Workers for Your Joy E-Book und Hörbuch

David Mathis

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

David Mathis Examines the Qualifications and Calling of Church Leaders for a New Generation of Congregants and Leaders We live in an age increasingly cynical about leadership—some of it for good reason, much of it simply the mood of our times. Still, the risen Christ continues the counter-cultural work he's done for two millennia: he appoints leaders in his church—not as a burden, but as a gift to his people. "He gave . . . the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry" (Ephesians 4:11–12). What is the nature, calling, and work of local church leadership? Pastor and seminary professor David Mathis considers the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 not only as prerequisites but as daily necessities to carry out joyfully. This accessible guide aims to serve current and aspiring pastors and elders, as well as church members who want to know the expectations for their leaders and how to pray for them. From the words of Christ to Peter and Paul and Hebrews, the New Testament casts a vision for church leaders that is good news to churches and leaders alike: joyful workers for the joy of their people. - Great Training for Current and Aspiring Pastors and Elders: Expands on the nature and work of local church leadership through the framework of its qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:1–7, Titus 1:5–9, and other passages - Useful for the Whole Church: Aims to help full-time pastors, lay elders, deacons, and seminary students, as well as church members eager to explore the true nature of leadership in the church and to pray intentionally for their own pastors - Explains 15 Virtues Church Leaders Should Pursue: Mathis shares Spirit-given competencies that Christian leaders can draw upon week in and week out to do the work to which Christ has called them 

Leseprobe

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“David Mathis is right that two thousand years later, the biblical qualifications for elders ‘continue to pulse with relevancy to the everyday work of Christian leadership.’ What a great help this book would have been forty years ago when I was trying to build church-wide consensus around how the local church is to be led. What makes this book unique is the way pastoral joy, patient exposition, and personal application are woven into the fabric of Christian leadership. May God use Workers for Your Joy to raise up thousands of leaders who do not lord it over their people’s faith, but ‘work with you for your joy’ (2 Cor. 1:24).”

John Piper, Leader, Teacher, and Founder, desiringGod.org

“As an author who has written two books about leadership in Christ’s church, I know of no other book like Workers for Your Joy. David Mathis leads you through an examination of the biblical qualifications of an elder in a way that is penetrating, personal, and practical at every point. As I read chapter after chapter, each dedicated to a pastoral qualification, I was both deeply convicted and encouraged. As you read, you cannot help being amazed at the generosity of our Lord in gifting his church with this kind of leadership—all for the joy of his people. And I have to say: I love that joy is the central organizing theme of this book about pastoral ministry! I cannot think of any member or leader in the body of Christ who would not benefit from taking some time to stroll through the garden of practical gospel wisdom that makes up the pages of this book.”

Paul David Tripp, Pastor; author, Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church and Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry

“Our culture is averse to authority, partially because of the sinful abuse of authority. Still, God intended for there to be leaders in our churches, and David Mathis helps us understand in this biblically saturated and pastorally wise book what the Scriptures teach about elders. The duties and responsibilities of elders are unpacked clearly and powerfully chapter by chapter. We desperately need qualified and godly leaders in our churches, and this is the ideal book for church members considering who should lead a church, for leaders as they consider whether they are qualified, and for seminarians and college students as they study what the Scriptures teach about elders.”

Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“The antidote to bad authority is not no authority. It’s good authority. And we need a whole lot more good authority—humble, whole, and honorable—in the church today. I commend David Mathis’s wonderfully clear and biblical guide to Christian leadership that glorifies God.”

Collin Hansen, Vice President for Content and Editor in Chief, The Gospel Coalition; Host, Gospelbound podcast; coauthor, Rediscover Church

“At a time when Christian reflection on leadership seems to have been hijacked by ideas from the corporate world, it is refreshing to see a book on leadership that derives its material from the Scriptures. The major leadership crisis facing the church today has to do with character, not with method or strategy. The Bible has a lot to say about that. This is the focus of this book. It reflects deeply on what the Scriptures teach in a way that challenges our attitudes and behaviors and encourages change toward Christlikeness.”

Ajith Fernando, Teaching Director, Youth for Christ, Sri Lanka; author, The Family Life of a Christian Leader

Workers for Your Joy

Workers for Your Joy

The Call of Christ on Christian Leaders

David Mathis

Workers for Your Joy: The Call of Christ on Christian Leaders

Copyright © 2022 by David C. Mathis

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2022

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

Scripture quotations marked NASB® are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7807-6 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7810-6 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7808-3 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7809-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mathis, David, 1980– author.

Title: Workers for your joy : the call of Christ on Christian leaders / David Mathis.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021061419 (print) | LCCN 2021061420 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433578076 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433578083 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433578090 (mobipocket) | ISBN 9781433578106 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian leadership—Biblical teaching. | Elders—Biblical teaching. | Prests Biblical teaching. | Clergy—Biblical teaching.

Classification: LCC BS2545.L42 M38 2022 (print) | LCC BS2545.L42 (ebook) | DDC 262/.1—dc23/eng/20220411

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061419

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061420

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-08-05 01:13:12 PM

To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Cities Church,with the pastors and deacons

Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

Luke 10:20

Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Pastors We All Want

Part 1: Humbled: Men before Their God

1  How Christ Appoints His Pastors

2  Not a Novice—or Arrogant

3  Pastors Are Teachers

4  Pastors Keep Their Head in a Conflicted World

Part 2: Whole: Men Where They Are Known Best

5  Self-Control and the Power of Christ

6  The World Needs More One-Woman Men

7  Does Drinking Disqualify a Pastor?

8  Does Your Pastor Love God or Money?

9  The Tragedy of Distracted Dads

Part 3: Honorable: Men before a Watching World

10  The First Requirement for Christian Leaders

11  How Pastors Win (and Lose) Respect

12  Love for Strangers and the Great Commission

13  The Strongest Men Are Gentle

14  How Do Pastors Pick Their Fights?

15  Why Christians Care What Outsiders Think

Commission: Christian Leadership versus Modern Celebrity

Thanks

Appendix 1: Who Are the Deacons?

Appendix 2: A Word for Leaders: On Plurality and Team Dynamics

Appendix 3: What Is Anointing with Oil?

Appendix 4: What Is the Laying On of Hands?

Appendix 5: How Old Should Elders Be?

Study Questions

General Index

Scripture Index

Desiring God Note on Resources

Preface

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy.

2 Corinthians 1:24

We live in an age that has become painfully cynical about leadership—some of it for good reason. Much of it is simply the mood of our times.

Stories of use and abuse abound, and the letdowns make for big headlines. In the Information Age we have more and quicker access than ever before to tales of bad leaders. In our own lives, we all have felt the sting of being let down by some leader in whom we had placed our trust. The pain and confusion are real. The wounds can be deep. We learn to guard ourselves from future disappointment. Cynicism can feel like a worthy shield.

But the high-profile failures can mask the true source of our discontent with being led: we love self and come to pine for self-rule. Couple with it our generation’s distorted sense of what leadership is. When leadership has become a symbol of status, achievement, and privilege—as it has in many modern eyes—we desire to be the leader ourselves, not to bless others but to get our way. And, understandably, we become reluctant to grant anyone else that authority over us.

Led by God through Leaders

Into such confusion the Christian faith speaks a different message. You need leadership. It is for your good. You were designed to be led, first and foremost by God himself—through the God-man, Jesus, who now wields all authority in heaven and on earth at the Father’s right hand. God made you to be led. He designed your mind and heart and body not to thrive in autonomy but to flourish under the wisdom and provision and care of worthy leaders and, most of all, under Christ himself. But there is more.

The risen Christ has appointed, even gifted his church with, human leaders, in submission to him, on the ground in local congregations. Precious as the priesthood of all believers is—a remarkable truth that was radically countercultural from the first century until the Reformation—today we have need to articulate afresh the nature and goodness of leadership in the local church—an important kind of graciousinequality within our equality in Christ.

Christian Vision of Leadership

One of the ways Christ governs his church and blesses her is by giving her the gift of leaders: “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11–12).

The mention of shepherds and teachers is of special significance, not only because it is the subject of this book but also because it is intensely personal to you as a Christian. It includes the pastors of your particular local church (and note that pastors is plural—that’s a major theme of this book). You’ve never met one of Jesus’s apostles (even as their writings remain precious to us beyond words!), but chances are you know a pastor. I hope that many readers of this book will themselves be pastors. Faithful pastors are a gift from Christ to guide and keep his church today.

Are pastors flawed? Of course. Sinful? Regrettably. Have some pastors made terrible mistakes, sinned grievously, fleeced their flocks, and harmed the very ones they were commissioned to protect? Sadly, yes, too many have. Such failures do not fulfill the vision of what true Christian leadership is, but fall short of it or depart from it altogether. In fact, such failures show—by contrast—what real leadership in the church should be.

That’s what this book is about: what Christ calls leaders in his church to be and do, especially the lead office or teaching office in the church, that of pastor or elder or overseer—three terms in the New Testament for the same lead office (more on that to come). At times the bar may seem surprisingly low. Other times it may seem almost impossibly high. Sometimes we’ll talk in ideals; other times, very practically. My prayer is that these pages will be useful to congregants and leaders alike in considering what Christ expects of, and what vision he himself has cast through his apostles and prophets for, leadership in the local church.

Leaders for Your Joy

The epistle to the Hebrews gives this important glimpse into the dynamic of Christian leadership:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Heb. 13:17)

Here is a beautiful, marriage-like vision of the complementary relationship between the church and its leaders. The leaders, for their part, labor (they work hard; it is costly work) for the advantage—the profit—of the church. And the church, for its part, wants its leaders to work not only hard but happily, without groaning, because the pastors’ joy in leading will lead to the church’s own benefit. The people want their leaders to labor with joy because they know their leaders are working for theirs.

Leaders in the church, then, as Paul says of himself, are to be workers for the joy of their people. “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy” (2 Cor. 1:24). Christ gives leaders to his people for their joy, which turns the world’s paradigm and suspicions about leadership upside down.

For Your Advance and Advantage

Paul saw himself as such a worker for joy in the lives of the Philippians. Though in prison, he suspected this wasn’t yet the end for him but that he would be released: “I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again” (Phil. 1:25–26).

The apostle saw his leadership as a laboring for the church’s “progress and joy in the faith.” Not just progress, but progress and joy. How eager, then, would the people have been to submit to such a leader? The prospect of submitting to a leader drastically changes when you know he isn’t pursuing his own private advantage but genuinely seeking yours, what is best for you, what will give you the deepest and most enduring joy—when he finds his joy in yours rather than apart from or instead of yours.

For readers who are skeptical of leaders in general (as many people today are—again, sometimes for good reasons), what if you knew that “those who are over you in the Lord” (1 Thess. 5:12) were not in it to stroke their ego, or secure selfish privilege, or indulge their desires to control others, but actively were laying aside their personal rights and private comforts to take inconvenient initiative and expend their limited energy to work for your joy?

For readers who are formal leaders in the church, in the home, or in the marketplace, what if those under your care were convinced—deeply convinced—that your place of relative authority, under Christ, was not for self-aggrandizement or self-promotion but was a sobering call to self-sacrifice, and that you were working for their joy? That your joy in leadership was not a selfish pursuit, but a holy satisfaction you were finding in the joy of those whom you lead?

No Greater Joy

The Christian vision is that leaders taste the greatest joys when they look out for, and give themselves to, the interests of others—when they marshal their power and effort to bring about the advantage and advance (on God’s terms) of those in their care. Such leaders know the delight of the apostle John, who says, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4). They can say, with Paul, “What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy” (1 Thess. 2:19–20).

When undershepherds in the church show themselves to be workers for your joy, they walk in the steps of the great shepherd—the great worker for joy—the one who bore the greatest cost for others’ good, and not to the exclusion of his own joy. He found his joy in the joy of those for whom he was Lord. “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2). He is the one who tells us to pray, “that your joy may be full” (John 16:24) and speaks to us, “that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11; also John 17:13). And he is the one who gives pastors to his church for your joy.

This Book

Christian leadership exists for the joy of the church. Such a vision may turn some of our churches upside down, first for pastors and then for the people. That’s the vision I hope to impart, and linger in, in this book.

My hope is that these chapters will be useful for Christians who do not personally aspire to office in the church but hope to get clarity, in confusing times, about what they can and should hope for and pray for and expect in their leaders in the local church. I also hope this book will bless those who aspire to be pastor-elders and deacons (the two offices in the church), to get a fresh sense of what the work is (and is not). The concepts and approach of these chapters originally emerged from teaching seminary students (aspiring pastors) at Bethlehem College & Seminary (BCS), beginning in 2012. With congregants and particularly aspiring pastor-elders in mind, my friend (and instructional designer) Pam Eason lent her expertise to crafting study questions for each chapter, from preface to conclusion. She designed these with both individual and group study in mind. They are located at the back. I’m amazed to see Pam’s skill at work, extending the key concepts of these chapters into insightful and enjoyable questions and activities. I pray many will benefit from the study, not just the reading.

If I may be so bold, I also hope that this book might be of some use for those who are already in local-church office, whether newly or for years. This book may not have many new concepts and perspectives to offer you, but perhaps rehearsing them afresh, in this format, could provide some renewed sense of the preciousness of your charge and enrich the joy you find in it—for the good of your people (Heb. 13:17). Perhaps these pages will offer something you’ve overlooked or neglected. We all are lifelong learners.

In teaching the eldership class for the last decade at BCS, maybe my single biggest discovery has been how much the practical-ministry topics one would want to address with aspiring pastors map onto the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9. Imagine that! The apostle Paul, speaking for the risen Christ, really knew what he was talking about. Almost two thousand years later, these qualifications continue to pulse with relevancy to the everyday work of Christian leadership, if we will only slow down enough to really listen and think and learn.

The eldership qualifications are not simply moral hoops to jump through to then be qualified to do the work of pastoring. Rather, Christ, through his apostle, requires these traits because they are the precise virtues pastor-elders need for the day-in, day-out work of their calling. These are the graces we need to be good pastors. These are not just prerequisites but ongoing requisites, because this is who the elders need to be to do what they’re called to do. Without these fifteen attributes, leaders will not prove, in the long haul, to be genuine workers for the joy of their church. They will devolve, in time, into self-servers. They will not prove to be the kind of pastors we all want. Let me say it once more, so that the particular focus of this book is lost on as few readers as possible. The qualifications are not the main subject of this book. Rather, the pastorate, or eldership, is the subject, and the qualifications are the lens through which we will address the topic.

So, then, if the remarkable ongoing relevance of the elder qualifications is one of the central offerings of the book, why not just keep with Paul’s order for the book’s structure? Well, lists in a series, in a single sentence, don’t necessarily impress themselves upon a reader in the same way that fifteen chapters do in the flow of a book. I’m asking you to pause with me over these qualifications and see the pastor’s task through them. Intentional as Paul is in his choice of virtues in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, I don’t believe he would insist we search them out in a particular order. Just the varying order of his twin lists may make that clear enough.

As for my semi-apologetic for the order of this volume and its parts, I’m taking my cues from the (near) mysterious power of three.1 Perhaps it’s because God is one and three, and our universe, even when we do not perceive it, dances spectacularly to the tune of one and three. Or maybe it’s just enduringly helpful for finite creatures like us (prone to see things from a single perspective, or maybe two) to consider three angles. However deep the magic, I often find it illuminating to push myself to ponder three vantage points rather than just one or two. I don’t force every sermon into a three-part outline, but I end up there an awful lot—and not just three disparate bullets but three perspectives that illumine and reveal one singular, multidimensional whole. In a previous project, on the so-called spiritual disciplines, a triperspectival approach contributed to the main insights I offered there, considering God’s means of grace for the Christian life in view of three loci: the word of God (normative), prayer (existential), and fellowship (situational).2

On the topic of eldership—whether you’re a congregant considering your leaders or an aspiring (or current) pastor pondering your call—I find the elder qualifications cleanly cluster to at least one of three axes: (1) the man before his God (the devotional life), (2) the man before those who know him best (his private life), and (3) the man before the watching church and world (public life). In sum, we might say humbled, whole, and honorable. Instead of proceeding through the fifteen qualifications in the order of 1 Timothy 3, I’ve arranged them according to this paradigm. Sometimes we find insights in simply coming at known concepts in a fresh order.

This book does not mainly offer lessons from my years of pastoral ministry (only fourteen at the time of publication). This book is largely a biblical vision of Christian leadership that takes the elder requirements with utter seriousness. I have not aimed to produce a practical guide. This book is not designed to give you simple answers about many of the perennial questions in eldership—some of them, yes, but this is not mostly lessons and answers.

This book aims to paint a vision, not just in broad brushstrokes but with the fine lines the New Testament gives us and what we discover about those lines as we follow them across the canon of Scripture. Experience is not irrelevant. You probably wouldn’t want a book like this to be all theory from a man who has never pastored. But I hope my limited experience (as still a young pastor who recently turned forty) won’t be too much of a drawback. Perhaps if I waited another twenty years to write this book, then it would be substantially different. But I doubt it, given its nature. Time will tell. For now, I give you what I can offer, informed first by Scripture and tested in about two decades of spiritual leadership, from college ministry to almost fifteen years as a pastor—and sharpened and challenged by a decade in the seminary classroom. Not to mention with many wise, old friends in life and in print.

At the end of the day, I want to point you, like every good Christian teacher should, to the words of the chief shepherd himself in the writings of his apostles and prophets. If readers of this book will simply take the elder qualifications of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 with new seriousness (and fresh enthusiasm to embody them and apply them in the labor of pastoring), I will feel a great satisfaction in this work. I could say, “My joy will increase.” Which is another main emphasis and offering of this book.

I take the topic of joy in leadership very seriously. I believe, with John Piper, that “there is a joy without which pastors cannot profit their people.”3In the Christian life and in spiritual leadership the pursuit of joy is not peripheral. It is not icing on the cake. It is central. Christian leaders, if they are true and faithful, are workers for your joy. As are good husbands and fathers and mothers and coaches and bosses and politicians. In one sense, this could be a book for any kind of leader—that is, if he wants to be Christian in his leadership. The vision is fundamentally different from the operating assumptions of fallen men in our sin-sick world. But there are Christians today, in business and in politics and elsewhere, who are disillusioned with the world’s assumptions about leadership as personal privilege instead of glad self-sacrifice for the collective good. I hope some readers in those spheres will find here—in the elder qualifications of all places!—the fresh vision they are looking for to be a different kind of leader in the world, the kind of leader Jesus would call them to be. But mainly this is a book about Christian leaders in the local church and what the risen Christ calls them to be and do.

So what is the kind of pastor we all want? What does it mean for leaders to be workers for your joy? Let’s find out.4

1  See John Frame’s article “A Primer on Perspectivalism,” The Works of John Frame and Vern Poythress website, June 4, 2012, https://frame-poythress.org/. Also John Frame, Theology in Three Dimensions: A Guide to Triperspectivalism and Its Significance (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2017); and Vern Poythress, Symphonic Theology: The Validity of Multiple Perspectives in Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2001).

2Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016).

3  John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Eugene, OR: Multnomah, 2011), 11.

4  Study questions, by chapter, are available at the back of the book, beginning with this preface.

1  Among them would be Mark 10:42–45; Acts 20:18–35; and 2 Tim. 2:22–26, in addition to the qualifications listed in 1 Tim. 3:1–13 and Titus 1:5–9.

2  Given the number of churches today with single pastor-elder structures, it may be worth addressing briefly, even this early in the book, how a pastor in such a situation might pray and work toward building a team of fellow pastors. In short, I would counsel him to make a patient plan to get there. Typically it is no fault of his own when a pastor finds himself in such a situation. Don’t assume you are in error to be there, but I would think you are mistaken to happily stay there without some intentional effort to raise up other leaders (as Paul charges his protégé in 2 Tim.