Friday, August 30, 2013
Take It To Heart
Ron Edmondson list "12 Bible verse for leaders" The theme is obvious - humility, service, trustworthiness,delegation. Just a couple of examples:
I reflect often on the phenomena in this nation of someone calling themselves preacher, hanging out a shingle and viola' we have a church. It's not the lack of education that concerns me, I know many a self-appointed pastor that is a much better person that the highly educated ordained types I usually traffic with. It is the lack of character testing that bothers me.
The world has always had its Elmer Gantry types, it always will. But it used to be that we sorted them out pretty rapidly. But no more.
That is, I think a mark at our lack of cultural influence. Our culture lacks the ability to sort the good ones from that bad ones. The secular assume all are shysters, and we are so desperate for the next superstar preacher that we just look the other way at personal peccadilloes and throw money in the plate.
The church needs to become intentional about trying to figure out how to reclaim the culture. And by that I do not mean music and art and so forth, though that is part of it. No I mean something even deeper - the part of us that music and art inform and reform. Even if Christian theology never dominated this nation, Christian thought once did. It is to this that we need to return and it is to this that we should devote ourselves.
church depth leadership mission
Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Philippians 2:4
Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. Matthew 5:37I find it striking that Edmondson closes the post with:
Perhaps you should choose one or two of these, write them down somewhere you’ll see it often, and commit it to memory.Frankly they are all verses the memorization of which I would expect to be a qualification for leadership. True enough we all need constant reminding of these lessons, but this is presented to matter-of-factly, that I wonder if Edmondson's perception of immaturity in church leadership has an even lower bar than mine.
I reflect often on the phenomena in this nation of someone calling themselves preacher, hanging out a shingle and viola' we have a church. It's not the lack of education that concerns me, I know many a self-appointed pastor that is a much better person that the highly educated ordained types I usually traffic with. It is the lack of character testing that bothers me.
The world has always had its Elmer Gantry types, it always will. But it used to be that we sorted them out pretty rapidly. But no more.
That is, I think a mark at our lack of cultural influence. Our culture lacks the ability to sort the good ones from that bad ones. The secular assume all are shysters, and we are so desperate for the next superstar preacher that we just look the other way at personal peccadilloes and throw money in the plate.
The church needs to become intentional about trying to figure out how to reclaim the culture. And by that I do not mean music and art and so forth, though that is part of it. No I mean something even deeper - the part of us that music and art inform and reform. Even if Christian theology never dominated this nation, Christian thought once did. It is to this that we need to return and it is to this that we should devote ourselves.
church depth leadership mission
