Can Single Men Pastor?
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to the podcast.
00:00:05.960 | This week we're talking about pastoral ministry.
00:00:09.080 | Can single men pastor?
00:00:11.640 | That's today.
00:00:13.200 | Or must pastors be married?
00:00:15.160 | And then how much should pastors make?
00:00:17.720 | That's up next time.
00:00:18.720 | So, Pastor John, we know that many professing Christians around the world claim that church
00:00:24.280 | leaders must be single men who have taken a vow of clerical celibacy.
00:00:29.800 | We of course disagree with that.
00:00:31.680 | For Protestants like us, pastors are typically married men.
00:00:34.960 | Typically married men.
00:00:36.880 | So we face a question in the opposite direction, and it's a question recently asked by two
00:00:40.960 | different listeners.
00:00:42.200 | First Josiah.
00:00:43.200 | Pastor John, thank you for sharing your insight with us week after week on this podcast.
00:00:47.420 | Do you believe a first requirement for eldership is that he have a wife and kids?
00:00:53.320 | And then Josiah cites 1 Timothy 3, verses 2 to 4, and Titus 1, 6.
00:00:59.360 | And Blake, another listener, likewise asks, "If a single non-married man is eligible
00:01:05.600 | to be a church elder, what would you say to Josiah and Blake?"
00:01:11.440 | Whether a single man is permitted biblically to be an elder or pastor boils down to whether
00:01:20.480 | two passages, one in 1 Timothy 3, the other in Titus 1, mandate that elders must be married.
00:01:31.160 | If they do, that settles the matter.
00:01:33.500 | We obey.
00:01:35.080 | If they don't, then we have to ask whether there are other passages or other pointers
00:01:40.940 | or principles that would suggest it's permitted or wise or unwise to have pastors who are
00:01:49.920 | not married.
00:01:51.700 | So here are those two most immediately relevant texts.
00:01:57.240 | First Timothy 3, verse 4.
00:01:59.720 | "He must manage his own household well," so he's given qualifications for the overseers.
00:02:05.160 | "He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive,
00:02:12.040 | for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's
00:02:17.800 | church?"
00:02:18.800 | The other one is Titus, chapter 1, verse 5.
00:02:22.640 | "This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained in order and appoint
00:02:29.920 | elders in every town, as I directed you, if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one
00:02:39.520 | wife."
00:02:40.520 | A couple of observations are, I think, especially relevant.
00:02:46.680 | Paul does not say here or anywhere else, "Elders must be married."
00:02:56.100 | He could have said that very clearly.
00:02:59.120 | It would have been easy in Greek to say that.
00:03:01.240 | It would have been easy, of course, in English to say that.
00:03:04.720 | For example, Titus 1.7 says, "An overseer as God's steward must be above reproach,"
00:03:13.840 | and the Greek "dei," "must," has to be, is necessary, makes it an explicit necessity.
00:03:22.800 | No questions.
00:03:24.360 | Paul could have said, "An overseer must be married," but he didn't say that.
00:03:30.960 | What he said was, first, "The elder must manage his household well," and two, "If
00:03:40.200 | he's a husband of one wife, he can be considered."
00:03:44.400 | Neither of those statements amount to an explicit mandate for marriage, so it appears that marriage
00:03:53.680 | was assumed, but that it was not explicitly commanded.
00:03:59.320 | I expect that it was assumed because ongoing lifelong singleness in that culture, those
00:04:09.680 | cultures, was so rare that it scarcely needed addressing.
00:04:16.400 | That's the first observation.
00:04:18.560 | Another observation is the assumption that the elder would not only normally be married,
00:04:25.080 | but that he would normally have children.
00:04:28.560 | Both passages assume that the elders have wives and have children, so if we're going
00:04:37.120 | to infer that marriage is required for the pastorate on the same grounds, it seems to
00:04:44.640 | me, we would need to infer that a pastor have children, not just a wife.
00:04:54.680 | So if I'm right that in these texts there is a strong assumption that a man will be
00:05:02.680 | married with a family if he's a pastor, and yet there's no explicit command that
00:05:09.240 | he be married or have children, then my question becomes, what other considerations in the
00:05:15.760 | New Testament might help us decide whether it's wise to have a pastor who's not
00:05:22.280 | married or expect that he would be or require that he would be?
00:05:27.040 | Now, the first consideration we might look at is that neither Jesus nor Paul was married
00:05:35.440 | and yet fulfilled roles of leadership and teaching and care for the churches in very
00:05:42.000 | much like a pastor.
00:05:45.560 | Nothing is ever said about Jesus being married or single.
00:05:49.440 | The topic of his own marriage never comes up.
00:05:52.800 | There is no wife in the story of the Gospels, and it would be a total fantasy—some people
00:05:58.700 | have spun out that fantasy—a total fantasy to claim that he was married.
00:06:05.520 | Paul, on the other hand, tells us more than once that he was not married.
00:06:11.600 | For example, in 1 Corinthians 9, 5, "Do we," meaning Barnabas and him, "Do we
00:06:20.640 | not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers
00:06:27.880 | of the Lord and Cephas?"
00:06:29.560 | In other words, they certainly do have the right, and yet there are practical reasons
00:06:34.900 | why marriage for Paul would have been unwise.
00:06:38.400 | He didn't use his right.
00:06:40.680 | The call on his life was just constant movement, and a lot of it in jail, enduring almost constant
00:06:50.440 | suffering.
00:06:52.980 | So marriage would probably have been constantly dangerous and miserable for a wife, whatever
00:07:00.520 | the reason.
00:07:01.520 | He wasn't, and he makes it explicit in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 6, "I wish that all
00:07:08.160 | were as I myself, but each has his own gift from God, one kind, one of another.
00:07:15.500 | To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I
00:07:21.920 | am."
00:07:24.540 | So it seems to me that the singleness of Jesus and the singleness of Paul implies that an
00:07:32.180 | unmarried man can have an exceptionally fruitful ministry and be an effective pastor.
00:07:41.660 | And add to this the amazing praise that Paul sings to the benefits of singleness.
00:07:50.420 | Here's what he says in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 32 to 35, "I want you to be free from anxieties.
00:07:58.880 | The unmarried man is anxious about many things of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but the
00:08:06.140 | married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests
00:08:11.780 | are divided.
00:08:13.620 | And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about things of the Lord and how to be holy
00:08:19.880 | in body and spirit, but the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please
00:08:26.980 | her husband.
00:08:28.660 | I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good
00:08:35.460 | order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord."
00:08:41.820 | And we're tempted to say, "Well, Paul, why don't you just make singleness a requirement
00:08:48.740 | for the pastor?"
00:08:49.740 | I mean, the church went off the rails at one point and did that.
00:08:54.020 | And Paul would say, I think, in response to that question, number one, sexual desire is
00:09:04.580 | intended ordinarily to be satisfied in marriage, and that goes for pastors too.
00:09:12.860 | Verse five verses of chapter seven of 1 Corinthians, amazing verses.
00:09:16.860 | Number two, while there are advantages to singleness in the pastorate, there are great
00:09:22.940 | advantages also to marriage in the pastorate, not only in the matter of sex, but also in
00:09:30.540 | the matter of firsthand knowledge about marriage and parenting and stresses and joys of ordinary
00:09:35.020 | family life.
00:09:36.820 | All of that is a great benefit for pastors, and having a wife at your side, oh my goodness,
00:09:44.020 | is a great ministerial blessing, I testify.
00:09:49.940 | So when Paul is singing the praises of singleness, he's not singing them as though there were
00:09:57.780 | no corresponding praises for marriage, especially in the pastorate.
00:10:02.780 | So my conclusion is that the reason Paul assumed marriage for the pastoral role in 1 Timothy
00:10:12.260 | and Titus was that it was culturally normal and it was a great advantage in knowing how
00:10:19.860 | to manage a household and empathize with married people in the church, and that was the norm.
00:10:30.140 | Most people were married.
00:10:32.300 | But also I conclude that marriage is not an absolute requirement for the eldership or
00:10:42.220 | pastorate and that along the lines of 1 Corinthians 7, there are advantages of being single in
00:10:49.140 | that role.
00:10:50.620 | So if I were on a search committee for the next pastor of our church, I would assume
00:10:59.220 | we're looking for a married man who has a family, but I would not rule out a gifted
00:11:07.500 | single man whose life and ministry had shown and borne real fruit.
00:11:14.380 | Thank you for walking us through your own thinking here, Pastor John, and through these
00:11:18.060 | texts.
00:11:19.060 | It's a wonderful question, Josiah and Blake.
00:11:21.060 | Thank you for sending them.
00:11:22.500 | And if you want to ask Pastor John, email us your question.
00:11:26.020 | Go to askpastorjohn.com.
00:11:29.260 | Well, next up, another question about pastoring, married or single, how much should a pastor make?
00:11:36.260 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:11:38.820 | We'll see you back here on Thursday for that.
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