Do you think you might be called to ministry? Maybe some of you do.
Do you hope that the Pastors in your life are truly called to the ministry? I trust that all of you do.
So how do you know if one is called to the ministry? I love what Spurgeon lays down here:
“True and genuine piety is necessary as the first indispensable requisite for ministry. Whatever call a man may pretend to have if he has not been called to holiness he certainly has not been called to the ministry.”
God has given two lists for testing and choosing elders/church leaders. Much commentary and debate is written about understanding and qualifying each individual qualification. But the entire list of qualifications is remarkable unremarkable.
It is not hard to understand or interpret as a whole. I really like D.A. Carson’s comment:
These verses teach us that the primary characteristic of the Christian elder/pastor/overseer is that his life constantly reflects Christian values, morality, conduct, and integrity; that’s the baseline.
In some respects, the list is remarkable for being unremarkable.
In other words, there is nothing about superior IQ, charisma, powerful personality or the like. The Christian minister is supposed to be gentle, not supposed to get drunk, and so forth: the list is remarkable for being unremarkable.
Indeed, with only a couple of exceptions, all of the qualifications listed here are elsewhere in the New Testament demanded of all Christians.
What this means, then, is that the Christian pastor must exemplify in his own life the virtues and graces that are demanded of all the people of God.
Elders must be “above reproach” – in a sense, blameless. This doesn’t mean that such a person is sinlessly perfect; there’s too much in Scripture to the contrary of that sort of expectation. What it does mean is that there is no obvious inconsistency or flaw that everyone agrees is there and serves as a reproach to the man.