Search Results for: spiritual gifts

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Accessing the Enablement | Part 3: The Offices

Having laid out the qualifications for the church ministry offices, Paul now turns to Timothy himself, the overseer of the whole process, to specify to him what qualities he must have as he carries his responsibilities.

Now, we readers can’t assume that everything Paul requires of Timothy should be required of all believers two millennia later–I don’t “use a little wine for [my] stomach’s sake” (1Ti 5.23)–but as we’ve noted before, the characteristics of effective ministers (servants) in the church in the first century can legitimately be extrapolated to all of us who believe. We’ll need to maintain a careful interpretive balance as we proceed.

As I read chapter 4, the first thing that strikes me is Paul’s heavy emphasis on doctrine; it appears in verses 1, 6, 13, and 16. One might expect the focus of someone who is “serving” others in the church to be on interpersonal skills such as empathy, listening, compassion, and so forth. I’m not suggesting that those things aren’t important; they are inherent elements in love, which is the second great commandment.

But the greatest commandment is to love God, and thus listening to him, and obeying him, are at least as important as being moved by the pleas of others. Of course the two are not in opposition; we can love God well and love others well too. But disregarding love for God, which is manifested by obedience, will render us unable to “serve” others well.

Hence, doctrine. Effective ministers, all of us, must know, understand, and apply the Word with skill. If your pastor exposits the Scripture well, your attentiveness, review, and later interaction will get you well on the way, and eventually you’ll be in a position to feed yourself from the Word at some reasonable level.

And if your pastor doesn’t exposit the Scripture, get a new pastor.

Against that doctrinal background, Paul expects other qualities.

A solid doctrinal foundation should enable us to recognize, refute, and reject false teachers (1Ti 4.1-6). That matters.

As our pastors exemplify godliness, we can reinforce their examples by our own (1Ti 4.12):

in our words
in our lifestyles
in our love
in our spirits, genuinely from the inside out
in our faith–and our faithfulness
and in our purity, rejecting all the defilements of the culture around us.

That way we won’t be a defiling influence on those we serve.

Paul closes the chapter, and his focus on our personal qualities, by reminding us of our spiritual gifts (1Ti 4.14). As he’s emphasized repeatedly elsewhere, these gifts are not for us; they’re for everybody except us. Our task is to serve those alongside us by doing well what we can do in order to strengthen them in their faith and in their walk.

We’re here for them.

Now, none of this happens accidentally or routinely. It happens on purpose. When we gather with the body, or when we fellowship with another believer over a beverage of choice (that’s a decaf breve for me), we’re focused on how we can serve one another. That might involve an encouraging word–or a challenging one. It might involve an intentional, if silent, example. It might involve a personal sacrifice for someone else’s benefit, or keeping a promise, or turning the conversation in a healthier direction, or teaching a Sunday school class.

The possibilities are literally endless.

Brainstorm, evaluate, plan, execute. On purpose.

Photo by Mélyna Côté on Unsplash

Sometimes people do funny things with words. My current example is the word “minister.”

In many regions of English-speaking Christendom, the label is elevated; it’s used of a pastor, someone who has professional-level training and official ordination to “the ministry.” It’s an honorific.

But that’s not what it means at all.

It means “servant.”

This is the guy who opens the car door, shines the shoes, prepares and serves the meal. The one who “ministers” to a group of people by serving them.

The New Testament Greek word is diakonos, which is the root of the English word “deacon.” That is of course an office in the church, but it’s not intended to be an elevated one. The deacons are different from the elders (Php 1.1).

What’s the difference?

Well, traditionally, churches have seen the deacons as introduced in Acts 6, when the Jerusalem apostles called for the appointment of seven men to see to the administration of food delivery to the older widows in the church. The passage sounds as if they were table waiters, but there were likely administrative tasks involved in the effort as well. Maybe acquiring the food, maybe cooking it, apportioning it, and then delivering it.

Now, the Acts 6 passage doesn’t actually say that the seven men were the first deacons; forms of the word do appear in the description of their work (Ac 6.1, KJV “ministration”; Ac 6.2 “serve tables”), but the apostles used the same word to describe their own work of “prayer and … the ministry [diakonia] of the Word” (Ac 6.4). Even so, pretty much everybody sees this passage as the birth of the diaconate.

Among American Baptist churches, the deacon board is often actually an elder board; it’s the governing board of the church. But it appears as though that’s not their proper role; as I’ve noted, deacons are not elders.

Now, it appears that appointment as a deacon should indeed involve some honor and respect; the job specification laid out by the apostles included “honest report” and “full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom” (Ac 6.3). But the Scripture uses this term much more broadly than just of the church office; Peter ties it to the exercise of spiritual gifts by everyone in the church (1P 4.10-11; cf. 1Co 12.5).

It appears, then, that a healthy Christian is going to be “serving” others in the church; he’s going to be “ministering” to them. That’s not merely the job of the “minister.”

What should that look like?

Late in his life, Paul wrote a couple of letters to his protege Timothy, who was serving in Ephesus as an apostolic delegate. It appears that Timothy carried more authority than a parish pastor; he was sent to act on Paul’s behalf in churches in the region. But Paul’s words to him focus on what’s expected of a “minister”; and I suspect that his teaching here would often be educational for all the “ministers” in the church, at every level.

I’d like to give some thought to that for a few posts.

Photo by Mélyna Côté on Unsplash