Any church community’s institutional stability and solid spiritual growth is always dependent on its mature and effective leadership committee. If there are no godly Christian men who are equipped to handle the Word of God and the saints, the church would collapse immediately. In this passage, Paul describes what it means to be a Godly Christian leader called by God to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and to suffer for His name sake.
Religious leaders often seem very kind in public, but get aggressive and violent when someone opposes them. Sometimes Pastors even beat up their wives and do not respect them in private. There are other leaders in the church, who serve people because of money. Some leaders are good with people in public but poor in managing their own household, their children don’t listen to them and are extremely rebellious. As a father and husband, they’re very passive about family matters, and the list goes on and on. But the Apostle Paul has a response against all these bad character qualities of a leader in this passage.
We have a lot of poor examples of leaders around us, who make big promises but don’t fulfill them. Hypocrisy is so evident in their lives. Many leaders have fallen into sexual immorality, financial mismanagement, abuse of authority in the church etc. Recognizing a man of character has become a difficult task these days. How do we discern the character qualities of an Elder who is not perfect but acceptable in the eyes of God and people? Listen to the sermon to find out.