There is no Golden Corral version of an armor bearer

Today I'm starting a series on armor bearers.  I know there is great material out there about how to be an armor bearer.  Many if not most of us have read Terry Nance's Armor Bearer I and II and they are really considered to be the "Bible" of armor bearing books beside the Bible itself.  I highly recommend these two books, and one of our PPN writers, Pastor Ronnelle Thomas-Brunswick, recommends In the Spirit of Armorbearing by Earma Brown.

But not a lot if anything is written for the pastor on how to find or select an armor bearer.

I'm asked about this a lot. It seems to be a common concern among pastors and their spouses. I am a fellow traveler on this journey and have had my share of experiences good and bad. While I don't have all the answers, I do know a few things and am going to share them in the next few posts here on PPN. I've invited our writers to share as well.

I began by asking each one of our writers this question: "If you had to boil it down to just ONE WORD that you need MOST from an armor bearer, if you only had to choose the MOST IMPORTANT thing - the TOP quality, what would it be?"  Here are the answers I got:

Melissa Kelly: Loyalty

Lisa Alexander: Stability

Jessica Smith: Called

Tara Sloan: Loyalty

Ronnelle Thomas-Brunswick: Consistency

Tracy Peters: Dependability

Leanne Weber: Proactive

I join Melissa and Tara in that my top quality is loyalty.

As we begin this series, one thing I want to point out is that there is no Golden Corral version of an armor bearer. What do I mean by this? At a buffet, people pick and choose what they want. You could go to Golden Corral and eat nothing but fried chicken. You could skip the steak, the potatoes, the salad, the dessert and everything else. You could just eat cheese if you wanted. Some people treat spiritual things like buffets. They pick and choose what they want. 

Some people set out to be an armor bearer and think they are going to create the role for themselves rather than follow what the Bible clearly says.

Being an armor bearer is not like being at a buffet. You don't get to pick and choose what you want.   A true armor bearer possesses all the essential biblical qualities, not just the ones they feel like having.  

A true [emphasis on true] armor bearer doesn't have the choice to decide that they are going to be proactive, but not loyal. They can't wake up and say, "well, today I really feel like being loyal but I don't know about dependable." Well, they CAN, but then they wouldn't really be an armor bearer, so what's the point of that?

Here's what some of our writers had to say in addition:

Lisa says, "I need them to be stable in the faith, stable in their emotions, stable in their personal life. No more doubleminded folk who are unstable in all of their ways."

Melissa says,  "Loyalty!!! Is is huge for me as well as Sean. Also trustworthy! Not going to spread gossip as "prayer requests".

Jessica says: "It's not enough to be trained or equipped, they need to have a connection to God and to you...in a way, called to you in the relationship. Nothing is worse than having an armor bearer who is equipped but does not click with your personality or vision."

And finally, Leanne says,  "Proactive; anticipating what needs to be done and willing to do it." 

In summary on this point, there is a checklist of the biblical qualities for an armor bearer. Most of us pastors are aware of those qualities. (And if you aren't I highly recommend Nance's book which covers them all extensively out of both the Old/New Testaments.)

Our problem comes in that we often bring people alongside us who only possess the qualities of their choice. We take someone who doesn't agree with all of the standards of biblical armor bearing  because we don't know what else to do.

When someone says, "I'll give you steak, cheese and dessert, but not potatoes..." we go, "okay, well I guess steak, cheese, and dessert it is..."

I probably don't have to tell any of you reading this what comes next when we do that. If you have been in ministry any length of time you know exactly where that ends up.

I have some thoughts on that to share in the next post.