I am Caleb Fielding and I have a question for you, how should you treat the older men and women in your church?
My home church is filled with people young and old. And there is a wonderful opportunity when your church has young and old people. The older members have much wisdom and experience to pass on to the younger ones but us younger ones can only grasp the oppertunity if we treat the older members like God says too.
The Bible tells us in I Timothy 5:1-2
1Ti 5:1 Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren;
1Ti 5:2 The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.
As a young man dealing with the elder women in the church, you should treat those older women like you would treat your Mom. When I say treat them like your mom I would include loving them like you love your mom, and respecting them like you respect your mom.
Ladies when you deal with the elder men in the church you should treat them like you treat your dad, you should love them and respect them like you would your own father.
I know that this is some very difficult preaching to live but its what God calls us to do. God wants us to have real depth in our relationships in the local church, and for us singles, until we get married, its going to be very difficult for us to have a deeper relationship than those we develop with the elders in our churches.
When the Bible teaches us to treat the elders in our churches like we treat our parents I don’t think the Bible is telling us to do this in the catholic sense, and I don’t believe the Bible is remotely suggesting going around and calling people father or mother who are not your parents. I believe that the Bible is calling us to treat the elders in our church as well as we would our own parents, not to call them our parents names and then treat them like total strangers.
Maybe you are wondering who the elders in your church are? For every church it would be a little different but I would argue that the pastor and his wife at the very least would be the elders in the church. The deacons and their wives would be, your Sunday school teacher would be, and obviously the aged in the church would be.
That said the relationship between young men and elder women, and young women and elder men in the local church will be somewhat different. Although the young men are to intreat the older women as a mother, women are not to be in authority over men in the local church(I timothy 2:12).
The way this relationship starts is like any other. They should consider one another, care one for another, provoke each other to love and good works, when one of them suffers the other suffers with them, when one of them is honored the other rejoices with them. Every relationship in the church should develop to this point.
But the young man should be intreating the elder women in the local church like his mother. How can he do so if she doesn’t have authority over him?
If you go to judges chapter 4 you will find the story of Deborah and Barak. At the start of the Chapter Israel did evil so the Lord put the children of Israel under Jabin the king of Canaan. And we find out this Jabin had a very scary military for his day, and the Children of Israel cried out to God because of it.
At this time Deborah was a judge in Israel and she called for Barak to come where she was at and he came. At this time they have a conversation about what God has called Barak to do. If you skim over this passage of scripture you may think that God is using Deborah to tell Barak what to do, but that’s not the case.
What happened is that Deborah asks Barak “Hath not the LORD God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun? And I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his multitude; and I will deliver him into thine hand.”
At this point Deborah is not commanding Barak to do anything. At this point Deborah is really just doing what every Christian should do, she is considering Barak’s call, she cares enough about him to ask him what is going on in his life, she is provoking him to good works, She is doing these things as an elder woman in the church should, not with authority commanding him to do anything, but as an older woman who cares for a young man like a son, trying to encourage him to do right, and help out if she can.
Barak turns around and says “If thou wilt go with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go.”
At this point Barak is making it clear that he knows what God would have him do, but he wont do it unless this woman holds his hand. This isn’t okay, he should have been a man and stepped up. When God made it clear to Barak that Barak should fight Jabin’s army, Barak should have gone. When Deborah asked him why he hadn’t gone yet he should have told her why. But for Barak to force Deborah into authority over him was sinful on Barak’s part.
Deborah told him “I will surely go with thee: notwithstanding the journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honour; for the LORD shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”
There is no telling how many blessings Barak lost by forcing Deborah to be his authority when he followed God’s will.
As a single man there is a balance we must be aware of. On one hand we need the older women in the church to be aware of whats going on in our lives, we need them to give advice, and provoke us to love and good works. On the other hand these women should not be in authority over us.
In I Timothy 2:12 when God commands women not to be in authority over men, I think God is very aware of how He made his creation. Men and women were created very differently in how they think, act and look at the world, and one of the dangers of a young man being under the authority of an older woman, in the church, is that she can never show him how to act like a man.
We live in a day and age where 40% of young people are born to a fatherless home, in this day and age divorce has taken fathers out of many a childs life, where a large percentage of our population does not interact with men until they turn 18. Their entire life they never had a male teacher, they didn’t play sports so they never had a male coach, and for whatever reason their dad, uncles and adult cousins never had anything to do with them. If this represents even 1% of our population this represents millions of people.
Many of these young men’s first response to a woman is to submit to their authority because that’s all they have ever done, and they have no clue on how to interact with men. These men ought to respect the women, honor the women, listen to their advice, but they should also find an older man in the church to grab a hold of and learn how to be a man, in word, deed, and action. Simply put a woman can do many wonderful things, but they can never show a man how to be a man.
Part of the issues is that women naturally want to nurture so it is very tempting for a man to submit himself to an older woman’s authority to get nurtured, but at this stage of life a man does not need nurture he needs manhood.
Now lets shift gears to the young women, the way that young women interact with the elder men in the church is a bit different than the way the young men interact with the elder women in the church.
Before we deal with the differences we should deal with what is the same. Young women should interact with the older men in the church by considering one another, caring one for another, provoking each other to love and good works, when one of them suffers the other suffers with them, when one of them is honored the other rejoices with them. Every relationship in the church should develop to this point.
I would argue that the elder men in the church would be those in leadership positions and would include the pastor if nobody else. As long as the pastor tells you to do something that is Biblically right you should submit to his authority and obey him.
A wonderful example of this is found in II Kings chapter 4.
We find a woman who just became a widow, and her husband had debt so the debtors came and were going to make her sons into bondmen, so she goes and tells Elisha what happened.
I want to stress this, she did not wait for Elisha to preach a sermon on what to do when your husband dies with debt and the debtors are going to come and make your sons into bondmen. Ladies if you have a problem in your life, do not wait for a sermon on the subject, do what this lady did. When she he had an issue she went to Elisha , and she told Elisha what was going on. If you are a young lady you need to learn how to let the men in the church know whats going on in your life, whether you are going to school, working, or like this lady financially drowning.
After she told Elisha her problem, Elisha wanted more details, and asked her what she had in her house, and she said she didn’t have anything in her house except for a pot of oil. That statement is so telling, either she sold everything or the debtors showed up and took everything back but the pot of oil.
This is where this gets so difficult, I am sure this widow was embarrassed that she had nothing left in her house but a pot of oil and yet when the elder man of God asked her about it she submitted to his authority and told him. This is a hard thing to do, when the pastor finds out about the broad strokes in your life and something you say makes him uncomfortable and he starts prying for details. You would have to trust your pastor to share that with him. One of the things you need to do is develop a relationship with trust with your pastor.
When Elisha found out that she had a vessel of oil Elisha told her to borrow vessels from her neighbors and that she would take her vessel of oil and fill up all the empty vessels. She went and did it and afterwards she sold the oil and paid off her debt and lived off the rest. The thing is her blessing was tied to how well she obeyed the man of God. If she borrowed very few vessels her blessing was small, if she borrowed many vessels her blessing was large. So too will your blessings often be tied to how well you obey the man of God.
To a real extent whether you are a man or woman dealing with an elder of the opposite sex you should be letting them know whats going on in your life and have the respect to listen to their thoughts and opinions. That said if you are a young lady you should submit yourself to the authority of your pastor.
Whether you are a man or a woman this is going to require you to develop trust with the elders in your church and that’s a good lesson to learn. I think that if you are not learning how to develop trust as a single adult you are wasting your single years.
Maybe you are thinking you will wait until you get married to learn this lesson on developing trust but if you do that you are crippling your marriage and crippling your singleness. It’s a scary thing to share stuff with people, but the reality is that if you share stuff with the elders in you church and you find out they gossiped about you (that’s about the worst thing they can do, and yes its embarrassing), you can find another church, and probably should since the elders in that church are disobedient to the scriptures and sinning by gossiping, and find a church where you can learn to trust someone. If you wait until you get married to learn these lessons on trust and sharing stuff and you find out your spouse is untrustworthy what are you going to do? Leaving a bad church is much easier than fixing or leaving a bad marriage.
In conclusion learning to open up with the elders in your church will open up a life of trust and liberty for you. Why wait for that life?
My home church is filled with people young and old. And there is a wonderful opportunity when your church has young and old people. The older members have much wisdom and experience to pass on to the younger ones but us younger ones can only grasp the oppertunity if we treat the older members like God says too.
The Bible tells us in I Timothy 5:1-2
1Ti 5:1 Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren;
1Ti 5:2 The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.
As a young man dealing with the elder women in the church, you should treat those older women like you would treat your Mom. When I say treat them like your mom I would include loving them like you love your mom, and respecting them like you respect your mom.
Ladies when you deal with the elder men in the church you should treat them like you treat your dad, you should love them and respect them like you would your own father.
I know that this is some very difficult preaching to live but its what God calls us to do. God wants us to have real depth in our relationships in the local church, and for us singles, until we get married, its going to be very difficult for us to have a deeper relationship than those we develop with the elders in our churches.
When the Bible teaches us to treat the elders in our churches like we treat our parents I don’t think the Bible is telling us to do this in the catholic sense, and I don’t believe the Bible is remotely suggesting going around and calling people father or mother who are not your parents. I believe that the Bible is calling us to treat the elders in our church as well as we would our own parents, not to call them our parents names and then treat them like total strangers.
Maybe you are wondering who the elders in your church are? For every church it would be a little different but I would argue that the pastor and his wife at the very least would be the elders in the church. The deacons and their wives would be, your Sunday school teacher would be, and obviously the aged in the church would be.
That said the relationship between young men and elder women, and young women and elder men in the local church will be somewhat different. Although the young men are to intreat the older women as a mother, women are not to be in authority over men in the local church(I timothy 2:12).
The way this relationship starts is like any other. They should consider one another, care one for another, provoke each other to love and good works, when one of them suffers the other suffers with them, when one of them is honored the other rejoices with them. Every relationship in the church should develop to this point.
But the young man should be intreating the elder women in the local church like his mother. How can he do so if she doesn’t have authority over him?
If you go to judges chapter 4 you will find the story of Deborah and Barak. At the start of the Chapter Israel did evil so the Lord put the children of Israel under Jabin the king of Canaan. And we find out this Jabin had a very scary military for his day, and the Children of Israel cried out to God because of it.
At this time Deborah was a judge in Israel and she called for Barak to come where she was at and he came. At this time they have a conversation about what God has called Barak to do. If you skim over this passage of scripture you may think that God is using Deborah to tell Barak what to do, but that’s not the case.
What happened is that Deborah asks Barak “Hath not the LORD God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun? And I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his multitude; and I will deliver him into thine hand.”
At this point Deborah is not commanding Barak to do anything. At this point Deborah is really just doing what every Christian should do, she is considering Barak’s call, she cares enough about him to ask him what is going on in his life, she is provoking him to good works, She is doing these things as an elder woman in the church should, not with authority commanding him to do anything, but as an older woman who cares for a young man like a son, trying to encourage him to do right, and help out if she can.
Barak turns around and says “If thou wilt go with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go.”
At this point Barak is making it clear that he knows what God would have him do, but he wont do it unless this woman holds his hand. This isn’t okay, he should have been a man and stepped up. When God made it clear to Barak that Barak should fight Jabin’s army, Barak should have gone. When Deborah asked him why he hadn’t gone yet he should have told her why. But for Barak to force Deborah into authority over him was sinful on Barak’s part.
Deborah told him “I will surely go with thee: notwithstanding the journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honour; for the LORD shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”
There is no telling how many blessings Barak lost by forcing Deborah to be his authority when he followed God’s will.
As a single man there is a balance we must be aware of. On one hand we need the older women in the church to be aware of whats going on in our lives, we need them to give advice, and provoke us to love and good works. On the other hand these women should not be in authority over us.
In I Timothy 2:12 when God commands women not to be in authority over men, I think God is very aware of how He made his creation. Men and women were created very differently in how they think, act and look at the world, and one of the dangers of a young man being under the authority of an older woman, in the church, is that she can never show him how to act like a man.
We live in a day and age where 40% of young people are born to a fatherless home, in this day and age divorce has taken fathers out of many a childs life, where a large percentage of our population does not interact with men until they turn 18. Their entire life they never had a male teacher, they didn’t play sports so they never had a male coach, and for whatever reason their dad, uncles and adult cousins never had anything to do with them. If this represents even 1% of our population this represents millions of people.
Many of these young men’s first response to a woman is to submit to their authority because that’s all they have ever done, and they have no clue on how to interact with men. These men ought to respect the women, honor the women, listen to their advice, but they should also find an older man in the church to grab a hold of and learn how to be a man, in word, deed, and action. Simply put a woman can do many wonderful things, but they can never show a man how to be a man.
Part of the issues is that women naturally want to nurture so it is very tempting for a man to submit himself to an older woman’s authority to get nurtured, but at this stage of life a man does not need nurture he needs manhood.
Now lets shift gears to the young women, the way that young women interact with the elder men in the church is a bit different than the way the young men interact with the elder women in the church.
Before we deal with the differences we should deal with what is the same. Young women should interact with the older men in the church by considering one another, caring one for another, provoking each other to love and good works, when one of them suffers the other suffers with them, when one of them is honored the other rejoices with them. Every relationship in the church should develop to this point.
I would argue that the elder men in the church would be those in leadership positions and would include the pastor if nobody else. As long as the pastor tells you to do something that is Biblically right you should submit to his authority and obey him.
A wonderful example of this is found in II Kings chapter 4.
We find a woman who just became a widow, and her husband had debt so the debtors came and were going to make her sons into bondmen, so she goes and tells Elisha what happened.
I want to stress this, she did not wait for Elisha to preach a sermon on what to do when your husband dies with debt and the debtors are going to come and make your sons into bondmen. Ladies if you have a problem in your life, do not wait for a sermon on the subject, do what this lady did. When she he had an issue she went to Elisha , and she told Elisha what was going on. If you are a young lady you need to learn how to let the men in the church know whats going on in your life, whether you are going to school, working, or like this lady financially drowning.
After she told Elisha her problem, Elisha wanted more details, and asked her what she had in her house, and she said she didn’t have anything in her house except for a pot of oil. That statement is so telling, either she sold everything or the debtors showed up and took everything back but the pot of oil.
This is where this gets so difficult, I am sure this widow was embarrassed that she had nothing left in her house but a pot of oil and yet when the elder man of God asked her about it she submitted to his authority and told him. This is a hard thing to do, when the pastor finds out about the broad strokes in your life and something you say makes him uncomfortable and he starts prying for details. You would have to trust your pastor to share that with him. One of the things you need to do is develop a relationship with trust with your pastor.
When Elisha found out that she had a vessel of oil Elisha told her to borrow vessels from her neighbors and that she would take her vessel of oil and fill up all the empty vessels. She went and did it and afterwards she sold the oil and paid off her debt and lived off the rest. The thing is her blessing was tied to how well she obeyed the man of God. If she borrowed very few vessels her blessing was small, if she borrowed many vessels her blessing was large. So too will your blessings often be tied to how well you obey the man of God.
To a real extent whether you are a man or woman dealing with an elder of the opposite sex you should be letting them know whats going on in your life and have the respect to listen to their thoughts and opinions. That said if you are a young lady you should submit yourself to the authority of your pastor.
Whether you are a man or a woman this is going to require you to develop trust with the elders in your church and that’s a good lesson to learn. I think that if you are not learning how to develop trust as a single adult you are wasting your single years.
Maybe you are thinking you will wait until you get married to learn this lesson on developing trust but if you do that you are crippling your marriage and crippling your singleness. It’s a scary thing to share stuff with people, but the reality is that if you share stuff with the elders in you church and you find out they gossiped about you (that’s about the worst thing they can do, and yes its embarrassing), you can find another church, and probably should since the elders in that church are disobedient to the scriptures and sinning by gossiping, and find a church where you can learn to trust someone. If you wait until you get married to learn these lessons on trust and sharing stuff and you find out your spouse is untrustworthy what are you going to do? Leaving a bad church is much easier than fixing or leaving a bad marriage.
In conclusion learning to open up with the elders in your church will open up a life of trust and liberty for you. Why wait for that life?