The Radical Resurgence

What Disqualifies a Person from Ministry?

by Jeff Reardon

Whenever a high-profile celebrity pastor falls morally, a firestorm on social media starts, opinions and disagreements erupt.

Whether the pastor has lied, stolen, defrauded, embezzled, been verbally abusive, or committed a sexual sin (whether virtually, emotionally, or physically) – all are moral failures according to Scripture, this is what happens.

One group says the pastor is no longer eligible to pastor a church at any time in the future. He’s banned from ministry forever. Another group says that the pastor can be restored with true repentance and future accountability.

In the first group, there are variations. Christians disagree over which sins disqualify a person from leadership forever.

For example, some say viewing pornography permanently bans a pastor from serving. Others say adultery does. Others say lying does. Other say stealing does. Others say verbal abuse and rage does. Others say sexual abuse of any kind does.

The opinions of humans vary far and wide. But what does the Bible say?

The reason why there is so much bickering over this issue is precisely because the Bible never addresses the subject of what permanently disqualifies a person from ministry.

For instance, Galatians 6:1-3 says clearly that a Christian overtaken in a sin can be restored. Yet some will say that this text doesn’t apply to leaders. However, the text doesn’t restrict it to non-leaders. Read it for yourself.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

It doesn’t say “if anyone of you, who isn’t a leader or an elder, sins.” It says “any.” That includes everyone in the church.

There is absolutely nothing in this text that says the instruction is only applicable to a certain segment of the body of Christ.

Another problem has to do with what defines a person as a minister in the first place.

In modern Christianity, if you are part of the clergy, you are a minister. If you’re part of the laity, you aren’t.

But this isn’t the picture the New Testament gives us. According to the full teaching of the New Testament, every believer is a priest and a servant (which means a “minister”).

There was no clergy/laity distinction in the New Testament.

The New Testament does give a prescription for elders. But in the New Testament, elders didn’t operate like modern pastors.

First, they were always a plurality of them in a local church in the New Testament.

Second, they didn’t preach a sermon every Sunday (as the modern pastor does).

Third, they did not make the decisions for a church.

Even though many commentators and a number of scholars have demonstrated that 1 Timothy and Titus are not talking about modern pastors, but a plurality of elders in the biblical sense, Christians continue to elevate the single pastoral office as a biblical role and insist that those who fill it must be nearly perfect.

The problem with this that all pastors have sinned in serious ways. Perhaps it wasn’t murder, exhortation, physical adultery, or embezzlement. But Paul puts slander, drunkenness, greed, lust (pornography), fits of rage (outbursts of anger), and envy in the same category.

While some might call this “sin leveling,” it’s the way Paul viewed the sins of the flesh, all of which (according to the apostle) exclude a person from God’s kingdom if a person doesn’t repent (stop the sin). See 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and Galatians 5:19-21 for Paul’s sin-leveling list.

Therefore, the pastor who verbally lynches another pastor for adultery or embezzlement, yet who has lost his temper with his wife or children, who has slandered others, who has gotten drunk at home, who has lusted after women through pornography or in his mind, and who has been envious of others is a hypocrite.

If such a pastor denounces another leader for being “permanently disqualified” from serving God (ministry), even if they’ve repented and stopped the sinful behavior, then that pastor has disqualified himself based on the standard of Jesus (Matthew 7:2).

If he allows grace for himself to be forgiven and continue in ministry despite his own sins, he must do the same for others, even if they sinned differently than he has. As long as both have repented, there is forgiveness and restoration.

To reiterate the point, in the New Testament, elders were shepherds and oversees, and they were always plural in number in a church. The idea of a head elder who is “the pastor” or “bishop” came much later in church history.

Therefore, to say that a certain sin disqualifies a person from continuing to be a modern-day pastor is like saying certain sins disqualify someone from continuing to be a Catholic priest. Neither office appears in the New Testament.

There are character traits of a biblical elder according to the New Testament.

The word [is] faithful: if any one aspires to exercise oversight, he desires a good work. The overseer then must be irreproachable, husband of one wife, sober, discreet, decorous, hospitable, apt to teach; not given to excesses from wine, not a striker, but mild, not addicted to contention, not fond of money, conducting his own house well, having [his] children in subjection with all gravity; (but if one does not know how to conduct his own house, how shall he take care of the assembly of God?) not a novice, that he may not, being inflated, fall into [the] fault of the devil. But it is necessary that he should have also a good testimony from those without, that he may fall not into reproach and [the] snare of the devil (1 Timothy 3:1-7).

For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou mightest go on to set right what remained [unordered], and establish elders in each city, as I had ordered thee: if any one be free from all charge [against him], husband of one wife, having believing children not accused of excess or unruly. For the overseer must be free from all charge [against him] as God’s steward; not headstrong, not passionate, not disorderly through wine, not a striker, not seeking gain by base means; but hospitable, a lover of goodness, discreet, just, pious, temperate, clinging to the faithful word according to the doctrine taught, that he may be able both to encourage with sound teaching and refute gainsayers (Titus 1:5-9).

Scholars like Ben Witherington III have pointed out that the line “husband of one wife” doesn’t mean the elder could never be divorced and remarried or widowed and remarried (in both cases, the elder would have had more than one wife).

“Some scholars would interpret 1 Timothy 3:1-12 to rule out the possibility of divorced clergy. However, the key phrase here–“the husband of one wife”–could refer to a prohibition of polygamy, or it could refer to an endorsement of only serial monogamy (that is, one wife at a time). Certainly it is true that religiously mixed marriages were viewed differently than Christian marriages (see, for example, what Paul says about a mixed marriage in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16). Nowhere in the New Testament is divorce called the unforgivable sin. So it would be difficult to talk about the “biblical” view on divorced clergy when the key texts are interpreted differently by equally devout and careful scholars.” (Ben Witherington III, “Are Divorced Pastors OK?,” published on BeliefNet.com.)

The term instead means an elder should be a “one-woman man.” In today’s parlance, that means the elder “doesn’t sleep around,” but he is completely devoted to his wife, demonstrating fidelity and commitment to the marriage.

Furthermore, these characteristics in 1 Timothy and Titus have been severally misunderstood and misapplied. The typical view is that these are the qualifications for “leaders” and not for everyone else.

If that’s true, that means it’s okay if a Christian sleeps around, gets drunk, and commits the other sins mentioned in the list because they aren’t “leaders.”

But that’s not what Paul was communicating. He wasn’t giving Timothy and Titus a list of qualifications, as if elder was a job a person applies for.

He was instead giving character traits of those who would serve as examples. The very meaning of an example is that others are supposed to follow the example.

This means that the characteristics in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 aren’t free passes for non-elders to be promiscuous, abuse alcohol, lose their temper, etc.

1 Timothy 5 explains how to deal with an elder who is currently practicing sin. The text says:

Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses. But those elders who are sinning you are to reprove before everyone, so that the others may take warning.  (1 Timothy 5:19-21)

Nowhere in this passage does Paul offer a statement that a sin would “disqualify” a person from serving God permanently in oversight (or anything else).

It simply deals with what to do if an elder is continually sinning in some way.

Galatians 6:1-3 would apply in such situations, and to say it doesn’t is an argument from silence.

Perhaps the best example of how those who serve the Lord can be restored is Peter. Peter was an elder, a shepherd, and an apostle according to the New Testament.

For those who like pitting some sins above other in God’s eyes (which violates texts like James 2:10), Peter committed one of the most egregious sins of all.

He denied the Lord who trusted him not once or twice, but three times. And yet Jesus restored Peter not only to serve as an apostle, but Peter became the greatest of the twelve apostles.

Before Paul (Saul) saw the risen Jesus, he abused women and ravished the Christians both physically and with threats of murder.

Acts 8:3 says “Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, he was delivering them to prison.”

Acts 9:1-2 also mentions that “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”

Murder is one of the worst forms of abuse. Paul was an accessory to Stephen’s murder (Acts 22:20).

Paul (Saul) wasn’t an immoral pagan at the time. He was a man who following his God, dedicating his entire life to the service of YHWH. He was blameless where the righteousness of God’s Law was concerned.

“As to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6).

You can think of him as the first-century equivalent of a Christian leader.

And yet, he was transformed and God didn’t disqualify him from service.

Using the same standard that many use today to judge others, Moses would be forever disqualified from leadership because he committed murder. But God used him to lead His people.

According to the same people, King David was forever disqualified from leadership because he committed adultery and murder. But God restored him and used him to lead His people.

The same with Peter and Paul (who were Christian leaders), yet God restored and used them both in ministry.

It doesn’t matter if David was a king and not a Christian leader, the spiritual principle is the same. God responds to repentance and restitution the same with His servants in both Old and New Testaments.

In conclusion, the New Testament never offers a clear cut list of sins that exclude a person from ever serving God again in preaching or teaching.

The Bible leaves that question up to the people who God has called that leader to serve.

Some Christian groups and churches find any person’s sin disqualifying (which is problematic since every Christian has sinned, including all leaders).

Other groups and churches will disqualify a person if they have a pattern of unrepentant sin.

Repentance doesn’t mean the person apologizes and confesses. It often includes that, but repentance means that the individual has stopped committing a particular sin.

On matters like this with so many variables involved in different situations, it’s up to the particular church to discern the Holy Spirit’s leading regarding whether or not a person they received ministry from can be restored to ministry or not.

The New Testament simply doesn’t give specific rules on the question. To claim it does is to speak where God has not spoken. Like so many other things in Scripture, God expects us to following the leading of the Spirit and apply it to different situations based on the principles of His written word.

A person can shout as loud as they can and be as forceful as they wish in their assertion that certain sins will eternally ban a person from ministry, but such assertions are simply opinions and examples of humans speaking where God hasn’t.

We should never ignore how God treated and used Moses, David, Peter, and Paul despite their egregious sins. The pattern in the Bible seems to be that true repentance that is evidenced by action leads to forgiveness and restoration.