Transcript
Ben Fallon: When we started this version of Ask Paul Tripp about a year ago, one of the first questions that we received, and that Paul answered, was about being disqualified as an elder if your children were not walking with the Lord. Today's question is along the same lines, although Paul, I know your answer is going to be different. The question and the background go like this.
After dealing with some difficulties in our marriage, my wife announced to me that she no longer calls herself a Christian, presently identifying as an atheist. While she is still supportive of my desire to serve in the church, she does not attend worship with me. Am I qualified to preach and teach up to and including eldership or pastoral ministry despite now being in a spiritually mixed marriage?
Paul Tripp: So, this question is heartbreaking to me and almost hard for me to answer. It's situationally, culturally, and currently relevant. Pastors and elders live and conduct their ministry in the real world. They and their families have to deal with all the brokenness, fallenness, and dysfunction of this sin-damaged world that no longer operates in the beautiful way God intended. And as long as sin still remains, an elder or pastor, his wife and children will be susceptible to a variety of temptations. The most serious of them is to succumb to the temptation to walk away from the faith for some reason. It's particularly tragic when an elder or pastor's family is spiritually torn asunder by the deconstruction of one of the members of the family; even more tragic if that's the elder's wife. So, what do you do if you're in this situation?
Well, I would say the very first thing you should do is step back from your ministry, from all ministry responsibilities and involvements. First, to examine your own heart and life; are there things in you that have contributed to this decision of your wife to walk away from the faith? Are there ways that you have proclaimed the gospel in public and not lived the gospel in your everyday life? Are there demanding, entitling attitudes? Is there irritation, impatience, even abusive anger? Has your wife been neglected or treated like your personal servant? Has there been a lack of romance of you seeking her out and spending time with her and doing special things with her? So, I think it's very, very important that you take your eyes off your wife for a moment and put your eyes on yourself. Why, at this point, would she make this announcement, and does it have anything to do with you, your behavior, your failure to love, a disharmony between your public persona and your private lives? Second thing, you want to have time just to know her and to know what's going on inside of her. Step away from being defensive and angry and love her in the midst of this situation. Understand why she's given up on God and the truths of Scripture. How is it that you didn't see this happening and weren't working with her along the way?
Second thing you need to do is you need to assess the complications of your wife's deconstruction for your daily life and your ministry. How will you manage your house well now when you've got two truth standards and two moral standards now in the house? The Bible says a house divided can't stand. How will this affect making decisions, planning schedules, co-parenting? How will this affect your children? Mom and dad are now buying into two radically different, disagreeing systems of truth. How hard and embarrassing will it be for your children to go to public services of worship when their mom isn't there? How will you deal with all the questions that come? Is there evidence that some of your children are following in your wife's footsteps? So, there are massive questions to be asked about things inside your home.
What I want to say in direct answer to this is because of three particular qualifications in 1st Timothy 3, it would be very, very hard for me to advise you to continue as an elder. The first one it says that an elder “must be above reproach.” Reproach is an interesting thing because you may have a clear conscience, but you may be in situations that place you in incredible questions–questions that get in the way of you doing the thing that you've been called to do. Surely you would understand that your wife's deconstruction calls into question the nature of your relationship with her, your spiritual ministry to her, your pastoring of her. Surely those things, at least, are going to be in the minds of people.
The second thing that I think is one of the diminished qualifications of an elder, but I think it's very important, an elder must be “hospitable.” One of your main ministries is welcoming people into your home, their feet under your table, you offering good food to them and fellowship, and it's really hard to do that when your wife is not part of your ministry anymore. She's not going to find the kind of joy and zeal in doing that that maybe she once would have. One of a pastor's easiest means of evangelism is by inviting your neighbors into your private place and proving that you're not weird, and you're loving and kind and gentle and good and your marriage depicts that. So, it's hard to think that you would be able to carry on that qualification.
And then the third one is it must be a person who “manages his own household (family)” well. Often, the deconstruction of a wife or a child is because there have been marital problems–that the wife or the children can't see the gospel reaching into the marriage and transforming the marriage and helping the marriage to be what God says it could be. So, because of those three qualifications, I just don't think it's wise to continue because there's massive spiritual division and distraction, in your life and family, that puts your pastoral conduct and wisdom into question. It would be my counsel to step away from the ministry of elder or pastor out of love for your church, love for your family, and love for your Lord.
BF: Well, if you want to hear Paul's answer about being qualified or disqualified as an elder with children who aren't walking with the Lord, and that has quite a different answer than what you just heard, you can find that in our Ask Paul Tripp, Episode 7, “Am I Disqualified as an Elder Because of My Kids?” And even if you're not a pastor or an elder, these answers, we pray, will be a blessing and practical to you in some way if you have kids, whether they're young or adult children. All of these episodes of Ask Paul Tripp can be found at paultripp.com/ask, on our YouTube playlist, on the Paul David Tripp Facebook page playlist, or even on the Ask Paul Tripp specific podcast channel.
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