Most of us have had experiences with high-performing teammates. Maybe the experience for you was a group project at work, where one member was able to accomplish 60 percent of the labor of a five-person team. Or a group in school relied on the girl who was willing to pull an all-nighter for everyone to get an A. I have a vivid memory in high school of being in a competition where a youth intern was on my team. I felt like I just needed to throw the ball within 10 yards of him for him to catch it.
Most of us have also had disastrous experiences with high performers. It’s not enough to do well. Everyone must be working for the same goal. The right people must be working for the right purpose.
Titus 1 teaches us a similar lesson about church life.
Leaders within the church must be the right people working for the right purpose. We see this point in two different ways. The first way is how Paul introduces himself. He begins the letter by describing himself as God’s slave and Jesus Christ’s apostle. Titus didn’t need to hear those words. Paul knew the churches in Crete would read or hear these words, and they needed to know that he was writing with authority as God’s representative.
Paul then gives the purpose of his apostleship. God called him to be an apostle so that God’s elect would come to believe in Christ and thus know the truth through Paul’s message. Christian truth leads both to godliness — or a proper reverence toward God — and hope, a confident expectation of Christ’s return (Titus 1:2–4). By God’s grace, Paul was the right person for the right purpose.
The second way we see this truth is in Paul’s teaching about local church leadership. The right people need to lead churches, and Paul’s emphasis in Titus 1, like 1 Timothy 3, is that church elders should be men of character. An elder needs to love his wife faithfully and lead his children well. An elder should avoid vices and instead be “hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined” (Titus 1:8, ESV). Elders need to exhort or encourage Christians in sound doctrine and to rebuke those promoting error.
The reason for the importance of these types of instructions is because false teachers were infiltrating churches in Crete and causing harm with their false teaching.
The right type of men were necessary to combat falsehood. Men of character were needed to protect the flock.
The right people need to lead for the right purpose. Who are the right people? Obviously, pastors need to be men who have the type of character that Paul describes in Titus 1, but many of these character traits apply to other types of church leaders as well. It’s vital, therefore, for churches to select godly leaders and to follow godly examples. The standard isn’t sinless perfection, but the virtues Paul mentions should characterize their lives as a whole.
When the right people lead churches for the right purpose, we can expect similar results as Paul saw in his own ministry: faith, knowledge, truth, godliness, and hope. Biblical encouragement and correction, moreover, are still hallmarks of church leadership. The right people serving for the right purpose will, by God’s Spirit, glorify Christ’s name.