Where are the Timothy's?

I came across the blog of a new ministry, and I am very encouraged and excited about it. The ministry is the Paul & Timothy Bible Conference and their focus is on the raising up of young men to be like Timothy, leaders in the church by giving them responsibility without prematurely placing them as elders. From their homepage, there is this piercing view of the problem in so many churches today, The Pre-Eldership Dilemma.

In most churches today, the young man who heeds God’s call to ministry is faced with a dilemma. How can he gain experience in preaching the Word without disregarding the biblical qualifications of Elders or Deacons? Under the conventional approach, a gifted young preacher and Bible teacher can, if he chooses, enter directly into vocational ministry right out of Bible College or Seminary. But in doing so, he often skips past the season of managing his own household that normally serves to temper a young man’s moral character and develop his competence in leadership. He is thrust by modern ministry demands into routines that undermine his biblical qualifications for church office. The younger the Bible College or Seminary graduate (e.g. ages 22 to 25) the more susceptible he will be to this trap. Pressed by the need to provide for a young family, yet relatively unskilled for other trades due to having invested completely in acquiring a theological education, he feels justified in making use of his training, whether or not he meets the biblical qualifications. The fact that so many churches currently do not hesitate to hire such young men as their pastors does not make it wise, and the casualties of treating the ministry as a simple career choice are unacceptably high.

As young married Bible College and Seminary students ourselves, we experience this dilemma personally. We desire to help move our fellow students around this pitfall and safely into a ministry that will have the best possible foundation to go the distance over a lifetime.

While I am not so young, I know all too well the disastrous pitfalls of being spiritually immature in a elders role, and these four young guys have a great mind for the problem and are seeking a solution. Their blog (which is going to become must read material for me) makes some very salient points. The church does a poor job of a lot of stuff, but nothing more so than discipling young men, challenging them and encouraging them to pursue Christian ministry. A lot of “youth” activities are focused on trying to entice young men into church and keep them entertained. I get the impulse to do so, but it also tends to dumb down youth ministry to the point that those young men who are committed, although small in number, fail to be encouraged to Christian ministry. Keep them entertained and hope they don’t get anyone pregnant seems as far as the church is willing to go. Without conscious, intentional raising up of young men to serve in ministry the church will continue to go along the same trajectory we see today: young men don’t see ministry as a viable option for adulthood. They go off to a secular college, planning for a secular career, often in a different town than the church they grew up in. Maybe, maybe, when they get older they feel the call to ministry and have to find some option for school, graduate and then start looking for a church to serve in. The whole process is little different from a career in accounting or health care. Is that the model we should seek to emulate?

Conversely many young men are full of zeal but need some mature direction and guidance, and sometimes need to be reigned in or even rebuked. Without godly older, spiritually mature older men where are they going to get that direction? They aren't, and so they are going to become spiritual renegades. Which brings us to the elders.

What about elders? How are they chosen in churches today? Well, for the most part they aren’t. The average church doesn’t subscribe to a plural elder model, and part of the reason they don’t is the lack of men Biblically qualified to lead in the church. Well there will never be Biblically qualified men if the church doesn’t disciple the men in the church, show them what is expected of them and seek to train those men to become Biblically qualified for eldership. What often ends up happening when elders are called, they are called for all the wrong reasons: availability, age and willingness. Those are noble but they aren’t Biblical qualifications. So something is broken and needs to be fixed. I am a big believer that the lone elder/pastor model is ultimately not healthy for the church. It is the default in many churches because the pastor is the only man who is really qualified, but the goal should not be for this to be the permanent state in church. Pastors need support and they also need accountability, both of which are hard to get properly when in a single elder model. Pastors need peers to talk to, sometimes complain and vent to, to bounce ideas off and to lift them up in prayer.

I harp on this all the time, but when we have limited resources as we do in the church and we have so many priorities for ministry, we need to be judicious in how we spend our time and resources. I would argue that training men to be elders and encouraging young men already in the church to pursue ministry should be a primary focus for the church. Just spending out resources and time on the same things we have always done is foolhardy and poor stewardship. Most churches need to, being blunt as I am often accused of, blow up the whole thing, reevaluate every line item, expense and class and have a serious, prayerful conversation about that commitment: does it make sense, does it yield results, could the resources be used better somewhere else, does it support the long-term mission of the church, does it impact lives for salvation and edification?

I am going to keep a close watch on this blog and ministry, and I encourage others to do the same.