Kelly - 1 Timothy 3

Paul expects quite a lot out of church leaders. There's nothing here I disagree with. But....

I don't know if setting such high expectations for church leaders (clergy and lay) will help people to rise to the occasion or will lead to despair at our failures.

"Above reproach, not quarrelsome, gentle, self-controlled, hospitable, able to teach" and (my favorite) "manage his own family well." We seem to have an overabundance of PK's in the congregation -and they are good and faithful men and women (even Jordan and Marcus). But PKs have the reputation they do for a reason.

When I was growing up my father was council chair or treasurer or stewardship chair or trustee chair....he held all the positions at one time or other. And my Sunday School teachers cringed when they saw me coming. I could get away with anything at that church and knew it. There are pictures of me in the top of a Ponderosa Pine wearing my Easter Dress. I spearheaded the youth movement in protest of one of our Sunday School teachers (she ended up quitting). And the Nevins who replaced her taught a good class, but were convinced I was queen of the heathens. I taught all the youth to do the polka during fellowship time and watch the crowds of coffee drinkers try to disperse without spilling their coffee. And I was a generally good kid without major rebellion.

And we could write entire theses about church leadership and the instruction to "not be quarrelsome."

To my mind, these may be ideals- but they cannot be requirements. God uses who God will, and the scriptures of full of stories of God choosing the most obnoxious heathens and shepherds and tax collectors and smelly locust-eaters to carry out God's plans.

I think sometimes the desire to create order in the church - to establish a strong institution to carry on the faith - is at direct odds with the innate disorder of God.