Asaph has put into words what is and has been a struggle for many Christians down through the ages who have gone through difficult times. This frustration is compounded when their struggles occur against the backdrop of the prosperity of the wicked. Trying to understand this paradox seemed like a wearisome task to Asaph—that is, until he went into the sanctuary of God (vv. 16–17). The sanctuary of God—with its ceremonies and rituals and bloody altars—had a sobering and crystallizing effect on Asaph, causing him to see his previous envy and doubt as coming from an embittered soul (v. 21), leading him to think and speak like a brutish and ignorant beast toward God (v. 22).

Question and answer number 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism is as follows: “What is your only comfort in life and death?” Answer:
That I, with body and soul, both in life and death am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all of my sins and delivered me from all of the powers of the Devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; yea that all things must be subservient to my salvation and therefore by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and He makes me sincerely willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.
I begin with this all-encompassing word of comfort as the backdrop for the very difficult subject of trusting God in difficult times, especially when that difficulty is financial. Contrary to what some might think, Christians are not exempt from the trials and adversities that are part and parcel of living in a fallen world. So I would like to begin with three overarching extractions from the answer to question 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism: (1) We belong to Christ, both body and soul, which means that His love and care for us are for both body and soul; (2) the blood of Christ has satisfied for all our sins, and therefore, we cannot reason that our hardship is punishment for sin; (3) we are delivered from the powers of the devil, which means that tough times are not ultimately dispensed by the hand of Satan. He will use our tough times as opportunities to entice us to not trust God or to make us think that He has forsaken us. But as Paul says in Colossians 1:13, “[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” Therefore, all that occurs in a Christian’s life is by the will of God and ultimately works for the good of the believer. Romans 8:28 declares, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
This does not mean that only good things happen—far from it. The catechism and the Scriptures teach that God’s saving purposes for the elect can never be frustrated by anything they experience. Romans 5:3–5 puts it this way:
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Consequently, we are enabled to serve and trust God in all seasons and circumstances.
The rationale of the catechism is that faith in the sufficiency of the person and work of Christ and the sovereignty of God attaches us to a reality that transcends our temporal experience and circumstances. We do not diminish the importance of our physical bodies in their present state. After all, the Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 12:1 that we are to “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice . . . , which is [our] spiritual worship.” But in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul points us to the transcendent realities to which our faith in Christ attaches us:
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (vv. 16–18)
Critics of the Christian faith, as well as those who adhere to various forms of the prosperity gospel, would take Paul’s words as espousing a “pie in the sky” religion. Be that as it may, our faith attaches us to a reality that is beyond our present experiences in this fallen world. Embracing the paradox that the Apostle presents does not mean that Christians go through tough times stoically and unperturbed. The words of Asaph in Psalm 73 come to mind.
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Remember the next generation of worship leaders. Of course, it is urgent to be concerned with what is happening on your platform this Sunday, but what seeds are being planted by your church in the children’s and youth ministry that will be harvested in the future? Public education is abandoning music. The children in your church are probably not singing at school or at home. Are they singing at church? We should not be surprised when no crops grow in five years if no seeds are planted today.

I teach church music and worship at a seminary. Every week, churches contact me to fill their worship leadership needs. While I’m thrilled to see the demand for qualified individuals, there’s one big problem.
I don’t have students for them.
The Old Model
When churches contact a seminary looking for a worship leader, they’re doing what worked for a long time. A generation ago, there was an established system: students came to seminary to get a Master’s degree in Church Music (MCM) before becoming a music minister or worship pastor. This mirrored the path young men took, pursuing an MDiv degree before becoming preachers.
Historically minded readers could investigate Westminster Choir College’s influence on theological music education from the 1920s onward. This model influenced many seminaries across the country. Perhaps the peak of this movement came in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when enrollment at my seminary’s School of Church Music surpassed 530.
That’s a lot.
However, through changes in the church and cultural landscapes, this model faltered. By the 1990s, Westminster Choir College financially couldn’t keep its doors open. There are many contributing factors which we’ll discuss later, but the old system hit its heyday in the late 1980s and gradually ground to a halt in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The New Model
Now, a new model for musical theological education operates in a different order. Worship ministers already serving in local churches study at a seminary to “level up” their ministry and personal lives.
Have you seen this? By and large, worship leaders in today’s churches do not need a seminary degree to qualify for leading a congregation in worship.
As someone who trains worship leaders at a seminary, you might think that I’m worried. I am not worried. That’s because our seminary worship training program pivoted to help students who are already serving the Lord Jesus in their local church grow in their skills.
Our students come from a variety of backgrounds and join our program to take their next steps of growth for their lives and ministries.

Some have been trained as music educators but lack the biblical and theological knowledge or ministerial skills needed to serve in a church ministry.
Others are very skilled musical performers and producers who are adept at planning high-impact Sunday morning gatherings, but they recognize their need for further education if they want to become church leaders and elder-qualified pastors.

These are my favorite people on planet Earth!
So when churches contact me for a graduate to fill their job opening, I do not have students. Our students are already in churches, growing and flourishing within faith communities that are investing in them.
What Changed? Schools and Churches
As we consider how we got here, think with me about two changes that have drastically affected the ecosystem of worship.
First, public schools have drastically reduced music education. There was a time when I would meet with prospective undergraduate students who would tell me that they wanted to study worship ministry and become ministers of music in their local church, but they felt like they needed to pursue a degree in music education as a career fallback. Music education was seen as the safer, more viable career choice.
That is no longer the financial or vocational reality. Over the past 20 or 30 years, as public-school funding shifted towards STEM (mathematics, science, and computer-based) priorities, musical education and opportunities have dried up.
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As careful as pastor-elders must be to keep their churches from being influenced and shipwrecked by the world, they also must lead their people outward. Jesus gave an outward-facing commission. Our gospel is a growing, expanding gospel. God’s word runs and triumphs. It matters, in some measure (not absolutely) what outsiders think because we want to win them. We do not change our message for them. We do not cower to unreasonable demands from evil, twisted critics. And we should not suffer leaders in the church who are fools on the world’s terms just as much as Christ’s.

Most Likely to Sheep-Feed
Leaders. Our criticisms of them, cynicism toward them, conflicts with them, and controversies about them fill our feeds, queues, and real-life conversations. Perhaps a previous generation gave its presidents and pastors too much benefit of the doubt. But that is increasingly not our temptation.
Whether in society or the church, both a fascination with and a negative mood toward our leaders and celebrities (we’re increasingly unable to draw clear lines between them) pervades our age. Many today are confused, and often for good reasons. Stories of use and abuse abound, and multiply, with the aid of our technologies.
What Christ Requires
For Christians, we have our conflicts and controversies to grieve, and speak into, but the risen Christ has not left us confused about what to expect, pray for, and hold our leaders to account for. Scripture has a lot to say about our current crisis.

Pastor-elder David Mathis expands on the nature and calling of local church leaders as joyful workers for the joy of their people, through the framework of the elder qualifications found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

To my count, 1 Timothy 3 provides fifteen requirements for pastor-elders—the lead or teaching office in the church. Another list—again, I count fifteen—comes just pages later in Titus 1, with most of them mapping on precisely to the first list. Added to that, we have, among others, 1 Peter 5:1–5, 2 Timothy 2:22–26, Hebrews 13 (verses 7 and 17), and the words of Christ in Mark 10:42–45. Jesus has not left us without clarity.
Paul Really Knew
For more than a decade now, I’ve given unusual time and attention to lingering over the pastor-elder qualifications. Not only am I a pastor seeking to regularly rehearse what Christ requires of me (and grow, with his help, in these virtues), but since 2012 I’ve been assigned “the eldership class” at Bethlehem Seminary. This class is typically a cohort of 15–16 seminarians training to be vocational pastor-elders.
Over time, we’ve found the lists of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 to be worthy of far more than a brief review or a single session of focus. In fact, in seeking to present to the class and address what Scripture teaches, and what I’ve found to be significant in pastoral ministry, I’ve found again and again that essentially all the relevant practical issues in preparing for eldership pair with one or more of the traits Paul lists in 1 Timothy 3 or Titus 1.
Imagine that.
Paul really knew what he was talking about—not just as a list of prerequisites to become an elder but as a catalog of the kind of virtues that elders need day in and day out to be healthy, effective elders in the long haul for the joy of the church.
What Kind of Men?
Semester after semester, I have found so much life, so much to learn, so much to say, so much to discuss, so much to apply in these elder qualifications. For one, the virtues mentioned here are not devoid of reference elsewhere in Scripture. Rather, in most cases, Scripture, from Old Testament to New, has quite a bit to say about these traits.
One avenue into these traits I’ve developed over time is finding a superlative for each. Perhaps this will help some readers, as it’s helped me, come at these traits from fresh angles and understand them, in theory, in practice, and in new dimensions. I’ll order them here under the three major headings I’ve come to use in the class—humbled, whole, and honorable.
Humbled: Men before Their God
The first is perhaps the most misunderstood: aspiration. “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Tim. 3:1). In the age of the subjective, we often emphasize the self’s desire for, or aspiring to, the office of pastor-elder. That’s good and well, and so we should. Aspiration is here at the outset of the list, and it’s critical. Pastor-elders are to be those who labor with joy (2 Cor. 1:24), which is to the benefit of their people (Heb. 13:17), and which is why this line of work is not to be done reluctantly or under compulsion, but willingly and eagerly (1 Pet. 5:2).
However, what some in our day misunderstand is that their subjective desire, their aspiration, is not the end-all-be-all in being “called to ministry.” Rather, the heart of Christian ministry is not bringing our desires (however sanctified) to bear on the world but letting the actual needs of others (on God’s terms) meet with and shape our hearts. Often overlooked in Christian discussions of “calling” today is the actual God-given, real-world (objective) open door. Aspiration is critical but not a “call” in itself.
“Not be a recent convert,” then, we might call the most unactionable trait in the list. If you just came to faith, you are recent (literally, a “new plant”) and there is simply nothing you can do about that. So we might say this one is, in a sense, “most out of your own hands.” However, we might also add that “recent” is a relative word. And those who seek humility (Zeph. 2:3) and make some real headway in putting to death their pride, move forward in line with the concern of this requisite: that he not “become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.” Being genuinely humbled, and learning to welcome it, will make more recent converts seem less recent.
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