As I interview women for a
series of articles on leadership I’m seeing the pattern of leadership beginning
during a child’s middle-school years with sports, band, or youth groups. Most
of the interviewees point to one person in their youth who recognized their characteristics
of dependability and responsibility and placed them in positions of leadership.
I find it ironic that now as adults many of us no longer feel like leaders and
we need mentors, classes and books to help build that skill set. We would do
well to follow the advice of the writer of Hebrews, “Remember your leaders, who
spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and
imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and
today and forever” (Heb 13:7-8 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----”Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.” (Ps 51:6). If God were picking the leaders, I think He might use this passage as one of the criteria. We look on all the outward aspects. It’s like your interviewees fingered dependability and responsibility as those characteristics which got them recognized as leaders. And these are extensions of truth in the inward being, but they are also extensions of ambition there. An overabundance of ambitious leaders have crushed the church like gravel.
-----I marvel at God’s wisdom in His manner of communicating to us. I thought that since ISIS is being so influential in today’s world, I ought to read the Koran and learn what stirs their inward hearts. That book so obviously wells up from the mind of man. It invests a great deal of ink and paper trying to scare the reader into believing Allah is great, Allah led Abraham and Moses, and you’d better believe in Allah or else! It’s principles don’t rise out of communications amongst one another like the Bible’s principles do. Everything in it is delivered on a flat, point blank platter, empty of the color and warmth of life that fills the Bible. And well it should be as flat as the paper it was written upon, for one mentally dysfunctional guy with a heartful of deceit wrote it to acquire followers. But the Bible’s messages and principles arise out of letters honest hearted men wrote to one another addressing situations in the light of truth and righteousness.
-----So, when the author of Hebrews writes, “Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you,” he is referencing more than just good men evangelizing the countryside. Most likely having been written later in the first century, its readers will have a natural sense of remembrance for the apostles and those whom the apostles instructed and set in place as leaders. These are men like Peter and John and James and Ignatius and Polycarp. They weren’t special because of who they were; they were special because their hearts were full of the truth and their desires were consumed with righteousness.
-----Even as these men went about making and instructing disciples, other dependable, responsible men were sure to be going about teaching circumcision and the observance of the laws, trying to capture Christ’s body for the synagogue. We know they were dependable and responsible by the amount of damage they wreaked. It’s just that they were dependable and responsible to the lie, not the truth.
-----Those letters Jesus dictated to John for the messengers of the seven churches smack of church history (history for us, prophecy to those who first received them.) The very first letter warned the Church at Ephesus to return to its first love, else its lamp stand would be removed from its place. Church history sees the church tangle into doctrinal and ideological debates and divisions nearly from the outset of the second century. The third century only goes worse. The fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries see avarice and power-lust conceived, then grow into maturity by the twelfth century. It is as if the lamp stand of the church had been removed from its place. It’s as if truth no longer made its leaders’ inward being.
-----To this day when I read Hebrews 13:7 and 8 I think about Peter and John and James and Ignatius and Polycarp and those guys. It isn’t that I completely discount the elders and other leaders of our churches. It is that I count them only through the same truth Peter and John and James and Ignatius and Polycarp and those guys portrayed.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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