SCRIPTURE
12Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. 13Until I arrive, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching. 14Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you through prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders. 15Put these things into practice, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress.16Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers. (1 Timothy 4:11-16, NRSV)
WHAT
When I was in seminary, I had a friend, a fellow student who was one year ahead of me whom we’ll call David. He was a very gifted seminarian and student pastor. When United Methodist seminary students on the elder track graduate, they are usually appointed either as associate pastors at larger churches, or as the sole pastor at very small churches. This practice recognizes that even seminary graduates still have much to learn.
That is what happened to me when I graduated. I was appointed to a small church in East Texas. But not David. He was given what some saw as a “plum appointment.” He was appointed to be the lead pastor at a church which gave him more responsibility and opportunity than many pastors were given who had been out of seminary for many years. It was due to David’s truly being gifted. His preaching was especially good; way beyond his age and experience. He was viewed as a standout pastor with very high potential.
Sometime later, I learned that David had left the ordained ministry. He had admitted to having an affair and was forced to resign. Fortunately, he somehow managed to save his marriage to his wife Debbie, but David never was a pastor again. All those gifts, all that education, all that potential was lost to the Church. The last I heard of him; David was a salesman for an electrical equipment supply firm.
I would like to be able to tell you that David’s experience was an aberration, an exception. But it is not. Since then, I have known more pastors than I care to admit who have had some serious moral failing, usually related either to their fidelity or financial management, and they have been forced to leave their ministry. And painfully, I have observed that it is often the most (outwardly) successful pastors who fall. Why is that?
Paul gives us some insight to my question in today’s passage when he tells Timothy:
Pay close attention to yourself… (1 Timothy 4:16a, NRSV)
Paul is certainly not advocating any kind of unhealthy naval gazing or selfish fixation on oneself. That is sometimes the problem, but more often it is leaders who do not do any kind of self-reflection, who do not practice good self-awareness. My theory on why it is usually the more successful pastors who fall is because they start to believe their own press. Under enormous pressure, they do not examine themselves to identify their internal needs, because after all, “I am so successful.” Or if they do, they do not address what they learn in healthy ways. I am not a psychologist so I may be all wrong. But that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.
Timothy faced an enormously difficult situation in Ephesus as we’ve seen. He was having to coral unruly elders and others in the church spreading false teaching. And he had the disadvantage of being younger than they were.
I don’t think Timothy ought to be thought of as so young as to be in his twenties or younger. After all, it had been fifteen or so years since the events Luke describes in Acts when Paul first met Timothy. So even if Timothy were a youth of around fifteen or sixteen when he and Paul met, Timothy would be in his thirties by the time Paul wrote this letter. The Greek word which the NRSV translates as “youth” is neotēs and it describes anyone of military age, i.e., up to the age of forty.
But, as William Barclay observes, the Church generally likes its office-bearers to be people of maturity and experience. The Apostolic Canons, which we saw previously is a 4th-century Syrian Christian text which served as an Ancient Church Order, laid down that a man was not to become a bishop until he was over fifty, for by then “he will be past youthful disorders”. And we saw that the word presbyteros, translated “elder,” referred to a leader’s age or station in life. He was older and therefore more experienced in the nuances and subtleties of life. Such a person could see things with shades of gray, and not just the black and white polarities that younger people often tend to see.
Because the Church likes its office-bearers to be people of maturity and experience, even if he was as old as forty, Timothy was at a disadvantage when facing down these wayward “elders” in Ephesus. That must have been enormously difficult and stressful. There’s only one effective way to handle such opposition, and we’ll come back to what Paul says in a moment. But for now, I want you to feel the stress Timothy must have felt.
Pastors today feel enormous pressure and stress as well. N. T. Wright, himself a pastor, preacher, and bishop in the Church of England and thus experienced in what he writes here, hits the nail on the head when he describes the life and stress of a typical pastor:
“It is quite possible to spend every waking hour -- and some of the sleeping ones as well -- worrying away at the numerous tasks which the pastor and preacher and church organizer has to attend to. There are sermons to write, hymns and music to choose and perhaps arrange, assistants to consult, decisions to be made. There are people in distress, people in joy, people in rebellion against the gospel, people facing disaster, people living with disease and trouble and fear and anger… and the pastor and preacher wants to be there for all of them, wants to help all of them, wants to carry them on her or his heart before God.
Then -- and this may well be the first thing on the mind -- there are neighbors who object to cars being parked near the church; there are local councils who don’t want the church bells to be rung; there are unemployed young people who throw stones through the church windows.
And every day the newspapers and television bring news of another war, another international crisis, the problems of global debt, the unhealed sore of asylum-seekers and refugees, and a thousand other things to which the church, locally as well as globally, must give attention. As a pastor and preacher myself, just writing this paragraph has made me feel tired.”
Add to the above list of worries the fact that in the lifetime of every pastor serving today, there has never been a time when fewer people were connected to church life. Never in their lifetimes has there been a time when more people admitted to “none” being their preferred faith commitment when asked by researchers and pollsters. With fewer people participating in their churches alongside growing cultural resistance to faith, especially Christian faith, this only raises the stress level of pastors. And I haven’t even mentioned the growing polarization in the country as a whole, which has definitely infected the Church and led to massive internal struggles for many pastors and denominations, including my own.
With all of the above, it is no surprise then that one of the major problems confronting the Church today is clergy burnout – which Bishop Wright calls “a vivid and nasty metaphor for the horrible reality of combined physical exhaustion, emotional distress (feeling you’ve let everyone down), family disaster (overworked clergy sometimes ignore their family until it’s too late), the possibility of losing your job, and, not least, the sense that you ought to be setting the church a good example but you’re doing the opposite.”
My pastor colleagues and friends who have lost their ministries through moral failure have all experienced this burnout. This is another reason why I suspect it tends to be the successful ones who fall. They are more prone to burnout. And I suspect they chose to take the low, easy road to deal with it.
To Timothy’s reality – and ours – Paul urges self-awareness, self-reflection. Today we call this having high emotional intelligence (EI), also referred to as Emotional Quotient (EQ) to balance IQ. It is having the skill set to become aware of what is going on inside you in response to what is going on outside you so that your response is not automatic, not gut-level, or instinctual, but controlled, truly human, and loving.
Those called to Christian ministry, especially the ordained ministry, may feel that their task is never to think of themselves. There’s a whole big world in need out there, and as the Church we are to be its servants. To think of ourself given such a reality seems like selfishness. But in contrast to that way of thinking, I hear Paul saying, “Pay close attention to yourself. Not in an unhealthy narcissistic way, but be alert to the rise of danger signals about things that must be tended to within you.” When Paul says in v. 16, “Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers,” he is acknowledging that failure to pay close attention to yourself and the inner warning signs of burnout not only sets you up for failure, but also those around you. People leave the faith and the church because of the failure of their pastor. That’s a painful reality I’ve witnessed.
If my fallen pastor colleagues had done what Paul urges Timothy to do here, perhaps they would still be in the pastoral ministry today. And so might some of their congregants.
Paul begins by telling Timothy not to let the reaction of “the elders” in Ephesus to his younger age get to him:
Let no one despise your youth (GREEK: neotēs)… (1 Timothy 4:12a, NRSV)
There is really only one way to confront such age-related bias. Paul tells Timothy what it is:
…set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. (1 Timothy 4:12b, NRSV)
The only way for Timothy to get the Ephesian elders to respect him enough to listen to him is to set them an example. Timothy can’t just come in there and say, “I have been appointed to be your leader. You must follow and obey me.” That doesn’t work. Having the respect and authority due a leader isn’t given with the title; it must be earned by setting an example worthy of being followed. That works no matter what your age. Silence criticism with conduct. (Paul adds speech, but I consider what I say to be part of my conduct.)
Paul specified three aspects of conduct to focus on:
· Love – The Greek word here is agape, which is one of the four Greek words for love but the only one the Bible ever uses to describe God’s love for us. This is the love Jesus demonstrated on the cross. It is sacrificial, other-focused, and never asks, “What do I get out of this?” Ordinarily, we think of love coming from the heart; but agape love comes from the will. “It is,” notes Professor Barclay, “that conquest of self whereby we develop an unconquerable caring for other people. So, the first authenticating mark of Christian leaders is that they care for others, no matter what others do to them.” (Emphasis mine)
· Faith – The Greek word here is pistis. Whereas agape is unconquerable desire for the good will of others, no matter what they do to us, pistis is unconquerable faithfulness to Christ, no matter what it may cost us.
· Purity – The Greek word here is hagneia. It is unconquerable allegiance to the standards of Christ, no matter what others say or do.
While paying close attention to his inner self, Timothy is to give priority to three aspects of his ministry:
Until I arrive, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching. (1 Timothy 4:13, NRSV)
As Professor Barclay correctly observes, people do not gather together to hear the opinions of a preacher; they gather together to hear the word of God. Therefore, Christian ministry and worship must be Bible-centered. But the Bible is a difficult book. It was written centuries ago by multiple authors in cultures very different than our own using languages foreign to most of us. Therefore, it has to be explained. Good explanation requires accurate interpretation. This means there needs to be an effective teaching ministry.
Paul urges Timothy to focus also on exhorting. The Christian message must always end in Christian action. “It is not enough,” Professor Barclay writes, “to present the Christian message as something to be studied and understood; it has to be presented as something to be done. Christianity is truth, but it is truth in action.” (Emphasis mine.)
Early in my post-seminary ministry, I learned a helpful outline for arranging and presenting a sermon. A sermon has to answer three questions for the listener:
· What? – What does this scripture passage say?
· So What? – Why should I care? How is it relevant to me?
· Now What? – Now that I know that what should I do?
Exhortation should answer that last “now what?” question.
Paul concludes by telling Timothy:
Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you through prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders. (1 Timothy 4:14, NRSV)
On day 7, I wrote about my wife’s cousin, Paul, who told me, “Hang on to that call. There will be days when that’s all you have.” I hear scripture’s Paul telling Timothy something similar. “There will be tough days, Tim. There will be days when you consider giving up; days when you actually write me a resignation letter. But particularly on those days, remember when elders picked you out for this ministry because the Holy Spirit showed them the gift given by God to you. Not just one person saw that gift, the whole council saw it. That gift is still there. No matter how you feel. Don’t throw it away.”
Paul has given Timothy some great advice for leading a church (and we’ve been allowed to listen in and apply it to our leadership). And he’s not done yet!
APPLY
Pay close attention to yourself. Watch for internal warning signs and do not ignore them when they arise. The longer you ignore them, the quieter – and more dangerous -- they will become. But that’s when you’re most at risk.
PRAYER
This is really a good word for modern church leaders, Lord. Help me to hear and apply it. In Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Bob writes, “I have observed that it is often the most (outwardly) successful pastors who fall. Why is that?” What do you say to Bob’s question? Is he right? If so, why does that happen?
2. What did Paul mean when he told Timothy, “Pay close attention to yourself…”? How did Bob relate this to the modern problem of clergy burnout and the moral failures that often accompany it?
3. Bob says there is only one effective way to counter age-related bias. What is it? What does Paul tell Timothy about it?
4. How good are you at being alert to the rise of danger signals about things that must be tended to within you? How can you get better at it?
How can you apply these insights in your life?