Some things you just have to wait for. Tuesdays with Timothy #31

1 Timothy 3:6-7 Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

The job of pastor is a very difficult one because the main part of the job is preaching the Word, which  in turns means rebuking, exhorting, commanding, and taking oversight. The church has to voluntarily submit to the leadership of the person they call as pastor  and this requires that the man not be a novice and that he not be, as Justice Scalia may have said, a fine practitioner in the arts of jiggery-pokery. They seem unrelated, but if I have anything to do with it, you'll see why I think they go together by the time you get to the end of the post. To add further bang for your buck, if you are wanting to be a pastor someday, you'll be that much closer to being ready by the time we are done. Because I want you to do well, allow me add this totally unnecessary sentence of fluff here to help you even more. What do they have in common, besides avenues for Satanic attack? Time. Somethings, you just have to wait for.

First, the man is not to be a novice or a new convert. You are not to call a man who has recently been saved into church leadership. The Christian life is full of ups and downs and a new convert is usually all ups for a while and if he is all ups and then ceremoniously hoisted upon the shoulders of the church and lifted up into leadership, he is in real danger of falling and falling hard.

The second area is how the man is viewed outside of the church. This is also a time related quality. It may have been that a man was a decent chap prior to the Lord saving him and he had a good reputation before. It is more likely that the man lived like a sinner and had the reputation of a sinner. The only way this can be corrected is time and a steady Christian walk. A man that has a bad reputation going into the pulpit is going to drag it with him. It will hurt both him and the church. Take for example, the man who wrote this Epistle. Saul of Tarsus had quite the reputation and not in the good way. Even after the years of service to Christ before coming to Jerusalem, his bad reputation preceded him. Only time and his dedication to Christ (along with some character references) did the trick for those in Jerusalem.

You cannot grow a good name overnight any more than you can move the distance between yourself and the day the Lord saved you except to patiently wait. If you try to fast forward or speed up the process, you are setting yourself (or the church) up for some hard times.

Now for some necessary qualifications. The novice has nothing to do with physical age, but life as a Christian. There are novices who are drawing social security and were too old to fight in Vietnam and there are some college students who have been Christians well over half their life. It also needs to be said that a faithful Christian will have rubbed people the wrong way. There will be those who hate him because they hate Christ and will have all sorts of terrible things to say about the man. Like the Accuser, they'll love to tear down his reputation. This cannot be avoided and is to be expected. I believe what this is means is he should be knows as an honest Christian man. People may not like him, but they wouldn't be afraid to buy a used car from him. They may hate his preaching and call him a religious zealot, but wouldn't care to call him as a character witness on their behalf, if they were in trouble with the law. They should be know for being a faithful Christian, not just be liked and praised by the community.