Rev Francisco Bilog Today we’re going to talk about honoring our spiritual leaders in the Christian community.
The New Testament books of 1 and 2 Timothy St. Paul challenged Timothy and the early Christians to Deepened their Lives With God. Here we see that a deepened life with God is a direct result of accurate beliefs, spiritual practices, and authentic community with other Christians. Authentic community takes place in the context of the Christian Church, and leadership is essential for authentic community in the Church to occur. Without effective leadership we won’t experience the kind of authentic Christian community we need to deepen our lives with God. Today we’re going to see four ways to honor our spiritual leaders from 1 Timothy 5:17-25.
1. FINANCIAL SUPPORT (1 Timothy 5:17-18)
Let’s look at vv. 17 and 18 together. What connects this section to the previous 16 verses in chapter 5 is the idea of “honor.” Here Paul continues talking about honor as it relates to our spiritual leaders.
Paul focuses his attention here on church elders. Elders were the primary church leaders in the first century Christian church. These elders guided their congregation forward in spiritual growth and ministry. These elders taught people the Bible, empowered church members to serve, helped the congregation stay focused on God’s plan, and protected the congregation against doctrinal error and false teaching.
To become an elder, a person had to meet certain standards. We looked at some of those standards back in 1 Timothy chapter 3, and we saw that most of the biblical standards focus on character rather than abilities. Leadership skills are important to eldership, but not nearly as important as integrity. And no amount of leadership ability can compensate for a lack of integrity.
Here we learn that there were different kinds of elders in the New Testament church. There were some elders who were volunteer, or what we call “lay elders”.
But there were some elders who were specially gifted to lead the church full-time. These are called “those who direct the affairs of the church well.” These are elders who were especially effective at leadership. Perhaps they had the spiritual gift of leadership described in 1 Corinthians 12:28. These were elders who were called to full-time leadership in the church because of their outstanding effectiveness as leaders.
There were also some elders who were specially gifted to preaching and teaching the Bible full-time. These are elders who aren’t just “able to teach” (which is required of all elders) but these are elders who’ve been given a special spiritual gift of communicating the Christian faith to people. For these elders, their primary calling is to study the Bible and then communicate the Bible to people. Paul views this as labor, as the word “work” in v. 17 implies.
Today we call them pastors.
Those called to lead full time and teach full time are worthy of what Paul calls “double honor.” Now some people take this to be double the salary. On the other hand it’s more likely that “double honor” here refers to two different kinds of honor.
You see, all the elders–both lay elders and staff elders–are worthy of an attitude of honor because of the role they play in leading the church. But those who lead particularly well and those whose calling is communicating the Bible are also worthy of the church’s financial support, which is a second kind of honor. This is where we get our English word honorarium, which means financial support as an act of honor. So the double honor is two distinct kinds of honor: an attitude of honor and honorarium.
Now to support this claim that some church leaders should be paid, Paul appeals to the Bible itself. From the Old Testament in the Bible, Paul quotes Deuteronomy 25:4. “Don’t muscle an ox while it is threshing grain” This Old Testament law from Deuteronomy forbids a farmer from muzzling the ox as it tramples the wheat. Instead, they should allow the ox to eat some of the wheat as it works. Paul is saying that pastors are like oxen, not a very flattering picture. Just as the ox has a right to benefit from its labor, so also the church leader called to full-time leading or teaching has a right to financial support from the church.
From the New Testament Paul quotes Luke 10:7, where Jesus says, “The worker deserves his wages.” So in addition to being like oxen, church leaders are like day laborers.
So here we find the first way to honor our spiritual leaders. WE HONOR OUR SPIRITUAL LEADERS BY SUPPORTING THEM FINANCIALLY.
Many churches are not as generous to their pastors as our congregation is. In more and more congregations, pastors have to work a second job just to support their family, and in many cases the church could afford to meet the pastor’s needs. The attitude of church members seems to be, “Lord, you keep him humble and we’ll keep him poor.”
But church leaders and or pastors are called to full time leadership and teaching are to be supported financially by the church. This is the first tangible way we honor our church leaders.
2. FAIR TREATMENT (1 Timothy 5:19-21)
Paul transitions from financial support of leaders to handling accusations against spiritual leaders in vv. 19-21. To “entertain” an accusation against someone is to accept that accusation as true and accurate. No accusation against an elder is to be considered as true unless that accusation comes from at least two witnesses. The requirement for two or three witnesses was an Old Testament principle for how the nation of Israel handled criminal accusations, that no person was convicted of a crime on the basis of a single person’s testimony. Independent confirmation was needed for an accusation to be considered true and valid.
Why demand two or three witnesses? Because church leaders live open, public lives, they are particularly vulnerable to false accusations. It seems like every year Leadership Journal, a quarterly journal for pastors, has at least one article about a pastor who’s ministry was destroyed by false accusation.
Pastors are look at public leader opens thus they and their family are open to a lot of criticism. Some often get notes and emails that criticizes their actions and decisions they have made as a leader. Many of these criticisms are anonymous notes or emails. So many Pastors have to guard their heart against getting too discouraged, because this is simply part of being a public leader. Trying to lead means some people won’t like you and will always assume the worst about you.
Yet sometimes accusations against church leaders are true and can be verified by more than one witness. St. Paul enumerated in 1 Timothy 3 some of these sins: unfaithfulness to his wife, drunkenness, out of control anger, greed, and false teaching.
Paul then gives Timothy a solemn charge to deal with all accusations against church leaders without partiality or favoritism.
In our church found in Book of Discipline par. 2702 are the chargeable offenses, for clergy and the process of dealing with these charges which give a very fair trial to the respondent. I hope to God it never happens to our pastors here at FUMC…
So here we find the second way to honor our spiritual leaders. WE HONOR OUR SPIRITUAL LEADERS BY TREATING THEM FAIRLY.
3 . EXPECTING INTEGRITY (1 Timothy 5:22, 24-25)
Paul admonished the church saying:“Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure” v. 22.
In the Bible, people laid hands on someone to commission them or acknowledge God’s calling in their lives. So when a person was commissioned to a special ministry, the church leaders would place their hands on the person in prayer as a way of visibly acknowledging God’s calling in that person’s life. When pastors are ordained to pastoral ministry, the Bishops placed their hands on them in prayer.
Now what does the laying on of hands refer to here? The logic goes something like this: “Be fair to pastors when they’re accused, and if they are found guilty of disqualifying themselves from ministry, be sure to rebuke them publicly. By the way, when you appoint new pastors don’t be too hasty but give the process time.” Thus the point would be to make sure you know someone’s character before appointing them to church leadership. Some people’s character flaws are obvious for all to see, but other people’s flaws take time to see.
There’s another way to understand this text that makes some sense. If the context is removing church leaders who’ve disqualified themselves from ministry by sinning, it’s possible to take verse 22 as referring to the restoration of these sinning pastors back into leadership. So the laying on of hands here isn’t so much commissioning new pastors, as much as it’s re-commissioning failed pastors who are being restored. So the idea would be something like this: “Be fair with your pastors. Don’t accept false accusations. But if an accusation that disqualifies the person from leadership is true, remove that person from leadership, publicly rebuking him. Don’t be hasty in reappointing that person to leadership because if you do, you’ll share in his sins.” I think this makes better sense in the context.
Whichever interpretation we favor, the point here is similar. Don’t appoint or reappoint people to church leadership too hastily, but make sure you know their character first. Some people appear charming and spiritual at first, but as time goes by you begin to see deep seated character flaws. It takes time to get to know a person’s character.
So this is the third way we honor our leaders. WE HONOR OUR LEADERS BY EXPECTING THEM TO ACT WITH INTEGRITY.
It might sound odd that expecting our leaders to act with integrity honors them, but it makes sense when you think about it. There’s an honor that goes with being a pastor because it’s a noble, honorable calling to serve in Jesus’ Church as a leader. To expect our leaders to live consistently with the honor of that calling really does honor our leaders. Now don’t confuse integrity with perfection. If pastors had to be perfect, the only church pastor would be Jesus, because he’s the only sinless person. Integrity doesn’t even mean close to perfect. Integrity means that a person’s private life and public life are consistent, that the leader is seeking to live a lifestyle that reflects the values of Jesus.
A person with integrity is brutally honest about his or her shortcomings and failures, but they’re not content to stay there. They want to grow, to move forward, even while being honest with where they fall short.
People can have some pretty odd expectations of pastors and their families. A study conducted by George Barna of pastor and congregations about ten years ago, noted that many pastors and church leaders struggle with unrealistic expectations. Barna says, “Many pastors are doomed from the day they join a congregation because the congregation’s expectations are unachievable by any human being. No matter how skilled, how loving, how intelligent or how experienced the pastor might be, the people of the church expect too much too quickly from the pastor to have much chance of succeeding in their eyes” But one thing we can expect from all our pastors and church leaders is integrity. We honor our leaders by expecting it.
4. ENCOURAGING A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE (1 Timothy 5:23)
Now v. 23 says “Don’t drink water anymore but use a little wine because of your stomach problems and your frequent illness.” Why was this instruction given?
In chapter 3 Paul warned against drunkenness among church leaders, that being addicted to alcohol disqualifies a person from spiritual leadership. Mostly likely, in his passion to be pure and avoid controversy, Timothy simply abstained from alcohol completely.
Now it was commonly believed in the ancient world that wine had important medicinal value. So Timothy’s total abstinence from wine was hurting his health, leading to stomach problems and frequent illnesses. So Paul tells Timothy that he can keep himself pure before God without hurting his health. In fact, Paul doesn’t want Timothy to engage in actions that will hurt his health, even if those actions are done in the name of being pure before God.
So the principle here is for Timothy to live a healthy lifestyle, with the application of the principle for Timothy to drink some wine in moderation.
So here we find a fourth way to honor our spiritual leaders. WE HONOR OUR SPIRITUAL LEADERS BY ENCOURATING THEM TO LIVE A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE.
For Timothy this meant taking small amounts of wine in moderation for his stomach problems and frequent illnesses. For us it means encouraging our leaders to do things that will keep them healthy for the long haul.
Conclusion
God wants us to honor the spiritual leaders in our lives, such as our pastor. We do that by supporting them financially, by treating them fairly, by expecting them to act with integrity, and encouraging them to live a healthy lifestyle. Two Mega Church Pastors in the USA, Pastor Pete Wilson, founder and Senior pastor of Cross Point Church(7,000 members) and Pastor Perry Noble of New Spring (5,000 members) resigned their pastorate, reason, their family and personal life were burned out in their ministry. In their dedication and busyness in their work, and possibly the expectations of the church members, they have neglected their personal lives and their families.
In the United Methodist Church worldwide many pastors leave their appointments or withdraw from the ministry for financial reasons and or family reasons. So let us help and honor our pastors reach a point in their lives Paul reached, when he looked back on his life in ministry and said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7).
How can we help our pastors finish well? One of the answer is for local church members to honor their spiritual leaders. Honoring pastors is only part of the answer, but its something the congregation can do. May God help us as a church to honor those who lead us, to honor them financially, to honor them with fair treatment, to honor them with our expectations, and to honor them with encouragement to healthy living, and prayerfully support their family and their ministry. Amen.