When any elected president walks into the oval office for the first time, I am sure they are overjoyed, overwhelmed, and humbled.  They know what that office means.  The elected president is the most powerful individual on the planet.

The day before their inauguration they were just (in the eyes of the law) a citizen.  They couldn’t execute laws with any authority.  They first must step into an office, a position.

And who are the men and women we would want to entrust to that kind of power?  A person who knows that they are subject to the office, the office is not subject to them.  They would know that they have no right to make the presidency into their image, but have their will bent to the magnitude of the office.

This is true also for the office of pastor.  The pastor must live up to, become worthy of, the office, not the other way around.  The pastor must know that authority comes from his office, not his own person.

Some may object that no offices really exist in the Christian ministry.  These are cessationists of a different kind.  Certainly in the first century the office of apostle existed and Paul referred himself back to it constantly.  He tells Titus to appoint elders in the churches in Crete.  Is this to have ceased with the apostles?  Certainly apostles like Paul have ceased because they are no longer direct witnesses to the resurrection.  But the appointing of people into offices of the church still is extremely important.

Because the health of God’s people depends on the men who shepherd them.  And the church is crying out for men who mold themselves to the requirements of the office and not make the office bend to them.