The pastor has the difficult task of being a non-argumentative person who knows how to make good arguments. He must be valiant-for-truth and a peacemaker, a man who contends for the truth without being contentious. Or as the Apostle Paul puts it to Timothy, “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim. 2:24–25a).
We must not misunderstand the injunction against being quarrelsome. Clearly, by both precept and example, Paul did not envision the ideal pastor as a nice, soft, somewhat passive, universally liked, vaguely spiritual chaplain. After all, in the very sentence in which he enjoins Timothy not to be quarrelsome, he also emphasizes that there is evil in the world and that the pastor must correct his opponents.
Not all controversy is bad. The pastoral epistles are full of warnings against false teachers (1 Tim. 6:3; 2 Tim. 2:17–18). At the heart of faithful shepherding is the ministry of exhortation and rebuke (Titus 1:9; 2:15). Doctrine is not the problem. Disagreement is not even the problem. There are hills to die on. There are fights to pick. Staying out of the fray is
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