The Bible lays out a whole list of qualifications that must be present in the life of a man who wishes to be a pastor. He must be the husband of one wife, he must be a lover of good, he must be hospitable, and so on. Meanwhile, he must not be arrogant, quick-tempered, violent, or a drunkard. It is no small thing to pastor God’s church and it stands to reason that the qualifications would be exacting.
Yet for all of the qualifications we take seriously, there is one that so often seems to be overlooked: He must manage his own household well. I suspect most of us have known pastors who were capable preachers and perhaps good at motivating a group of people to follow, yet whose home life was chaotic. To that end, I have often pondered Alexander Strauch’s words:
Managing the local church is more like managing a family than managing a business or state. A man may be a successful businessman, a capable public official, a brilliant office manager, or a top military leader but be a terrible church elder or father. Thus a man’s ability to oversee his household well is a prerequisite for overseeing God’s household.
This qualification has finally received its due in Chap Bettis’ new book Managing Your Households Well: How Family Leadership Trains You for Church Leadership. “One reason God’s people have so much poor or merely passable oversight,” he says, “is because we often have not pursued leadership wisdom. In this digital age, we confuse knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is information, while wisdom is information aptly applied to a situation. It is skillful living. Leaders must have knowledge. But they also need wisdom and wisdom of a particular type—relational wisdom. It takes wisdom to build a family and wisdom to build a church family.”
Where do we get such wisdom? It is not the kind that can be taught in seminary. Rather, it is the kind that comes by honoring and obeying God’s Word in the context of the home. A man’s qualification for ministry cannot be separated from his leadership in the home. “The family is a vital training and testing ground for church leaders. It is your first field of ministry that must be cultivated. God intends you to develop and display in your family the relational wisdom you need to lead God’s people.”
The church’s failure to value this qualification has led to several troubling concerns. First, we have pastors who can capably exegete a passage of Scripture, but who don’t know how to exegete people; second, we are clumsy in our leadership training because we attempt to teach by books what is meant to be taught in the home; third, we have a disconnect in godliness between church life and home life; and fourth, we do not see the church as the “household of God” as Paul describes it in 1 Timothy.
Thus, in Managing Your Households Well, Bettis attempts to remedy this oversight and he does it well, first by laying a theological foundation and then by providing practical leadership lessons for home and church. Of course, while this issue is crucial, it is not entirely straightforward, so Bettis needs to grapple with some difficult issues. What about the man who is unmarried and whose household is just himself? Or what do we do with the passage that says a man’s children must be believers (or faithful, depending upon the translation)? What about the man whose young children showed every evidence of being well-loved and well-managed by their father but whose life has since become rebellious? Bettis covers all of this and more and does so capably and biblically.
This is a good and much-needed book on a subject that, though clearly laid out in Scripture, has been too often neglected and overlooked. Every pastor or prospective pastor (not to mention every husband or father) will benefit from reading and considering it. I’m thankful that this crucial qualification is finally getting its due.
