Sunday, January 08, 2006
Leadership Is Hard
Thanks to Transforming Sermons for the link to this post at Through A Glass Darkly on Paul's letter to Titus and it's call to purity in leadership. The post focuses on sexual purity, but the Titus quote addresses so much more:
This truly makes me wonder -- there is so much to be done to operate a church, facilities, personnel, policies, budgets, and so forth. It is hard to find people to do all of that. So often we end up compromising such standards of purity because we need people to get the job done.
I know that in my particular flavor of Christianity (PCUSA) there would be a great value in separating doing the work from the leadership, but it seems we can't get the "workers" we need if we don't give them the "reward" and the motivation of a leadership position.
My personal bent is to put a stake in the ground and simply draw a line at such purity -- if we can't find enough people that meet the mark, then we need to find a way to do without. But I meet resistance on that stance all the time.
This much I do know. We need to begin to emphasize these standards on those who are in leadership. Bible study preceding leadership meetings. Division of the leadership pool into mutual prayer groups. These are the kinds of things that I find necessary, not optional.
What do you do at your church?
not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather he must be hospitable,That's a tall order - in fact some of that stuff makes maintaining sexual purity look pretty simple.
This truly makes me wonder -- there is so much to be done to operate a church, facilities, personnel, policies, budgets, and so forth. It is hard to find people to do all of that. So often we end up compromising such standards of purity because we need people to get the job done.
I know that in my particular flavor of Christianity (PCUSA) there would be a great value in separating doing the work from the leadership, but it seems we can't get the "workers" we need if we don't give them the "reward" and the motivation of a leadership position.
My personal bent is to put a stake in the ground and simply draw a line at such purity -- if we can't find enough people that meet the mark, then we need to find a way to do without. But I meet resistance on that stance all the time.
This much I do know. We need to begin to emphasize these standards on those who are in leadership. Bible study preceding leadership meetings. Division of the leadership pool into mutual prayer groups. These are the kinds of things that I find necessary, not optional.
What do you do at your church?
