1 Timothy 3

I work on a big church staff. We have all kinds of silly titles from Senior Pastor to Digerati Sherpa (no joke). But really, I think today's church staff is the same as deacons and elders (and the "five-fold ministry" roles of teacher, pastor, evangelist, apostle, and prophet). And as modern churches try to break the molds of tradition to be innovative and relevant to our 21st century context, I see us departing from the advice in this chapter a little. To some degree, we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. In trying to open up ministry roles to people without a cemetery degree [sic] on their resume, we've taken in people who just don't qualify for ministry roles spiritually.

Now I don't have a problem with this just to be exclusive. I just feel like we are hanging targets around their necks when they haven't learned how to stand up to the fiery darts. They haven't learned how to use their armor and haven't built up the spiritual muscle to hold up their shield. I've seen people fall because they jumped in too soon. I'd rather see someone minister like crazy in their regular job than join a church staff and get taken out by satan.

I don't see this as a really wide scale problem but every story is a real person. And I hate to see someone get taken out when we could have just followed Paul's advice here. Any thoughts?