A church leader's spiritual progress sets the pace for the rest of the congregation

that's why we should take special care when choosing church elders. What are the

virtues we should be seeking and what vices should we be on the lookout for?

Alistair Begg answers those questions today on Truth for Life. He's teaching from

First Timothy. We're looking at the opening verses in chapter three.

Verse two. Watch it, Mark, this overseer, well, he should be above reproach, above reproach.

In other words, he is not to be open to attack or criticism in terms of his

Christian life in general and in terms of the characteristics which now follow.

There's a sense in which a colon after reproach might be quite helpful and then

we might view these other characteristics as an explication of what it means to be

above reproach. Now again, we're not saying perfection. Trap the commentator who is a

wonderful old guy, I mean very old, he's dead, but he says some wonderful things.

He says every, every faithful pastor must be such as against whom no

just exception can be laid, no gross fault objected. In voluntary failings and

unavoidable infirmities have a pardon of course, both with God and with all good men.

So in other words, he's distinguishing as you rightfully must do because otherwise

the quest is for perfection. He's distinguishing in between gross faults,

justifiable glaring exceptions, and involuntary failings and unavoidable

infirmities. Now the challenge in this of course is who's setting the beam and

there's always a difference when we're setting it for ourselves or setting it for

somebody else. And the same thing happens. For example, just recently somebody wrote to me

from the radio program to say what a bad pastor I was. Now I understand that and

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