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It's not too difficult to think of a well-known Christian name who has been in the news for impropriety. How do we avoid such scandals? Reverend Daniel Shares from 1 Timothy on the topic of overseers and deacons.

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Church, a very good morning to you. Once again, uh it's a great joy for us to uh come into the house of God and to hear his word for us. I began last week uh on the theme of leadership in the church, overseers and deacons. So today I'll be continuing uh the series on leadership and stewardship, focusing on 1 Timothy chapter 3 and Titus 1, verse 5 to 9. Davis Matthias, in his book, Workers for Your Joy, offers a vision of Christian leadership in three areas of a leader's life. Firstly, the leader before his God. The focus is on one's devotional life. Secondly, the leader before those who know him best, that is a leader's private life. And thirdly, the leader before the watching church and the world, which is a leader's public life. Last week we covered the first two points: the leader before his God, his devotional life. And I shared with us the one characteristic that focuses on a leader before God is humility. The focus is on being humble or humility before God through sober-mindedness, considering others better, and not being a novice. Secondly, I shared about the leader before those who know him best. That is a leader's private life. And the focus is on wholeness. What you are in your private life will soon come out in your public life. That's why wholeness is something all leaders have to work towards so that what we say does not contradict what we do and who we are. So the focus on the leader's private life is on wholeness. Wholeness is about a private life that matches the one on display in public. This is revealed in five areas. Firstly, being self-control. Secondly, a one-woman man or one-man woman. Thirdly, not a drunken, not a lover of money, and a good manager of one's household. Today we'll be looking at the third point, which is the leader before the watching church and the world. And the focus is on his or her public life. And the key word is being honorable. A leader before the watching church and the world must be honorable. Let us pray. Father, I pray, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight. O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. So the leader before the watching church and the world, his public life. I have uh three points to share. Firstly, a leader before the watching church and the world must be above reproach and blameless. Secondly, a leader must be respectable. And lastly, a leader must be hospitable. So these are my three points. The first point, a leader before the watching church and the world must be above reproach and blameless. And this is what uh is mentioned twice in Timothy 3, verse 2 and verse 7. An overseer must be above reproach. He must, verse 7 tells us he must be well taught of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into the snare of the devil. Again, Titus 1, verse 6 to 7 tells us, if anyone is above reproach, for an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach. Notice that Paul's list in 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 1 to 7 ends on a similar note as it started in verse 7. He started with saying that an overseer must be above reproach. He ends that he must be well thought of by outsiders. In both lists of qualifications of a leader, of an elder or overseer begins with this. In both lists, in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1:5 to 9, above reproach comes first. First of all, I'd like to qualify that being above reproach is not being perfect. None of us here are perfectly above reproach if we take the word as wholesale as what it is. That means we are totally perfect before God. That is not what the word above reproach is saying. Rather, what it means and the primary primarily, sorry, the primary meaning which I want to uh unpack before us is a leader that's above reproach, it means one who is irreproachable in observable conduct. Let me repeat again a leader as one above reproach is someone irreproachable in observable conduct. Um it also carries the meaning of someone who is not being open to attack or criticism, not objectively chargeable. It's a kind of person whom no one suspects of wrongdoing or immorality due to his or her indiscretion, immaturities or imbalances. When the early church chose the seven deacons to serve in Acts chapter six, the first qualification of only two was the person must be of good repute, Acts 6 verse 3. And the other qualification was one full of wisdom and the spirit. According to 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 10, not only for overseers but also for deacons, the requirement is to be blameless, which is another way of saying to be above reproach, to be irreproachable in observable conduct. In case some of us think that none of us then can be a leader because none of us can meet that standard, I'd like to uh ask to just look at scripture and you realize that as you take a sweep through scripture, that God's people, though they are imperfect, though they still sin and fall away from the Lord, yet many of them have been described as being blameless. Right? So uh Noah was commended as such. Genesis chapter 6, verse 9 tells us Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Abraham was called to be blameless. In Genesis chapter 17, verse 1, the Lord revealed himself to Abraham and said, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless. God's people as a whole were encouraged to be blameless. In Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 13, it says, You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. Job in Job chapter 1, verse 1, verse 8, and verse 2, uh chapter 2, verse 3 said, Job was a man, a blameless man before God. So, so so along was Daniel in the Bible. Daniel 6, 22 says, Because I was found blameless before him. As we move to the New Testament, Zechariah and Elizabeth in the book of Acts, in the book of Luke, sorry, uh Luke chapter 1, verse 6, were being described as blameless before God. Paul reminds the believers in Ephesus that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. So also Jude in his benediction, the short book in the New Testament, Jude, declares the glory of the only God who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. So all of us today, God is able to see us as blameless and above reproach. It's not something uh that is uh a target that is not reachable. Can you turn to someone next to you and say that you can be above reproach and blameless? Can you just turn to your neighbor and say you can be blameless and above reproach? Because scripture tells us, it sets a pattern for us and it sets a requirement that all of us, not just leaders, should strive to be irreproachable in our observable conduct. I'd like to illustrate the outworkings of what it means to be above reproach and blameless through two real life examples: one negative and the other positive. So I'd like to share with us. Uh some of us may be aware of uh Ravi Zacharias, so uh his uh uh story is a sad story. Uh I'm not saying this, I'm not standing in judgment over him, but I'm just saying that this is an example of how ministers today can fall. So in April 2017, uh two Canadians, uh Lori Ann and Brad Thompson, sent a demand letter to Zacharias, requiring him to pay five million in exchange for them refraining from filing a lawsuit that would have accused him of impropriety. Their evidence included text messages, exchanges which included uh new photos sent by uh the ladies to Zacharias. In response, uh, Zacharias filed a lawsuit accusing the couple of extortion. The case was settled in November 2017 with a non-disclosure agreement. Fast forward three years later, four months after uh Zacharias's death in 2020, three women who worked at two-day spas, two-day spas he had owned, uh came forward alleging that he had uh sexually harassed uh multiple massage therapies over the course of five years. So uh Ravi Zacharias, the ministries denied the claims but subsequently hired a law firm to investigate. So on 11 February 2021, they released the full results of the investigation, concluding that there was credible evidence that uh Ravi Zacharias had engaged in sexual misconduct. Some of the testimonies and incidents uh is all available on the internet that was shared, will be too explicit for me to share in the context of a sermon. So accordingly, it was found that Ravi Zacharias solicited and received sexually explicit photos from more than 200 women who were in their early 20s until a few months before his death in 2020. There were also physical acts done to the women that were sexual in nature. One woman told the investigators that after he arranged for the ministry to provide her with financial support, he required uh sex from her. She said Ravi Zacharias made her pray with him to thank God for the opportunity they both received, and as with other victims, called her his reward for living a life of service to God. In their release of the full report, the board of Ravi Zacharias' ministry stated that it was shocked and grieved by his actions and apologized to his victims. Words cannot come close to expressing the sorrow that we feel for what you have gone through, the victims, and gratitude we feel for the bravery with which you have responded. As a Christian, what are your first thoughts about the disclosure of Ravi Zacharias's sexual misconduct spanning many years? Of course, the ministry had to reorganize themselves and reform, but I think the impact was great, not only among the victims, but uh the whole organization. And uh, I think most dearly and most painfully felt by his family, his surviving family. Do you think his sexual misconduct discredited his lifetime of ministry, of writing, of uh being an intellectual giant for the Christian faith? These are sober questions we need to ask. So in Chinese there's uh idiom that says uh it ho one yen, which means uh when something bad happens, it uh it lasts for one yen is a thousand, right? Thousand million yeah, it's a long time, many decades. Yeah, so that that's just an example for us, you know. I'm not saying it proudly, but it's something that is very real in ministry. And once a leader loses that credibility, uh something uh about his or her life becomes reproachable in observable conduct, then he or she does lose standing before God and before the people. On the other hand, it's not all doom and gloom in Christian leadership. Um some of you may recognize this uh picture of Philip Ng, who is the CEO of Far East Organization Singapore. In an interview with Philip Ng, who was a panelist for Movement Day Asia Cities on the 6th to 7th October 2022, uh, recorded in uh documented in Soft and Like.sg. Philip was interviewed as a business owner and a Christian. How does he live his life of faith in the marketplace? And this is this is what he says, and I quote Being a steward of a family business, I've decided that that the best way I could show my dedication and devotion to the Lord is to make my organization a Christian enterprise. It's not easy in Singapore where we are a multi-religious, multicultural, multi-racial country. But stepping out for Christ allows me to share the gospel in my organization. He goes on to say, surprisingly, in the transition, the challenges that we face were from Christians and not from non-Christians, because the Christians in the organization are challenged to show love. The danger is that we can be good Christians, but perhaps only on Sundays. The rest of the week we behave with the intellectual capacity to solve problems, but we don't do it in the Lord's way. We operate clearly in a very circular way. It's always profit maximization and to the benefit of the shareholders. That is, in a way, he says, a Babylonian kind of system. So the question which he explored and which he executed as a CEO of uh Far East Organization Singapore is to operationalize grace in um his business. So he goes on to say, for us to make an impact as business, we have to counteract the Babylonian system, and that's doing business with grace. Here we have to allow the Holy Spirit to work through us unfettered if we want to touch lives and transform lives and point to Jesus Christ and share the blessings that we have in business. If we leave it to our own human understanding and intellect and the way we solve things, we will try to operationalize grace as a standard operating procedure, and that will not be grace. He goes on to say, in fact, when I was first when I first mentioned to my colleagues that we want to act as a Christian enterprise and we want to do business with grace, one of my managers said, How do we operationalize grace? What are the SOPs? The change impacted our human resource management deeply because how do you show love and compassion if everyone is treated as a number? Here we said, no, we must treat people as people. Everyone has a different situation. Grace is not something that you administer to a body of people who are nameless and just a number. Grace is always on an individual and personal level. Today we are confronted with the same challenges. How do we personalize the way we manage each and every person as an individual rather than as data points and sets of statistics? This is the danger of business because we are relying more and more on algorithms and data and statistics. So this is just a snippet of his uh Christian example of living out the gospel in a way that is above reproach and blameless. According to 6.1 and 6.2 of our church constitution on the duties of the parochial church council, PCC, it states that the vicar and the PCC shall work, shall cooperate in the initiation, conduct, and development of church work. In particular, the PCC shall be responsible for financial management of the parish, care and maintenance of the property and premise of the church through the issue Christian Joint Council, presentation of the annual report to the AGM, employment and supervision of office and other staff, appointment of subcommittees or persons as necessary to assist the PCC. Some of us perhaps have been uh the first time you've been seeing this in a long while, right? So this is in a way set out in our uh in our constitution. This is the requirement of what is the scope of the responsibility of the PCC. And all of us know that we can't do it alone. I can't do it alone. We need a team of uh godly leaders who are willing to come alongside us to serve God in the ministry. We need members of various gifts and abilities to serve God, especially in the areas of finance, in the areas of uh facilities, administration, uh, human resources, and all the expertise is out there, you know, in where you all are sitting, all of you are the resource of the church. And as as we come together, you know, as we are going through this period of nation, do consider and prayfully ask the Lord how you can serve. Um we may think it is a very spiritual role. Yes, it is, because we are called to serve blamelessly above reproach. But it is also involves uh a lot of uh, in some ways, circular expertise, financial uh input. We need people who can write minutes, who can uh who are good in administration. We need uh human resource uh personnel who can input to the church uh how uh policies are being made. In the government or the uh private sector, and how we can help uh build up good policies for the church. So all these uh are out there. I mean, all of you are there, you know, it's not a one-man show. So uh do consider to stand for nomination or to nominate someone whom the Lord will lead you to.

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Okay.

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Let me move on to my second point. An overseer or a leader must be respectable. The first point is to be above reproach and blameless. The second point is to be respectable. 1 Timothy 3 verse 2 says, an overseer must be respectable. Respectable uh comes from the noun kosmos in Greek, which means the world, uh, but it's actually uh respectable. The word is cosmios, right? So there's an added I in the original Greek. So it does not mean literally world, but to be respectable carries the idea of certain order in a person's life, an orderly arrangement, uh, dignified is other translations uses it, the word dignified. It captures the idea of having characteristics or qualities that evoke admiration or delight. Someone you look up to, someone who observes propriety and is orderly in certain mannerisms and in conduct. So to be respectable is to live an ordered and dignified life that puts others at ease and engenders trust. It also conveys the ideas of sober-mindedness or seriousness and appropriateness. Uh so how does respect and honor work out in the context of ministry? I'd like to again uh share this through uh a story uh of a pastor, uh Reverend Dr. David Wong, who wrote a book in his retirement, Mentoring Stories. I chance to meet him up for coffee one day. And uh because after reading his book on mentoring stories, I felt it very real. So he was sharing stories of life in his years, decades, and decades of ministry. Some uh antidotes for us to learn and discover. So this is what he says. After serving the church as the first homegrown pastor for some 20 years, I stepped down. The Lord opened a door for me to serve with a Christian leadership training organization, uh Hagai Institute, based in Hawaii. Close to a year passed, still fresh with vivid memories of the many farewells in the months leading to our departure, I was invited back to Singapore to teach a crash course at the theological school. I contacted my church to let the leaders know I was coming back. I expected them to give me a preaching slot on Sunday, but they did not. Evidently, since the preaching schedule had already been filled, I accepted that and asked if something could be put in the church bulletin that I would be at a midweek, the midweek prayer meeting and would be able to meet those who wished to see me. But when I showed up, those at the prayer meeting were surprised to see me. You are back, they exclaimed. You didn't tell us. I knew that nothing has been put in the church bulletin. I kept my disappointments to myself till I left Singapore. Then I wrote to the leaders to express how I felt about the missed opportunity to meet with church members. I received an apology for the oversight on the leader's part. Apparently, something fell between the cracks and no one noticed it. It reminded me of what Carl Armanding shared with us when I was a student at Region College. After serving 10 years as a principal, he stepped down and in his usual cheery voice said, Hi, this is Carl speaking. The answer came back. Carl, who? We students laugh at his story, but when it happened to me, it was no laughing matter. I experienced firsthand how it felt to be forgotten so quickly. So he was actually serving decades uh in one of the local churches in Singapore, and uh and it was really a time of transition. He helped to stabilize the church and uh brought in a much younger pastor in his 30s to take over. So he, in fact, he was almost a pillar in that context. So that just to paint us the context. So he said, when I received an apology, it helped soothe my hurt feelings somewhat. But that was not the end of the saga. Soon after I received a letter from one of the leaders who had obviously given further thought about the matter. After expressing his regret over what happened, he offered a piece of counsel. Don't expect honor, don't ask for honor. Honor us is not honor. So he said on hindsight, the words cut deeply, but to this day I thank God for what he wrote. Honor cannot be taken, it must be given. I'd like to add that respect similarly cannot be assumed and taken. It must be given and accorded. Many of us here, you know, we we long for people to respect us, but respect is not something we grab for ourselves, it's something accorded to us. So a leader before God, serving among his people, must be respectable. People must accord that respect to you because of something uh you have been or you are, that kind of gives the vibes and the connection with people. Lastly, a leader must be hospitable, an elder must be hospitable. In 1 Timothy 3 2, it tells us again in Titus 1, verse 7 to 8, an elder as God's steward must be hospitable. Hebrews chapter 13, verse 2 reminds us: let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware. The Greek word used for hospitality is the word Philo Xena, Philo Zenia. It is made up of two words, Philio, which means the love of a brother or sister, and xanos, which means the stranger or foreigner. So when we put these two words together, and this may be interesting for us to know, you know, what does the word hospitality mean? It means loving strangers and foreigners as our brothers and sisters. You know, and and this is what uh he the author of Hebrews tells us to not neglect to show hospitality to senior to strangers. This includes respecting them, caring for their needs as we would our siblings, loving strangers and foreigners as our very own brother and sister. The opposite of uh philosynia is, can you all make a guess what it is, is uh xenophobia, right? Which is the fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or anything strange or foreign. You know, like if a newcomer comes, you know, some of us who are old members will just look, give them a stare, and perhaps, who are you? You know, not saying we will do that, but that is perhaps xenophobia. But we are talking about philosynia, we are talking about hospitality, uh, not xenophobia. So it's incredible because Hebrews 13, uh, the author was writing to churches already facing persecution uh for believing in the Lord. That means their faith was not fully there, you know, their faith then was not that high. That's why the author had to write to uh to them to encourage them to continue because Christ has uh gone on ahead for the believers. So they were first facing persecution and because of their faith in the Lord, they were being discouraged. Yet they were being reminded that you are still called to show hospitality. You know, it's not a matter of when times are better, then I can be more hospitable. But as a Christian, in fact, that it's a lot of writing uh right now in uh leadership circles on the idea of hospitality and how hospitality itself uh turns everything around uh and becomes a form of outreach. Um there's a local church, local Methodist church, Living Hope Methodist Church in uh Tampanice. Uh it's not a large Methodist church compared to some other churches of a bigger size. Yet uh there's a testimony, there's a book being written by the pastor Ivan Tan about how during COVID-19, as they extended their hand to the homeless, to the poor, to those who need help, to the uh uh to our foreign workers, domestic helpers, rough sleepers, the church actually grew many times. Families were being baptized out of that. You know, even our very own Church of our Savior. Uh currently they have a new facility upgraded. They open the kind of the MPH area for dance classes, for students to come in to study, and there's a sense that uh hospitality, they open the premise up and uh the Lord actually brings people into the church. People can ask questions, oh, what's this place? Is the church? You know, what is it being like, and so on. So there's a lot of good things that can be done. You know, we always think of outreach as a one-time event, having a crusade, you know, having this uh evangelistic speaker, you invite people to come. But nowadays, even in church circles, where when we talk about outreach, uh it is really showing consistent hospitality. So it's not about the one event that we run and rally everyone, and then after that, everyone goes for a few days of leave because we are all uh overworked. But it is really about what we can do to be hospitable so that people will want to come to church, right? And it's something that as a church over the next few years we can think about is there a people group within each one that the Lord is calling us to reach out to? Right? Is there is there something the Lord is laying on our hearts that we can reach out to them and bless them and in turn uh reap the harvest of souls? Will uh Gudara in his book Unreasonable Hospitality remarks the remarkable power of giving people more than they expect, he wrote this providing a service to a person is a matter of black and white, right? We serve someone, we we've done our duty, we we've done our part. Uh let's say you're a waiter serving uh uh a guest a meal, so you've done your part, it's black and white. Okay, I'm done my part. Uh that that's it. While uh hospitality goes beyond service, and uh so uh Will Caldera says this um service is black and white. You do it, you're done. But hospitality is color, it's colorful, it's not just black and white. Black and white is doing your job with competency and efficiency. What color means you make people feel great about the job you are doing for them. Getting the right plate to the right person at the right table is service, but genuinely engaging with the person you are serving so you make an authentic connection, that's hospitality. Last year I had a chance to uh while we were on a mission trip uh on our way back, uh uh on the flight back from West Timo. So I was uh on a plane together with Pastor Richard. So I was curious because he was holding a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates. So I was wondering uh uh uh whether he's gonna eat that all uh for himself, the 24 pieces of chocolates. Or is he planning to share with us? You know, so I was a bit curious. So I kind of asked him, you know, what is the box of chocolate for? So he he shared further, he actually bought it uh to bless the air stewardess and stewards who come for their service, right? So so I thought, wow, that's uh that's really going the extra mile to uh bless others, to be hospitable. So I thought, wow, that's great. Maybe something I can learn from you. So that's what he did, you know, the little things, but it's going beyond. No one uh is asking for that. In fact, uh maybe later he can share about the response about those who receive it. It's the extra thing we do for others that makes the difference. And it's a perfect example of hospitality because he doesn't know who the air stewards or stewardess are, right? They are just people whom they meet once who he'll meet once and perhaps not see again. Yet showing uh hospital, being hospitable to them, loving strangers and foreigners as our brothers and sisters. Another example is uh uh Pastor Roger. So we have started a ministry, uh or rather, we have partnered with the Chinese Congregation for Ministry at Anglican Senior Center, which is something like an active aging center at uh Floral Spring. So uh every Friday there's a uh coffee corner, coffee break, where uh the residents will come down for coffee, so they'll just sit down and chat. So recently when he came on staff, I told him that do you think you can be there and then connect with the elderly residents? So the the men will gather together over coffee and some snacks, and then the ladies will gather. Of course, in most cases, the lady group will be bigger and rowdier. So the guys will just gather for coffee, quite sober, some reading newspaper, but all sitting down there. So uh so after that, uh I joined them I think once or twice, but I know at least once uh I was there. So after that, uh they everything ended, it's about an hour, right? But actually, he continued with them at the nearby coffee shop. He said, uh, going for coffee and drink? Okay, second round. So he actually accompanied them. So I just joined them uh for a further conversation. So we just sat down and began round two of the conversation. So again, this is an example of going beyond black and white, what you are needed to do, but bring color. So his action showed me that uh he wants to connect with these uncles, right? That even though he has every reason to say, okay, meeting ended, you know, that's that's all, you know, but he continued to fellowship with them probably uh for another hour or so, right? So I think he has there's many fruits from that ministry. He has connected with them, uh invited them uh to some of our evergreen uh outings, and so it is really going the extra effort to connect with someone. That's what hospitality is about. It's not just black and white, it's to bring color to someone's life. Daniel and myself from time to time have hosted members and visitors to our church at our place, and we enjoyed the time uh of connecting over a meal. Some of us is over lunch, lunches together, some of us is at my place. You know, so we we as a family enjoy uh hosting y'all either at my place or sometimes lunch outside for really connecting for deeper conversations, and it's always our joy to connect and to grow in hospitality. So let me conclude uh the message today. Uh the main points. So the leader before the watching church and the world, the focus of the public ministry of the leader is to be honorable. And how are we honorable? We are being honorable by firstly being above reproach and blameless. To be above reproach and blameless means to be irre-reproachable in observable conduct, right? So nothing, as much as we strive to live our life, you know, we try not to be reproachable in our observable conduct. It does not mean to be perfect. So all of us, we don't have to be a leader to be above reproach and blameless. God calls us to that standard of life. Secondly, to be respectable, respect and honor must be given and accorded. You know, none of us, I hope, will claim it as a badge that we want to wear, but it's something given to us, it's not something we strive for. Um, thirdly, hospitable. A leader must be hospitable, and to be hospitable means loving strangers and foreigners as our brothers and sisters. We are opening our homes, opening our hearts, opening our lives to them. And when we do so, we are opening the gospel.

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We pray that you can minister to by the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about the Eastern Christian Church, please visit our website at yccanglican.com. Have a blessed day.