Household Leadership, Not Lifelong Control: Understanding an Elder’s Children

This article is in response to Jack Wilkie’s Facebook post and the article he posted: " How Many Faithful Kids Does an Elder Need?

I agree that churches need qualified elders and that Christians must take the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 seriously. I also share your concern and grief over the number of children who have left the faith. Parents must not use free will as an excuse for negligence, inconsistency, permissiveness, or spiritual indifference.

I disagree with adding qualifications the text doesn’t establish. The qualifications require proven household leadership, not that a father’s qualification remain permanently dependent upon every later choice made by every biological child, including independent adults who have established households of their own.

Household Leadership Is the Qualification

Let’s start with 1 Timothy 3:4–5: “One who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?).”

Paul is telling us that leading his own household shows whether he can care for the household of God, but notice what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that every child a man fathers must remain faithful until death, or that an adult son who establishes his own household remains under his father's rule. Paul also doesn’t say that if twenty years later a grown child chooses to abandon the faith, that their choice somehow proves the father never governed his household properly.

 Your argument about a child reaching an “age of accountability” at fourteen and leaving home at eighteen doesn’t answer the actual issue. You supplied both ages because neither appears in the qualification. My position doesn’t reduce the qualification to an arbitrary four-year test. A congregation should consider the man’s entire record of leading his household, including his teaching, discipline, example, judgment, consistency, and ability to maintain respectful submission. The criterion is not a particular age or number of years. It is whether he has demonstrated that he can govern his household well.

If a twenty-two-year-old son still lives in his father's home, is rebellious, uncontrollable, and brings reproach upon the family, that could certainly be relevant, but that is very different from saying a fifty-year-old elder becomes responsible for every spiritual decision made by a thirty-year-old married son who has long since established his own household.

An adult child’s apostasy may cause a congregation to investigate the father’s leadership, but that evidence is not automatic proof that the father failed. The congregation should consider how the father taught and disciplined his children while they were under his authority, the example he set, whether he governed with consistency and reverence, and whether hypocrisy, harshness, neglect, or permissiveness contributed to their departure. Those questions should be investigated rather than answered merely by pointing to the adult child’s present condition.

Genesis 2:24 says that a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife. The father may continue to love, teach, warn, and influence his adult son, but he doesn’t govern his son’s separate household as described in 1 Timothy 3:4. The son has left his father’s household and established one of his own.

Paul uses the same household standard for deacons in 1 Timothy 3:12, requiring them to rule “their children and their own houses well,” which further shows that the stated qualification concerns demonstrated household government.

Paul’s own comparison shows the difference between leadership and control. Elders teach, warn, correct, and watch for the souls of church members, but members remain responsible for their own decisions. If an adult member forsakes Christ, the congregation should ask whether the elders faithfully fulfilled their duty, but the member’s apostasy doesn’t automatically prove that the elders failed. In the same way, a father’s leadership should be examined without treating him as the controller of another person’s will.

What Pista Does and Does Not Prove

Titus 1:6 deserves closer attention than simply calling one interpretation “the plainest reading.” Paul says that an elder is to have τέκνα πιστά (tekna pista). Pista can mean believing, but it can also mean faithful or trustworthy. Paul immediately adds that these children must not be accused of dissipation or insubordination. The parallel passage in 1 Timothy 3:4 speaks specifically of children being in submission with all reverence.

This context doesn’t conclusively prove that pista cannot mean believing, but it does show that Paul is concerned with observable conduct and submission within the household. Therefore, before building an entire doctrine around the claim that every biological child must remain a Christian throughout adulthood, one must establish more than the possible meaning of a single word.

Even if pista is understood to mean believing, that still would not prove your full conclusion. It would establish that the man’s children should be believers when the congregation examines his qualifications. The word itself doesn’t tell us the qualification must rise and fall forever with every later choice made by every independent adult child. That additional claim must be proven, not assumed.

Does Children Require More Than One Child

Also, our text doesn’t demand a plurality of children. Now, I would agree that a man with two children has more experience rearing children. So does a man who raises three children over the man who has two. We even use the word children today to mean just one child. For instance, if I ask you if you have any children and you have one, you will answer yes. Or ask a new grandmother who has only one grandchild if she has any grandchildren, and she will say yes.

We have at least two clear biblical examples in which a plural form can include one child: Matthew 22:24 uses “children” when citing Deuteronomy 25:5, which speaks of a man who dies without “a son” (or “a child” in some translations), and Genesis 21:7 says that Sarah would nurse “children,” even though she had borne Abraham one son, Isaac. Matthew 19:29 and Luke 14:26 also use “children” generically, which could include one child or more.

Parental Influence and Personal Accountability

Now, Deuteronomy commands parents to teach their children diligently. I wholeheartedly agree, but a command to teach faithfully is not the same as a promise that faithful teaching will always produce faithful adults. The same distinction applies to Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs gives us wisdom about the normal results of faithful training, but it is not a promise that removes a child’s free will. If this were an absolute guarantee, every departure from the faith would prove that the parents failed, regardless of all other evidence. The proverb emphasizes the importance and lasting influence of early training without making parents responsible for every decision their adult children make.

Parents are responsible for teaching.

• Children are responsible for learning and obeying.

• Adult children remain responsible for their own decisions.

Those truths are not mutually exclusive.

Your article presents only two possibilities: either good parenting produces faithful children, or a child’s faith is simply “luck of the draw,” but other possibilities exist.

Parents can have tremendous influence without having absolute control. A father can faithfully teach his children, discipline them properly, be a great example of Christianity, pray for them, warn them, encourage them, and give them every reasonable advantage, and a grown child can still decide to reject what he was taught.

That doesn’t mean parenting is irrelevant. It means influence isn't the same as determinism. The statement, “If success is a matter of cause and effect, then so is failure,” also doesn’t follow logically. Something may strongly contribute to a good result without guaranteeing it. Consequently, the absence of that result doesn’t automatically prove the contributing factor was absent. All this needs to be considered when the “result” is the freely chosen conduct of another morally accountable human being.

Your article dismisses the distinction between parents and adult children as 'radical individualism,' but individual moral accountability is taught in Scripture. 2 Corinthians 5:10 teaches that each person will answer for what he has done. Romans 14:12 says, 'Each of us shall give account of himself to God.'

Finally, we have this: “The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son” (Ezekiel 18:20). Ezekiel 18:20 doesn’t settle the meaning of Titus 1:6 by itself, but it does establish the principle that a father and his adult child possess separate moral accountability before God. Therefore, recognizing individual responsibility is not “radical individualism.” It is biblical.

Scripture even describes God as a Father whose children rebelled. God said concerning Israel, “I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me” (Isaiah 1:2). Deuteronomy 32:6 calls God Israel’s Father, and Deuteronomy 31:16 predicts that Israel would forsake Him.

I recognize that God’s relationship with Israel is not identical to the household qualification of an elder. Nevertheless, it establishes an important principle: rebellion by those who have received perfect instruction, provision, patience, and correction doesn’t prove failure on the part of the one who taught them. If rebellion can occur against our perfect Father, then an adult child’s rebellion cannot, by itself, prove that his earthly father failed.

What the Rechabites Actually Prove

Jeremiah 35 shows that family influence can endure for generations. That is an impressive example, and parents should learn from it. However, the passage doesn’t teach that faithful parenting guarantees every descendant's continued faithfulness.

In fact, the chapter contrasts the Rechabites’ obedience to their forefather with Judah’s disobedience to God. The Rechabites obeyed Jonadab’s command, but God said to Judah, “I have spoken to you, rising early and speaking, but you did not obey Me” (Jeremiah 35:14). God repeatedly sent His prophets, yet Judah refused to listen.

Therefore, the passage shows both sides of the issue. Strong family teaching can have a lasting influence, but even those who receive God’s own instruction can choose to rebel. So, Jeremiah 35 doesn’t prove that every case of adult unfaithfulness must have been caused by defective parenting.

There is also a problem with saying parents and adult children are both “100% responsible” without defining what “responsible” means. Parents are completely responsible for fulfilling the duties God gave parents: teaching, disciplining, encouraging, modeling godliness, and bringing children up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

Adult children are responsible for their own choices. My responsibility is to fulfill my duty toward them faithfully, not to control the outcome of choices they are free to make.

Samuel Is Not Eli

The discussion of Samuel illustrates the problem well.

1 Samuel 8:3 says of Samuel's sons: “But his sons did not walk in his ways; they turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice.”

Notice the wording: they “did not walk in his ways.” The text certainly condemns the sons, but where does the text say Samuel was a “train wreck of a father”? Where does God say their greed resulted from Samuel's failure to train them?

Calling Samuel a failed father simply because his sons became corrupt assumes the very point you must prove. The reasoning becomes circular: faithful parenting must always produce faithful adult children; Samuel’s sons were unfaithful; therefore, Samuel must have parented them unfaithfully. Samuel is then used as evidence that unfaithful adult children prove unfaithful parenting. That conclusion has been added by you.

Samuel may have used poor judgment by appointing his sons as judges, but that would not prove that their greed resulted from defective childhood training. Scripture condemns what the sons became without saying Samuel caused them to become that way.

Compare Samuel with Eli. In Eli's case, God explicitly identified the father's failure. God said Eli knew what his sons were doing and “did not restrain them” (1 Samuel 3:13). When Scripture intends to blame a father for failing to deal properly with wicked sons, it can say so. So, we shouldn’t automatically apply the same judgment to Samuel when the text doesn’t.

Children Are Not Houses

The house-building comparison in your article also fails for an obvious reason. A builder exercises physical control over the structure he builds. A house has no independent will. It cannot understand the blueprint and decide to reject it. It cannot become bitter, choose sinful friends, develop unbelief, resist correction, or decide at age thirty-five that it no longer believes what its builder taught it. Children are people, not buildings. Of course, this doesn’t lessen parental responsibility.

An Outcome Does Not Prove a Guarantee

Finally, saying that some families have seen every child remain faithful doesn’t prove your conclusion. I am grateful for every family like that, and they are worthy of imitation in everything they did right, but the fact that an outcome has occurred doesn’t prove that every faithful parent possesses the power to guarantee that outcome.

“If it can be done, it should be done” is not a sufficient argument.

What must be proven: “God has made the continued lifelong faithfulness of every biological child, including independent adult children no longer under a father's household authority, an ongoing qualification for an elder.”

It is not enough to prove that parents should teach faithfully, that family influence is powerful, or that some parents fail badly. All three points are true. What must be proven is that Paul made a father’s qualification permanently dependent upon the lifelong conduct of adults he no longer governs.

Where is the passage that says that?

Questions the Lifelong Standard Must Answer

If an elder's qualification permanently depends upon every later decision of every adult child, then I have several questions:

• If a sixty-five-year-old elder has a forty-year-old son who leaves the faith, is the elder immediately disqualified?

• If that son repents two years later, does the father automatically become qualified again?

• If a child attends worship but secretly lives in sin, is the father qualified until the sin becomes public?

• If the child joins a faithful congregation in another state, who determines whether every later belief and practice is acceptable?

• How many generations are included when Deuteronomy's principle of generational faithfulness is made into an elder qualification?

These questions show the difficulty of making a man's qualification rise and fall according to the conduct of adults over whom he no longer has governing authority. Paul doesn’t describe the qualification that way.

Conclusion

1 Timothy 3 says that an elder must rule his household well. Titus 1 says that his children must be pista and not characterized by dissipation or insubordination. Those are real qualifications, and we must not weaken them. At the same time, we must not add more than God has revealed.

Parents are responsible for faithfully performing the duties God has given them, and adult children are responsible for their own choices before God. An adult child’s unfaithfulness may justify a careful investigation into the father’s example and leadership, but it doesn’t automatically prove that the father failed.

An adult child still has a father, but he also has a will, a conscience, and his own accountability before God. Holding fathers responsible for their leadership and adult children responsible for their choices takes Paul’s qualifications seriously without adding a requirement Paul never stated.