Good morning. If your copy of God's Word still turned to 1 Timothy chapter 3 and hopefully a finger in Titus 1, we are continuing our vision series this morning. Today we're looking at the idea of a vision for proper leadership. Now, before we get into the sermon Proper I always feel weird and I think I mentioned this one of the last times when we were walking through the pastoral pistols and we got to the sections on you know what it is to be a an elder slash pastor and what the qualifications are. You always feel awkward when you stand up to tell people about your job. That's just kind of a weird deal. It's like, alright, we're going to have a public session and you go through all these other things and it's okay, let's talk about marriage and let's talk about prayer and let's talk about what it means to be an elder in a church. And so we get an elder in a church to tell everybody what it's like to be an elder in a church. It it seems like there might be a little conflict of interest there. And so this is this is kind of weird to do this this morning. But I want to just take a moment as we start before we kind of unpack what what is here in this. And I want to talk about historically visions of church leadership because there have been a lot of visions for for proper church leadership in the history of the church. The church has been established and around for roughly 2,000 years now. And a lot of places, a lot of spaces, a lot of cultural context, a lot of variations of how church leadership works. And so I just want to kind of walk through some of those to show some of the difficulty of looking at what this should be like. There have been times and places in the history of the church where they've embraced what's known as a single pastor model, where there's just one pastor There's no multiplicity of elders. There's no multiplicity of pastoral staff. There's just one pastor, and he's the guy that does whatever the pastoral stuff is, and then maybe there's deacons, maybe there's not, but there's not a shared leadership in pastoral models. You have that in a lot of places even still today in evangelical Christianity, but there are those who do that. There are those who follow what would be called a multi-pastor model, similar to what Sylvania does, where there's a plurality of pastoral leadership, whether it's through staff or through elders or a combination of both. And that has been incredibly common throughout the history of the church as well. There are actually those models that take the idea of the priesthood of the believer to the extreme, and they have the no-pastor model. that there's not an actual pastor who leads the church, that everyone is equally filled with the spirit and everyone equally hears from God. and that on any given time of corporate worship anybody can stand up and lead in teaching and instruction. You typically would find that in some of our more apostolic and Pentecostal type denominations where they're waiting for the falling of the Holy Spirit to give someone a word and there's not necessarily the need for any kind of pastoral leadership. You also have several denominations that more aggressively have what I would call the formal clergy model. some of our Anglican friends, our Episcopal friends, some of our Lutheran friends, it would be a bit more like that. And so we have some models that are structured like that where there's kind of a hierarchy of church leadership. There is almost an assigning of people to congregations. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes our Presbyterian friends do it that way. Some of our Methodist friends do it like that on occasion depending on what version they are of that. And it's always interesting when I have cross-denominational conversations with friends who are in other groups that do it that way. where they have no say in who their church leadership is going to be. They get assigned it by a council or a senate or whatever, and somebody else retires or leaves or gets moved to another place, and then a few weeks later they assign them somebody new, and they just have to accept whoever it is that gives it to them. And they find our model remarkable. It's like, wow, everybody kind of got to review it and think about it and decide if they want it or not. It's very interesting to see that, but that's been a model throughout the history of the church, where there's kind of this formal clergy model. And then, of course, there are some, under the Christian umbrella, this would be more of our Catholic and Eastern Orthodox friends, where there's an actual formal priesthood. It's not so much formal clergy as it is, they are representative of what it means to be a priest in the economy of God. They do things And in the doing of those things, it actually transmit and helps people to actively and really and truly participate in the grace of God. And so you have all of those models that exist currently and throughout the history of the church as far as what pastoral and elder leadership should look like in a congregation. From the no pastor model to the formal priesthood, I'll give you grace model and everything in between. So the question that we need to ask is this, why has there been so much incredibly high levels of diversity throughout the history of the church on this issue? It's probably something that most of us just don't take a lot of time to stop and ask a question about, you know, because we have a particular denominational grid that we're a part of. Our denominational grid has always done it a certain kind of way. You might have been one of those brave people who's crossed over a denominational line or two, and you've seen a couple of examples of that, you know. And so you got a little more exposure to, hey, you know, not everybody always does it the way that we do it. But most people, most people have some sort of past background familiarity with a particular way a particular group of people do it. And even if they do cross denominational lines, They cross denominational lines to denominations that are a lot like the one that they were already in. And so there's not a whole lot of differences as far as how things are done. And so the assumption usually is, and I'll just go ahead and say it could be the wrong assumption. We have to be careful with this. The assumption usually is, well, of course we do it right and everybody else does it wrong. No, that's human nature. That's how human beings are wired. And so, and so we don't usually stop and ask the question, why is it so different between so many different kinds of Christians? You would think something as significant and important as the people who are going to help lead local churches, that it would be a lot more cut and dry. It would be a lot more stable. There wouldn't be a lot of wiggle room for diversity. You would think that there'd be a lot laid out to where it's like, this is exactly how it ought to be because As we saw a few weeks ago, the church is God's public expression of people being conformed to the image of Jesus. It is the avenue by which the gospel goes out into the world and evangelism and discipleship takes place. You would think something that magnificently important, it would be like you could turn to the appendix and say, all right, here are the 19 steps you need to go through to make sure church leadership is just the way that it's supposed to be because of how many other important things that it impacts. Yet, We have incredible diversity in this. Why is that? Well, we're going to get to the answer to that question in just a second. But to get there, we have to ask this other question first. What is required? Biblically of church leadership. What is required? biblically of church leadership. For those of you who don't know, a storm is coming. We are now being informed of that by everyone's alert systems on their phones. If you haven't been watching the news, there is one coming. It's not here yet, but it's coming. So, anyway, we'll be out in plenty of time, I promise. So, even mine just flashed at me in the middle of my clock and said, Philip, it's coming. So, anyway, all right. And of course, some of you may have just gotten an amber alert too, but anyway, all right. What is required biblically of church leadership? What is required? This is something that all Christians should be able to settle on and agree on, because this is the thing that the Scripture is most explicit about. There is no real room for adjusting and wiggling on this particular issue. The thing that is required of church leadership biblically is this. First, Mostly, predominantly the thing that is expressed the most frequently here in Timothy over in Titus and in some other places, mostly Christian character that can be modeled by other people. That is the chief thing that is required. Of church leadership. Now, what does that mean? So let's take a look at it. So Timothy and Titus focus chiefly on Christian character. If you read through 1 Timothy 3, which was done for us by Chris just a little while ago, Titus 1, you see an expression of issues about character. Being above reproach, prudent, respectable, hospitable, not having addictive issues, not a kind of person who flies off the handle. They don't lose control. They have a good household. They have a good reputation with people outside of the church. And on and on and on it goes. You bring both the lists together and it's mostly 90 some odd percent of both lists when put together is about character. Now, I want to make a strong point here. Because having been in pastoral ministry and walking with other guys who do pastoral ministry, I've heard it said to me, and I know other guys have heard it said to them, that sometimes people who aren't in pastoral ministries, they live their lives in a certain kind of way sometimes, and maybe their character doesn't quite rise up to some of the things that are listed out in scripture. And one of the things, at least in Baptist circles, that gets, well, you know, I'm not a preacher or anything. And that's kind of a way to excuse bad Christian behavior among people who aren't in pastoral leadership. I want to let everybody in on a secret. Nothing in the character list in either one of these passages is unique to Christian leadership. It's applicable and called on in other places in the scripture for all Christians. You're not supposed to fly off the handle in outbursts of anger. Galatians talks about that for everybody. We're not supposed to be greedy. We're not supposed to be pugnacious. We're not supposed to be addicted to things. We're not supposed to be the kind of people who are inhospitable. We're not supposed to be the kind of people that are only focused on self and the advantages that things bring to us as individuals. We are supposed to have good households. Christians, above all people, are supposed to have homes that model the the image bearing of the family. to the rest of the world. We are supposed to lovingly, with compassion, discipline our children in a good way. It doesn't necessarily mean our children will become Christians. We pray for that. That's God's sovereign work. But we long to create an environment where the gospel can be evident in Christian households. This is not a call for a group of clergy and everybody else gets to behave differently. This is a call for all Christians, this character list. So what's the difference then? The difference then is those who are in leadership should act in this manner in such a way that other people can see it and model themselves after it. Now, that makes me really uncomfortable. Because it means, in the position that I'm in, in the position the elders here are in, and other people who are in pastoral ministry are in, is they have to be able to, for the most part, do what Paul did and look at some people who are in the faith and say, hey, listen, if you want to look like Jesus, just act like me. And that sounds incredibly arrogant, but it's the call. That's the difference is that people who are in leadership in the church predominantly are supposed to live their lives in such a way, at least most of the time, that when other people look at it, they can say, hey, that's a really good example of somebody who doesn't fly off the handle, who handles conflict well, who doesn't have outbursts of anger. That's a really good example of somebody who's hospitable. That's a really good example of somebody who isn't self-willed but is concerned about the well-being of other people. And on and on and on the list goes. Hey, I might should talk to that person about why it is they behave that way and what I can do to maybe be more like that in my life. And hopefully what would happen if the person is in pastoral leadership is they would move to the second big thing. They would move to the second big thing, which is the one thing that separates out church leadership from everybody else. The one thing that must be uniquely present is the spiritual gift of teaching. That's what has to be there that's absolutely different and required. In both of these lists, both of these lists, Titus and Timothy, the only action verb given to church leadership is to be able to teach. Both of these lists. All the rest of them are either participles or nouns describing character. Hey, they ought to be like this and they ought to be oriented that way. What is the thing they have to do? They have to be able to do the verb, the function, the thing they should be able to perform. They have to be able to teach. Now, Timothy and Titus talk about it slightly differently. Timothy just says they must be able to teach. And Titus, when you take a look at it over there, he kind of expands that a little bit more in verse 9, holding fast the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teachings, so that what he will be able to do two things, both to exhort in sound doctrine, in other words, encourage people to learn what that is and to live it out practically, and to refute those who contradict sound doctrine. In other words, to say, this is why, this is not true, and this is what it causes to happen in our lives. That is the one thing that must be uniquely present, is the spiritual gift of teaching. Now, not all Christians have the gift or must have the gift of teaching. The gift of the pastor teacher, the gift of teaching, as it says in the scripture, is a unique spiritual gift, just like the gift of the evangelist, just like the gifts of mercies, just like the gifts of giving, just like the gifts of sacrifices, just like the gifts of administrating. And oh, no, no, we can walk through the spiritual gifts throughout the scripture, but they are not necessarily blanketly true for all Christians. There are certain spiritual gifts that I do not have. that if people were relying on me to be the one in a supernatural God-oriented kind of way to accomplish whatever that thing was, I wouldn't do it very well. I might could muster up some natural skill and some strength and surround myself with some good people, kind of like government officials do, and maybe get by, but it's not going to be the thing God has uniquely gifted me to do to bless the church. There's some of those, I just don't have them. There are some gifts that you have that I do not and that's why we all have to be together and next week we're proper vision for community and service. That's one of the reasons why the local church has to be one unified group of people doing all the things that they've been gifted to do together is so that nobody misses out on anything. Those who are going to be in pastoral leadership, those who are going to be elders in a church, the one spiritual gift that they must have and they have to demonstrate it through ability is they must be able to teach. They must have the spiritual gift of the pastor teacher. They must have it. It is a requirement. It is what sets them apart uniquely from everybody else. Not the character stuff, because all Christians are called to that high level of character. They must be able to teach. Everybody who's in pastoral ministry must have that. Now, given that that is true, let's go back to our original question. Why is it so difficult for churches to understand a good leadership model? Why do we go from no pastor denominations to formal priesthood denominations and everything in between? Why is it that it doesn't look consistently the same? It's because no one has answered quite sufficiently. The question of what is the pastor elder supposed to do? The Bible answers very explicitly what's required of the pastor elder. They must have good character, they must be able to teach. That's required of them. So now let's place these leaders in a local church context. What should they actually do? Well, of course, they should teach. But what else? Do you know what the scripture calls upon for the pastor elders to do elsewhere in another passage from Peter? It says these incredibly great words. Are you ready? It clears the whole thing up for everyone. Shepherd the flock. OK, what does that mean? Like what does that, and practice, like what does that actually mean? Do we need to like go build a fence outside and everybody walk around all fours? I need to get a big stick and the other elders need to have a big stick and we walk around and if you try to go outside the fence, you know, that'd be taking the metaphor way to the extreme. What does that mean to shepherd the flock? It's incredibly vague and it's vague on purpose. And so what happens is the reason why there's so many models is because the Bible is not very specific here. We know what's required of church leadership. They have to have good character and they have to have the spiritual gift of teaching. Now, in your cultural context, when your local church is established, what then should those people actually do? Shepherd the flock. OK. What is what does that mean? And the problem is, The struggle then becomes with cultural context. When when God's word is intentionally vague, which I believe that it is here, he is allowing for the diversity of cultural context. The way shepherding looks in predominantly middle upper class East Texas evangelical Christianity. Is not going to look like the video that we just saw in Cuba. the cultural needs, the governmental realities, the political oppression, the presence or absence thereof. The understanding of the people, the background that they came from, the under what they were saved out of the religious environments that are around them that weigh in heavily on their ability to do certain kinds of ministry or not do other kinds of ministry. The sorts of economic realities that come into people's lives because of the acceptance or rejection of the Christian religion as a whole in the society that they find themselves in. All of these things come into play in defining what it means to shepherd the flock. And so the reason why the scripture leaves it remarkably vague is because God is giving freedom for first century persecuted Jewish Christians who are welcoming in pagan Gentiles for the first time to shepherd the flock in a certain way. And for 21st century predominantly white middle upper class Christians in East Texas to shepherd the flock in a different way in a country that allows for absolute freedom of religion and has no current meaningful abiding persecution against the church at all. Because it's not going to look the same. And that's what makes it really difficult. That's what makes it really hard. And what happens is, and I found this to be true about myself and you may, I don't know if you've thought about this. I've thought about this when I've studied, been studying the Bible and been thinking about, you know, all right, well, the Bible doesn't really talk about this issue, but we need to talk about this issue. So how do we talk about this issue? And so when, when the scripture is silent or when it whispers, because sometimes the scripture is silent and sometimes it whispers. We should fill in those gaps with wisdom from the things that are clear that that's what we should do. So we come to an issue and it's like, all right, the scripture doesn't really have a lot to say about this, but we need to say something about whatever this is. So in this case today, we're talking about what leaders actually are supposed to do. How do they actually shepherd the flock? This is true of a whole lot of other issues. I had a great conversation with some men from our church the other night about Smart automated technology. And how should Christians think about, you know, the fact that cars might drive themselves and that two generations from now, people might not ever even know how to drive a car anymore if the technology keeps going that way. Like, what should we actually think about that as Christians? Guess what? You're not going to find chapter and verse where God announces to you how he feels about smart automated technology. But Christians should probably have some sort of an informed perspective on that. certain kinds of medications, certain kinds of surgeries, certain kinds of scientific advancements and technologies and how they play into the reality of what it means to be human or not to be human, artificial intelligence and lots of other kinds of things. Christians should probably think about what should we say to those? You're not going to be able to turn to Second Hesitation Chapter 8 and find an answer to that because it's just not there. And so when scripture is silent or when scripture whispers, the practice that we should follow is that we should fill in those gaps with the wisdom of the things that are clear. That's what we should do. But however, what we often do is we fill in scriptural gaps with pragmatism and convenience instead. Well, the Bible doesn't say anything about this, so let's just look around and figure out what's going to work best. Instead of asking what is best. And the problem with pragmatism, Ravi Zacharias said something kind of like this. I'm going to loosely quote him. The problem with pragmatism is it's captive to the moment. It's a slave to whatever is needed right then, rather than taking a step back and thinking about what's going to be best in the long haul. But that's normally what we do. I know it's what I do. I come to a difficult issue, the scripture doesn't really have a lot to say about it, so I just ask, what's going to make life easiest for me? That's pragmatism. That's convenience. And if you look at the history of the church and you see the way that church leadership has expressed itself culturally in its different times and its different spaces, it's usually, sadly, I have to confess this, been done more of what's pragmatic and convenient rather than what's wise and what's best. And that's one of the reasons why we have all the different kinds of models that we have. And when that certain kind of pragmatism would run its course and not be useful anymore, you usually had some other group of Christians that say, see, that's not best. Look, this is what's best now. But that group would never really go away. And so now you've got another group of people doing it a different way. So how do we get so many different denominational groups? This what I'm talking about right now, what is useful for me in the moment in my church life right now, tied with theological differences. And that's what you get birthed. So what does that produce? It produces when we fill in and church leadership models, pragmatism and convenience, rather than trying to find a wise, healthy, best course of action that's sustainable. What does this then produce in our lives? It produces in our lives, improper, unmet, unrealistic expectations. That's what it produces. And that produces this from every side. It produces from the leadership toward the congregation. The leadership has in their mind what the leadership should be about. They're trying to be about that, and it's not resonating well with the people that they're trying to lead. And so the leadership becomes frustrated because of unmet, unrealistic expectations. It comes this way from the congregation toward the leadership congregation has in their mind, the pragmatic, convenient way that they think the leadership should be and what they should be about. And the leadership's not doing that. And so there's unmet unrealistic expectations. It happens among the members of the congregation because maybe some people think that it's going the way it should go. And maybe some people think it's not going the way it should go because, Hey, my pragmatic expectations are, are being met. Your pragmatic expectations aren't being met. One of us has to be wrong. And since I feel better about myself, it must be you. And so then that creates frustration among the members of the congregation, because some people are getting their unrealistic, unmet expectations actually realistically met for once and the others aren't. And that's the problem with pragmatism. It's a problem with convenience as a way of defining how things ought to be. Marriage is a great example of this. A bunch of years ago, I had a post-marital counseling session with a couple. And they had only been married like six, eight months, and they were at each other. Oh, they were at each other. It was like, y'all were so happy like before, and now, wow, what happened? And I thought something cataclysmic had to have taken place for them to be at each other the way that they were. Come to find out it all boiled down to When do you do the dishes after dinner? That's what it all came down to. It came down to and look, people are looking at each other because y'all had this conversation. It came down to when do you clean the kitchen after dinner? Now, she had grown up in a in a household where you can't rest and enjoy a quiet moment. until the kitchen is picked up the way that it's supposed to be. So you finish your meal, you go wash off the dishes, however you do that, put them in the dishwasher, whatever you do, you put all the stuff away and then everybody can settle in for the evening. He came from a family situation where that's not how you did it. Everybody cleared the table. Put the dishes in the sink. You go enjoy a little quiet time as the food kind of settles and starts to digest. You enjoy time with each other. You start getting the kids ready for bed. And then you go, while they're getting ready for bed, and you clean the kitchen at the end, a couple hours later. This nearly tore their marriage apart. It seems like nonsense, I know. But do you know what the key problem was? They had unmet, unrealistic, improperly identified expectations. No one had given a job description before the marriage started and said, OK, so we're going to negotiate here. None of this nonsense about leaving these dishes in the sink. We're going to wash that stuff before. Nobody did that. The assumption going in was that this is remember what we said at the beginning of the sermon. This is how we've always done it. Well, no, this is how we've always done it. Why would you do it that way? You have to be wrong. And then it creates this clash. This is true in almost all of the relationships of our lives. And it's incredibly true in the church context of, of, of leadership. When the scripture doesn't lay out for us very plainly what it is, it's supposed to look like and what it is that people are supposed to do and what it is that they're supposed to be about. If you don't actually fill that in with something of meaning and substance, people then develop their own improper, unmet, unrealistic expectations. And it can cause a lot of conflict that is not necessary. And so what do you do? What do you do? How do you deal with this? Well, what you do is you don't embrace pragmatism and convenience. Because your version of what might work is not going to be your neighbor's version of what might work, and it won't be the person who's up front or the guys that are in the boardroom's version of what might work. Everybody can't come to the table with, well, we'll just do it the way I think it's going to work. It only takes about three conversations to realize you have four different opinions about what that is. Because that's just how people are. You put three people in a room, you're going to get four different opinions. That's just the way humans are wired. Sadly, it's true, but that's how we're wired. So what do you do? You try to grab a hold of wisdom in the things that are clear and apply that to the circumstance rather than what you think is what's going to work best right now. So as we've done with all these other sermons, here's some questions we at Sylvania Church need to ask about having a vision for proper leadership. Do we take seriously the call for character to be more important than skill sets or ministry expertise? I'm going to put a really fine point on it right now. We're in the process of trying to find a music youth pastor. As we approach this as a congregation, are we going to ask ourselves that question? Because we're bringing this person in as a pastoral type. They need to to be elder material, even if they don't function on the actual elder board. This is what they need to be. Do we take seriously the call for character to be more important than skill sets and ministry expertise? Because notice in these lists, the only thing the person has to be able to do is have the spiritual gift of teaching, they have to be able to teach. The rest of it is, hey, are they going to be a good guy above board, good reputation, both people in and outside of the church? Are they going to be a good family man who's faithful and devoted? Are they going to be hospitable and kind to people? Are they going to be gracious in their speech? Are they going to be self-controlled as far as not having outbursts of anger? Is this person going to be a quality person that we can look at and be really glad that they're a part of our leadership team? when people both in and outside of the church see them and engage them? Is this the kind of person this is going to be? Are we going to take that call more seriously than, well, what kind of experience do they have? What sort of stuff have they done? Where did they get their education from? You know, talk to us about all the things that you've done before in other kinds of places or whatnot. Remember, one of these lists was to Timothy who'd never done this before. Never. He was a young man. And by definition, back in that day, young man meant he was under the age of 30. If you were over the age of 30, you were considered an old man. I'll let that resonate with a lot of people. I saw a bunch of people grimace just then. So that means he was somewhere well under the age of 30 and he'd never done this before. So are we going to take that seriously? Are we all striving together as a church for these same character qualities to be in our lives? Are we viewing this as, well, that's what the leadership is supposed to have. And I, well, you know, I'm not a preacher or are we looking at it going? Every one of us needs to step up and try to model as much of this character as we can together so that we can be encouraged when people lead us in it. Are we allowing these character qualities to be modeled graciously in the lives of our leaders toward us? Second question we need to answer, do we take seriously the chief role of church leadership as teachers of God's word? Do we do we take that seriously that the chief thing they ought to be able to do is to teach God's word because they have been supernaturally gifted by God to do it? Do we take that seriously? Do we place value collectively as a church on the transformative power of scripture? It is actually the word of God through the grace of God because of the work of Jesus that's going to change my life. Do we actually really, truly believe that? As such, do we take seriously then the need to be led in that word by those spiritually gifted to do it for us? And, and, and I want to say this as plainly as I can. I spent a lot of years reading a lot of books, learning a lot of things about the Bible, and that means nothing. If there's not a supernatural presence of the gifting of God to teach the word. Because I've met a whole lot of other people who spent even more time than I did reading more books than I did learning things about the more things about the Bible and I did who aren't even Christians. Could they relay a lot of great factual information about the Bible and its history and its context? Yes, absolutely. They could. Could they present the scripture in a way that is transformatively valuable for the Christian to be made more like Jesus? No, they could not. Because that is not something that you muster up in yourself through any level of training or reading or studying. It's the reason why someone like Charles Haddon Spurgeon Not ever actually finishing high school really himself. Was considered one of the greatest preachers ever in the history of the world. Because he was supernaturally gifted by God to teach the Bible. Supernaturally gifted to do so. Do we take seriously? And this isn't just applicable to the gift of teaching. We happen to be talking about it today because we're talking about church leadership, but it's true of all the spiritual gifts. Do we take seriously the calling that people have a diversity of gifts that we might not have and we need them to exercise their gifting on our behalf in order for our lives to be blessed in such a way that we are made more to be like Jesus. Do we take that seriously? And in this particular context, do we take it seriously that there really are people that have been gifted to open up God's Word and to teach us the right application and the right direction to move to become more like Christ? Do we really take that seriously? Or have we bought into the very modern lie that easy access to information makes us all equally the same? Hey, I've got a struggle with the theological problem. I'll just Google it. Because I can figure it out on my own just as easy as anybody else can. Priesthood of the believer, I'm just, you know, I've got all the same stuff that everybody else has. The same Holy Spirit that lives in me is the same Holy Spirit that lives in you. These are the kinds of things that we all say, and if we don't say them out loud, we think them in our heads, about different stuff that goes on in the church. When the reality of it is, that's not how God has done it. Yeah, there's a priesthood of believer. Yes, the Holy Spirit lives in me that lives in you, but it's a diversity of gifts. It's a diversity of gifts. There really are people that we should go to in certain times of need for certain sorts of things. And those who've been gifted by God to teach his word, those are the ones we should go to and say, listen, I don't understand this or I'm having this meaningful struggle in my life being more like Jesus in this way. What what does the scripture actually have to say about that and how there can be victory here in Jesus? Do we take that very seriously? Last question to ask as we close, have we considered. Here at Sylvania, what leadership and congregational expectations should look like in our cultural context, because friends, that's what defines the reality of how ministry should be done. If your church planting in the Northeast or the Northwest, where there's essentially no meaningful Christian presence. over against leading an established congregation in the Southeast where you're still in the Bible Belt, guess what's going to happen? The expectations of what it is that church leadership does is going to look very different. If you're planning a church missionally in Cuba where there's oppression or in hidden churches in China and North Korea, the expectation of what it is that church leaders do is going to be very different than if you're, say, in Tennessee or Mississippi. It's not going to be the same. And so have we considered here in our church What leadership and congregational expectations should look like based on our cultural context? Do we have a clear vision of how the duties and work of ministry should properly be delegated out among the leaders and the people in the congregation so that all things are touched the way that they need to be touched and all gifts are used the way that they need to be used? Are we striving for unity through the diversity of gifting and work that can be done by lots of different people? It goes back to the statement in the book of Acts. There were widows that were not receiving food distribution. They had no way of getting food themselves. The church had resources to purchase food to then distribute to these women who were in need. The Hellenistic widows, those of a more Greek background rather than a Jewish background, were being neglected, either intentionally or unintentionally, we're not 100% sure, but they were being neglected along ethnic lines from receiving the benefit that they needed. the food that was going to support their well-being. They brought that to the attention of one of the apostles and said, listen, we don't know who else to go to. Our needs aren't being met the way that they should be met. There was an expect an unmet expectation. And you know what the apostles did, they said, listen. Everybody's got something different that they're supposed to be doing so that nothing gets missed out on. We're supposed to be teaching people the Bible and doing evangelism and praying and helping to deal with the spiritual counsel and care and concerns of people's lives as they are transformed to the image of Jesus. This is what we've been tasked to do and gifted by God to do. Let's set out then some men in the congregation where you are who are gifted in this way, administration and gifts of mercy and those other kinds of things who can help make sure these needs don't keep going unmet. And so they divided up the work based on the diversity of the gifting of the people so that everything that needed to happen in the church would happen in the church. Do we here at Sylvania take that seriously? Do we come to understand not everybody is going to be involved in every ministry? Not everybody is going to be able to do everything. Not everybody is going to be able to be in everybody's life specifically. But there's enough people and enough diversity of gifting and enough love in the congregation for Christ that everybody can in some way be meaningfully impactful on at least someone else. So that the work does what it's supposed to do, makes all of us look more like Jesus. And so if we're going to have a proper vision for leadership, we have to sit down and ask and answer those questions. What are the expectations? What are the cultural contextual needs? What is the best way for us to make sure that all the needs are properly met and that everyone has a real opportunity to exercise their spiritual gifts in a meaningful way? And so my prayer. And I hope it's your prayer that you'll join with me on, is that we will start having those difficult conversations and come to a good, not pragmatic, not convenient, but a wise, biblically oriented way for our church to be structured so that we can graciously exercise our gifts in unison with one another so that this body can look the best like Jesus it possibly can. Let's pray together. Father God, thank you. Thank you for these passages that talk about church leadership. Thank you for these passages that lay out what is explicitly expected, good character, the ability to teach. Father, forgive me, forgive the other men who are in leadership here of those times that we don't model. these character qualities the way that we should. Help us to be men of repentance. Help us to be men who are willing to also learn and be transformed. Help us to be men who understand that we haven't arrived either, that we are still being transformed to the image of Jesus ourselves, that we are still putting our own sin to death through the grace of God, through the Holy Spirit. Father, help us all to strive toward godly character. Help us to model it for each other. And father, those that you have gifted to teach father, give them opportunity to do so. Those who have not gifted to teach, help them to receive that gift with graciousness and, and with excitement and as a blessing. Father, help us as a congregation to come together to identify what is it that leadership in a wise, biblical, Christ-honoring way, what does the relationship between those who are in leadership and those who are being led, what does that need to look like? How does the ministry work need to be divided? Who needs to be responsible for what kinds of things so that everyone is able to become more like your Son, Jesus? We ask these things in His name. Amen.