100 Leadership Lessons #12 Be Honest When Things Aren't Right

Top marks to John Marlow for noticing that 12 should actually come before 13. Maths was never my strong point...

Ok, maybe this is a provocative one. Evangelicals (like me) can find it too easy to sweep under the carpet things that aren't right because we think we are doing and believing all the right things. We believe the gospel. We are committed to the bible. We give our energies to teaching and obey it with passion. But...

Evangelical churches nevertheless can contain a high percentage of non-missional, non-active attendees who claim to be believers. Something is obviously wrong

We can give little attention to showing the love of Jesus to our immediate vicinity in practical ways. Something is missing

We can allow leaders to shoulder the responsibilities that actually belong to the whole church exercising their spiritual gifts all together, thus presenting them with intolerable burdens. Something isn't as it should be

We can set up structures that allow the least spiritual and least biblical just as much say in major church decisions as the most experienced and godly. We have misunderstood something

We can continue activities way past the point where they ceased to be useful for the gospel because they (rather than the gospel) have become someone's personal identity. Somehow they have misunderstood their identity in Christ and the purpose of the church

We can take living Christ's life and turn it into merely passively acknowledging the benefits of his death

We can turn the whole community being witnesses to the world into evangelistic events run by the few on Christian premises, in which we invite non-believers to step out of their comfort zone into ours if the want to hear about Jesus

We can let people's go for ages - maybe years - with bad attitudes, without ever challenging them for fear of causing offence. We haven't heard what the Bible says about church discipline, or are too scared of the consequences to do what it says

I could go, but you get the point. All of these things are wrong. They all indicate that something is wrong at the level of foundational assumptions. And they can all happen in Bible teaching churches. Merely being evangelical does not indemnify us against all kinds of things being wrong, but it can mean that we are so persuaded that we are doing the right things that we don't address them.

If we see things wrong at the level of symptom and can discern what needs to change at the level of foundational assumption but do nothing it never gets better. It only entrenches wrong ecclesiology, wrong relationships, wrong assumptions, wrong self-understanding. We effectively legitimise the wrong things by declining to address them. That's not to say we shouldn't be wise about what to address and when - we always have to choose the most important hills to die on. But if we get into our heads that merely being evangelical by conviction and teaching is enough, and don't also make every effort to conform our church life to biblical patterns then we can expect much of our teaching to be ineffective.

Be honest when things aren't right and don't ignore them. The church is God's amazing, supernatural means of declaring the wisdom of God to the world and the heavenly places. It is not good enough to simply let sub-biblical church go because it would be too challenging to change it. Honestly admitting that things may need to change is the critical first step to a healthier church life.

Comments

[Andrew Evans]

"We can set up structures that allow the least spiritual and least biblical just as much say in major church decisions as the most experienced and godly. We have misunderstood something."

Marcus,

While I agree entirely with the major thrust of your post (that we should be honest with people about when things aren't good) I have some issues:

a) Any system of church government that gives more say to the supposedly more "spiritual" (however measured) risks undermining the truth of the priesthood of all believers.

b) Who gets to decide who is most spiritual? If the existing church leaders do that the corrupting influence of power is always a massive danger.

c) On what ground do you propose 'spirituality' is decided? Almost any measure which doesn't contain massive subjectivism (see b above) is likely to lead to legalism.

d) In the end people in churches (and everywhere else) listen to who they want to listen to and even the most godly, thoughtful and structurally wise leader cannot stop that happening.

e) You seem to fail to distinguish between formal voices (each church member here gets one vote in the recognition of elders) and informal voices (I do not know any church leader who does not pay more attention to the views of those they trust as fellow workers in the gospel when it comes to discerning how things are going).

e) Can you name a time in history when church leaders have not felt that lots of people in their congregations are a bit rubbish? This is not a entirely (though I accept it is partly) a failure of our ecclesiology or doctrine or bravery but also very significantly product of the sinful nature.

[Marcus]

All points taken Andrew.

But... I'm not sure that you are being quite nuanced enough on the priesthood of all believers. This biblical doctrine is NOT the "leadership of all believers." It doesn't teach that we no longer have people with spiritual gifts of leadership, it teaches that we no longer have mediating, priestly, leaders. We have leaders, given by God, we don't have priests. In many congregational government situations people assume that they are the same thing and that therefore we don't have either (albeit we may have The Preacher or The Worship Leader!)

I am sure it doesn't happen with CCL, but I see plenty of places where people use the priesthood of all believers as a synonym for democracy and holy sounding means of overruling the lead of godly people with spiritual gifts of leadership.

You are right to say that in the end people will listen to who they want to listen to, and we might want to conclude that churches where this happens are falling short of the biblical picture and have instead become clubs for the faithful. Nevertheless I contend that it happens quite a lot simply because leaders feel the pressure to not address it. It is one reason why churches have a tendency to drift out of healthy leadership patterns over time. They never drift into them - that is only ever done deliberately and intentionally