Fat Pastors Are Disqualified: Gluttony and the Qualifications for Pastoral Office

As Disqualified as Anyone

If you are a pastor and you are fat, you are disqualified. You are as disqualified as a gay woman wearing a Catholic priest’s collar. That sounds outrageous. Yet the same churches that would never ordain her have ordained you. Many of these pastors are a hundred pounds overweight. Some of them are on their second wife. They stand in the pulpit and point at women who want to preach. They point at gay men who want to be ordained. They do it with a Bible open to 1 Timothy 3. None of them seems to notice that the same chapter is pointing back at him. Jesus had a name for this. He called it straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (Matt 23:24). The gnat is a verse the church argues about. The camel is a sin the church has stopped seeing. I do not write this to excuse anyone. The woman, the gay man, the divorced man, and the glutton must all answer to the same text. My complaint is that only some of them are asked to.

The Gnat

The church has built a great deal on very little. The case against women pastors rests largely on 1 Timothy 2:12: διδάσκειν δὲ γυναικὶ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπω, οὐδὲ αὐθεντεῖν ἀνδρός, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.”¹ The key verb is αὐθεντεῖν. It occurs once in the entire New Testament. Scholars still disagree about exactly what it means. On that one verb, whole denominations have written their laws. The Code of Canon Law says, “A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly.”² The Baptist Faith and Message of 2000 says that “the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”³ In June 2023 the Southern Baptist Convention voted Saddleback Church out of its fellowship for having women pastors. The vote was 9,432 to 1,212.⁴ For forty years the United Methodist Church barred “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from ordination. It did so because its ministers were “required to maintain the highest standards of holy living in the world.”⁵ I am not arguing here about whether any of those rulings was right. I am pointing out that the church knows how to enforce a qualification when it wants to. It will count votes to the last ballot. It will remove a congregation of thousands. It will do all this over one rare verb.

The Camel

The church does not enforce the rest of the chapter. In 1 Timothy 3:2–3 Paul says the overseer must be νηφάλιον, σώφρονα, κόσμιον, φιλόξενον, διδακτικόν, μὴ πάροινον. That is “temperate, self-controlled, orderly, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine.” In Titus 1:8 he adds ἐγκρατῆ, “self-controlled.” These are not rare words. The family of words for sobriety, self-control, and a sound mind appears more than thirty times in the New Testament. Paul uses them for overseers. He uses them for deacons. He uses them for older men, for the training of younger women, and for younger men (Titus 2:2–6). Peter uses them three times in one short letter (1 Pet 1:13; 4:7; 5:8). Self-control is listed as fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:23). It is a rung on Peter’s ladder of growth (2 Pet 1:6). It is the virtue Paul preached to Felix until Felix grew afraid (Acts 24:25). Against this weight of evidence the church has written nothing. I could not find a single major denomination whose ordination standards mention gluttony. The closest is one Methodist sentence asking candidates for “responsible self-control by personal habits conducive to bodily health.”⁶ That is the whole of it. The gnat gets a convention vote. The camel gets a potluck on Wednesday night.

The numbers show what this neglect has produced. Researchers at Duke surveyed every active United Methodist pastor in North Carolina. Ninety-five percent of them answered. Among pastors aged thirty-five to sixty-four, the obesity rate was 39.7 percent. That was 10.3 points higher than other North Carolinians.⁷ The pastors also reported more diabetes, more high blood pressure, and more angina. A follow-up study in 2024 found that nothing had changed. Severe obesity among these pastors stood at 9.7 percent. In the general population of the state it was 5.5 percent.⁸ These studies cover one denomination in one state. I will not pretend they measure every pulpit in America. But they do not describe a rare problem. They describe pastors who are heavier than the people they serve. They describe men who preach self-control and do not practice it at the table. Their congregations can see it every Sunday. So can their neighbors.

What the Words Mean

The list begins with δεῖ οὖν τὸν ἐπίσκοπον ἀνεπίλημπτον εἶναι. “Therefore the overseer must be above reproach.” The verb δεῖ means “must.” It is not a suggestion. Paul uses the same verb when he says Christ must reign until every enemy is under his feet (1 Cor 15:25). The word ἀνεπίλημπτος means “not able to be taken hold of.” A man above reproach gives no one a handle to grab. Everything that follows in the list explains what that looks like. John Chrysostom preached on this verse late in the fourth century. He said, “Every virtue is implied in this word.” Then he drew a hard conclusion. A man aware of his own sin “does not well to desire an office for which his own actions have disqualified him. For such an one ought to be ruled, and not to rule others.”⁹ It is his own actions that disqualify him. Paul also says the overseer must be well thought of by outsiders (1 Tim 3:7). Outsiders notice a glutton. They notice him faster than they notice anything else about him. A body that announces an appetite out of control is exactly the handle ἀνεπίλημπτος forbids.

The next word is νηφάλιος. It began as a word for abstaining from wine. In time it came to mean clear-headed and alert. Peter uses the verb that way: νήψατε, γρηγορήσατε, “be sober, be watchful,” because the devil prowls like a lion looking for someone to devour (1 Pet 5:8). Chrysostom said the word describes a man “having a thousand eyes about him.” He meant a man whose mind is not dimmed.¹⁰ A man who is dull and heavy after every meal does not fit that description. Then comes μὴ πάροινον. The word means “not beside the wine.” It describes the man who lingers over his cup. On this word the church is strict. It does not ordain drunkards. It removes pastors who become drunkards. Many churches ask their pastors not to drink at all. All of that strictness rests on two words. Yet Scripture never treats wine as the only appetite that can master a man. The law and the wisdom of Israel join the drunkard to the glutton again and again. If μὴ πάροινον disqualifies the man ruled by the bottle, the same principle disqualifies the man ruled by the plate. The list is about mastery. It is not about the beverage.

The words σώφρων and ἐγκρατής make the point without mentioning wine at all. Σώφρων describes a sound and governed mind. Titus 2:12 says the grace of God is παιδεύουσα ἡμᾶς, “training us,” ἵνα ἀρνησάμενοι τὴν ἀσέβειαν καὶ τὰς κοσμικὰς ἐπιθυμίας σωφρόνως καὶ δικαίως καὶ εὐσεβῶς ζήσωμεν, “so that, renouncing ungodliness and worldly desires, we might live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.” Grace does not excuse appetite. Grace trains us against it. Ἐγκρατής is the last word on Titus’s list, and it is the strongest. It is built on κράτος, the Greek word for power. The ἐγκρατής man has power over himself. William Mounce says the word “means ‘self-controlled, disciplined’ and can contain a sexual nuance.” He notes that it “was a cardinal virtue for Socrates.” He adds that its opposite, ἀκρατής, “occurs in the vice list in 2 Tim 3:3.”¹¹ That vice list describes the last days. Even the pagan philosophers expected a leader to master himself. Paul did not lower their standard. He gave it a better foundation. A pastor who cannot refuse a second plate cannot truthfully call himself ἐγκρατής. He may be gifted. He may be loved. He is not qualified.

Paul Feared It for Himself

Paul applied this standard to himself first and foremost. In 1 Corinthians 9:25 he writes, πᾶς δὲ ὁ ἀγωνιζόμενος πάντα ἐγκρατεύεται. “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.” The object is πάντα, all things. It is not only the sins our culture dislikes. Then he turns the image on himself in verse 27: ἀλλὰ ὑπωπιάζω μου τὸ σῶμα καὶ δουλαγωγῶ, μή πως ἄλλοις κηρύξας αὐτὸς ἀδόκιμος γένωμαι. “But I strike my body under the eye and lead it as a slave, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” The verb ὑπωπιάζω comes from boxing. It means to give someone a black eye. The verb δουλαγωγῶ means to lead someone away as a slave. Paul’s body was not his master. It was his prisoner. The word ἀδόκιμος means tested and rejected. A coin that failed the test was ἀδόκιμος. So was a candidate who failed his examination. And Paul says whose failure he feared. It was the failure of the man who had preached to others. That is the pastor exactly. He warns his people against lust and greed from a body that shows he has not mastered his own appetite. Paul wrote the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3. He believed he could fail them himself. A pastor who thinks he cannot has a higher opinion of himself than Paul had of himself.

Glutton and Drunkard

The Hebrew Bible put the glutton and the drunkard side by side long before Paul mentioned it in the New Testament. In the law of the rebellious son, the parents bring him to the elders of the city. They say: בְּנֵ֤נוּ זֶה֙ סוֹרֵ֣ר וּמֹרֶ֔ה אֵינֶ֥נּוּ שֹׁמֵ֖עַ בְּקֹלֵ֑נוּ זוֹלֵ֖ל וְסֹבֵֽא. “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard” (Deut 21:20). The glutton comes first. The law did not treat this as a private weakness. It treated it as public evidence of a rebellious heart. Proverbs gives the same warning: אַל־תְּהִ֥י בְסֹֽבְאֵי־יָ֑יִן בְּזֹלֲלֵ֖י בָשָׂ֣ר לָֽמוֹ׃ כִּי־סֹבֵ֣א וְ֭זוֹלֵל יִוָּרֵ֑שׁ. “Do not be among drunkards of wine or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty” (Prov 23:20–21). Earlier in the same chapter is a startling command. A man seated at a ruler’s table is told: וְשַׂמְתָּ֣ שַׂכִּ֣ין בְּלֹעֶ֑ךָ אִם־בַּ֖עַל נֶ֣פֶשׁ אָֽתָּה. “Put a knife to your throat if you are a man of appetite” (23:2). The Hebrew calls him בַּעַל נֶפֶשׁ, an owner of appetite. More truly, his appetite owns him. Proverbs 25:28 gives a picture of such a man: עִ֣יר פְּ֭רוּצָה אֵ֣ין חוֹמָ֑ה אִ֝֗ישׁ אֲשֶׁ֤ר אֵ֖ין מַעְצָ֣ר לְרוּחֽוֹ. “A city broken through, without a wall, is a man without restraint over his spirit.” A pastor is a watchman on the wall. If his own wall is broken, he cannot guard anyone. By the time of Jesus the pairing was a common insult. His enemies called him ἄνθρωπος φάγος καὶ οἰνοπότης, “a glutton and a drunkard” (Luke 7:34). The charge was false. But it tells us how serious the charge was. His hearers thought gluttony as damning as drunkenness. We have learned to think it harmless.

Whose God Is the Belly

Paul’s sharpest words about appetite are in Philippians 3. He writes them with tears. He speaks of the enemies of the cross of Christ: ὧν τὸ τέλος ἀπώλεια, ὧν ὁ θεὸς ἡ κοιλία. “Their end is destruction. Their god is the belly” (Phil 3:19). In Romans he warns against men who do not serve Christ ἀλλὰ τῇ ἑαυτῶν κοιλίᾳ, “but their own belly” (Rom 16:18). In both places Paul is describing false teachers. He is not saying that every heavy believer is an enemy of the cross. He is saying that the belly can become a god. He is saying that a teacher who serves it cannot serve Christ. In 1 Corinthians 6:13 he quotes a slogan: τὰ βρώματα τῇ κοιλίᾳ, καὶ ἡ κοιλία τοῖς βρώμασιν, “food for the belly and the belly for food.” In the very next breath he answers it with sex: τὸ δὲ σῶμα οὐ τῇ πορνείᾳ ἀλλὰ τῷ κυρίῳ, “but the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.” The Corinthians used the same excuse for both appetites. Paul refused it for both. He ends the chapter with the reason. The body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, so δοξάσατε δὴ τὸν θεὸν ἐν τῷ σώματι ὑμῶν, “glorify God in your body” (6:19–20). Clement of Alexandria taught new Christians in Egypt around AD 200. He wrote, “Some men, in truth, live that they may eat, as the irrational creatures, whose life is their belly, and nothing else. But the Instructor enjoins us to eat that we may live.”¹² He defined the Greek word for gluttony, γαστριμαργία, as “insanity in reference to the belly.”¹³ He described men “fattening themselves like cattle, to feed themselves up for death.”¹⁴ Clement was not writing to monks. He was writing to ordinary believers. He expected more of them than we expect of our pastors.

The Door to Every Other Sin

The early church believed that gluttony never stays at the table. John Cassian wrote his Institutes for the monks of Gaul around 420. He listed the eight chief sins in order: “first, Gluttony or the pleasures of the palate; secondly, Fornication.”¹⁵ The order was deliberate. Cassian said the first battle a Christian must fight is against gluttony. He gave the reason: “He then will never be able to check the motions of a burning lust, who cannot restrain the desires of the appetite.”¹⁶ He asked it again as a question: “For if a man is unable to check the unnecessary desires of the appetite how will he be able to extinguish the fire of carnal lust?”¹⁷ He even said that the sin of Sodom began at the table: “The cause of the overthrow and wantonness of Sodom was not drunkenness through wine, but fullness of bread.”¹⁸ Gregory the Great said the same thing two centuries later. “While the belly is not restrained,” he wrote, “all their virtues are overwhelmed at once by the lust of the flesh.”¹⁹ He named the children of gluttony: “foolish mirth, scurrility, uncleanness, babbling, dulness of sense in understanding.”²⁰ Thomas Aquinas took Gregory’s list into his Summa. He explained that the “uncleanness” born of gluttony refers “especially to the emission of the semen.”²¹ These men were not guessing. They were reporting what a thousand years of pastoral care had taught the church. I will not claim to know the private sins of any particular pastor. No one can know that about another man. But the fathers make a claim that should frighten us. An appetite a man never learned to refuse at the table is an appetite he never learned to refuse anywhere. The pastor who cannot govern his fork should not be surprised when he cannot govern his eyes.

The Excuses

The first excuse is medical, and part of it is true. Weight is not always about appetite. The National Institutes of Health list medicines that can cause weight gain. They include “some medicines used to treat epilepsy, depression, or psychotic disorders” and steroids. They also list conditions “such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), Cushing’s syndrome, and hypothyroidism.”²² A man whose thyroid has failed has not sinned by gaining weight. Neither has a man whose medicine added forty pounds. The list in 1 Timothy never mentions a scale. It mentions self-control. Gregory the Great saw this fourteen centuries ago: “For it is not the food, but the desire that is in fault.”²³ He named five ways the desire shows itself. It eats too soon. It wants finer food. It demands careful preparation. It eats too much. It eats too eagerly.²⁴ Any pastor can test himself by those five without stepping on a scale. A man with a real medical condition should be able to show his elders a doctor’s report. They should believe him. But the exception belongs to the men who have it. It does not explain why pastors outweigh their own congregations in such great numbers. Thyroid disease does not cluster in pulpits.

The second excuse quotes Paul: ἡ γὰρ σωματικὴ γυμνασία πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶν ὠφέλιμος, “for bodily training is of some value” (1 Tim 4:8). Some read this to mean the body does not matter. It says the opposite. Bodily training has value. Godliness has more. In the verse before, Paul uses the athlete’s word for godliness itself: γύμναζε δὲ σεαυτὸν πρὸς εὐσέβειαν, “train yourself for godliness” (4:7). Gluttony is not a failure to go to the gym. It is a failure of restraint, and restraint is part of godliness. The third excuse quotes 1 Samuel 16:7, where God looks on the heart and not the outward appearance. That verse is about Eliab’s height. No man chooses his height. The qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 are almost entirely things people can see. Is he faithful to his wife? Is he hospitable? Does he drink? Is he violent? Does he manage his home well? Jesus told the crowd to “judge with right judgment” (John 7:24). The fourth excuse points out that Jesus himself was called a glutton (Luke 7:34). He was, and the charge was false, and his life disproved it. A pastor who borrows that verse is claiming that the evidence against him is slander. He had better be sure it is.

The last excuse names the great preachers of the past. Some of them were large men with fruitful ministries. I will not sit in judgment on the dead. I do not know their health or their hearts. But the principle can be stated without names. A man can teach true things and still be disqualified from the office. The truth he taught remains true. Jesus said of the scribes and Pharisees who sat on Moses’ seat, “do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do” (Matt 23:3). Paul rejoiced when Christ was preached, even by men who preached from envy (Phil 1:15–18). God spoke through Balaam, and Balaam died among Israel’s enemies (Num 31:8). So the truth of a sermon does not depend on the preacher. The qualification of the preacher does. Those are two separate questions. The church has confused them. It assumes that a fruitful ministry proves a qualified minister. Paul did not assume that. He feared becoming ἀδόκιμος after preaching to others. He would have had nothing to fear if fruitful preaching made a man safe.

Qualified Again

Disqualified does not mean damned. It does not mean forever. The list is written in the present tense: δεῖ οὖν τὸν ἐπίσκοπον ἀνεπίλημπτον εἶναι, “the overseer must be above reproach.” It describes the man as he is now. A man who is not ἐγκρατής today can become ἐγκρατής. Self-control is fruit of the Spirit. That means willpower alone will not produce it. It also means the Spirit will. The grace of God is still παιδεύουσα, still training us to say no (Titus 2:12). Paul’s remedy is in 1 Corinthians 9. He struck his body and led it as a slave. Those verbs are in the present tense. They describe a daily practice, not a single resolution. Jesus assumed his followers would fast. He said Ὅταν δὲ νηστεύητε, “whenever you fast” (Matt 6:16). A pastor who has never fasted has never told his belly who is in charge. Gregory’s five tests can be applied at every meal. A pastor who fails them should tell his elders. Elders who love him should hold him to it. A congregation that loves him should stop rewarding his appetite and start helping him master it. Some pastors will need to step out of the pulpit while they do. We would ask the same of a pastor who confessed a drinking problem. We would honor him for doing it. A man who masters his appetite will preach on self-control with a credibility no sermon can supply.

Notes

1. Greek text throughout is from The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition, ed. Michael W. Holmes (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010); Hebrew text is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Translations are my own. ↩
2. Code of Canon Law (1983), can. 1024. ↩
3. The Baptist Faith and Message (2000), art. VI, as published at bfm.sbc.net (archived December 23, 2020). The current text reads “the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” ↩
4. “2023 SBC Meeting: Messengers Disfellowship Three Churches,” Baptist & Reflector, June 14, 2023, https://baptistandreflector.org/2023-sbc-meeting-messengers-disfellowship-three-churches/. ↩
5. The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, ¶304.3, as quoted in Judicial Council Decision 1341 (2017). The General Conference removed the ban in May 2024: Heather Hahn, “40-Year Ban on Gay Clergy Struck Down,” UM News, May 1, 2024. ↩
6. The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church, ¶304.2. ↩
7. Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell and Sara H. LeGrand, “High Rates of Obesity and Chronic Disease among United Methodist Clergy,” Obesity 18, no. 9 (2010): 1867–70. ↩
8. B. J. Lee et al., “High Rates of Obesity and Chronic Diseases among North Carolina United Methodist Clergy: An Updated Analysis,” North Carolina Medical Journal 85, no. 6 (2024): 446–53. ↩
9. John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Timothy 10, ed. Philip Schaff (NPNF¹ 13). ↩
10. Chrysostom, Homilies on First Timothy 10. ↩
11. William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, WBC 46 (Dallas: Word, 2000), 391. ↩
12. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 2.1, trans. William Wilson (ANF 2). ↩
13. Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 2.1. ↩
14. Clement of Alexandria, Instructor 2.1. ↩
15. John Cassian, Institutes 5.1, trans. Edgar C. S. Gibson (NPNF² 11). ↩
16. Cassian, Institutes 5.11. ↩
17. Cassian, Institutes 5.20. ↩
18. Cassian, Institutes 5.6; compare Ezek 16:49. ↩
19. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job 30.18.59, Library of the Fathers (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844–50). ↩
20. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job 31.45.88. ↩
21. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 148, a. 6. ↩
22. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, “Factors Affecting Weight & Health,” last reviewed May 2023, https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-management/adult-overweight-obesity/factors-affecting-weight-health. ↩
23. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job 30.18.60. ↩
24. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job 30.18.60; compare Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 148, a. 4. ↩