Leadership Matters – part 2
Titus 1:5-9 (5)
February 16, 2025
Tonight we’re going to jump back in to our discussion on leadership.
We know that Paul had left Titus in Crete so that he “would set in order what remains”
He was to straighten out the church.
He was to show them how to live.
Similar to what we read in 1 Timothy:
1 Timothy 3:14-15 “I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long; but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.”
Titus was to do the same.
He was to travel that island, examine and confront the churches there and straighten them out.
That was:
#1 THE PURPOSE
Titus 1:5a
His purpose was to reform the church.
Get their doctrine straightened out.
Get their old men, their old women, their young women, their young men, their slaves, and their citizens all straightened out.
That’s why he was there, and as we pointed out this morning, he didn’t have long to do it.
It was an enormously difficult task.
But it was his task.
And then we started looking at the second point.
#2 THE DIRECTIVE
Isaiah 1:5-9
“and appoint elders in every city as I directed you,”
Not only was Titus to straighten out the church, but he was also to put in place elders who would continue to lead and hold the church true after he was gone.
And so we were discussing this morning about leadership.
We looked into the title of “elder”.
1) THE TITLE
We saw how it is uses interchangeable with the term overseer and shepherd.
We saw how those terms are also distinguishable and important.
Elder speaks of the leader’s maturity.
Overseer speaks of the leader’s authority.
Shepherd speaks of the leader’s ministry.
They are important titles.
And then we started discussing the second aspect of these elders and that was:
2) THE JOB
And when we left we were discussing their God-given authority to rule or manage or oversee the church.
Like a husband must manage his household…
Like a king must manage his kingdom…
Like a father must manage his children…
So also the elders must manage the church…
Indeed they are commissioned by God to do so.
If they fail to lead they will give an account to God for their failure.
And if the congregation fails to submit to their authority the congregation will give an account to God for their rebellion.
This is God’s design.
Now the elder has no right to dominate the flock or lord his authority over them.
He is a shepherd leader, not a ruthless leader.
And the Scripture has much to say about this.
TURN TO: EZEKIEL 34:1-6
The text there is clear.
It is also symbolic.
God isn’t talking about literal sheep, nor is He talking to literal shepherds.
God is speaking about the people and the elders who have been given charge over them.
But the problem was that the elders in that case ruled badly.
They had no love for the flock.
They only sought to use and abuse the flock.
You may remember even in Jesus’ day:
Matthew 9:36 “Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”
Instead of feeding the flock they were skinning the flock.
Instead of caring for the flock they were tossing them aside.
Jesus hated those evil shepherds.
That is the same point being made here in Ezekiel 34.
These elders were not caring for the flock they were caring for themselves.
Instead of feeding the flock (preaching the word) they were starving and exploiting the flock.
That is what a prosperity preacher does when he extorts money from the flock by tickling their ears.
You starve the sheep spiritually and rob them financially all at once.
They didn’t strengthen the sickly (that would be those struggling with sin)
They didn’t heal the diseased (that would be those caught in sin)
They didn’t bind up the broken (that would be those in the consequences of sin)
They didn’t bring back the scattered (those who have wondered off in their sin)
They didn’t search for the lost (those who have never been saved)
And God says
(5) “They were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered.”
So clearly, when God gives authority to elders over the congregation He is not giving them the right to run roughshod over the congregation.
He is there to feed them, lead them, strengthen them, heal them, bind them up, bring them back, and search for those who are lost.
He is there to lovingly care for the flock not dominate them.
So we do understand the type of authority we are talking about.
It is true God-given authority over the flock to which the flock must submit, but at the same time it is a loving authority that God demands.
There is a beautiful balance there, just like in a marriage.
But there is authority given.
And there is a reason for that.
It has never been God’s design to turn His people loose without leadership.
The church was never designed to be self-managing.
Throughout the pages of Scripture a lack of leadership never worked out well for the people.
TURN TO: JUDGES 2
Pick up in verse 6, and let’s read through the end of the chapter.
What do you notice?
When Joshua died and they had no leader the entire congregation fell into sin.
And when God would raise up leaders it would straighten out the congregation until the leader died and then they would return to sin.
When they rebelled against the leader it never went well.
And you see this throughout the book of Judges
Judges 4:1 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, after Ehud died.”
Judges 6:1 “Then the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD gave them into the hands of Midian seven years.”
Judges 8:33-34 “Then it came about, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the sons of Israel again played the harlot with the Baals, and made Baal-berith their god. Thus the sons of Israel did not remember the LORD their God, who had delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side;”
You get the point.
The presence of leadership was a stay against corruption, but when the leader died or the people rebelled it always led into sin.
The entire period of the Judges is defined like this.
Judges 21:25 “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
And it was a recipe for disaster.
Leadership matters.
This is God’s design.
He appoints leaders in the church whose job is to “set in order what remains” and at the same time to preserve what is straightened.
When qualified leaders are in place and they do their job well the church thrives.
When leaders are rejected…
Or when leaders are unqualified…
Or when leaders fail to do their duty…
The church suffers.
Leadership matters and that is what elders do.
They have been given God’s authority over the congregation.
And the church must submit to their leadership.
Now, as we have noted, there are many in the world who categorically reject such a notion.
Why should we give such authority to one guy to come in here and be over us?
Are you just saying that the church calls a pastor and from that moment on we’re just all supposed to do whatever he says?
No, I’m not.
In fact, let’s talk about another aspect of elders.
3) THE PLURALITY
One must be able to see that in verse 5 Paul uses the term “elders” in the plural.
He is not to appoint an elder, he is to appoint “elders”.
And this is something that is also seen throughout the pages of Scripture.
James 5:14-15 “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him.”
The phrase is clear, “elders of the church”
James is not referring to many churches, but one.
He is not referring to one elder, but multiple.
Acts 14:23 “When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.”
You see it again “appointed elders for them in every church”
It really couldn’t be more clear than that.
Every church had elders.
Acts 20:17 “From Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church.”
These were those Ephesian elders.
And in Bible times it’s not like Ephesus had multiple churches.
Ephesus had 1 church and that one church had multiple elders.
Those same elders are referenced by Paul in 1 Timothy as Timothy served in Ephesus:
1 Timothy 5:17 “The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.”
Philippians 1:1 “Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons:”
There it is again.
The church in Philippi and both “overseers” [plural] and “deacons” [plural].
And it is interesting that while some balk at the notion of a plurality of overseers no one balks at a plurality of deacons.
Yet, there is more Scripture evidence of a plurality of elders than even of deacons.
The point is that the church in the New Testament operated under a system that saw a plurality in its leadership.
Hebrews 13:7 “Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.”
Hebrews 13:17 “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.”
Hebrews 13:24 “Greet all of your leaders and all the saints. Those from Italy greet you.”
Now why does this matter?
Why is this preferred?
Well for one, and this is a big one: ACCOUNTABILITY
Everyone seems to rightly understand that you don’t take a congregation and give sole authority to one guy to make all the decisions of the church.
That is a foolish notion.
Even a trusted man should not be in that situation.
There is too much temptation, and it is not a good idea.
After all, even a man who has been appointed as a shepherd is himself still a sheep.
Accountability is vitally important to the leadership of the church.
Men need to be accountable to other men.
Beyond that, all men have blind spots.
That is to say, everyone has failures and flaws that they do not see in themselves.
Sometimes it is just blindness, sometimes it is that they weren’t raised to see their flaw as a flaw and so they don’t.
Iron sharpens iron and multiple leaders help to bring accountability and purity to each other.
Another important reason is: WEAKNESSES
A plurality of elders balances the weaknesses of men.
There are things an elder may be good at and there are things he is not good at.
And when there is only one then the flock suffers.
If you have a shepherd that’s good at feeding sheep and terrible at sheering sheep, then the sheep are going to suffer.
And the flipside is also true.
If the shepherd is good at sheering and terrible at feeding then the flock will still suffer.
A plurality of leadership balances out the weaknesses of the various leaders.
Another important reason is: WORKLOAD
It is unlikely, but let’s say you have a leader who is actually exceptional at every aspect of leadership, but even then doing it for the entire flock all the time can still cause the flock to suffer.
You may have the best cardiologist in Lubbock, but if all of Lubbock uses him too you’re going to have a difficult time getting to see him.
The fact is that the flock deserves to be cared for.
This is God’s flock.
They must be fed, healed, bound up, delivered, restored, and searched for.
Often times it is a job too big for one man.
God answers this problem throughout the New Testament with a plurality of leadership.
You see them described over and over as “elders”.
Does that mean you lose your main preacher?
No, not in the New Testament.
There is also a principle in there that is often referred to as the “first among many” principle.
Peter is often held up as the example.
Peter was not the first disciple chosen by Jesus.
It was actually Andrew who took Peter to Jesus.
And yet in Matthew 10 we read:
Matthew 10:2 “Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;”
There Simon is called “the first”.
But he wasn’t the first chronologically.
“first” there is PROTOS
And it means first in rank.
And you see that.
It was Peter with Jesus on the mountain.
It was Peter closes in the garden.
It was Peter tabbed to preach at Pentecost.
They were all disciples, they were all apostles, they all had been granted authority to shepherd the flock from Jesus and yet Peter was still “the first”.
A plurality of leadership does not negate spiritual gifts or abilities or duties but it does follow a patter that lends to accountability, effectiveness, and availability.
Now some would say:
YES, AND THAT IS WHY WE HAVE DEACONS
And that is a fair assessment.
And in fact that is what has happened in many Baptist churches.
Baptist churches have ordained deacons and then treated them as ex-facto elders.
I have found this to be true in every church I’ve been a member of.
The deacons become a sort of leadership group to accomplish all the things we just said a plurality of leadership is necessary for.
I actually had a deacon at Crawford tell me that the job of the deacons was to keep the preacher in line.
And look, I am not in total disagreement here.
I have seen the fall out and the problem.
When I was in seminary they told us that the average tenure of a pastor was 18 months.
I googled it and found that the number today is more like 3 ½ years.
Southern Baptists are doing better with their tenure closer to 7 years.
But even that causes problems, and I have seen them.
A pastor comes, the church is excited, he starts leading and making changes.
He starts new ministries.
He allocates funds for them.
He makes a change to the schedule.
He changes the music or whatever.
And just as the church is starting to buy in, he leaves.
The next pastor comes in and wants to put his stamp on everything so he starts changing stuff too, but this time the congregation is a little more hesitant because they’ve been burned before.
And sure enough after a while he leaves.
The next pastor shows up, unaware of all that has happened before him and meets immediate resistance. He labels the congregation as stubborn or “too attached to tradition” gets frustrated and leaves even sooner.
And then your stuck in this broken cycle of pastors who get frustrated with the congregation and congregations who have a difficult time trusting their pastors.
It happened in Baptist life.
What was the solution?
In Baptist life the power began to be transferred to the deacons.
Afterall, they were typically the most faithful men of the church.
And the deacons really started to operate more like elders than deacons.
Instead of an office of service it became an office of authority.
And you see that easily.
If an issue arises in the church and our deacon body makes a recommendation it is almost a certainty our congregation will follow their recommendation.
And that is not a bad thing.
The congregation realizes the need for a plurality of godly leadership, they see that in the deacon body, and they follow their lead.
Now, why is that a problem?
What is wrong with that structure?
Only this.
By ordaining men as deacons and treating them as elders you have created a leadership group of men who at the very least are untrained as elders and who may even be unqualified to be elders.
That is the problem.
The church deserves biblically qualified and biblically trained men to be in a position of authority, and in many cases in the church this has not happened.
Far too often men are selected to be deacons, only if they haven’t been divorced, they are not asked to know any doctrine or theology, they are not examined according to the criteria of an elder, but they are put in a position where they are given authority over the congregation as if they were qualified.
Now, I love our deacon body.
I love their humility.
I love the love they have for this church.
I love their wisdom.
I love them.
But even they will tell you that they can all remember a time when the deacon body of this church was something far different and something far worse.
And here is the simple point that we must ultimately see.
God has ordained two offices in the church.
God has ordained the office of elder.
God has ordained the office of deacon.
They are both absolutely vital to the health of the church.
But they are not the same office.
They do not have the same function.
If you ordain deacons but treat them like elders then the church loses the blessing of a faithful deacon body.
If you ordain deacons and use them as deacons then the church loses the blessing of an eldership that can lead effectively and minister effectively.
Commonly what you get is a mixture hybrid of both and it all falls short of what God intended.
Elders and Deacons do not serve the same function.
What is the difference?
If I could just sort of simplify it then I would say it like this:
Elders are appointed for the spiritual care of the flock.
Deacons are appointed for the physical care of the flock.
TURN TO: ACTS 6:1-6
You see it there don’t you.
You have Peter who knew his obligation to prayer and ministry of the word.
There needed to be servants who could handle the distribution of food.
Does that mean that Peter thought feeding widows was beneath him?
Certainly not!
But it wasn’t good for the church to go spiritually hungry either.
You needed both!
Does that mean that there is never any overlap between the two?
No.
If you keep reading Acts you’ll find both Stephen and Philip preaching.
Certainly Peter served his brothers and widows from time to time.
But the main issue at hand has to do with qualifications and training.
When you read the list of qualifications the lists for deacons and elders are remarkably close and similar.
But there is one major exception.
Elders must be “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2)
Paul will tell Titus:
Titus 1:9 “holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.”
Beyond that, and I think this is very interesting.
When Paul lays out the qualifications for deacons.
We read this peculiar verse.
1 Timothy 3:8-13 “Deacons likewise must be men of dignity, not double-tongued, or addicted to much wine or fond of sordid gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. These men must also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons if they are beyond reproach. Women must likewise be dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. Deacons must be husbands of only one wife, and good managers of their children and their own households. For those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a high standing and great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.”
Isn’t it strange that Paul is talking about deacons, then all of a sudden he mentions “Women” and then he is back to deacons again?
The KJV for years translated that word “their wives” and sought to settle the debate saying that it was just a qualification for deacon’s wives to meet.
And I certainly don’t think it’s a bad thing for a deacon to have a good wife.
But doesn’t it seem strange that Paul would give criteria for a deacon’s wife to fulfill but none for an overseer’s wife to fulfill?
In reality that word Paul uses is not the word for a wife, it is just the word for a woman.
And it is highly likely that he does so because the early church had women deacons.
Romans 16:1 “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea;”
That word “servant” that Paul uses for Phoebe is the Greek word DIAKONOS
And if you’ll think, this makes so much sense.
When you’re delivering food, or one of the widows is bedridden, or perhaps she needs help taking a bath, or any of the other practical and hands-on physical ministries of the church, you’d much rather have a woman come in and help than a man.
So why don’t we have women deacons in the Baptist church?
Because we have wrongly elevated the office of deacon to an authoritative office and women are forbidden from preaching or having authority in the church.
It’s just an example of how doing things the wrong way robs the church of a beautiful blessing.
In reality, in the New Testament this is what we see.
We see churches with multiple pastors, elders, overseers, shepherds.
They are men who fit the qualifications.
They are men who are able to teach.
They are men who are trained in doctrine.
They are men who care spiritually for the flock.
They teach them, they counsel them, they encourage them, they correct them, they lead them, they feed them the word.
They protect the flock from heresy and deception.
They guide the flock in godliness and truth.
And in those churches we also see multiple deacons.
They serve the physical needs of the church.
They deliver the meals.
They meet the needs.
And it is a beautiful picture of care for the flock.
It is God’s ordained design so that His flock gets the absolute best care imaginable.
It is not a system meant to rob the congregation of her voice.
It is not a system meant to silence the sheep so that the elders can do whatever they want.
On the contrary, it is a system meant to care for the sheep.
I realize that there are many who oppose such a system because they have seen it abused, and clearly that is just as wrong.
Any group of elders who think it is their job to hide in a room and disregard the desires of the flock just to be in charge has no idea what their job is.
But let’s be honest, in our lives we’ve seen just as many bad deacon bodies do that as we have elder bodies do it.
The problem isn’t the structure, the problem is placing ungodly, unqualified, and untrained men in positions they should not be in.
Or when we place them in a position that they have no idea what their true responsibility before God is.
That is when things go bad.
It’s not a plurality of elders that is bad, it’s bad elders that is bad.
The Biblical model is multiple elders to oversee the church and multiple deacons to serve it.
Now, if you’re a little nervous (and I know that not everyone agrees with me on this, and that’s ok. I’ve told you it took me about 5 years to come around to it after being first introduced.)
If you’re nervous that I’m about to try to pull something on you, I assure you I am not.
We are currently training men, any men who want to be trained in leadership.
They have been emphatically told that just because they go through the training does not mean they were going to be elders or deacons.
This church will not follow the elder led model unless the church congregation sees fit to adopt such a model.
There’s no need to fight or get nervous here.
But I would say, don’t close your heart to it.
What God has designed here He has designed for the good of the flock and we’ll never adopt a better design than His.
The Title
The Job
The Plurality
Let’s consider one more thing about this elder issue before we dive into the qualifications next week.
4) THE APPOINTMENT
How does the church go about selecting elders?
Well on one hand we could just read the verse here and take it at face value.
Paul told Titus “appoint elders in every city as I directed you”
And I suppose one could say, “There it is.”
Titus was just supposed to go and pick some men make them elders over the church.
One could even quote:
Acts 14:23 “When they had appointed elders for them in every church, having prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed.”
And you could double down right there and say, “There it is, one elder just goes and appoints the others.”
Let me tell you why that doesn’t mean what it sounds like.
First of all, you have Titus who is going to travel to these churches all over Crete.
As I told you this morning some have thought there to have been around 100 cities on Crete and that would be a lot of churches.
There is no way Titus knew the men in those churches.
There is no way Titus, in a relatively short amount of time, was going to be remotely able to enter a church, select elders and ordain them.
You and I both know what Titus was going to do.
He was going to approach those churches, outline God’s plan for reform or straighten them out.
He was then going to outline God’s plan for leadership in their churches, namely that they needed elders.
He was then going to show them God’s qualifications for those men.
And you and I both know what he was going to do next.
He was going to ask the congregations if they had any men who fit this description?
Who knew those men better than the people who lived with them day in and day out?
That is what he’s going to mean by “above reproach”
Paul is going to tell Titus to examine their family life and their public ministry life.
And Titus is going to ask those congregations.
Do you have any guys here who have managed their families the right way?
Do you have any guys here who are living with the right attitude?
And someone will say, “Yes, Stephanos has” or “Yes, Marcus fits that criteria”.
And then what is he going to do?
He’s going to ask, “Does anyone here have any indictments of either of these men based on the criteria God has set forth?”
“Does anyone know of something about them that makes them unfit to fill that role?”
And if you can’t find any reproach then what is going to happen?
Well then Titus is going to appoint them.
Most likely he will question them doctrinally, but ultimately he will lay his hands on them and ordain them as elders and charge them to care for the flock.
Similar to what Paul told the Ephesian elders:
Acts 20:28-32 “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. “Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. “And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”
That is the sort of thing Titus would do.
And what you will end up with is a leadership identified by the congregation, qualified by the word of God, and appointed by those in leadership.
That’s how the deacons were selected wasn’t it?
Acts 6:3 “Therefore, brethren, select from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this task.”
Peter told them to select qualified men and then Peter would put them in charge.
And I just point that out to you as well, because it is important for you to know that learning these qualifications is important for you.
You need to know what sort of man God has determined should be an elder.
You need to know what sort of man God has determined should be a deacon.
Because as this church begins to identify and select leaders in for our congregation you need to know:
Why you are selecting them.
What you are selecting them to do.
What office you are selecting them for.
What sort of training you are going to require them to complete.
You do not want to select unqualified or untrained leaders, that is a nightmare for the church.
So we study to see God’s plan for the leadership in the church.
Next time we’ll start talking about their qualifications.
