Be Worthy

The saying is sure: If any one aspires to the office of bishop, he desires a noble task. Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, no drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and no lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way; for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil; moreover he must be well thought of by outsiders, or he may fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

1 Timothy 3:1-7

Christians are, as a rule, disposed to thinking of priests, pastors, deacons, bishops, and all those involved in church governance and administration as being especially devout and particularly pious.

Church scandals—of we we have seen many—are notorious in large measure because they put the lie to this notion. In every church, in every denomination, those who lead are every bit as sinful, every bit as fallen, every bit as human as those who sit in the pews come Sunday morning.

Leaders are people, and it follows that good leaders are generally good people, and bad leaders are generally bad people.

How can that be if leaders are as imperfect as followers, if leaders share the weaknesses of followers?

As with all things in life, it comes down to the choices we make. We are all sinful, we are all fallen, we are all imperfect, but we all still make every choice in our lives. When we sin, it is through our choices. When we rise above sin, it is through our choices.

Good choices move us away from sin and closer to God. Bad choices move us closer to sin and away from God.

When we speak of people being “good”, we do well to apprehend that we are ascribing to them a tendency to make more good choices than bad, and when we speak of people being “bad”, we are ascribing to them a tendency to make more bad choices than good.

It really is as simple as that. Read through any text on leadership, dissect all the models and modalities proposed for leadership, and at their core the basic premise remains: good leaders are good people who make generally good choices, and bad leaders are bad people who generally make bad choices.

If one wishes to lead, practice making good choices. If one wishes to lead, make good choices a habit.

This is a challenge I suspect we too often overlook in evaluating the leadership potential in people. Do they exhibit the signs that good choices are truly a personal habit of theirs?

The Apostle Paul lays out the signs of a habit of making good choices in his listing of qualifications to serve as a bishop within the early Christian church: A man must be “temperate”; he must be “sensible”; he must have only one wife and not be greedy or gluttonous. Taken together, these qualities in a man’s personal life show discipline, restraint, and deliberation. A man who maintains an orderly household is a man who is providing a safe and healthy environment for all who dwell within that household.

A man who exhibits such traits is a man who may be said to have chosen a good path for his life, a path leading to righteousness and closer communion with God.

From Paul’s list we may also discern something else about the habit of good choices: it cannot be confined to any one part of a person’s life. As with all habits, the habit of good choices permeates the entirety of one’s life or it does not exist.

I like to think of myself as a rational man. In all my writings, even my sermons here, I lay out the reasons for my thinking, and invite people to agree or disagree. I bring such facts as I have at my disposal to support my reasons.

This is true even in my day job as an accountant. I am frequently asked questions about a variety of things, and in every instance I make a point to respond with facts, with details, with documented evidences of things. If there is a question about prior communications, I will present what I have said and what others have said in response.

This habit of factual responses has won me a measure of respect as a source of factual information. My knowledge not just of accounting facts but also of where to find vital information has let to my being asked to mentor others, and share bits of that understanding, to strengthen others in the course of their work. Even my supervisors will come to me to cross check their own thinking.

That is not a boast. That is merely what happens.

This habit of factual communications has won me my following here, and it has won me a measure of acclaim in my regular day job. It is the same habit, built on the same principles of striving for honesty and bearing true witness to others.

I will not claim to be a paragon of virtue, for I am not. I will not even claim to be an ideal choice for leading anything. I will claim that, any time I am tapped to lead anything, the quality of my leadership will be the direct result of the habits in choosing that I already possess.

Nor is this a novel teaching from Paul or anywhere else, for when God instructed His People Israel on how they were to choose a king for themselves in Deuteronomy 17, His formulation was structurally not much different from Paul’s: a would-be king must not seek after horses, or wives, or gold. A would-be king must be restrained, disciplined, and pious, daily studying God’s Word and always seeking to understand God’s Law. The Mosaic formulation is not of a king who is mightier than his subjects, or morally superior to his subjects, but merely a man who has risen to leadership because of the quality of his choices.

We can see in the errors King Solomon committed at the end of his reign what happens when a man fails to make good choices. Solomon choose to seek after wives, and had multiplied considerable gold for himself over the course of his reign. He gave in to greed and gluttony, and those choices led him away from God, leading him to erect altars to the foreign gods of his foreign wives. Solomon’s private errors led to wars for the Kingdom of Israel, and ultimately produced civil war when his son Rehobo′am ascended the throne, thus beginning Israel’s slow decline.

Good leaders are good people who make good choices. Bad leaders are bad people who make bad choices. People who start out making good choices and being good leaders can succumb to making bad choices and becoming bad leaders.

This is not to say that all who attain positions of leadership and authority do so because they make good choices. The downfall of Israel, and the fall of nations and empires since, contain ample proofs of people who secure positions of leadership for themselves despite their proclivity for bad choices.

This is to say that all who attain positions of leadership and authority will turn out to be good or bad leaders according to their habits of making good or bad choices.

This is to recommend to all who aspire to positions of leadership, be it in their church, their job, or elsewhere, to cultivate a habit of making good choices. This is to recommend to all who aspire to positions of leadership to be worthy of leadership by first cultivating a habit of making good choices.

This is to recommend to all who are already in positions of leadership to be worthy of that leadership by cultivating even now a habit of making good choices.

My prayer this day is that God will always strengthen my own habit for making good choices, and that I will make far more good choices than bad ones. My prayer this day is that whatever leadership I will be called upon to show will be defined by my good choices, that it may survive my bad ones. My prayer this day is that I will always be worthy and ready to lead because I have succeeded in making more good choices than bad ones.

My prayer for you this day is that God will always strengthen your habit for making good choices, and that you will make far more good choices than bad ones. My prayer for you this day is that whatever leadership you will be called upon to show will be defined by your good choices, that it may survive your bad ones. My prayer for you this day is that you will always be worthy and ready to lead because you have succeeded in making more good choices than bad ones.

All who attain positions of leadership and authority will turn out to be good or bad leaders according to their habits of making good or bad choices.

All who aspire to positions of leadership, be it in their church, their job, or elsewhere, do well to cultivate a habit of making good choices. All who aspire to positions of leadership do well to be worthy of leadership by first cultivating a habit of making good choices.

The foundation of good leadership is simply this: If one wishes to lead, practice making good choices.