Divorces do not happen in a vacuum. Just as marriage takes two, so does divorce. Marriage is more complex than "I was perfect and she just left."
Wisdom says that when a man is divorced, he needs to step aside at least temporarily. The strain of divorce on a life means that he will not be effectively able to manage and lead spiritually for a while. The emotional toll that it takes, even on the "innocent," is tremendous.
Even in an "innocent party" situation, there will be people who say, "What did he really do?" And it's not an unreasonable question. That is a contradiction of what it means to be blameless.
Pastoral Qualification Quandary ??
Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by PastorMark, Jul 1, 2009.
Page 4 of 9
-
-
peace to you:praying: -
Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
-
-
-
-
Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
You give a broad and impossible view of reputation. It certainly doesn't line up with scripture. No man pastor or otherwise can have a good reputation with everyone. Someone is going to get upset just simply because a pastor has preached the truth.
Reputation does not only refer to what people are suspicious of but it can and does refer to what has been proven and there is no need to include suspicion. -
perhaps more questions
Greetings, I saw when I loged in that I had not been here for almost 2 years, but this thread got me interested, having read and re read the 7 pages of posts. let me add my 2 cents, which will likely only add more questions. I have some personal experience as my first pastor was divorced while I was a member of his church and I have watched him remarry move to another town, start another church and struggle for the last 10 years. I have also watched the church he pastored while going through his divorce struggle as well. Over the years I have pondered this situation long and hard and looked at all sides of the issue. I can't say that my mind is completly made up on things as I write this but I would like to offer up a few thoughts:
My first thought has to do with the I Timothy 3 qualifications. I have seen many people do the same thing that people on here have done, when they have said Bishop=Senior Pastor. When we draw this conclusion we then say the man can't serve as senior pastor but he can serve as...(some other staff position other than senior pastor) I tend to believe that this may indeed be a slippery slope. let me explain.
The Book of Philippians is widely accepted as being addressed to The Church at Philippi:
"THE Epistle to the Philippians is a friendly letter of encouragement
and exhortation addressed to a church which was in a prosperous
and happy condition. " Abbott New Testament Comentary
"SUMMARY OF PHILIPPIANS 1: Greetings to the Church and Its
Officers." Peoples New Testament commentary
Philippians 1:1 states the following "Paul and Timotheus, the servants of
Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:"
So Paul's letter to the church at Philippi is addressed to the Bishops (as in more than one) of that church. I am then forced to conclude that our pratice of equating the office of bishop with that of senior pastor has to be a mistake.
I am going to post this and work on my other thought. -
In one town where I pastored just before I left a neighbor lady came to our home and thanked me for getting to know her husband. She is a Christian and he was not. He and I had many talks across the fence.
In one place where I worked it was not uncommon each month to see a church on the list of those whose accounts were delinquent. The church where I go now has an excellent reputation and it makes it much easier to talk with people without having to deal with poor things first. I have a few students who worked on the new building that was just finished and everything they said was good. I know how that made me feel and what I think of the church and its people. -
I have no way of knowing all who are pastors but some are self identified. -
Maybe if we applied the rules advocated here as being scriptural, we could get rid of at least half the pastors supposedly serving in churches to-day.
There is one qualification. Is the person called of God to serve.....period? If they have a good educational background, perhaps all the better.
Certainly some standards for people serving is listed in Timothy, but it is only talking about men. Also, because it says a "husband of one wife" does not mean he must be married. It is just ruling out multiple wives, which may have been a problem at that time in that culture.
Cheers,
Jim -
second thought
My second thought on the subject is as follows, please bear in mind that this is oberservational in nature.
I mentioned that my first pastor remaried, moved to another state and started a new church. this church is now more than a decade old and I have been there on numerous occasions and know several families in the church.
What I have observed is this. the pastor remains to be one of the best Bible teachers I have ever been exposed to and becuase of this the church gets more than its fair share of visitors, the vast majority of which, when they find out about the pastor's divorce, leave never to return. the only people who have stayed are folks that have been divorced themselves. As I write this there is not one family in the church that is on their first marriage, some are on there third and forth (Deacons included) I realize that people need to be in church regardless of how many marriages they have but when you get 15 families together with all of their issues it can be a very caustic invironment to be in.
The pastor almost never preaches on home and family (for obvious reasons) and people continue to flounder. My assessment is that this would not be the case in this church if the pastor was still on wife #1
like i said in the begining, my two cents, with it you are still $3.98 away from something at starbucks -
When an accusation is made, do people say, "Yes, I can see that in him"? When an accusation is made, do people say, "Yes, he did that before. I am not surprised he did it again."
I can't imagine this is even questionable. -
-
So, you say, Called of God is not scriptural,,,,,,That explains all the nutcases that have entered ministry.
Cheers,
Jim -
I didn't called of God wasn't Scriptural. I asked you for your biblical support that it was the "one qualification ... Period." The Bible seems to indicate other qualifications. You seem to deny the necessity of other qualifications. I was asking for your scriptural support.
Personally, I think there are a lot of nut cases that are pastors. I am preparing to preach on that tomorrow from Jude 5-16 about how what to look for in teachers, how to recognize bad ones. -
A friend of mine is a pastor for the same congregation that he once was a child in. He came to know Christ through his parents and attended the same church he now pastors. What an honor for a man to be selected as their pastor from among the people of his own church. Imagine the credibility he has among them. He told me that it is the best thing that ever happened to him. There are elderly people in that chruch who have known he and his family since he was born.
A divorced pastor should step aside. If the church decides to keep the pastor that is their business. A friend of mine was married to the mother of his children and then one time he asked me to preach for him. He was there to hear the sermon. Afterward I told him that something was wrong with his wife but I diod not know what it was. A few months later he found out that there was something seriously wrong. She had been online and involved in pornography. There wwas a time when she told him that she was going with her mom to visit relatives in Europe. He later found out that she did not go with her mom but went to shack up with a man in Europe she had met online. He told her to get tested before he would let her back. She refused and she left their home and family. He gave his resignation at the church and they refused his rresignation but told him to take some time off and they would take care of him by paying for counseling and give him a full salary. It was interesting what happened as a result. It changed his life and the church grew too. When I saw him the next time I saw a man who truly understood God's grace. It changed his children too. -
Larry, you might be amazed at how close I was to all those oldtime fundamentalists in my hayday when we actually fought against modernism.
I was called a fundamentalist bymy liberal friends and a liberal by my fundamentalist friends. I learned to disregard labels of that sort and just make fun of them. I'm sorry, mate. Guess I am just getting too old now. There are a lot of strange applications of the Word that I see in here and outside, when what we need is balance and some adaptation with modernity. Sometimes a word only has meaning to the immediate audience. Hence all the translations and controversies.
Cheers,
Jim -
Which returns us to the actual question: You said the one qualification for a pastor was to be called of God to serve, Period.
Do you have Bible for that? Do you think the list in 1 Timothy is not a qualification? Or a qualification that is negotiable? -
When I do a serious study of an issue where there are people on both sides I seldom find one to be wrong and the other right but usually it is something quite different. It can be that some of each is right or none of them are right. What I have come to the conclusion is that people are quick to jump on the bandwagon before studying it for themselves. I was amazed at how many times people in the congregation would tell me, "Just tell us what we need to know." They did not always appreciate it when I took them down the road of how I arrived at a particular interpretation when there were godly people who disagreed..
Page 4 of 9