Monday, September 16, 2013
There Is No Private
Ron Edmondson on what he calls "A Sobering Leadership Principle":
Presenting a public persona that is different for your private, and therefore most heartfelt, persona represents a lack of faith somehow. It is as if you do not really believe this Christianity stuff enough to let it into your home - "It's just for out there."
There is a flip side to this. That is the person who deeply believes, but is embarrassed by his/her failings. Even then, you do not believe in grace. And as a leader it is a failure to model the reality of the gospel.
I, for one, do not expect perfection in my church, but I do expect a gracious handling of failure. One that begins with confession. Grace only occurs when we confront our shortcomings.
I think the question really is "Where are we leading people?" If we are leading them in the way of Christ, we lead them through confession to grace and eventually towards perfection. But if we are leading simply to perfection, how can we claim to be Christ's? And how can we lead them someplace we do not go?
confession grace leadership
Your private life. Your public life.
They are inseparable.
You can try to manage two identities.To my way of thinking, there is something very wrong with pastors or anyone else thinking that they have a different public and private life. Public is not a stage and we do not pretend to act like Christians. Either we are Christians or we are not Christians. There is no act.
Presenting a public persona that is different for your private, and therefore most heartfelt, persona represents a lack of faith somehow. It is as if you do not really believe this Christianity stuff enough to let it into your home - "It's just for out there."
There is a flip side to this. That is the person who deeply believes, but is embarrassed by his/her failings. Even then, you do not believe in grace. And as a leader it is a failure to model the reality of the gospel.
I, for one, do not expect perfection in my church, but I do expect a gracious handling of failure. One that begins with confession. Grace only occurs when we confront our shortcomings.
I think the question really is "Where are we leading people?" If we are leading them in the way of Christ, we lead them through confession to grace and eventually towards perfection. But if we are leading simply to perfection, how can we claim to be Christ's? And how can we lead them someplace we do not go?
confession grace leadership
