Expectations of a Church Leader

Tonight I am at a Pastor's Wives Retreat.  I was blessed with a room to myself.  It's a great room - soft pillows, ample covers, fluffy duvet instead of those thin bedspreads, all in white.  I have control of the remote.  I can watch old reruns of my shows uninterrupted.  Yep, I'm enjoying my late night.

Earlier, we ladies sat around a table and played a game designed to get us talking - like we needed help!  LOL  But, really, it was a great way to just be together and bond without things getting TOO deep, which often happens in our line of work....  But towards the end of the evening it DID get a bit deep.  Some real concerns were shared.  No answers were found.  Really got me thinking.

The beginning was when one mom shared how worldly our church-based colleges have become.  Professors swear on campus.  Students are swearing, drinking, becoming addicted to pornography, and becoming sexually active.  We expect this on state school campuses, but it brings concern on church-based college campuses.

The conversation began to swing at this point - what about church?  What do we do when we learn that a leader in our church is sinning?

Wow - that's a hot button!

What is an acceptable sin and what sins need to be dealt with?  What are our expectations of a church leader?

What about people who walk in the front door?  What are our expectation of them?  How do we draw them into our church family?  How do we include them and do life with them?  How do we grow them into future leaders?  At what point do they 'arrive' at leadership quality?

Something I have noticed through my years of ministry is that we tend to assume that God deals with us each the same - that He expects the same things from each of us - that there is one spiritual plane.... typically the one we are on ourselves.  We look around at the people around us and judge them from our point of view- from our spiritual plane -  and we justify ourselves in lots of ways.  Then, as we grow spiritually, we expect that everyone else is, too and we continue to expect those around us to look like us.

But all this time that we are learning and growing there are others just entering through the front door - others who are just beginning to walk down the path we have already been on.

At what point do we 'arrive' at a level of spiritualness that we can be called a leader?  Who decides when that level is achieved?

In our church culture we have a list of behaviors that are taboo.  Some are clearly sins based on biblical teachings.  Adultery.  Premarital sex.  The mishandling of money.  Some are grey areas.  Alcohol - drunkenness is a sin, but is all alcohol?  Then there are the 'acceptable sins' - the ones that we allow to continue in our churches unchallenged.  Gluttony - practically encouraged through carry-in dinners that are so prevalent and rich, decadent food served at most gatherings.  Pornography - men are often singled out for this one due to their visual desires, but ladies, those 'Harlequin-style' books out there that made Fabio so famous are just as much pornography for our emotional needs as Playboy magazine is for the men, yet  women can be seen trading books right in the church!

I think we need to be very careful how we look at the people in our church.  How do we choose leadership?  What makes someone leadership material and at what point do they need to be removed?  How do we approach a leader who is struggling?  How do we hold our leaders accountable?  And how do we take a new believer from where they are to a point when they can be a leader?

I believe we need to look at this carefully and lay out guidelines that our church will follow - we should have a set of outward behaviors that our church wants to see in a leader and actions that would be cause for removal.  (We can only use outward behaviors - these can be observed.  Inward spiritual/emotional development cannot.)  These need to be in writing and made available to everyone.  We often have a list in our heads that we apply to people unfairly, holding them to a higher standard that we hold ourselves.

The apostles were leaders.  Would they qualify as leaders in our churches today?  Jesus picked them himself.

Yet I fear we tend to look for our church leaders among those who would have been part of the Sanhedrin.  That scares me.

Lots of prayer.

Lots of introspection.

Thanks for listening...

The Right Track

I just ran across the quote, "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there!"  It isn't a new quote to me, but I saw it in a new light today.

In the past, I have always seen and applied that quote in a church setting - it makes for a great catalyst for a spiritual discussion.  I've even used it to judge others, unfortunately, who don't share my own thoughts, style, or vision.

But today I saw a different side - this quote applies to ALL areas of our lives - it applies to our homes, our relationships, work, and especially the laundry!!!  If we get to a certain place in our relationships and just stop making an effort, the relationship will die.  If we get our house/home all spruced-up and just let it sit without further maintenance, it will fall apart around our ears.  Even at work - if we get to a point at work where we are not looking to take initiative or looking out for new and better approaches to our jobs, we will lose them.

And spiritually, we NEVER 'arrive'.  We are NEVER 'done'.  We have NEVER 'made it'.  Spiritual growth and how the church reaches out to the culture are never-ending processes of change and require us to always be listening to God.

We get tired.  We get old and creaky.  But we cannot get complacent in our spiritual growth.  And we cannot get complacent in our attempts to reach out to the community around us.

Keep growing

Keep Listening

Never quit!  :)