Qualifications of Church Leadership

Leadership is all about influence. Paul understood this unique reality of leadership and it is why he spent so much time training and building up leaders. It was important to Paul that anyone who would seek to lead the churches he started would have a solid foundation of true doctrine and true character. If leadership was all about influence then Paul wanted to make sure that those who were influencing others were of sound character and good doctrine. The church was a new thing that God was doing and with the power of the Holy Spirit it was growing extremely rapidly among the known world and Paul knew that eventually he would die and someone else would have to take the baton from him and run with it, it’s with this frame of mind that Paul wrote letters to Timothy and Titus sharing with them some valuable leadership insight and giving them instructions on how to pick leaders in their various communities.

Everything about the Early Church was new and that was probably both refreshing and frustrating to Paul. Imagine being one of Paul’s new converts, passionately in love with Christ but having no idea what that means. Even today for those encountering Christ for the first time, there is two thousand years of history and tradition for new Christ followers to refer to but not even Paul had that much luxury! For many believers in the Early Church there was nothing to fall back on, no church structure, no programs, no classes, the only thing that new believers had as a reference was their old traditions and the culture that they were trying so hard to leave behind. The Early Church was heavily influenced by the culture around it. Most of these churches were in hellenized areas and were easily swayed by people or thoughts that were rooted in that lifestyle. A great example is that of Apollos who had such an amazing ability to speak that Greek believers were just enamored. To the point of fighting over whom their leader was, Apollos or Paul. This love of knowledge and philosophy for many believers led them to be influenced by novel and new forms of doctrine and also kept their struggle with mystical philosophies, legalism and materialism at the forefront of their new faith.

Even before that however, the whole concept of church was new to those who became Christ followers. Sure there was temple life and the Cult of Caesar but the concepts of Christ centred living, Kingdom living were brand new. The ideas and behaviours that were to be expected, weren’t expected, for many they weren’t even known! Early believers were still emerging from their pagan past and still faced the pull of past ties and habits.

It’s from this reality that Paul tries to create a governance structure. The Early Church governance structure was made up of overseers, also called elders and deacons. It is no mistake that in Paul’s development of a leadership structure for the church he did not create the position we now know as senior pastor. Paul’s model was one where a team of elders would oversee the church working together to administrate and minister to those in the local church community.

Leadership is more than just who is responsible to make sure that stuff happens, according to Paul, leadership is all about the demonstrable character of people before they become leaders. In essence, it is about character. Who a person is when no one

is watching and when everyone is watching.