Student Study Guide
Lesson 26
The Attributes of a Leader - Pt. 2
Section 1 - Attribute Three: Sober
Moderate as to Opinion or Passion
We continue through the sixteen attributes Paul places before Timothy as the standard for anyone in leadership. The first two, blameless and vigilant, were covered in Lesson 25. This lesson works through the next four: sober, of good behaviour, hospitable, and apt to teach.
The word "sober" in this context has nothing to do with alcohol. The scriptural definition is more precise and more challenging: to be moderate as to opinion or passion. A leader must not be given to extremes - not too high, not too low; not swept away by emotional intensity in one direction or collapsing into spiritual depression in the other.
1. The call to sobriety is a call to the center. The balanced, measured, consistent life that is not unduly shaped by the and crashes of emotion, circumstance, or popular opinion.
2. The roaring lion does not attack from the middle of the herd. He circles to the , looking for those who have strayed. The extremes are where the hunts. The sober person, steady at the center, is considerably harder to isolate and bring down.
✍ The Tragedy of Keith Green
On a day of high spirits, riding the wave of an exuberant mood, Keith Green made a spontaneous decision to take a flight on his private plane with more passengers than the aircraft's weight limit safely allowed. He knew how to calculate load capacity. But in that moment of elevated emotion, the sober watchfulness that would ordinarily have caught the error was absent. He was too high to be careful.
The plane could not achieve lift. It crashed shortly after takeoff. Keith Green, his two young sons, and others aboard died. He was not reckless by nature. He was unguarded in a moment of extreme.
3. Emotional extremes are the most obvious danger: the person who is spiritually and dangerously unguarded on the mountaintop, and the person who is spiritually desperate and dangerously in the valley. Both are exposed.
4. Extremes of produce church splits. Every major doctrinal abuse begins with someone taking a genuine truth and pressing it past the point of Scripture - applying it in isolation from everything that would qualify it, until the truth becomes a distortion.
The Sober Leader in This Generation: We live in a generation swept by emotional highs and crashing lows, by doctrinal fads and reactionary extremes - offended by everything and recovering from nothing. The sober leader stands as a steady anchor in the middle of all of it. Not cold. Not lifeless. Clear-headed, self-controlled, and firmly planted in the center of God's truth.
5. Sobriety is not a personality . It is a spiritual . Paul says it is a . The Church does not need more gifted extremes. She needs sober, vigilant sons and daughters who will not be moved.
Your Reflection
Section 2 - Attribute Four: Of Good Behaviour
Conduct That Communicates Christ in Every Setting
Good behavior means conducting oneself with consistent decency, kindness, and respect in every setting - not only in the pulpit or on the platform, but in restaurants, hotels, airports, and every context where a leader is observed. Paul names it as a qualification for leadership because the watching world judges the credibility of the gospel largely by the conduct of those who represent it.
The Indictment: Hotel and conference center staff in many cities have developed a reputation-based dread of Christian groups. Waitstaff near churches anticipate the post-Sunday crowd with something other than enthusiasm: demanding attitudes, complaints about service, poor tipping, and the particular irony of replacing a gratuity with a gospel tract. These are not minor lapses. They are the testimony of a people who claim to follow the servant of all - behaving in the very moments when their faith is most visible in ways that communicate the opposite of what they profess.
6. Good behavior is not merely . It is the outward expression of a heart that has genuinely been . A leader who barks at waitstaff is not demonstrating strength. They are demonstrating that the has not yet gone deep enough.
✍ The Airport Queue
Facing a woman who was barging through an airport check-in queue in desperate need, a man stepped aside, gave up his place, sent her to the front, and went to stand at the back - likely missing his own flight in the process.
The queue that had been on the verge of hostility went silent. No words were preached. No tract was offered. The behavior itself communicated something so unusual, so genuinely Christ-like, that it arrested the entire atmosphere. That is good behavior as testimony.
7. Peter's standard is searching: conduct so consistently that even those who speak against believers are eventually by the evidence of the works they observe. The standard is not the avoidance of obvious disgrace. It is the active, consistent, publicly visible of Christ-like conduct in every circumstance of daily life.
Your Reflection
Section 3 - Attribute Five: Hospitable
Generous Reception as a Way of Life
Hospitality means generous reception of strangers. It is the attribute that stands most directly against the culture of exclusivity and inaccessibility that tends to develop around leadership as it grows in influence and platform. Paul names hospitality as a qualification for leadership precisely because the temptation to withdraw runs so directly against the heart of what a servant-leader is called to be.
8. As ministry visibility increases, the leader tends to become surrounded by layers of staff and structure that them from direct contact. The very people who most need what the leader carries find it to reach them.
The Most Common Complaint: The most common complaint voiced by those in youth and associate ministry roles is not about workload or compensation. It is this: "My pastor never talks to me. He never pours into me. The only time he addresses me is to give instructions. He has never opened his life to me." That is a hospitality failure, and it is epidemic.
9. Ministry was never meant to look like a stage and an audience. For most of church history it looked like a table with extra , a door that stayed , and a pot that somehow always had enough. Hospitality was not a ministry . It was a way of life.
✍ The Hitchhiker - Mississippi to Dallas
Driving back from Mississippi to Dallas - an eight-hour drive - a hitchhiker was spotted on the side of the road. He was picked up and driven three hundred miles. He had been recently released from jail, had given his life to the Lord while inside, and was now trying to start over in California having lost everything.
While driving, worship music was put on. He began to cry - just weeping because God was touching him right there in the car. "I thought to myself, I may never know, but this could be an angel in here. This could be my test."
That is the texture of the hospitality Paul is calling leaders to - not event-based, not institutionalized, but a pervasive readiness to receive and serve whoever God places in the path.
10. Service does not as leadership widens. It . Whoever is to be the greatest among you must become the of all.
Your Reflection
Section 4 - Attribute Six: Apt to Teach
The Default Mode of the Spiritually Mature Leader
The phrase "apt to teach" means having both the ability and the inclination to teach God's Word - not merely the capacity when called upon, but a habitual orientation toward instruction, always looking for the opportunity, always turning the circumstances of life toward the principles of Scripture. Teaching is not a program or an event. It is the default mode of a spiritually mature leader.
Preaching
Announces. Produces emotional encounters and initial decisions. Tells people that God can help them. Essential - but alone, insufficient.
Teaching
Equips. Tells people how God expects them to live. Produces transformed natures. The Great Commission is fundamentally a teaching commission.
11. A congregation that is consistently at but not consistently will produce people who know that God can help them but not how God expects them to live.
The Diagnosis: What the contemporary church has largely given people is encouragement without instruction. And encouragement without instruction produces people who feel better temporarily but change very little permanently. The leaders fall because they have not been taught. The people fall because they have not been taught.
12. The maturity test in Hebrews 5 measures spiritual development not by platform size or gift prominence but by whether a person has grown into the capacity to . By now you ought to be .
The Apt Teacher's Posture: An apt teacher does not reserve teaching for the pulpit. Every meal, every journey, every conversation is a potential classroom. There is always something being drawn out, a principle being illustrated by a passing event, a Scripture being connected to a current circumstance. That is not performance - it is the natural expression of a person who has been shaped by the Word to the point that they see the Word in everything.
13. A true leader is one who is apt to teach, always , always , and always turning the circumstances of life toward the Word of God.
Encouragement without instruction produces people who feel better temporarily but change very little permanently.
Your Reflection
Lesson 26 - Practice Test
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Part A: Multiple Choice (5 questions · 2 pts each)
1. What is the scriptural definition of "sober" as a leadership attribute, according to this lesson?
2. What does the lesson say the Keith Green account illustrates about sobriety?
3. What does the lesson identify as the most common complaint among those in youth and associate ministry roles?
4. What is the critical distinction the lesson draws between preaching and teaching?
5. What does the lesson say the maturity test in Hebrews 5 actually measures?
Part B: True or False (6 statements · 1 pt each)
1. Peter places "sober" and "vigilant" together in 1 Peter 5:8 by coincidence - the two attributes are unrelated and address different areas of leadership.
2. A leader barking at waitstaff and demanding preferential treatment is demonstrating strength and appropriate use of authority.
3. In the airport account, the Christ-like impact was produced primarily by the man verbally sharing his faith and offering a gospel tract.
4. Hospitality becomes less important as a leader's platform and influence grow, because their time must be protected to preserve their effectiveness.
5. According to this lesson, a congregation that is consistently preached at but not consistently taught will produce people with emotional encounters but not transformed natures.
6. The "apt to teach" attribute applies only to ordained ministers and formal preachers - Hebrews 5:12 is addressed to church leaders, not ordinary believers.
Part C: Fill in the Blank (5 items · 1 pt each)
1. The scriptural definition of sober is to be moderate as to or passion.
2. The roaring lion circles to the - the extremes are where the predator hunts.
3. Good behavior is not merely politeness. It is the outward expression of a heart that has genuinely been .
4. Preaching . Teaching equips.
5. Encouragement without instruction produces people who feel better but change very little permanently.
Part D: Short Answer (completion credit)
1. Explain the two types of extremes sobriety guards against, using the Keith Green account and the teaching on doctrinal extremes to illustrate each type.
2. What does the hitchhiker account reveal about the kind of hospitality Paul is calling leaders to? How does it differ from programmatic or event-based hospitality?
3. Why does the lesson say "encouragement without instruction" is an insufficient diet for a congregation? What is the specific fruit it produces, and what does genuine teaching produce instead?
Part E - Before You Leave
Where in your life are you most susceptible to extremes - emotional or doctrinal? What does staying at the sober, steady center require of you this week?
Name one person in your sphere who needs you to move from encouragement to instruction - from announcing God can help them to teaching them how God expects them to live. What is the first specific teaching you will bring them?