The Character of a Bishop

The Character of a Bishop
1Timothy 3.1-7

A friend gave me a lift in the car the other night. He’s a politician and has been a member of parliament for 25 years. But now he’s decided to run for a new kind of public office: he’s hoping to be a candidate to be Mayor of London.

‘Suddenly,’ he said to me, ‘the party managers started asking me all kinds of questions about my private life. They never asked me questions like that when I wanted to be an MP. But if you’re going to stand for a major position in the public eye they need to know that there’s nothing which could bring the party into disrepute.’ Not that his party is conservative in its attitude to personal morality; rather the opposite (though he himself is a lifelong practising Christian). But they know, as everyone in public life knows, that the higher you go up in an organization the more the world outside looks at you – at your personal character, your lifestyle, your family life – and will judge the organization itself by what they see of you...