If you put a gun to his head . . .
It’s a telling scenario to play out—hypothetically, of course—when considering a man for the office of pastor-elder in the local church. Run the simulation on a candidate: Would the most natural commendation, relative this particular man, be the more minimalist statement, “He’s able to teach—if you put a gun to his head?” Or would it be the more maximalist assertion: “He’s the kind of man who will hardly stop teaching—even if you put a gun to his head.”
It’s the latter we want in the office, on the team, in the pulpit, writing the church-wide letter, giving the welcome and announcements, leading congregational meetings, and giving pastoral counsel. “Able to teach” in the ESV (one word in the Greek, didaktikos) is, we might say, the most central of the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 (listed eighth of the fifteen) and also the most distinctive. The single qualification that most plainly sets the pastor-elders apart from the deacons is “able to teach”—or perhaps even better, “apt or prone to teach.”
Such teaching bent and ability in pastors is not to be minimal, but maximal. We want the kind
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