Summary: What are some considerations for succession?

1. Choose successors based on their faith(fulness) and reverence, rather than their gifts (Neh 7:2; 2 Tim 2:2).
2. Guide our successors, as how Paul guided Timothy as his own son.
3. If we are asked to take up a work, be faithful, humble and willing to learn, even if we are unskilled in it.

Work has to be passed down from generation to generation because all of us will one day grow old and leave the world. However, work cannot stop because of age or other limitations. That’s why we must have the concept that work must be passed down. The Bible also contains such a concept - priests and Levites had to come out to work at 25 years old and retire at 50.

Num 8:24-26
“This is what pertains to the Levites: From twenty-five years old and above one may enter to perform service in the work of the tabernacle of meeting; and at the age of fifty years they must cease performing this work, and shall work no more. They may minister with their brethren in the tabernacle of meeting, to attend to needs, but they themselves shall do no work. Thus you shall do to the Levites regarding their duties.”

Why was this age restriction imposed on them? Because the Levites had temple duties which involved making sacrifices to God daily - once in the morning, afternoon and night. If it was the whole country needing them to make sacrifices on their behalf, they would have to kill many many bulls and rams. Further, they also had to go within the tabernacle to perform other duties. Their work wasn’t easy.

David put Asaph in charge of the hymn singing ministry. They sang 24h a day; while they sang on a rotational basis, there was always someone singing at any point of time in the day. Therefore, if we were to consider their work, even though they didn’t work in the fields, they were very busy. We need to understand that their strength may not have been enough after a certain age. That’s why God told them to step down after 50. This doesn’t mean no one does the work anymore, rather, the work is passed down. This is hence the recording of succession in the Bible; the Bible speaks of the concept of retirement.

The System of Retirement and Succession

These two things must hence happen in the church: (1) a system of retirement, (2) a system of succession. Some people say they just want to continue working without retiring. Of course if our bodies hold up, we can continue to do so. But we know our bodies cannot hold up forever. We hence need a system of retirement in place. This then necessitates a system of succession for people to step up to take up the work.

There are specific areas of church works where retirement is necessary. For example, there’s a system in place in church for preachers and full time administrative staff to retire by 65. After 65, the church may make post-retirement arrangements for them to continue working. There is a system. But for most other church work, there is no system in place. There’s no system of retirement for say AVA or RE teaching. When there’s no such system in place, people retire as and when they wish. When they want to retire, they have to think about how to pass their work on. Sometimes the passing down is not done so well. This is perhaps because we want to retire just one month later and there is insufficient time to train the next person to pass the work down to. Without a system in place, the process of passing on God’s work is not done so well.

Not all church work needs to be associated with retirement. For example, how do you determine the age RE teachers should retire? There are many different works where it’s difficult to decide on a retirement age. The passing on of the baton/succession is hence not done very well.

The speaker doesn’t mean to say we should decide on a retirement age for every church work. Instead, since we don’t know what age we’re going to retire, we should do the work of succession and passing down NOW. When we start the work of succession early, then when we retire, we know there’s someone sufficiently trained to take over.

When the Levites and priests were given an age to retire, God fixed this age due to the physical constraints of men. This means when we are doing a church work, we should be responsible in our duties and not cease in doing them until there is a valid reason for us to stop the work; we should work until we are sure we have reached a certain limitation where we know it is time to retire. Just because we see our predecessors doing it doesn’t mean it’s ideal for us to do likewise. For example, the service of hymn leading tends to be taken up by younger youths nowadays. But have we considered the fact that the younger youths may not be so spiritually stable or mature and yet are asked to lead the entire congregation in singing. The congregation consists of elderly too. When a younger youth shares his/her experience in school during hymn leading, it may not be sufficient to meet the spiritual needs of the older members. This mismatch happens because older ones say that since they are older now, they should step down and let the younger youths take on this service. They don’t realise the younger youths lack experience. We also have to consider that younger youths may share very well but only do so in English. As a result, members (usually of the older generation) only able to understand Chinese won’t understand what is being shared. This happens because those who are older are too eager to pass down their work to younger youths. They consider their needs but the overall needs of the church is not considered. When performing the work of succession, it is important to consider the needs of the church. Don’t just pass the work down for the sake of succession.

In the church, there is hence the process of retirement and succession.

Who to pass the work down to? Someone FAITHFUL

Who do we pass the work down to? It has to be done based on the standard of faith, not on a person’s capabilities and talents. Capabilities and talents are a consideration, but they shouldn’t be the main factor. We cannot say: “This person is very talented in this area, so let’s put him down for duty.” He may not have the right heart or faith!

For example, just because a person is eloquent doesn’t mean he should be put down to speak sermons. He doesn’t come for services regularly! People may argue the person speaks very well outside and so he should still be scheduled. But that’s not right because he doesn’t have the required faith. How can we put him down for sermon speaking?

Not all church work requires a certain degree of faith. For example, for the work of sweeping, we don’t look at the level of faith. If a person is capable of sweeping, hasn’t committed mortal sin, isn’t apostate, hasn’t opposed the church in any way, then him taking up this work won’t be opposed. There are some areas in church where we can take up the work without considering the level of faith. But we would usually determine suitability to take up the work based on a person’s level of faith.

Neh 7:2
“that I gave the charge of Jerusalem to my brother Hanani, and Hananiah the leader of the citadel, for he was a faithful man and feared God more than many.”

Nehemiah chose his workers. Hananiah was chosen to take charge of Jerusalem. Why? Because he was a faithful man who feared God more than many. We can take this to be one of the criteria while doing the work of succession. A person you choose to succeed the work should be faithful and also display a heart of reverence. Then when the work is passed on to him, he’ll be able to do the work effectively because God is with him.

Paul also talked about this concept.
2 Tim 2:2
“And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

Paul said, “Commit the things heard from me to faithful men able to teach others also.” It’s because they’re faithful that they’re able to teach others. When working and thinking about passing on the work, this is an area of due consideration.

What does it mean to be faithful? We know a person is faithful because he does his work not for personal glory. Some people accept work in church because they would gain recognition in church. In this case, that person would be working for himself and not for God. That’s not the mark of a faithful servant. If someone works for himself and not God, we may get the case where they give up halfway when things get difficult - we don’t want that. While doing work in church, we will face difficulties along the way. Some difficulties are not that large but some are really major and serious. For example, when people criticise us for our work or speak behind our backs. These things impact a worker greatly but will we give up our work because of that? If we’re faithful and understand what we’re doing is for God, we won’t give up so easily. We will instead ask God for strength to accomplish these things. We have to be fully invested in our work. When we are assigned work in church, we do the best we can and go all out/are all in.

Regarding the parable of the talents in Matt 25, the servant given 1 talent didn’t do any work with his talent. Jesus called him a wicked and lazy servant. He was given work to do but didn’t perform his duty. He knew his master would seek an account of what he had done, but he didn’t do his work and skived instead. This was why he was criticised to be both wicked and lazy by his master. He was an unfaithful servant.

Today we need to find a person who is faithful while working in church. While doing the work of succession, look out for people who are faithful.

There are some works where we are unable to choose our successors/where the successor is chosen for us, whereas there are some works where we are able to choose our successors. For example, consider the system of electing church leaders. Under such a system, we can’t really choose who we want to be our leaders. As a result, sometimes we see persons who aren’t fully invested in the work chosen for it. This isn’t to say the person lacks quality; he may be good on the whole, but may not be able to be fully invested in the work at that point in time. When passing on the baton, we can see whether the person we pass the work on to isn’t able to fully take it on. This may lead us to think it’s better to choose our successor on our own instead of going through an election where we may not really have a choice who ends up being our successor. Such a proposition has its merits. When we go through the process of election, the aforementioned problem may arise because not everybody has the understanding to vote for a person able to be fully invested in the work. Some members who don’t come to church often may just end up voting for a person because they know he is. “I know who this person is so I’ll just vote for him.”

In Acts 6, the 7 deacons were also chosen in such a manner. However, everyone had the understanding that they should choose the 7 deacons based on the criteria set out - people who are faithful. When we have to choose workers today, as long as everyone has the understanding that the people we should choose should be faithful, the right people will be chosen. This understanding should also be in the person who gets elected. If you know you cannot take on the duties in full, you should step down. Then even when people choose wrongly, the holes in the election are plugged. Step down and let another person be chosen so that the church is able to function smoothly. Let’s take note of this so the work of succession can be done properly.

The Two Perspectives of the Baton

1. Person PASSING ON the baton
What kind of attitude should the person passing the baton on have? What’s most important is he ensures the person receiving the baton is properly trained. A good example is how Paul trained Timothy. Paul treated Timothy as his own son! (1/2 Tim) Even though Timothy wasn’t his biological son. Paul treated Timothy as his own son in the area of church work and taught him many things. The first understanding one should have: properly teach the person who is going to take up the work. Only then will you have the heart of patience to properly guide him to take the work up. You’ll also constantly have the person by your side to take up the work. Today, we lack persons to pass on the baton; to properly train the person receiving the work. They don’t train the person enough. Sometimes when we want to pass on the work, we want to do it quickly. Consequently, the person is not well trained. We should maybe do it 3 years in advance. Then the person taking up the work can see what you’re doing and learn the ropes properly from you. Therefore, in our eagerness to pass the baton on, we shouldn’t just throw the baton at the person. We shouldn’t fling our work away.

We may say: “I didn’t just throw the baton at him, I trained him!” But the key consideration is whether we have trained the person enough; whether we spend enough time to train the person. Paul still wrote letters of instruction to Timothy up till when he was going to die! Paul brought up and taught Timothy just like a father. It was throughout his lifetime. He didn’t just throw the work at Timothy. Paul properly guided Timothy all the way, recognised the difficulties he would face, and reminded Timothy about things like not letting others despise his youth (1 Tim 4:12). But some people just throw the baton: “I’m done already. If you got any problems, you settle.” Most of us aren’t like this but we still need to take note of it.

Also note not to criticise the person who took the baton up. That’s criticising yourself. Because you’re the person who passed the baton to him. If he doesn’t do it properly, it means we didn’t teach the person properly. This is like slapping our own cheek. We shouldn’t criticise the one who took the baton from us because that’s effectively criticising ourselves.

Continually hold the hand of the other person/successor and guide him like Paul. Like how a father guides his child every step of the way. This is the attitude the person passing the baton on should have. We need to prepare ourselves sufficiently for this.

2. Person RECEIVING the baton
The attitude the person receiving the baton should have is being willing to be taught. He may think he is not suitable for the work and that the work has been forced upon him. So in the first place, the person is not willing to take the work on. We need to consider why we’re being forced to take on certain work.

Firstly, are we not a faithful person? If we bear the concept in mind that we should be choosing faithful persons to do the work; if the person passing the baton on already did his work and discussed with people to choose us to do the work, then when we say we don’t want to do it, is it because we lack faithfulness? If we really are not faithful, then yes we shouldn’t accept the baton. But if we are actually capable and faithful, then we should receive the work. With a faithful spirit, we’ll be able to do our duties properly, take the work up and do it well. Unless we have other reasons like other areas of church work we’re concentrating on; we hence turn down the new work passed down to us because we don’t want to affect it. This is something acceptable and other people can be found to take this work up. If we do not have other reasons and others deem us faithful, we should take up the work.

Another reason we may not take up the work is because while others see we are willing to do the work, we know we do not possess the gift. Then we have to make the reason for our unwillingness known to others; that we turn the work down because we feel we don’t have the gift. This is important as the gift of doing and the willingness to do the work are different things. We might be faithful in other areas of church work but if we don’t have the gift in this area, we really can’t do it. Unless the church really has no one else, then we need to take it up. We must have the attitude of willingness to take the work up. Most of us when asked to do work will think we are not capable and don’t have the gift. When work is given to us and we actually think we have the gift to do it, we need to examine ourselves a second time to see if we have the right heart and faithfulness to do the work. Don’t think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think. Instead, do our duties faithfully and in humility. This is the attitude a person receiving the baton should have.

Both the person handing the baton down and receiving the baton have the mindset that this is doing God’s work. Whichever party we are, always consider God and the church in what we do. Then we will know how to pass on the baton and receive the baton given to us. Jesus will see what we’re doing and bless us accordingly.

May God guide us, especially for those at the age who are going to take up the baton. Prepare ourselves to be faithful in the little things. So that the church will recognise you are faithful in the little things and entrust you with the big things.

Prepare yourself to take the baton up. Singapore is blessed because we have many people. Unlike in Myanmar where there’s no generation to pass the work down to. There are at most 3 persons to take the work up. But they aren’t sufficiently zealous or faithful. If they were to be asked to give up everything to serve in church full time, none would be willing. It’s a lot less ideal compared to Singapore. Singapore is truly blessed. We have a lot of youths. But if we have many youths but not many take up the baton, it’ll be a tragedy, especially in the areas that are more critical— in the ministering of the word. This is in comparison to other works like AVA; even without it we can still evangelise. If there’s no one amongst the youths who can take up the work of ministering the word, then even with so many youths, the ministering of the word will not be done. At present, thank God we still have youths who will take it up. But 10 years down the road is worrying. They are disconnected from the church. It’s difficult to rejoin them back to the church. This is the work we, 20-30+ year olds, have to do. Those above 40 will continue to serve in the areas they can, but those in the 20-30s need to work on reconnecting would-be-youths-in-10-years back to the church. Otherwise we don’t know how the church work is going to continue. We really have to put in effort to join the next generation of youths back to the church. Let’s specially remember the next generation of youths in prayers. We hope and pray that within the church there’ll always be a next generation to take over the work.