Lead by Paul David Tripp
Character over ability
As I was reading Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church (Crossway) by Paul David Tripp, I was impressed by something that I’ve been reflecting on for about a year and a half now, something that was really brought to my mind by Christianity Today’s “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill” podcast. That something is this: In Christian ministry, far more important than talent, ability, charisma, hard work, or any of the things we see valued when a list of most influential pastors is culled—far more important than all that is one’s character. Mark Driscoll had to leave the church he planted not because of some affair, but because he was a huge jerk—despite his enormous gifts (and really, he was a very talented guy, even if there’s no way he read a book a day), his character did not measure up to his position as pastor.
Maybe you would think, well, of course character matters. I think that some as well. But it never really struck me that in any of the biblical qualifications of ministry, almost none of them have to do with one’s ability. They are matters of character. Here are the qualifications for the office of overseer, essentially a pastor, in 1 Timothy 3: One must be
above reproach;
the husband of one wife;
sober-minded;
self-controlled;
respectable;
hospitable;
able to teach;
actually sober;
gentle (explicitly not violent);
not quarrelsome;
no lover of money;
able to manage one’s household well;
a longtime Christian;
thought of well by others.
The qualifications in Titus 1 are much the same: One must be
above reproach;
the husband of one wife;
the parent of children who are believers;
not debauched or insubordinate;
not arrogant;
not quick-tempered;
not a drunkard;
not violent;
not greedy;
hospitable;
a lover of good;
self-controlled;
upright;
holy;
disciplined;
hold firm to the gospel truth, so as to teach it and lead others in it.
The only “skill” mentioned here is the ability to teach. (And even there, the Scripture doesn’t qualify that the teaching has to be good, merely that the content must reflect biblical truth and that the pastor must be available and willing to teach it.) There is nothing here about one’s ability to contextualize the gospel, as important as that is; nothing about one’s physical appearance; nothing (outside of generally being thought well of) about one’s presence in the public; nothing about one’s ability to fundraise; nothing about one’s connections; nothing about one’s ability to captivate a crowd; nothing about one’s personal charisma; nothing about one’s skill to communicate vision and values to a team of people; nothing about one’s ability to build that team. In short, in the Bible, the pastor looks almost nothing like the pastor we would see lifted up in magazines and books and online. Instead, what we see is that the pastor ought to be holy as Jesus is holy, and seek to point others to Jesus and his holiness for us.
When you see it put so stark, it is kind of astonishing. After all, we admit that this is true, but do we in the church really organize our ministries this way? When looking for pastors, sure, we want folks who are good followers of Jesus, but we also want people who can do all those other things as well. In pastoral ministry, yes, I desire to simply follow Jesus and help others follow Jesus, but it is also true that I want to be the kind of pastor who can lead a growing church, whose jottings have a wide reach, whose teachings are widely shared. We are envious of the slick-looking churches and the slick-looking pastors we find on social media. Are we as envious of those pastors who quietly go about their work for decades, living for Jesus and discipling others in the way of Christ? Doesn’t the question answer itself?
Tripp’s book is helpful insofar as it focuses not merely on the individual pastor, but on anyone who plays any sort of leadership role in the church—that it is, in important ways, all of our responsibility in the church to build a healthy culture wherein people see and reflect the glory of the Lord. Tripp asks a good set of questions in this vein:
Could it be that the way we have structured local church leadership, the way leaders relate to one another, the way we form a leader’s job description, and the everyday lifestyle of the leadership community may be contributing factors to pastoral failure? Could it be that as we leaders are disciplining the pastor, dealing with the hurt he has left behind and working toward restoration, we need to look inward and examine what his fall tells us about ourselves? Could it be that we are looking to the wrong models to understand how to lead? Could it be that as w have become enamored with corporate models of leadership, we have lost sight of deeper gospel insights and values? Could it be that we have forgotten that the call to lead Christ’s church is not summarized by organizing, running, and funding a weekly catalog of religious gatherings and events? Could it be that many of our leadership communities don’t actually function like communities? And could it be that many of our leaders don’t really want to be led, and many in our leadership community don’t value true biblical community?
I would make a slight addendum: All of us—pastors, laypeople, elders, deacons, leaders, volunteers, members, attenders—ought to ask ourselves these questions. As churches, as pastors, do we reflect biblical qualifications? Do we reflect God’s upside-down kingdom, in which the way to gain one’s life is to lose it? Are we, to use Martin Luther’s language, theologians of the cross, in which the way we see the world is on the basis of Christ and how he has revealed himself? Or are we theologians of glory, people who have been taken in by worldly definitions of success?
The road the Bible lays out is unquestionably the harder path, filled with all sorts of challenges. But, in the end, it is unquestionably the better path.