If you can smile and make conversation on a Sunday morning and are willing to volunteer to help, chances are someone will eventually ask you to lead. How do you know if you’re ready? Just smiling and putting up your hand surely aren’t the qualifications. Then again, a Christian is someone who admits that they’re a sinner in need of God’s grace, so you probably don’t have to be perfect to be a Christian leader. In the case of an elder, the lines are drawn pretty clearly in Scripture. We looked last time at the first of those qualifications: integrity. Today, let’s consider self-control from 3 different angles.
What should you do if you’re asked to serve as an elder? Do you decide on the basis of related work experience? Is there an x-factor you should know about? Is it a question of who has the strongest opinions or whether you think you could make better decisions than the current elders? The Bible gives a clear benchmark, and the starting point is integrity. But it’s not just a requirement of elders. It’s the goal of all discipleship and should characterize every believer. We all need to work on integrity whether we’re ever asked to becoming leaders or not. The Christian version of integrity is slightly different than how people typically conceive of it, though. Let me explain.
