June 30, 2008
Failures and Flops
In an interesting article on leadership there is apparently a growing trend among foundation leaders to be more transparent and accountable. When they implement a program that flops, they admit it publically. One foundation executive stated, “If something didn’t work, it is incumbent upon you to make sure others don’t make the same mistake.” Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this type of moral obligation in the church. Over the years I’ve seen many ill advised programs fail, but I can’t ever recall hearing leadership publically admit failure to the congregation. The normal reaction to failures is to just cover them up with another vision or new direction for the church.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Search your Bible for the word “leader” and “leaders”. The overwhelming predominant usage of these terms is in relation to the Jews and the Old Testament. I believe church leaders have had their concept of purpose distorted by overly mimicking patterns from the Old Testament. The Jewish nation and people approached God as a group through a priesthood. Leaders were paramount. Leaders are also important in the body of Christ, but we no longer must approach God as a group through the efforts of other men. We now approach God as individuals, then having our approach, come together as a group. The place of the leader in the church becomes quite different than it is was in the Jewish system.
-----And Jesus referenced the very heart of this difference at Luke 22:26. He clearly presented the greatest as being the one served. With full understanding that He does not make the one who sits at the table the spoiled little rich kid, he makes him the little rich kid. Because the kid has been given the greatest relationship in all existence, the welcome to go boldly before the very throne of God with his issues and to be known personally by God, the servant of the kid must be quite mindful of what he serves. For if God has ordered hasenpfeffer for the kid, the servant had better not show up with pizza!
-----Granted, we all now see dimly as through a mirror. But the Word of God is presented with enough clarity that, even in the mirror, we can make out when it means hasenpfeffer from when it means tuna sandwiches. Some leaders have been hung on this rung of detail. Many fellowships are very odd when compared to the simple reading of the Word: The Latter Day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, etc.
But where the mirror is fuzzy enough that it becomes impossible to discern if the Bible means hasenpfeffer or beef stew, the leaders have all forgotten the position of the one sitting at the table. If that one says “beef stew is what the Word says,” then beef stew is what the servant had better deliver. For the servant has no right to insist upon his confusion over and above the confusion of the one he serves.
-----Therefore, the leaders of the church are not there to shape the group into their own personal philosophies. They are there to 1) assure that the group dines on beef stew where the Word is very clear about beef stew, and 2) that the group dines upon what the group best believes when the Word is not clear.
-----“What about the unity? How confusing! How confusing!” Cries out the objecting leader who insists upon what he himself believes.
-----And that is just the rub. The careful leader notices that the carrots of the beef stew are made of unity in love and peace, not unity in doctrine and knowledge. In fact, searching carefully through our plate of stew, we find no veggies that are made of an insistence upon unity of knowledge beyond that which is simply and expressly made plain by the Word itself. So where the Word makes no demand of programs in the church, or formats, or paradigms, or organizational structures, the leaders have no authority to demand the served one to toe the lines of those they create. And in as much as either the served do not wish to toe those lines, or the toeing of the lines are abjectly fruitless, their relentless maintenance bears testimony to selfish ambitions and vein conceits of stubborn, arrogant leaders. And it never hurts to call something what it is.
Love,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment