Don,
In your #1, the “word” is indeed referring to a saying and not Jesus. The reasons are clear from the text itself. While Jesus is called the “Word”, in Timothy 3:1 there is no sense that Jesus is being referred to.

(Darby) The word is faithful: if any one aspires to exercise oversight, he desires a good work.

What has the faithfulness of Jesus got to do with anyone aspiring to exercise oversight? It would be a disjunction to attach the two statements. However there is no disjunction at all to have a faithful saying attached to the saying that anyone can desire to be an overseer. Any play on words must match the context and the context does not match in this case.

2 IF there are churches who exclude all I put in the box then at least they are being consistent. The fact is that the modern church of today is not consistent and this is what I was addressing.

3 Your point doesn’t make sense to me. If there had to be twelve, then when James died he should also have been replaced. I think it would be better to say that the twelve were sovereignly picked to be the foundation of the church and the only reason that Judas was replaced was because he was the only one who was predicted would be replaced as he was the unfaithful one who betrayed Jesus.