Not long ago, I sat in a room full of men who made me feel small. They were Marines, firefighters, police officers, and other men who had lived hard lives and carried themselves with a kind of strength I have never possessed. They were muscular, tattooed, experienced, and confident. By the world’s standards, they looked like real men.
I don’t hunt. I don’t fish. I don’t chew tobacco. I don’t have a commanding presence. I am not the guy who walks into a room and immediately makes everyone turn their head. No, people don’t even know I arrived.
For four or five months, I had simply been around these men. I spoke when I was asked to speak. I prayed when I was asked to pray. I encouraged them when I could. I listened. I cared. I invited others to join them. I kept telling them that God could help them.
Eventually, I volunteered to teach.
My passage was 1 Timothy 3:1–7. I wanted to talk about what makes a godly man. Paul’s qualifications for an overseer describe the kind of character every Christian man should pursue. Self-controlled. Respectable. Hospitable. Gentle. Faithful at home. Mature. Above reproach.
As I looked around the room, one thought kept running through my mind: These guys think I’m a joke.
I felt intimidated, and I assumed it showed. I stumbled through thoughts that seemed clearer in my head than they sounded coming out of my mouth. I felt like I lacked the presence to command the room and the words to persuade the men in it.
Then the meeting ended.
Several of those men came to me afterward and told me the teaching had changed the way they thought about being a man. Some asked if I would disciple them. Some of them are still in my life today. They call me. They invite me to speak. They meet with me. They keep hanging around.
I walked away surprised and humbled. Honestly.
Apparently, God had been doing something in the room that I could not see while I was standing in front of it.
His Speech Is of No Account
I know the feeling of being unimpressive. When I try to speak, my vocabulary sometimes feels like it stopped developing somewhere around middle school. Thoughts that seemed available a moment ago start running from me. I chase them down while everyone else waits for me to finish the sentence.
I envy pastors who seem to find the right words immediately. They are concise. Memorable. Forceful. They say in one sentence what takes me a paragraph to explain. They can sit in a leadership meeting, process a complicated issue, and respond with something clear and persuasive.
I often leave those same meetings replaying everything I said. Did that make sense? Was I confusing? Why did I take so long to get there?
I can walk away from a sermon or counseling conversation convinced that I fumbled and mumbled my way through it. At times I feel unequipped, unlearned, unpersuasive, and boring. Moses’ protest feels familiar: “I am slow of speech and of tongue.”
That is one reason a criticism of Paul has always caught my attention. Some of his opponents said, “His bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (2 Corinthians 10:10).
No presence. No speech. I know something about feeling that way.
Paul was capable of deep reasoning, powerful writing, and bold proclamation. Still, there were people who encountered him in person and walked away unimpressed. Apparently, apostolic ministry did not always look impressive standing in front of the room.
That has become strangely comforting to me.
The pressure on a church planter can make this insecurity worse. You compare yourself to established pastors around you. Their churches are larger. Their sermons are polished. Their leadership seems effortless. They know how to work a room. They seem to have the charisma, vocabulary, confidence, and quick thinking you wish you had.
Then you start believing that the church needs a more impressive version of you. That is an exhausting person to become.
What Kind of Men We Proved to Be
Paul gave the Thessalonians another way to evaluate ministry. He reminded them that the gospel came to them “in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction,” and then added, “You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake” (1 Thessalonians 1:5). That last sentence keeps getting my attention.
You know what kind of men we proved to be.
When Paul defended his ministry in the next chapter, he kept pointing back to the life they had seen. He spoke about pure motives. He refused flattery and greed. He did not seek glory from people. He described himself as gentle among them, like a nursing mother caring for her children. He reminded them of his affection, his labor, and his desire to share his own life with them. He appealed to the holiness, righteousness, and blamelessness of his conduct. Then he described the fatherly way he exhorted, encouraged, and charged them to walk worthy of God.
Paul’s words had a life standing behind them. That life gave them weight.
Long before I became a pastor, I made 1 Timothy 3:1–7 a personal pursuit. I wanted to be that kind of man regardless of how the Lord eventually used me. I studied those qualities. I prayed over them. I formed habits around them. I confessed sin. I served people. I tried to become a man whose life would agree with the gospel he professed.
Over time, that pursuit shaped the way I lead.
I invite people into my life. I join them in theirs. I try to be patient while they grow. I forgive. I show mercy. I help people become leaders. I find joy in guiding them toward greater godliness. My family serves alongside me. People come into our home. They see our affection for one another. They see our weaknesses too. They get close enough to find out whether the man speaking on Sunday resembles the man sitting at the dinner table.
Many people will lean into your life before they ever lean into your words.
People have told me that my teaching is simple and easy to understand. They tell me they lean in when I speak. That still surprises me because I rarely feel that way while I am speaking.
Yet many of those same people leaned into my life before they leaned into my words. They tell me they see tenderness. Transparency. Affection. Sincerity. They tell me our home feels peaceful. They say something about it feels real and right and godly. I still cannot fully explain what they see. I believe the Holy Spirit is at work.
I have also learned something about leadership through it. My character often speaks better than my mouth.
Adorning the Gospel
Paul makes this connection explicit in Titus. Titus was responsible for helping establish healthy churches in Crete, and Paul immediately made character central to leadership. Elders were to be above reproach, faithful at home, self-controlled, disciplined, upright, holy, and devoted to what is good (Titus 1:5–9).
Then Paul widened the call beyond elders. Older men, older women, younger women, younger men, and servants were all to live in ways that matched sound doctrine. To Titus himself, Paul said, “Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works” (Titus 2:7). Later, he described faithful conduct as something that would “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior” (Titus 2:10).
I love that image.
A godly life adorns the gospel. It puts the transforming power of Christ on display. It gives people something they can see alongside what they hear.
Faithful Christians do this for me. I am especially encouraged by people who struggle, stumble, repent, and remain at the foot of the cross. Their lives remind me that the gospel is real. Their character anchors gospel truth for me because I can see what grace has done to them. That kind of persuasion reaches deeper than polished speech.
A godly life puts the transforming power of Christ on display.
Church planters need to remember this because the pressure to be impressive is real. We want people to like us. We look around at established pastors and compare ourselves. We imagine that people need us to be unusually gifted, endlessly confident, charismatic, polished, and quick on our feet. Trying to sustain that version of yourself will wear you out.
Eventually, your life has to support your words. If character begins contradicting the message, leadership becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Promises become easier to make than to keep. You begin managing appearances. You can become two-faced. At its worst, the pressure to look impressive can tempt a leader toward dishonesty.
God gives us a better pursuit.
Be godly.
Keep growing in skill. Study harder. Work on your preaching. Learn to communicate more clearly. Ask good leaders to help you improve. Steward every gift God has given you as faithfully as you can.
Give even greater attention to the kind of person you are becoming.
Become Useful
Paul told Timothy that the cleansed vessel would become “a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work” (2 Timothy 2:21).
Useful to the Master. That is what I want.
I may never become the communicator I imagine when I listen to certain preachers. I may always need extra time to find the right words. I may always need to tell someone, “Let me think about that before I answer.” I may need to bring someone into the room who thinks faster than I do. I may leave important conversations wondering whether I communicated any of it well.
I can be honest about those weaknesses. I can lean into them. God can deal with a lisp. He can deal with a stutter. He can deal with a lost train of thought. He can deal with an unimpressive personality and a sentence that took too long to finish.
Scripture repeatedly asks leaders for godliness. That is something I can pursue.
I can keep my word. I can confess my sin. I can love my wife and children. I can practice hospitality. I can serve without needing to be the hero. I can be gentle. I can be patient. I can care sincerely for people. I can remain close to Christ. I can let the gospel keep transforming me into the kind of man whose life makes the message more believable. And then I can trust God with the rest.
Looking back on that room full of men, I realize they had been watching me for months before I ever taught them. They had seen me sitting quietly. They had watched me pray when asked, speak when invited, encourage when needed, and care without trying to take over.
I thought the lesson would rise or fall on my ability to speak. But God had already been speaking through a life. That gives me relief when I think about church planting.
You do not have to become someone else to be faithful in the work God has given you. If God has placed you in this ministry, He already knows your limitations. Your simplicity does not surprise Him. Your weakness is not hidden from Him. You can accept it, keep growing, and keep laboring.
Press on. Preach the sermon. Have the conversation. Sit in the meeting. Open your home. Love the people. Pursue godliness. Keep becoming useful to the Master.
You may walk away from the room convinced that you dropped the ball. You may replay your words and hear every place where you wish you had been clearer. You may never feel as polished as the pastor down the road. Keep going.
God is bigger than your fumble.
And sometimes, while you are worrying about everything you failed to say, He is using the life behind your words to say far more than you realize.