We have to start to focus on character and not gifting.

Paul had left a mission unfinished. But he left his spiritual son behind to complete the task. A mission which does not lead to an established is unfinished. An established church plant that has no leadership is unfinished. Titus knows his task. He is to find leaders for every church in every town they had established the church. He is to find them, appoint them and this letter will help him to equip them.

This is a wonderful letter from Paul that can probably be broken into 3 categories: organising the church, the belief of the church and the lifestyle of the church. The use of the word elder in v6 and then overseer in v7 is the same position. Every church today has different titles for their leaders who operate at different levels of authority within the community of believers. This letter is for them all and for the whole church for that matter.

“The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. ⁶ An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. ⁷ Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. ⁸ Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. ⁹ He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.” (Titus 1 v 5-9)

The task is still the same for us today. We need to find leaders. We must appoint them into positions and even take risks with them making sure we do all we can to equip them. The question is how do we do that? What do we look for? How do we appoint? What are the important things we need to teach them? All my ministerial life I have been taught that character is above gifting. We all know what that means. Yet here I am having certainly entered the second half of my life and I constantly see the search, appointments and leadership training being focused on abilities, skills and gifting. There is an assumption that those character issues have been sorted in a discipleship course attended years ago. We ignore to our peril that satan never attacks the gifting but always the character. It is staggering to think that we still are so focused on whether we can do and not whether we can be.

The attacks come and they are real and they attack these 5 areas of our lives. This is not only for leaders but because they have responsibility to care and lead the church then if they can bring a leader down the enemy has access into the church.

The leader will be attacked in who they are: v6 … blameless, v7 … blameless, not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not violent, v8 … self-controlled, holy.

The leader’s family will be attacked: v6 … faithful to his wife, whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.

The leader will be attacked by temptations in their social life: v7 …not given to drunkenness, v8 …must be hospitable.

The leader will be attacked financially: v7 …manages God’s household, not pursuing dishonest gain.

The leader’s work will be attacked: v8 … one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. v9 … hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

These 5 areas are where the leader will be attacked. Our search, appointment and equipping needs to be focused more on these and not the offices, gifts, abilities and skills. If the enemy can bring us down through our character then he has removed those things that we have often thought is of most importance.