Dear Pastor, Value Character over Performance

This text is a part of the Dear Pastor collection.

Priorities

Each management group wants to acknowledge that ministry is an intersection of many competing and conflicting motivations. It might be fantastic if each chief in each church and ministry management group may say, “My coronary heart is pure and unable to be tempted by any motivations that compete with my allegiance to Christ and his gospel of grace.” The issue is that whereas each chief’s coronary heart is being purified by sanctifying grace, it’s not but fully pure and past temptation. Vinod Ramashandra, in his ebook Gods That Fail, notes that for the believing group, essentially the most highly effective and seductive idols are those which can be simply Christianized. His phrases are a pointed warning to everybody in ministry management. Right here’s how we go astray: a ministry chief pursues agendas apart from his ambassadorial calling by doing ministry. A frontrunner whose coronary heart has been captured by different issues doesn’t forsake ministry to pursue these different issues; he makes use of ministry place, energy, authority, and belief to get these issues. Each management group wants to know that ministry will be the automobile for pursuing a complete host of idolatries. On this means, ministry management is struggle, and we can not method it with the passivity of peacetime assumptions.

Sadly, noble ministry leaders develop into ignoble ministry leaders, and since their hearts have been kidnapped, they’re the ambassadors of false gods (energy, fame, materials issues, management, acclaim, cash, or the world’s respect), whereas nonetheless doing ministry. Within the lifetime of a ministry, leaders change. Generally that change is a deeper submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ and to ambassadorial calling, however typically it’s a drift towards the service of different masters. Everybody studying this has been witness to the unhappy drift that may happen within the coronary heart, life, and ministry of a pacesetter.

Pastors Want Group

Every time there’s a public fall of a widely known chief, my first query is, “Why didn’t the encompassing management group see it and handle it earlier than it acquired to this horrible place?” I ask as a result of there are a few assumptions that appear protected to make. First, the chief has modified as a result of if he had been within the early days who he now’s, he would by no means have been referred to as, employed, or appointed to this management place. Second, the adjustments didn’t happen in a single day. They occurred in bits and items over a interval of years. Because of this there will not be solely many evidences of a shift going down in his life, however a rising physique of proof of a shift in coronary heart sensitivities and coronary heart allegiances. So it appears proper to ask once more the query I started this paragraph with.

How does a biblically based mostly, gospel-committed, Christ-serving management group not transfer to lovingly confront a pacesetter who has modified, searching for to rescue him from himself and to guard him from false ministry gods? I’m going to reply my query in a means that can upset and possibly even anger a few of you, however please give me the prospect to elucidate. The explanation we are sometimes means too passive within the face of troubling proof within the attitudes and actions of a pacesetter is that means too usually, efficiency trumps character. I’ve heard statements like those beneath repeatedly:

“However he was such a gifted preacher.”
“However take a look at the numbers of people that have come to Christ.”
“However look how our church has grown.”
“However take into consideration the variety of church buildings now we have planted.”
“However we’d by no means have had this ministry campus other than him.”
“However take a look at the gospel assets he has produced.”

Few management communities say that they’ve come to worth efficiency over character, however efficiency turns into the logic behind not coping with problems with character. Right here is the insufficient logic: “Look what this nice man has achieved for God; ought to we actually tarnish his ministry?” So a management group accepts what it mustn’t settle for, is silent when it ought to communicate, and is passive when it ought to act. There was no confessional values change, however on the useful degree the management group involves worth ministry success greater than godly character and ambassadorial allegiance. It’s not simply that considered one of their leaders has modified; your entire management group has modified, and in lots of circumstances, they don’t appear to understand it.

Let’s take a look at how this shift usually takes place. My function is to not argue that that is the way it all the time occurs however that these steps are typical of the best way it tends to occur.

Each chief wants confronting and restorative grace.

A Sluggish Shift

At first of a pacesetter’s ministry there’s a excessive degree of concern for character and a complete lot of loving encouragement and accountability. In attending to know a pacesetter, he’s watched fastidiously for the way he does his work and pertains to others. He’s surrounded by the form of group each chief wants. However because the months and years go by and the chief’s items bear fruit in wealthy and thrilling methods, the leaders round him start to shut their eyes and shut their ears. Perhaps it’s anger in a gathering that’s not addressed, or an perspective towards an worker that’s not confronted, or one thing inappropriate mentioned a few lady that’s not addressed. This highly effective and efficient chief now has the ability to silence wanted gospel voices in his management group. Fellow leaders develop into comfy with resisting the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Issues are mentioned and achieved that they know are flawed, and after they occur, there’s a verify of their spirit, however they fail to answer the prompting, and so they sit in silence

Earlier than lengthy, quite than confronting wrongs with grace, in their very own hearts or in dialog with fellow leaders they’re explaining them away. As a management group they persuade themselves that possibly flawed isn’t actually that flawed. They produce in their very own hearts and with each other various views and explanations that make flawed look lower than flawed. If all that is allowed to occur, it received’t be lengthy earlier than this management group begins defending the chief when costs come from folks he has wronged as an alternative of coping with these wrongs with a dedication to moral and character purity that’s tempered by grace. This as soon as loving, watchful, rescuing, and protecting gospel group has morphed right into a group of defenders and advocates. The facility and efficiency of this chief have left him unprotected and unpastored. The success of his ministry is liked by his fellow leaders greater than he’s. The fort he has constructed has develop into extra valuable than his soul. Fellow leaders have cowered in silence when he has resisted loving concern and confrontation, quite than loving him with the form of sturdy, unrelenting love that comes when concern of God has defeated concern of man.

No chief will be left to himself. No chief must be permitted to drive away fellow leaders who’ve godly issues. No chief ought to command loyalty in a means that compromises gospel integrity and morality. No chief’s ministry fruit ought to lead to his coronary heart not being protected. Each chief, regardless of how highly effective and profitable, must be keen to have a look at himself within the dependable mirror of the phrase of God. No management group ought to compromise its integrity to perform its imaginative and prescient. No chief must be untouchable by the gospel group that God has lovingly positioned round him. Each chief wants confronting and restorative grace.

Ministry is an on a regular basis struggle of values. However we shouldn’t be afraid or discouraged, as a result of we aren’t alone on this battle. Each ministry chief is the article of God’s sanctifying grace. In relation to the true values of our hearts, sanctification progressively exposes, convicts, reclaims, and restores. Our hope just isn’t that we are going to all the time get it proper however that God won’t ever forsake his sanctifying work. We could also be keen to compromise, however he by no means will probably be. We could give solution to concern, however he has no concern. We could also be swindled into not seeing issues clearly and precisely, however his view of us is all the time excellent. His presence and work in and thru us is our hope, and since it’s, we are able to commit ourselves to doing higher. We are able to personal our weak point and our failures and settle for his invitation to contemporary begins and new beginnings.

This text is tailored from Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church by Paul David Tripp.

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