May 09, 2007
Accepting Leadership
It’s not unusual to see men who don’t or won’t, for what ever reason, take on leadership roles. Years ago a member of a congregation asked the newly hired preacher what his plans were for the church and he said, “Build up the men.” Not that the men were weak, but out of an attendance of 360 people [including children], there were only 39 men. The preacher recalled, “It was an interesting little church. If it weren’t for the women holding it together, the doors would have closed. They kept the church going. It was amazing though, when men started attending, the women were thrilled to turn over the leadership responsibility to them.” A church is blessed when men step forward and accept their leadership-birthright - and when women let them fulfill their role.
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Gail;
-----Being a man, I don’t have far to look to offer you my insights. I have always believed the same: that the man’s role in leadership is natural (recognizing nature as established by God.) I have even seen in the man’s relationship to his family a metaphor of God’s relationship to His creation. Not that man acts with autonomy, for God is the head of man (and therefore both the source and the constraint of man), but that man acts with total care and concern for the well-being of the family and the propagation of truth within it. As such, the children grow up in an illustration of an individual’s relationship to his/her Father. The church is also a family to which the same principle applies.
-----But what draws a man away from these responsibilities are the same things that draw men away from anything else that is good and right to do before God. Time constraints cause so many corners to be cut that often involvement at church diminishes to near non-existence. It is easy for a man to misjudge his bread-winning and maintenance responsibilities as being objectives to be completely fulfilled before attention can be significantly refocused to something like helping at church. And today’s life is busy.
-----Then there are feelings of inadequacy. When a person begins to at least doubt his/her adequacy, ambition and assertiveness begin to lag. It is bad enough that many family situations instill much inadequacy into the child, but the contemporary culture piles on even more. The humanistic philosophy has been corroding man’s attraction to God for several centuries. It is now serving up a healthy push for the feminization of society. The 21st century man is expected to keep his male nature disengaged from the processes that shape the culture. That creates more tendencies toward inadequacy when a man’s biological nature must be forced into the back seat by overbearing societal pressures. I don’t believe that many men have actually bought into this idiocy. But I do believe that many men are too mindful of “the peace” to challenge the deceit, and many more just feel too inadequate for the battle.
-----Finally, there is just too much fun to be had. Football, baseball, skis, ski-dos, jet-skis, jeeps, pizzas, beer, hot cars, and unfortunately, fast women. The fun in our life is phenomenal. And there is a way of having most all that fun with moral decency (and yes, I think I have one hot wife.) But spiritual decency requires limits upon the entertainment appetite. And we are not given the message by our culture to limit those appetites. Business forbid!
-----If the church wants men to begin stepping forward and taking their leadership responsibilities seriously, it has some work to do. It must convince men that, like it or not, they are metaphors of God’s headship and examples of His provision. And that they must be as responsible for spiritual provision as they are for physical provision, which they should bring forth confidently from what they do have, not from what they do not have. The church must instill in the man his responsibility toward speaking the truth, even when opposed by deceit This is a challenge which can not be dropped for the sake of a “peace” that is not peace at all, but rather a captivity by the enemy. If the church wants a man’s attention, it must be more meaningful to him than entertainment.
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