Sermon Tone Analysis

Is church good or bad?

Recently, I’ve been watching the newly released documentary by John Dickson’s Center For Public Christianity called “For better or worse - how the church is better and worse than you ever imagined”.

Essentially it’s a warts and all exploration of the history of the church.

The documentary doesn’t gloss over the bad parts, like the crusades and the inquisitions, as if they somehow don’t really matter, rather explores why they happened the way they did.

What becomes really clear in the documentary is that when the church is operating the way God intended it to, there is nothing finer.

When the church loses it’s way, it can become one of the most horrible, distasteful places.

The truth is, as we fast forward to today, the same is very true.

I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you of the recent Royal Commission in child sexual abuse.

Now the reality is, they aren’t acting as God would want, but however they got there, they are in the church and we have to deal with that fact.

But even if we put aside these gross abuses, church can be both an amazing place as well as a horrible place.

I’m sure if we all shared our stories together we would hear of both the absolute beauty of the church, as well as the horrors that it contains.

Finding answers in 1 Timothy

Now there is a lot of reasons that a church can be both really good or really bad.

As we’ve gone through the book of 1 Timothy, I want to suggest one main idea that stands out however - that is, a really good church is one that holds to the wonderful truths of Jesus Christ.

As we’ve gone through this book, I’ve described how this is a letter from Paul writing to the relatively young, and perhaps even a bit timid Timothy, whom God has placed in a position to look after the church in the city of Ephesus.

And right from the start what we saw was the insistence that Timothy stamps out those that have polluted the gospel.

You see, the truth is beautiful.

The church is at it’s finest when we hold this beautiful thing up for all to see.

Conversely, any alteration of the truth is a blemish - a stain that puts an ugly scar on its beauty.

We perversely think we can improve the church by our own additions, but it just becomes ugly.

Well, as Paul writes to Timothy, he gives lots of practical advice of how to put this into practice.

In chapter 2 he put it into practice in a worship setting.

Chapter 3 brings leadership into the equation, and then in chapter 5, which we started before the school holidays, he brings various relationships into the mix.

Relating to leaders

Well, as we get to verse 17, which is where our passage for today starts, we move to another type of relationship, but this time the relationship we have with our leaders.

Now I want to make the argument this morning, that if we’re going to hold this idea that the church is most beautiful when we hold to the truth, it is the leadership that are going to put us in the right direction.

In fact we see this time and time again throughout the bible.

You see it in the Old Testament.

Under bad leaders, wickedness flourished.

Under good leaders, righteousness flourished.

In the church today, good or bad leadership can make or break a church.

Now we already know what a good leader looks like - that’s because we covered that when we looked at chapter 3.

If you weren’t here, then you can read chapter 3 for yourself, but basically, it sets out the moral requirements for church leaders.

Well, for those of you listening now that aren’t in leadership, you’re probably thinking - well this is good, it’s out of my hands whether the church is good or bad.

But this is where my point for today comes in - you see, though you might not be in leadership, we all need to relate to our leaders, and how we do this will have an impact on the church.

Note 1 - different to Timothy

But before I continue, a word of note - this passage is actually addressed to Timothy who is placed in a position above these leaders.

While the nature of how you relate with our leaders will differ in nature to how Timothy dealt with the Ephesian leadership, I’ll argue that the principles that I’m going to draw out will be the same.

Note 2 - who are our leaders?

And also, just for clarity, when I talk about leadership in our church context, the term can be used on a few levels.

At one level I’m talking about myself as Pastor, and the elected deacons.

But on a broader level, there are also those who have leadership responsibilities for various ministries.

If I just briefly look at the word Paul uses of leaders, its the word “elder”, which in Greek is Presbyteros, which you might notice, is the origin for the name of the church denomination “Presbyterians” comes from.

Although that Greek word can refer to age, when Paul uses it both here and elsewhere, he is referring to someone who has been given authority.

And so as I continue, I’m going to apply this passage to church leaders generally.

Five Principles

So what I’m going to do as we work through this passage is find five principles of how we should treat leaders.

I believe that when the church operates with these principles, we’ll be in a much better position to see the church at it’s most beautiful.

Now of course, this only really works if the leaders are acting in a godly way, but in fact, you’ll find that this will actually address itself when we get to it.

Appreciation

I’m going to take the first principle from verses 17 and 18, and that is the principle of appreciation.

In verse 17 it talks about the elders being worthy of double honour.

But what does that mean.

Well, interestingly, the word translated as honour actually carries the connotation of compensation.

In fact, as we’ll see in verse 18, it seems quite clear that Paul is talking about a monetary payment.

Now of course, I recognise that I just said that I’m going to apply this passage generally to all leaders, but of course, as our deacons and other ministry leaders know, they don’t actually get paid.

I do recognise that I’m speaking here of course as the only person being paid for ministry by this church, but it does show that there is biblical justification for paying people who dedicate themselves to ministry.

Now for obvious reasons, I’m not going to harp on about that idea, but instead bring it back to the general idea of showing appreciation to leaders.

You see, while this passage might contain the notion of providing payment, I believe we can do it more generally to our leaders by showing our appreciation by other means.

Now I

Maybe it’s a card or gift.

More often it’s probably going to be words of appreciation.

Those words might be done publicly or privately.

Of course, the appropriate show of appreciation will depend on the circumstances.

Now something I’ve noticed over the years, while some people are really good are showing their thanks to others, for others, it doesn’t come so naturally.

Sometimes this is because we just don’t think about it.

But sometimes I’ve noticed that it is the receiver of thanks who struggles with it.

I think sometimes this can happen with a distorted view of humility.

You see, our motivation for doing ministry should not be the reward.

We do it because Jesus showed us the meaning of serving, and we need to do it with great humility.

But while all praise should be directed to God above, it is okay to accept thanks for leading well, after all, as Paul quotes Jesus in verse 18, the worker deserves his wages.

Certainly we need to keep this balanced with the knowledge that it is God working through us, but I suggest that this passage here gives us the imperative, that when someone leads the affairs of the church well, they should be given the thanks due to them.

Whether this is monetary or otherwise isn’t the point, rather we should thank those who lead well.

Fairness

The second principle that I find comes from verses 19 and 20, and that is the principle of fairness.

There are two concepts that Paul gives us within this principle of fairness.

Firstly, verse 19 is a protection against false accusations.

And then verse 20 talks about what to do if the leader is found sinning.

Avoid false accusations

The idea in verse 19 is a fairly well known idea, but one that needs some balance.

You see, Paul says that no accusation should ever be entertained against an elder (or in our case a leader), unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.

The idea is quite simple - leaders are vulnerable to false accusations, and they should be protected.

Unfortunately, there are countless stories of church leaders who have been accused, essentially had their ministries completely ruined, only to be found innocent, but with the damage already done.

But the tricky part in all of this is: how do you know if the person is actually guilty or not.

Well, Paul gives us a tip, but I believe it should be seen as a tip illustrating the principle of fairness.

The tip is: if only one person is making the accusation, then there is a good chance that nothing is wrong.

We can take this too far however, and certainly in the past it has.

For example, a church leader abuses someone in private, that person comes forward, but the church fails to listen, because there is only one accusation.

This is where we are called to be wise and discerning.

While we don’t want to unnecessarily drag the leader through the mud, but we do need to be wise with the evidence before us.

And if it involves a minor, we need to follow the laws of the land as well.

The key principle however is fairness.

Our leaders have important tasks and we need to treat them with a level of fairness, not allowing false accusations to be thrown around and affecting their ministry.

Reprove the sinner

The very sad reality is that as much as we need to protect our leaders, unfortunately they aren’t perfect.

And so while fairness means protecting them against false accusations, if the evidence is there that they are in fact sinning, then fairness also means dealing with their sin in an appropriate manner.

In the NIV, we’re told that we are to reprove them before everyone.

The Greek word used here to say “reprove” is not just to admonish, but to sternly admonish.

Now this idea of public admonition is a tricky one and one that doesn’t sit well with the way we do things.

But Paul spells out his reason why he asks for this.