oh, it wasn’t technically legal, but they had this system of concubines where they would have basically a second class wife. She wasn’t legally the wife, but in every other capacity, she was the wife. And so men were expected in that day and age to go out and have affairs.

They would look at us like we’re weird for naught. And so when it says the husband of one wife, I believe if you look at the Greco-Roman culture that they lived in, it was talking about somebody who was countercultural, where the culture says, go out and be wild, go out and be disloyal to your wife, go out and sow your wild oats and do whatever you feel like. God’s standard was saying, no, I want people who are self-controlled, people who are faithful.

I want people who will stand with what I say as opposed to what the culture says is all right. So if you ask me now, as opposed to 20 years ago, what does it mean husband of one wife? It means somebody who stands with what God says and is loyal and is faithful when the culture says those things don’t matter anymore.

It’s part of having a good reputation. He says, having faithful children, not accused of dissipation or insubordination. It means their children are not wild.

Now, y’all saw Charlie this morning. I’m running in. My children are a little wild like children.

That’s not what it’s talking about. It’s talking about children who are not going out and living contrary to what Christ calls us to do with the approval and with the help of the parents. If you remember the story of Eli from the Old Testament, there was a man who was supposedly a man of God, but his sons were running amok and doing all sorts of ungodly things, and he turned a blind eye to it.

Now I’ve seen men who, by the way, a lot of the qualifications for an elder and deacon are very similar, and I’ve had men come to me and say, wait a minute, I’m a deacon, but look at how my daughter acts. One man in particular said, your daughter is 40, all right? And you’re not telling her that this is okay.

You’re still representing Christ to her. At some point, she becomes responsible for making her own decisions. But are you leading your family to the extent that you’re able to, to follow Christ?

And not in every case, but in many cases I’ve seen, somebody’s kids will rebel because of what they perceive as hypocrisy. Now, if you have kids that are prodigal, I’m not accusing you of that. I’m just saying I have seen it in a few situations.

And it always makes me wonder if kids might be more likely to rebel because what they see from their parents at church is not the same as what they see from their parents at home. So I think there’s an area where this could be pointing and saying, as a leader among God’s people, you’re the same person at home the other six days of the week that you are here. All right.

I really believe these two aspects in verse 6 or describing somebody who has a good reputation, who’s living it out and being consistent. Not perfect, but being consistent with what God’s called us to do. And then we see in verse 7 that godly leaders have wisdom and they have self-control.

We see that he calls for a leader in the church to be a steward of God. And a steward of God is somebody who’s worthy of being trusted because they see what they do not as a means to enrich themselves, not as a means to gather power. those of you who have been in the Wednesday night lessons that Brother Rick has done, he talked about diatrophies in 3 John, I believe, where diatrophies looked at the church as his personal kingdom, whereas a steward of God realizes that this is just something God has entrusted.

It’s not something I built or something that I’ve done or something that belongs to me. It’s something God has done, and he’s merely put me here and given this position of trust. Somebody who recognizes that they’re a steward of God is going to do right by the people and by the calling that they’ve been given. Not self-willed.

I need to move through these a little faster tonight or we’ll have to continue this next week. He says not self-willed. That means not an overbearing my way or the highway type.

Again, like diatrophies. Someone who’s not quick-tempered. How’d you like your pastor or your Sunday school?

How would you like to be at the grocery store and hear somebody screaming at their wife and kids and you’re thinking, oh my goodness, what’s wrong with them? and you go around the corner, and it’s your pastor or your Sunday school teacher. Well, that’s a great witness, isn’t it?

Now, there are times I have to yell at my kids in public, especially when they go darting across the parking lot. You know, that’s a safety issue. But I’m talking about there are those people that just scream at each other in Walmart, and you can tell that that’s just how they communicate.

We had neighbors in Seminole who anytime they talked to each other outdoors, you could hear them down the block. We’re not supposed to be that way. We’re not supposed to be quick temper.

just walking around on a hair trigger all the time. He says, not given to wine. Now, I’ve always wondered why for the deacons it says not given to much wine, and to the pastors it says not given to wine.

I’ll tell you what, to be a godly leader, you’ve got to have your faculties about you. Is anybody here so good at making decisions that you don’t need to be thinking clearly all the time? You’re just so good at it, it comes naturally?

What I mean by that is I need all the help I can get to make wise decisions. Sober. I would hate to try to make decisions for God’s people and God’s church while I didn’t have a clear head.

And so he says you don’t want people who are drunk. You want people who are under control. Not someone violent.

This is kind of like being quick-tempered. You don’t want your pastor, your deacons, your Sunday school teachers, Your nursery workers being the ones that fly off the handles and you want people who have self-control. Not greedy for money.

Now this has caused more trouble in more churches than we can probably count. You don’t want people who are motivated by greed to be in leadership positions, especially in the church. You want people who have that self-control to recognize that there’s a certain amount of trust here.

And it requires things to be done with transparency and for the right motives. So godly leaders are supposed to have wisdom and self-control. The third thing here is godly leaders are servants.

We see this in verse 8. Godly leaders are supposed to be hospitable. Now, I’ve been learning about this word myself and hope to do a better job about practicing this.

There’s a lady that I’ve listened to on a podcast being interviewed by one of our Southern Baptist leaders, and I started reading her book about Christian hospitality. And I think we all think we’re hospitable. I think I’m hospitable because I was raised to do certain things.

It’s southern hospitality, right? You let people into your house and you put on the dog, as I think my grandmother used to say. You provide sweet tea, you provide cookies, nice place to sit.

Can I get you anything? It’s more than that. Christian hospitality, as described in the Bible, is not this momentary, you know, putting our best foot forward, being on our best behavior, can I get you anything kind of hospitality.

It’s inviting people into your life. Letting them see your home as it really is. Letting them see your life as it really is.

being, I don’t like this phrase. It’s not wrong. I just, it kind of grates on me because I’ve heard it overused by, by church leaders, but doing life together is a good way to say it.

Letting people, letting people be a part of your life as it really is. Not saying, oh, the church people are coming over. I better, I better clean up.

I better put fresh doilies out. No, let them be a part of your life as it is. Be genuine with each other.

Be genuine with each other. Be welcoming. And godly leaders need to be welcoming to other people in their homes, in their lives, in the church as well.

As I’ve seen and probably some of you have seen situations too where churches were not always hospitable to new people. I can tell you a few stories, but I remember when I was a kid, our church disbanded. My parents don’t leave church.

They stay until it closes the doors. So our church disbanded and we went looking for another church and we went to another one up the road and liked it. We were there for a few months and were seriously considering joining until we came in one day as Sunday school was ending and sat down and some lady came up to my dad and said, you’re in my seat.

He said, oh, you’ve got to know my dad. He’s a little sarcastic. He’s where I get it from.

But he said, oh, I’m so sorry we got up. We walked out. We never went back to that church.

Now, was that right? I don’t know. But I’m just saying there are things like that that happen.

Hospitality means we welcome people in, not just into our pew, but into our lives. He says that they’re supposed to be a lover of what is good. Now, a very literal translation of the Greek here means a lover of good men.

Somebody who loves God’s people. Someone who has compassion for God’s people. Because if we’re motivated by compassion for God’s people, we’re going to serve each other.

Or we’re going to care for each other. So somebody sober-minded, that means somebody who takes their calling seriously. Somebody just means somebody who treats people right, who treats people fairly.

Somebody holy. Okay, we think of holy as they behave really well. There’s another aspect of the biblical word for holiness that just means being set apart to God.

And so somebody who’s holy recognizes that they need to be devoted to serving God and His people, that that’s priority one. And then somebody self-controlled, I know I already said that a godly leader needs wisdom and self-control, but to spell self-control out here in verse 8, it applies to this whole idea of servanthood, because a godly leader doesn’t give in to the fleshly desire to be served. It’s so easy.

It’s so easy when you’re in a position of leadership to think, oh, they work for me. But when you’re in a position of leadership among God’s people, you work for them. Really, you work for God, but you work among them to serve them because you work for him.

So godly leaders are servants. And then godly leaders are committed to the word. It tells us in verse nine, he says that these elders were supposed to hold fast to the faithful word that That idea of holding fast means being devoted to God’s Word and all that it teaches.

A godly leader shouldn’t just be okay with what God’s Word says. We should love it. We should love this book.

We should love what it teaches. We should love the Lord that it points to. I get so tired of hearing people who profess to be church leaders.

Not here, but you see it in the media. People who profess to be leaders among God’s people going out and feeling like they have to apologize for God’s Word. no the leaders of God’s people need to be committed to what God’s word says we need to love it if we go out and feel like we need to apologize for what God’s word says as leaders then how are the people in the churches how do we expect them ever to take it seriously we’re supposed to hold fast to the to the faithful word as he has been taught and I would submit to you that a godly leader also needs to be teachable somebody who doesn’t think I’ve got it all figured out I know it all now somebody who wants to continue learning God’s Word.

And he says in verse 9 that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convict those who contradict. Somebody who has studied to be competent, to teach believers and to challenge false teachings. Again, that doesn’t mean that you know everything.

It just means you’re progressing, you’re working, you’re learning God’s Word and you’re learning how to apply it as you teach others and as you deal with those who undermine these teachings. I need to move through this quickly. I’m way behind where I should be in my notes.

But as I read these descriptions of a godly leader, something dawns on me that Jesus fit this description perfectly. I mean, in the little individual details, there may be some things that didn’t really apply to Jesus. Despite what you may have heard in fictitious novels and movies in the last 20 years, Jesus was not married.

He did not have children. Some people believe that the Da Vinci Code was real life. He didn’t have a wife or kids, but when we look at the kind of person this is describing overall, Jesus fits the bill.

Nobody has ever done these things as well as Jesus. Because when you divide it into the four categories with the four verses here like I’ve done, Jesus, you want to talk about good reputation, Luke chapter 2 says, Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. Even the people who hated Jesus begrudgingly had to admit that they had nothing they could genuinely accuse him of.

Jesus had wisdom and self-control. The writer of Hebrews says, We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. And that goes back to Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness right after his baptism.

Satan, I don’t think that it was only those, I could be wrong in this. This part’s just my opinion. I don’t think that those three temptations that are recorded are the only things Satan threw at him during those 40 days.

I think those are summaries. I think those things really happen. But I think Satan was probably on his back a lot during that time because Jesus was tempted in every way we have ever been tempted, and yet he was able to navigate it without sin.

Because we see in those three examples, Jesus had the wisdom and the discernment. I mean, he’s God. You would expect him to.

But he had the wisdom and the discernment and the understanding of the eternal word that was needed to navigate those things. Jesus had all the wisdom and self-control that anyone could ever need. Jesus was an incredible servant.

He told his disciples in Matthew 20, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. He said, I didn’t come to be served. He got down and washed their feet and served, but He served even when it cost Him His life.

He came here to go to the cross to offer Himself as a sacrifice for us. He did the ultimate act of service. And Jesus was committed to the Word one of the many times that He explained this.

He told the Pharisees in Matthew 5, do not think that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. They thought He was bringing some new teaching and Jesus said, I’m coming to help you understand what God’s Word is really all about.

So realizing that Jesus fits these characteristics so well, as I read this again, I realize that the best church leaders are the ones that are growing to be more like Jesus Christ. That’s really what this is all about. Who can be blameless without striving to be Christ-like? And so I’d tell you tonight, if you hold any kind of leadership role in the church, then your job is to be in a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. I’m not saying you have to be perfect to serve.

I’m saying to serve in any kind of leadership role, whether it’s as pastor, as a deacon, whether a Sunday school teacher, ministry leader, nursery worker, whatever it is, if you’re leading among God’s people, your job, more than just accomplishing a certain job description, is to be growing to become more like Jesus as the Holy Spirit enables you to do it. And I realize it’s the work of the Holy Spirit in us that changes us to be more like Jesus, but we’re supposed to cooperate with Him, right? We’re supposed to cooperate.

not just for your sake