Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Burrowed Into the Woodwork of Puritanism

Church Government - Elders of the Church
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, May 08, 2011

Here is a small necklace of things that should be strung on the same thread, at least in my mind. To the casual observer, it might seem more like a pearl, a washer, a wooden bead, and a small metallic nut, but this is only because that casual observer is not looking at it with the eye of faith.

Let me begin with a requirement laid down by Paul for men in the ministry, a requirement that is unfortunately widely neglected (and  therefore controversial) in conservative circles. He says that part of a minister's qualification is his ability to manage his own household well, and with all dignity, such that his children are submissive (1 Tim. 3:4). In addition, he says further that what is going on in his household is a good predictor of what is going to be happening in the church (1 Tim. 3:5). Paul says elsewhere that this submission extends to submission to the gospel. Not only must a minister's children not be dissolute and rebellious, they must be faithful (Tit. 1:6). Whether or not that last word is rendered as faithful or as believers amounts to the same thing. A minister's children are his first parishioners, and they are the canary in the mine.

Now the necessary qualifications. I make a distinction between ordaining men to the ministry and defrocking them. Qualifications for expulsion should be stiffer than qualification for non-admittance -- but to the extent we want to lean on this, it is perhaps a strong argument for not ordaining men with younger children. A man strong-minded enough to insist on pursuing his call to the ministry when his younger children are two, four, and six should also be strong-minded enough to tender his resignation when his grown children are serving two to four, and four to six, in the state penitentiary.


There are other complicating factors because the world is a messy place. Suppose a minister has four saintly children, but the last one is a crack cocaine baby they adopted, and they have had nothing but trouble. Now what? God is perfect, and His Word is sure, but He is not a perfectionist.

I also make a distinction between how I would apply this standard to others, and how I would apply it to myself. I believe that the default approach of believers is to be stricter with yourself than with others. That said, here we come to the point.

What would I do if one of my adult children converted to Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism? No worries on that score, for all three of my kids have burrowed into the woodwork of Puritanism, but work with me here. What should my response be?

In that circumstance, I would step down from the ministry, and this is why. This would obviously be an enormously complicated circumstance, but here are three basic reasons.

First, they would have fallen into a significant compromise with faithlessness. (I am not saying that Catholics cannot be regenerate, by the way, but that's another subject.) They were brought up to worship God without the use of images, and they would have fallen into the use of images in worship. The man who trained them in the faith should take some kind of foundational responsibility for that. True Christians have to be warned against idolatry (1 Jn. 5:21). But the fact that true Christians can get into idolatry does not make idolatry okay.

Second, all true reformations share certain characteristics, and one of them is anti-clericalism. When the Spirit moves, you will have music and psalm-singing, a restoration of great preaching, liturgical reformation, and so on. But one of the neglected aspects of historical reformations is the fact that clerical pretensions become risible. When the Protestant world cries out for reformation and revival, as it does, this would include the Protestant ministers. Guys who like fat books more than their wives, and committee meetings more than their kid's ball game, to hear their own golden tones flowing out from the pulpit more than to hear their little girl's chatter on a weekly date, are men who will find themselves caricatured in cartoons when the reformation comes.

And last, all reformational thinking has to begin and end with scriptural obedience. It is not enough to say sola Scriptura. We have to do what it says. And, not to put too fine a point on it, the Bible teaches us more about disordered households being a disqualification for ministry than it says about sodomy. Don't get me wrong, sodomy disqualifies a minister. But so does a mismanaged household -- if we are going by Scripture, and not simply by "traditional values."