Leadership Training?

It seems that a secret from my past I thought had been well buried has now come to light. To find out more listen in on the latest Mortification of Spin... 

Crisis! Todd's past comes back to bite him. This Promise Keepers-sweatshirt-wearing hooligan and the rest of the gang discuss a continually important pastoral subject: leadership. Much of what passes for "leadership training" in the evangelical church is profoundly unhelpful. It has more in common with secular leadership theory than it has with anything found in Scripture. This becomes especially troubling when it comes to pastoral leadership. What qualities should a good leader have? How can pastors improve their leadership capabilities to better serve their churches? Listen in!

Learning from Herman Cain

Albert Mohler has written a thoughtful challenge for Christian men in light of the news swirling around Herman Cain.

Mohler points out five lessons to be learned:
1. The Christian man must realize that credible accusations of sexual misconduct or immorality are fatal to credibility and ruinous to Christian witness.

2. The Christian man cannot dismiss any charge of sexual immorality as being a private matter of no public concern.

3. The Christian man must plan his life in order to assure moral accountability and protections.

4. The Christian man must depend upon his church, the congregation that is so essential to his Christian vitality and faithfulness, as a bulwark against sin.

5. A Christian man knows that his wife is his best defense against sexual immorality and sexual vulnerability - and his most important witness to character.

Read the entire article HERE.

Understanding the Bible and Ministry

Mark Dever interviews New Testament scholar Bruce Winter concerning issues such as cultural contextualization in ministry, the importance of historical background for interpreting Scripture, and bad contemporary ideas of leadership.

Check it out HERE.

HT: Justin Taylor

"To Lead is to Choose"

Carl Trueman's latest entry over at Ref21 deals with our "cult of options" and the lonliness and even hostility that is experienced by the leader who dares to make choices.

Certainly, much of the culture surrounding Christianity at the moment militates against the kind of commitment that making a choice, rather than merely having a choice, demands. The language of conversation, so popular in certain quarters, has a certain open-ended quality to it. Once upon a time, arguments and debates were designed for the express purpose of reaching a conclusion, of deciding which, if any, of two or more positions was the best or the strongest or the most true. Conversation has more of a `I'll hear what you say; you hear what I say and we can all agree to differ while remaining friends' feel...

All of this is sad in a tragicomical way; and it is perhaps not surprising that as adolescence creeps into middle age, so does the fear of making choices and closing down options; but I wonder if most lethal of all will prove to be not the lack of commitment and stability that characterises Marks' [Dever] `cult of options'. Rather the worst of it may well be that a generation is growing up that is happy to sneer and snipe at the decisions of others, but for whom making decisions that bind is something they themselves are incapable of doing, an alien concept no less; and that means not only, as I suspect Mark Dever fears, that a generation will grow up with no real commitments other than to themselves as individuals but also with no real leadership potential.

One of the striking things about great leaders in history is the strong passions they have aroused. Churchill is surely a great hero to many on both sides of the Atlantic, but, interestingly enough, my grandfather hated him with a passion because in the 1920s he had set the troops on striking miners. Lloyd George was the other great war leader Britain produced in the twentieth century, a brilliant orator and political strategist, but he was hated and reviled as much as he was praised and adored. The same is true in America: think of a significant leader in any sphere and you find someone who polarizes opinion, whether it is Franklin D. Roosevelt, General MacArthur, or Martin Luther King, Jr. Why? Because great leaders make tough choices and, in so doing, commit themselves to courses of action that can bring praise but also excoriation. They do not sit on the fence; they do not nor do they sit on the sidelines, throwing potshots at those who have to make the decisions; they do not enjoy the luxury of always knowing what should be done but never actually having to take responsibility for doing it. And they understand that, sometimes, it is better to make a decision that proves to be wrong than to make no decision at all...

This leads to one other concern about future leadership. It is what I call the emergence of the professional statesman. The professional statesman is the person who thinks and acts as if they can rise above the fray and speak to issue in a way that transcends the typical struggles involved in any leadership situation. I have witnessed this so often over the last few years, both in observing the wider political scene and in the church which seems to me to be increasingly marked by such men: they are those who try to defuse theological conflict by playing the moral equivalence card whereby they argue that the struggle is really petty and personal, a moral conflict between lesser men above which they and they alone can stand and see the way forward. My suspicion is that too often this simply reflects the problematic patterns in wider society: a need to be liked; a need to avoid making divisive decisions; and a desire to have the perks of leadership with none of the responsibilities and pain involved.

Read the entire article HERE. Very helpful!

Thoughts on Christian Leadership

I have little patience with many of the leadership conferences and seminars offered by big, huge, really cool, awesome churches and other Christian ministries. Most of them sound something like, “How to be a super-duper impressively awesome leader.” The largest such event that is hosted by Willow Creek Community Church actually has as its slogan: “The future of the church rests with its leaders.” Yikes! No mention of Jesus’ promise to build HIS church. My friends, if the future of the church rests in my hands then I quit! I can’t build the church. As a four time alumni of this particular conference I believe I can speak with a bit of insight on this event.

Based upon the speakers the event hosts, the copy for the brochure should go something like this:
“Come hear a pastor from Dallas who preaches prosperity and denies the doctrine of the Trinity but he’s on TV a lot and has a really big, huge, awesome church. We also have a retired general in the army who will tell us a lot of really cool awesome things about leadership. There will also be this well known leadership guru who will tell us awesome stuff from his awesome book about how to be an awesome leader. But wait, there’s more! A famous NFL quarterback is going to speak about how awesome it is to be an awesome quarterback in the NFL. We’re pretty sure that some of these speakers aren’t Christians but they are awesome really cool leaders and we’re sure you will learn some awesomely cool stuff about leadership and how the future of the church rests in your hands!”

Okay, so that’s a bit of a raw spot for me. But if you go to enough of those kinds of events (and I have) then you will become 1) a high functioning workaholic who builds an awesomely cool church because you are able to perform at a level that most of humanity cannot or 2) you will become disillusioned and hate yourself and the church because you cannot perform like the guy who “pastors” the ginormous church or 3) you will simply drop off the “consult the expert” treadmill and trust that God’s Word has far more valuable words for Christian leaders than do all the false teachers, military experts, leadership gurus, and professional athletes put together.

One book that continues to challenge, encourage, and rebuke me is D.A. Carson’s The Cross and Christian Leadership. It is an exposition of the key texts in I Corinthians that pertain to Paul’s role as a leader in the church. It is a book that all those who care about the church ought to read. Pastors should read it for obvious reasons. But those who are not involved in “leadership” per se in the church ought to read it to gain a better understanding of what God expects from those who lead His church.

Carson writes:
“The person who daydreams about being a leader in almost any field imagines what it is like to be the best, or at least to be better than most others – to succeed where others fail, to be stalwart where others stumble, to create where others merely perform, to win adulation and applause, perhaps after some initial hardship and rejection. To be a leader may mean fame, money and some freedoms from the responsibilities and humdrum existence of ordinary mortals. To be a leader means to win respect. Only rarely do those who dream of leadership, but who have never experienced it, think through the responsibilities, pressures, and temptations leaders face. Almost never do they focus on accountability, service, and suffering.”

Commenting on I Corinthians 4:1-7 Carson writes:
“Two elements stand out, and both are tied to things Paul has already explained. (1) Christian leaders are ‘servants of Christ’…Christian leaders do not try to be independent gurus, all wise teachers. They see themselves simply as servants and want other Christians to see them that way, too. But they serve one particular Master: they serve Jesus Christ. (2) At the heart of the commission they have received from their Master lies one particular assignment. They have been ‘entrusted with the secret things of God’…The gospel itself is the content of this mystery, God’s wisdom summed up under the burden of Paul’s preaching: Jesus Christ and him crucified…

“What it means to be a servant of Christ is to be obligated to promote the gospel by word and example, the gospel of the crucified Messiah. That is absolutely fundamental. There is no valid Christian leadership that does not throb with this mandate…Moreover, they must beware of politely assuming such a stance, while their real interest lies elsewhere…Those who are servants of Christ, those who are entrusted with the secret things of God, do not see themselves winning popularity contests – not even within the church’s borders. That is what Paul means when he says, ‘I care very little if I am judged by you or by any other human court’ (4:3). There is only one Person whose ‘Well done!’ on the last day means anything. In comparison, the approval or disapproval of the church means nothing.”