If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good! But there are preconditions: A leader must be well-thought-of, committed to his wife, cool and collected, accessible, and hospitable. He must know what he’s talking about, not be overfond of wine, not pushy but gentle, not thin-skinned, not money-hungry. He must handle his own affairs well, attentive to his own children and having their respect. For if someone is unable to handle his own affairs, how can he take care of God’s church? He must not be a new believer, lest the position go to his head and the Devil trip him up. Outsiders must think well of him, or else the Devil will figure out a way to lure him into his trap.
1 Timothy 3:1-7, The Message
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I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
Well, there goes the ministry. Who could possibly meet the standards of this list?
In the church I grew up in, this list of qualifications was taken very seriously, and it meant that women could not take any position of leadership in the church, nor could single men or men without children. Gay men, of course, were right out.
Wow, Heather. I’ve heard Timothy being used to keep women out, but I’ve never heard of it being used to say unmarried men could not be leaders of the church. That is an extremely literal reading.
“The church I grew up in” may be an overgeneralization, too… I grew up in the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, but I only became aware of this in the last congregation I was part of, because I had a friend whose wife was experiencing fertility problems, and he was frustrated that they prevented him from serving the church as he’d like. It’s possible that not all congregations interpret the passage as literally as that one did.
A few years ago I wrote a whole series on how passages like this, literally “man of one woman”, are interpreted in different countries and churches. The most relevant part is this one.