Today, we're pleased to share with you an audio essay written and read by David Mathis

entitled A Superlative Guide to All 15 Elder Qualifications.

David is the author of Workers for Your Joy, The Call of Christ on Christian Leaders from Crossway.

A superlative guide to all 15 elder qualifications by David Mathis.

Leaders. Our criticisms of them, cynicism toward them, conflicts with them,

controversies about them fill our feeds, cues, and real-life conversations.

Perhaps a previous generation gave its presidents and pastors too much benefit of the doubt.

But that is increasingly not our temptation. Whether in society or the church, both a fascination

with and a negative mood toward our leaders and celebrities,

we're increasingly unable to draw clear lines between them, pervades our age.

Many today are confused, and often for good reasons.

Stories of use and abuse abound and multiply with the aid of our technologies.

What Christ requires.

For Christians, we have our conflicts and controversies to grieve and speak into,

but the risen Christ has not left us confused about what to expect, pray for, and hold our leaders accountable for.

Scripture has a lot to say about our current crisis.

To my count, 1 Timothy 3 provides 15 requirements for pastor elders, the lead or teaching office in the church.

Another list, again, I count 15, comes just pages later in Titus

1, with most of them mapping on precisely to the first list. Added to that, we have, among others,

1 Peter 5, 1 to 5, 2, Timothy 2, 22 to 26, Hebrews 13, verses 7 and 17, in the words of Christ in Mark 10, 42 to 45.

Jesus has not left us without clarity.

Paul really knew.

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