Over the course of thirty-seven years, Jim Markle planting and rescuing churches from closing, he has had the responsibility of writing and rewriting several church constitutions and doctrinal statements. In doing this, he had to wrestle with what the Bible actually teaches about the qualifications of pastor and deacons of a church. These qualifications, listed in 1 Timothy and Titus, deal with the character of the man desiring to be a pastor. Traditionally, one of these qualifications has been taken out of the realm of the character of the man and placed in the particular status of a man’s relationships. This is the qualification that the man desiring to be a pastor must be the husband of one wife. This qualification is usually applied to the man’s marital status and primarily to the issue of divorce and remarriage. However, it says nothing about divorce and remarriage. This qualification, like the rest of them, deals with the man’s present character, not his past conduct. Because of this faulty standard preventing some otherwise qualified men from being allowed to enter the pastorate, Jim has dug into the phrase ‘the husband of one wife’ through a study of the Greek grammar of this particular phrase, comparing it to other passages of Scripture that deal with divorce and remarriage to clear up the misconceptions of this qualification of pastor. Jim’s goal is to ask and answer the question of what it means to be the husband of one wife for a man to be qualified to be a pastor of a local church. This book gives the results of that study in a clear and concise manner.
