Attractive Leaders

Introduction: What Makes a Church Attractive?

We're continuing our series in Titus. Last week we considered what an attractive church looks like, drawing from chapter 2:10, where Paul teaches Titus how to win over those whose lives are messy. The answer: be an attractive church, one that lives out gospel teaching and starts looking like Jesus. As faith leads to godliness, both the church and the culture around it begin to change.

Today we ask a follow-up question: what does it look like to be attractive leaders of an attractive church?

As we look at the elders of this church, we might ask, "What makes us attractive?" Is it a beard, PowerPoint skills, or charisma? Thankfully, the Bible gives us a much richer answer.

Reading Titus 1:5-16

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might put in order what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God's household, he must be blameless, not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

There are many rebellious people full of meaningless talk and deception, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach, and that for the sake of dishonest gain. One of Crete's own prophets has said it: "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons." This saying is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply so that they will be sound in the faith... To the pure, all things are pure. But to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and their consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good.

In a nutshell, elders become attractive when they guard the truth of the gospel — showing it both through their lives and through their teaching. This unfolds in three points:

1. An attractive church is an orderly church.
2. An orderly church appoints attractive leaders.
3. Attractive leaders guard the truth.

This isn't merely advice on running a good job interview for new elders. This is Holy Spirit-inspired instruction for guarding gospel truth — applicable to us today.

Point One: An Attractive Church Is an Orderly Church

If Paul looked out over London today and saw all the false teaching we contend with — from other religions, secular ideology, or even churches that get it wrong — how would he tell us to fix it? Not by putting Christians into positions of political power. Not merely by planting street preachers on every corner. Not by fleeing the city for some isolated community free of false teaching.

Instead, Paul says: appoint elders. Raise up godly leaders whose lives are blameless — not just in public, but in private — whose teaching is sound and unafraid to call out falsehood. If false teaching is a fire, godly elders who uphold the truth are the firefighters at the front line.

The opposite is devastating. I have friends who grew up in a London church where the leaders' lives were a mess — publicly and privately — and the teaching was unsound. The church split multiple times. People were deeply hurt, some never returned, and tragically some people even referenced the church in notes when they ended their lives. When a church lacks attractive leaders, lives are wrecked. This is serious. We need to get it right.

Order Is Not the Goal — It Serves the Gospel

An orderly church has its structures and priorities rooted in Scripture. But order isn't the end goal — we want a church where the gospel grows and lives are changed. A merely orderly church, with everything looking beautiful but doing no actual gospel business, is like a Tesco's that never opens its doors to customers.

Notice what Paul prioritizes first in bringing order: leadership (v.5). Leaders are not thermometers, simply reflecting the temperature of the room. They're thermostats — they set the temperature for everyone else. Godly, blameless, self-controlled, holy, sacrificially loving leaders set a tone that trickles down through the whole church.

Notice also that it's elders, plural. Leadership isn't a one-man show. We need each other — to call one another out, to use our different gifts together, and to avoid the unhealthy pattern of a single person at the top. At Globe Church, no one simply decided one day to become an elder. Each of us was appointed by other elders who examined our lives against these very qualifications — a lineage of elder-appointing-elder that stretches back through church history to Titus and the apostles themselves. That should reassure us we stand on solid, orderly ground.

Point Two: An Orderly Church Appoints Attractive Leaders

"Attractive" here means looking like Jesus — not physically, but in character: living and loving and sacrificing like he did. Paul highlights three key areas of an elder's life.

1. Blameless in Family Life (v.6)

An elder loves his wife like Christ loved the church, helps her grow in faith, and leads in a way that earns her trust. He fathers his children well, teaching them about Jesus and modeling what he teaches, so his kids want to be like Jesus because they want to be like their dad. When he fails, he models repentance.

The logic: if an elder can't care for his own family, how will he care for God's family?

2. Blameless in Character (vv.7-8)

An elder practices what he preaches — not performing on Sundays while living however he wants at home. He actively fights sin rather than giving in to it, striving for holy, sacrificial living because he wants to be like Jesus. When he fails, again, he models repentance.

The logic: if an elder can't guide his own character toward holiness, how will he guide the church's?

3. Sound in Teaching (v.9)

An elder holds firmly to the trustworthy apostolic message, so he can encourage the faithful and refute those who oppose the truth. A pastor needs two voices — a soft one for encouragement, a firm one for correction.

Blameless doesn't mean sinless. If it did, all of us would be disqualified. It means a constant, active striving for holiness — where people look and honestly say, that person is worth following.

This isn't about worldly impressiveness — a brilliant entrepreneur or a winning sports coach might have stepped on people to get to the top. That's not what Paul is after. God cares about character.

These qualifications aren't a checklist to dismiss — they're a reflection of who Jesus is, and something all of us should aspire to, not just elders. If you look at this list and think "I can't do this," that's fine — there is grace. This isn't meant to condemn us, but to give us a good goal, with grace available when we fail.

If you're new to church, or moving to a new one, hold up Titus 1 against the leadership you find and ask honestly whether it matches. Don't settle for less. And if you find leaders who reflect this, pray for them — they need God's strength to keep living it out.

Point Three: Attractive Leaders Guard the Truth

Everything so far builds to this. Like a superhero movie where the hero's qualifications only matter because the city faces a real threat, these qualifications for elders exist because the church faces a real enemy: false teaching.

Paul describes a group of false teachers (the "circumcision group") who are dishonest, corrupt, and detestable — inventing myths and human commands that sound authoritative but aren't from God. They're like scam artists tricking people out of something precious.

I remember being scammed on eBay years ago — someone cleverly drained thousands from my account. It was infuriating. But Paul's anger here isn't personal; these false teachers are robbing God — twisting and stealing the message of salvation he achieved through Christ's death and resurrection.

The Goal Is Restoration, Not Destruction

Unlike some responses to false belief, Paul doesn't call for these teachers to be silenced through force or exclusion for its own sake. Verse 13 is telling: rebuke them sharply so that they will be sound in the faith. The goal is restoration — bringing them back to Jesus. Paul knows this is possible because his own life was transformed by this same gospel.

Let's not give up on our society, just as Paul didn't give up on Crete. Let's keep speaking and living out the gospel as a church.

This gospel truth has been guarded for 2,000 years — it's not a weak, unreliable message, but one that has proven itself by changing lives across history and still today. It is worth fighting for, and guarding it isn't just the elders' job — every one of us plays a part in knowing this truth and passing it on.

Know the Truth to Spot the Counterfeit

Banks once trained staff to detect counterfeit notes not by studying every possible fake, but by thoroughly knowing what a genuine note looks like. The same applies to us: we don't need to master every false teaching — we simply need to know Jesus, the truth, deeply. As we grow in truth together, we become the kind of attractive church that can reach London.

An Invitation: Look at the Evidence

If you're visiting today and wondering who the best role model in life might be — is there a better one than Jesus? Consider the effect he has on his people.

Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. (Acts 20:28)

Jesus — truly God, truly man — gave his life for his church, and that sacrifice should visibly change those who lead it. So put us to the test: come and see how we live. See if we are blameless. And if it checks out, stick around and get to know this Jesus for yourself.

My hope and prayer is that we would all leave recognizing that gospel truth is worth protecting, worth fighting for, worth knowing, and worth delighting in — that the Globe would be a church that is orderly, with attractive leaders who work together to guard the gospel truth.