Anyone?
Eli? No, he lost his office because he refused to prosecute his sons but instead let them go unpunished for their crimes. Anyone else?
I mention this because I think some believe First Timothy 3.4-5 and Titus 1.6 are criteria for mandatory defrocking. I’m doubtful about this. The passages themselves don’t prove this position. If I tell my daughters to marry men who will be sexually faithful and who will also be faithful leading in family worship, I haven’t thereby told my daughters they have grounds for divorce if the guy turns out to have no interest in family worship. Paul’s list for Timothy and Titus as to whom they should raise to leadership positions cannot be automatically assumed to constitute valid reasons for deposition from office.
Where that leaves us, I don’t know. I certainly want, work for, and pray for my children to continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that they have heard. But, if it comes down to following the Bible, we don’t have grounds for automatically removing people from office because their children don’t remain Christians.
Mark – Say someone wanted to depose Eli, say early on in his sons apostacy, before things got insane. How could someone have had the high priest removed from office? Are we given instructions on how to do that? What about a king with wayward children?
It could be that there are no OT examples of men being removed from office because there was no practicle way of doing so…by the people that is. That said, things are different in the church today.
Mark,
Where, then, does Scripture give us the valid reasons for removing an elder from his position?
I think Eli’s sons had done things that warranted removal from office (and probably removal from the living).
I agree that we almost certainly have more flexibility in these matters than in the OT. I’m not trying to say that a pastor is just as secure in his office as a hereditary monarch. I’m just saying we have no direct evidence that the eventual apostasy of a son or daughter warrants his removal from office.
You know me…a serious question: Based on proximity in those passages, how would we then treat ordained women currently in the ministry? Just curious how your argument affects that subject. Blessings!
Just to give you the opportunity to unpack things a bit more … surely you’d say that the list of qualifications in Timothy and Titus, while it’s a list of qualifications for entrance into office, would also be relevant things to consider in determining whether a man is *still* qualified for office, right?
That is, if a guy is a habitual drunk, you don’t install him as an elder. But if an elder is a habitual drunk, you don’t necessarily kick him out of office instantly (though you might suspend him sooner rather than later). You might work with him for a while, possibly allowing him to take a leave of absence to get things sorted out. But eventually, you might simply relieve him of his office.
I suspect that if a guy is not faithful to his wife, if he’s an adulter, you might suspend him from office and put him under discipline almost as soon as you find out. The gravity of the offense and the potential for shame being brought on Christ and His church would lead to greater speed. But if you have an elder who occasionally falls into the sin of using pornography, you wouldn’t necessarily punt him from office instantly but might work with him and only remove him from office if he’s unrepentant.
And so with fathers of children who are unbelieving. I think that passage is speaking of children who are currently in the father’s home, not 35-year-old grownup kids who have received a lot of different influences after leaving home and whose apostasy is not so easy to link with parental influence or lack thereof.
But even so, if a guy’s teenage son is rebellious, you don’t put the guy into office. But if an elder’s teenage son is rebellious, you don’t kick the guy out of office. Not right away, at least. You might give him a leave of absence, some time off from active service, in order to allow him to get his household in order.
But down the road, if the guy’s son (who is still living at home) is still rebellious, that might be a factor in removing the guy from office, right? One might consider other factors (I’d be interested in *why* the son is so rebellious), but this factor would be one thing to bear in mind.
One might also consider whether this is an anomaly (14 of the guy’s 15 kids are godly but this one kid is acting up lately) or whether this is a consistent pattern (all 15 kids are rebellious).
In fact, one might consider then what happens with the kids when they get out of the home. If all of a guy’s kids drop the faith as soon as they leave home, I’d wonder a lot about what happened in the home and I’d wonder whether the dad really is qualified to shepherd a church after all.
And one might consider the trajectory of the dad, too. A guy who messed up with his kids and now realizes it may make a great elder.
Is this tracking with what you’re saying in this blog entry, Mark?
I’m not sure what you mean by “proximity,” but I don’t believe there are or can be women in the pastoral ministry.
I’m not sure how my argument affects it….
Oh wait. Are you saying ordination while wrong might still be valid?
I don’t see it. There are no OT priests. Paul puts restrictions on men only ruling. I think I’d have to say they simply are not ordained.
Yeah. One thing to consider is, whether or not it is the man’s fault, some things simply hurt the church. While I don’t want to leave someone destitute, I think it might be proper to move him into some other line of work where he’s not in the fishbowl and let someone else pastor the church.
Scripture gives no iron-shod guarantee that the children of Christians will remain in the church, being submissive. Any self-respecting pastor worth his salt (if one of his children goes awol) will question his own worthiness to be a pastor. That is to the good, since none of us are worthy to be Gospel ministers. It should drive us back to Christ.
Mark,
The universe may be about to end, but I agree with you.
I like the principle above: if a guy’s house is in disorder, don’t put him into office. If it goes into disorder when he is in office, don’t remove him immediately.
I think we would do a man in such a position far more good if the elders helped him deal with the situation Biblically. If he is responding to it Biblically, whether or not the child repents immediately, or not, then it shows maturity and that he governs his house well.
And, that, it seemeth to me, is what Paul is getting at. If he governs his house well, even with a rebellious child, he shows he can govern the church well, even with rebellious sheep.
I appreciate comments but would like to avoid recognizable descriptions of situations.
Right. Well, I agree and grant your point. As you know, most of the recent argument over women’s ordination has centered on those or “nearby” texts. I guess I was just wondering if– analogous to your treatment of the elder in question–while we would not ordain a woman, we might yet work with an already ordained woman from another denomination in common mercy ministry or service to our neighborhood. Just thinking out loud…and off-topic!
Oh, up above. In my reply to Jamison. I meant to write: “There are no OT priestesses.”
We tend to ask when we may declare a man unfit for office, and deny or take away a privilege. Certainly that’s part of it in some cases of sin. I’ve wondered if there’s another angle.
Should we also consider that the man’s time and energies are limited, so that if his child is falling away from the faith, God is calling him away from serving the church, and towards serving double-time in that area? From that perspective, there may be warrant for quickly relieving a man of his office so that he might focus on that calling. Instead of telling him he’s a failure and not capable of serving as an officer, we could affirm his gift, assure him that we will carry his load to serve the church in his absence, and encourage him to devote more energy toward his family.
Maybe Alan, but everyone has to support his family financially doing something that takes his time away from them….
I think a number of folks are thinking of lay elders, Mark, not necessarily pastors. I’m wondering whether that changes things, since a lay elder, by being removed, would not lose his livelihood. Of course, the Pastoral epistles don’t themselves make that particular distinction, but Paul does reflect elsewhere on “professional” ministers of the gospels. I really appreciate John’s comments: they seem to be well-balanced. I would like to add a couple of notes:
1. Shouldn’t lay elders at least step down themselves without being removed? If a man truly is godly, he should be the first one to recognize when he is not meeting the requirements of the Pastorals. Of course, some godly men with tender consciences may think they are never meeting those requirements, but that is where the pastor and other elders should encourage such a man to remain in office. You also don’t want someone bouncing in and out of active office, though, just because his kids have been acting up one week…
2. The requirements for elders in the Pastorals make me wonder whether we need a shift of mentality in the church regarding our pastors. Right now, the majority of seminarians are young men, newly married, or getting married in seminary. Why are they being called to the pastorate when their circumstances are not such that they can even be examined or tested by some of the standards for elders (e.g., the family requirement)? Paul seems to have in view men of standing and reputation in a community, which most 22 year olds haven’t had time to acquire. And Timothy was clearly an exception, so we can’t appeal to him to support the fact that the majority of the men in seminary are so young.
Oh, and has anyone here read To You and Your Children, the book on covenant succession from Canon Press? Any reactions?
One observation on the book is that it at least should help us correct our view of covenant children: it seems to me that the prevalent perspective is to consider it a complete toss-up whether any children will be faithful or not, while Scripture seems to give substantial expectation that God will save our children with us. This generational promise, by the way, seems to be particularly intensified in the new covenant (e.g., Isa. 65:23–which, BTW, applies in some sense to temporal history, v. 20), so that appealing to the example of Eli doesn’t apply.
Mark, I guess I was looking at it from the angle mostly of ruling elders/deacons, where the church office is on top of work & family.