If your pastor has unbelieving adult children, you don’t really have a pastor

“If any one is blameless, a man of one woman, having faithful children not under accusation of riotousness nor unruly—for it is necessary for the overseer to be blameless, as God’s steward…” Titus 1:6–7

A remarkable number of pastors today lack faithful, pious, obedient children. Sometimes their children are too young to reveal the fruit of dad’s discipleship. This in itself is a problem. But more often, they have grown up and abandoned the faith.

Because of this, many churches are highly motivated to deny that Paul is writing in Titus 1:6–7 about adult children, or certainly adult children outside the home. But he is; and this is obvious both covenantally, and exegetically.

God’s covenant promises & his call of elders

Covenantally, we know that God’s promise is to us and to our seed. That is the normative pattern throughout scripture:

I, Yahweh thy god, am a zealous god, visiting the wrongdoing of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third and upon the fourth unto those hating me, and doing loyal-love unto thousands, unto those loving me and guarding my commands. Exodus 20:5–6

Because of this, unbelieving adult children disqualify a man from eldership: God himself has disqualified that man by not fulfilling his promise to him. The covenantal pattern reflects back on the man himself.

For each tree is known from its own fruit. For from thorns men do not gather figs, nor from a bramble harvest they grapes. Luke 6:44

Children are fruit that take a generation to mature. This is not to say that having unbelieving children proves a man hates God. Rather, it proves that he has not loved God and guarded his commands with respect to discipling those in his care—or certainly not to a high enough standard to fit him for rulership over the covenant people.

He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much. Luke 16:10

If, then (to paraphrase the next verse), a man has not been faithful in shepherding his own house, who will entrust him with shepherding the household of God? Sadly, most churches. Yet they do so against Paul’s own application of Jesus’ logic:

If anyone knoweth not how to rule his own house, how shall he care for the congregation of God? 1 Timothy 1:5

A man who cannot lead his own sons in the faith is not qualified to lead strangers. On the other hand, for the faithful father who rules well and produces the good fruit of faithful children,

His lord said unto him, “Well done, servant, good and faithful: over a few things thou wast faithful, over many things I shall set thee; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” Matthew 25:21

For men who are believers, unbelieving children are a shame upon them, and a disqualification to them. The example of Eli is pertinent (1 Sam 2:12ff). It is not a question of formal authority, but of moral authority. It is not a question of immediate control, but of the seed which was planted which has produced the bad fruit. Families are bodies, just like we are bodies, so you cannot artificially isolate the children from the father, even after they leave home. ❋ For a more developed explication of how bodies implicate all their members, albeit from a different (ecclesial) angle, see Dominic Bnonn Tennant, “Why I cannot worship at your lockdown-compliant church” (October 2021). https://www.bnonn.com/why-i-cannot-worship-at-your-lockdown-compliant-church. That doesn’t mean he is punished for their sin—but he is in some important respects responsible for their sin, just as he is responsible for his wife, even though he is not punished for her sins. Scripture clearly shows that sons are made in the likeness of their fathers (cf. Gen 5:3), and thus inherit the sins of their fathers—often in exaggerated ways, as in the case of David and Amnon.

This likeness matters for assessing a pastor.

Exegetically, Paul must be speaking of adult children

In an effort to escape the force of Paul’s words in Titus 1:6, many churches argue that the character of a man’s children no longer matters once they leave home. After all, are they not beyond his control at that point? How can he be held responsible for their actions if they are no longer under his roof?

I have deliberately placed the covenantal argument first, to prove how foolish this reasoning is—but from an exegetical angle it is also inept. The terms that Paul uses in Titus 1:6 are very particular. The overseer’s children, he says, cannot be under accusation of riotousness, nor unruly. These two words are quite rare in the New Testament, so we can easily “track” their usage and apply the analogy of faith. When we do so, we find that they specifically call out adult sins:–

Riotous

This Greek word appears in only three other places:

1. Ephesians 5:18: “be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot.”
2. 1 Peter 4:4, which speaks of unbelievers being surprised that Christians will not run with them into the same excess of riot as described in verse 3—namely, “lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatries.”
3. Luke 15:13, describing the prodigal son wasting his father’s inheritance in riotous living.

All of these instances obviously refer to the same group of adult sins. The example of the prodigal son is especially telling, since it gives us a template for the kind of child that Paul has in mind here. Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of child that many pastors have: young men and women given to drunkenness, partying, hookup culture, and all kinds of worldly passions; who display no fear of God, nor due honor for their parents.

Unruly

This Greek word appears in:

1. 1 Timothy 1:9, about how the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly: those who are ungodly and sinners, unholy and profane, and even “murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers.”
2. Titus 1:10, only a few verses after Paul uses it in his qualification for elders’ children, saying that “there are many unruly men, vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision.” As in verse 6, the unruliness is directly connected to unbelief—faithlessness—which is another disqualifying mark.
3. Hebrews 2:8, where the connection is a little different: this time referring to how God has left nothing that is unruly—i.e., not in subjection—to Christ. In the same way, the children he has given to an overseer should not be unruly to him, if he is to model Christ.

Given these factors, there is a clear connection in Paul’s mind between unruliness and wicked adult children. The question is not fundamentally whether a child is still under his father’s roof; the father’s direct authority is not the issue, and is obviously not the issue, or Paul wouldn’t specifically single out children who are capable of leaving home, then connect it with the example of the prodigal son who did leave home, and then say that these children must be believers and not sinners if a man is to be considered for eldership.

The idea of direct authority is often imposed on the text because of modern, individualistic assumptions about what is and isn’t our responsibility. But these assumptions are reductionistic and mechanical, contrary to scripture’s covenantal and organic view.

But what about…

At this point, inevitably questions arise like, “What if he needs his job as pastor to provide for his family?!” But I am not suggesting the church cruelly kick him to the curb without warning. Apostasy seldom happens in a moment; nor repentance for that matter. Yet a man who is useless for work outside the pastorate is in fact useless for work in the pastorate (Acts 20:34–35).

Or, “What should he do with his gifts if he isn’t shepherding—should he just squander them?” But are you deliberately ignoring the gifts that scripture requires of pastors, and replacing them with your own? Do you want a charismatic orator, rather than a man of character, proven in discipleship? And has he not already squandered his gifts by not using them for the sake of those God gave into his closest care—his own children? In fact you are not begging liberty for him to use them further, but license for him to squander them some more!

These kinds of questions follow the same logic as atheists who want to allow abortion. “What about if the mother is raped? Should she be made to carry the baby of her rapist?!”

That the answer is hard to hear does not make it wrong.

In this vein, I also don’t think Christians have sufficiently grappled with how God works in our lives to sanctify us, and how repentance is something he gives. Suppose he is testing a pastor’s faithfulness by having his son apostatize? Suppose, if his father were to step down and seek the good of his son, leaving the 99 to rescue the one stray sheep, God would grant repentance to that son—and restore his father to ministry? (Does not the prodigal repent?)

But suppose the father fails the test by pragmatically justifying remaining in the pastorate—and the son goes to hell?

Unbelief is known by disobedience

It seems to me that most modern Christians are deeply, fundamentally weak at obeying God when it is hard. I don’t mean this in the glib sense that obviously the flesh is weak. I mean that modern Christians are especially weak at it. Our weakness is unprecedented in the history of the church, and reflects the weakness, and frankly often the deadness, of our faith. It is a regular occurrence that professing believers—pastors—can’t even conceive of obeying God if it will be hard. They don’t struggle to obey. They don’t even try. They routinely fail when God puts them through trials; and indeed, routine is the operative word: they seem submissive to God when it is part of their comfortable routine, their regular habit—but when God shakes up their lives to see what will remain, they cling to comfort and continuity rather than to Christ. It is easy to discern the real lord of their lives, for they are only submissive to God when it will not too greatly perturb their true masters: comfort, safety, money, normality, preference, convenience. In a word, routine.

Obedience that is contingent on circumstance is just disobedience waiting to happen.

Should we take professions of faith seriously from men who look at what scripture says, and just refuse to do it because it would interfere with how they’re currently living? Would not true faith rather obey God, and do the hard thing, trusting him to do what is just and bless that obedience? I don’t say that would be easy. I am not being glib. I know how hard obedience can be. But what kind of faith doesn’t even try? What kind of faith cannot distinguish good from evil, to even attempt it? What kind of faith weasels around God’s commands, covering disobedience with pragmatic justifications and deferring to the desires of other, equally faithless men? What kind of faith risks God’s displeasure?

These questions apply both to the pastors who are disqualified, and the church members who continue to support and submit to them.

As for me and my house…

I have a very personal stake in this issue. I am serving as a shepherd at Redwood Reformation Church. I am not oblivious that God may disqualify me from ministry via my children. So let the record stand that if my children abandon the faith, I will know that God does not want my talents for ministry any more—at least until I can restore my child—and that I should serve him first by seeking the salvation of that child.

If you are a pastor who cannot say the same—or you have a pastor who cannot say the same—what does ordination even mean? What is it really worth? Of what value is a SHINO: a shepherd in name only?