5. Character
The values of a leadership community shape the way the community thinks about and approaches its work and, more importantly, the way each member views and relates to all the other members. Now what I have written seems quite obvious, but what seems to be obvious is not always obvious in the press of the opportunities, responsibilities, and relationships of ministry leadership. Along the way, in the life and work of a leadership community, a subtle shift in values takes place. I’m not talking here about formal confessional values but about what that community sees as important. This shift in values is subtle, but it fundamentally changes the way leaders do their work. As it occurs, the leadership community experiences a growing discontinuity between its confessional values and its functional values.
This shift happens again and again—what a group of leaders confesses that they value is no longer what they actually value. What they say is most important, they don’t treat as most important. What they confess that they want in every leader, they don’t actually want in every leader. They are no longer the same community of leaders with the values they once had, but no one seems to know it, and no one is sounding the warning alarms, and no one seems to understand that the leaders’ work has taken on a very different character and that the leaders are in danger.
In a real way, this chapter is an extension and a specific application of the previous chapter.
What God Says Is Important
A leadership community is spiritually safe and prepared for a long-term and productive life of ministry only when what is important to God is not just theologically important to them but also functionally important. The life and work of a leadership community is shaped not just by the gifts of its leaders, their vast experience, the force of their public personalities, entrepreneurial skill, or vision and strategic planning, but most importantly by their values. Whatever they value most shapes the way they relate to one another, what they long to accomplish, and what they name as success. So it is important for a ministry leadership community to keep asking the question, “Is what’s important to God still important to us?” At the root of many of the heartbreaking leadership failures we have all witnessed is this subtle and progressive shift in values. By the time the church or ministry blows up, the leaders who pilot it are not what they once were, and they do not value what they once did. Most often, this movement occurs in small increments over many years, so small and slow changing that it is hard to notice.
The illustration that follows could be misunderstood, but I think it does picture well how shifts in values subtly take place. These shifts are a lot like how middle-aged men tend to become overweight. I’m not talking about people who have physiological problems they cannot control that result in weight gain. As I said before, if you gain a half of a pound every month, you and the people around you will not notice, but that’s six pounds a year, thirty pounds in five years, and sixty pounds in ten years. Then you are a completely different person physically, but not just physically. Along the way you’ve had to deny the fact that you eat way more than you need, that you have to continually buy bigger-sized clothes, and that you can’t walk up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath. You have become comfortable with swindling yourself into believing that you’re okay when you’re not okay. You make a fat joke when you order the forty-eight-ounce cowboy ribeye steak, but your joke is an indication of something sad, and the people who are with you shouldn’t be laughing.
I know some of you will think I’m a stick-in-the-mud, but the overweight middle-aged man I have just described hasn’t just had a shift in his belt size; he’s had a shift in values, and he is carrying around the empirical evidence of that shift. Sadly, a very similar thing happens to church and ministry leaders. This is why it’s important not to assume the permanence of your ministry values or that your leaders won’t change. To add to this, because every leader in every ministry still has sin residing in him, the war for the rulership of his heart still rages. Every leader is susceptible. No leader is incapable of being tempted. Every leader at times wants what he shouldn’t want, has trouble controlling his emotions, and regrets something he did or said. But there is more.
Every leader of every ministry also does his work in the context of a world where evil is all around, where what God says is ugly will be presented as attractive. And I must add one more element here. Every leader of every ministry works in a world where the enemy lurks, seeking to divert, deceive, and destroy. So it is very important that, as leaders, we are always committed and open to asking values questions of ourselves and to being lovingly confronted when there is reason for a fellow leader to personally ask those questions of us.
I want to look at two places in Scripture that tell us what God thinks is important in the lives and ministry of those he has called to lead his kingdom work on earth. The first is very familiar to anyone who has considered ministry calling:
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil. (1 Tim. 3:1–7)
What should strike every leader about this list of leader qualities, the thing that jumps off the page, is that above everything else you could want in a leader, God values character. I must say that I am not sure that we always do. I think there are times when we are more attracted to big personality, powerful communicating, and result-producing leaders than to persons of beautiful character. There’s another thing that impresses me here: the list tells us that in God’s eyes, character trumps performance. There is only one mention in the entire list of qualities that you could call a “performance gift”—teaching. Everything else in the list is about what moves, motivates, and directs the heart of the leader. Everything else is about what a leader values most in life and in ministry. Leaders who have character, lead with character, model what is truly important, and encourage the same in others.
Do we really look for leaders who are known for their gentleness? Do we esteem leaders who have their vision and emotions under control so that they’re not controlling, demanding, or easily irritated? How high is a lifestyle of hospitality on the list of what we value in a leader? Do we consider how a leader has handled his or her money as a valid window into the values of his heart? Are we too tolerant of argumentative, domineering ministry know-it-alls? Do we really value self-sacrificing marital love and tender, compassionate parenting when we consider what is important in a leader? These are all critical values issues. A leader who is quarrelsome values being right and in control more than he values what God says is right in his heart and life. A leader who is not self-controlled can’t say no to himself because he values what he wants more than he values what God wants for him. Every character quality on this list is a window into what God values most in the heart and life of those he has called to lead.
So there is never a point when a leadership community should stop asking, “Is there still concrete evidence in our ministry work and our relationships with one another that we value what God says is most important?” We should always be looking for subtle shifts in values that have progressively changed us and the way we do our work.
Here is another question we must always be asking: “Have we closed our eyes to certain character deficiencies in a leader because of the effectiveness of his leadership performance?” Or here is another way of asking this question: “Is there anyone in our leadership community whom we have quit holding accountable because of his ministry effectiveness?”
There is another passage that powerfully captures what God values most in the leaders he gifts and calls to his work. This passage captures what God values in a leader. I must admit that I find this passage one of the most motivating, challenging, convicting, and encouraging reminders in all of Scripture as I contemplate what God calls me to do as his representative. It is a value statement that drops me to my knees in weakness and failure and causes me to cry out for forgiving and enabling grace as I recognize where I fall below its standard again and again. Because of this, it is a passage I visit regularly, and it has become a consistent cry for help to my Lord that has marked my prayer life. Take time, right now, to reflect on the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:16–21:
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
In this passage Paul unpacks the redemptive activity that produces the gospel zeal that forms, shapes, motivates, and directs his ministry. He holds before us huge gospel realities that must never take a back seat to what we want for our own ministries, what we want to accomplish as ministry leaders, and what we want from our fellow leaders or from the seductive draw of leadership power and position. We are part of the amazing work of God where he re-creates us in Christ, reconciles us to himself, does not hold our sins against us anymore, and then turns and entrusts the message of these glorious realities to us.
As leaders, we must never lose sight of this bomb-drop passage. Here’s what it does for all who put their trust in Jesus: it explodes false identities and any remaining pride in personal righteousness. It explodes Satan’s lies and accusations against any child of God. It blows away the fear that would make people hide and deny. What has been entrusted to us is beautiful and life changing in every way. No matter your ministry, your leadership position, the daily tasks that have been assigned to you, or the leaders who stand and work with you, it is this gospel that must be in your mind and fill your heart moment by moment as you do your work. The danger in church and ministry leadership is that something else will begin to take the place of the gospel in your mind and heart, and if it does, you will no longer value what your Savior values or conduct yourself in a way that pleases him.
Now, there is a single value-laden word in 2 Corinthians 5:16–21 that is both the summary and crescendo of the passage. Paul says, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ.” What a picturesque and content-laden word! Think about the only thing an ambassador is commissioned to do wherever he is, whoever he is with, and whatever he is working on. The single call of an ambassador is to represent. Church and ministry leadership is designed by God to be representative in every way that the word ambassador connotes. Leaders can’t think of themselves first as ambassadors of the church or ministry they lead or as ambassadors of a particular strategic plan or as ambassadors of personal ministry career goals. They must lead with the knowledge that the thing God values most in a leader is that he or she represents him well. In every task, in every relationship, in public or in private, we are called to an ambassadorial mentality, to ambassadorial values, and to ambassadorial functioning.
Now, practically, what does this mean? It means that to the best of my ability, relying on the outpouring of enabling grace, I will commit myself to faithfully represent the message, methods, and character of the Savior King, who commissioned me. Every message we privately or publicly communicate must be tested by our ambassadorial calling. Every methodology we employ as a leadership community must be evaluated on the basis of our ambassadorial calling. All our attitudes and actions must be measured by our call to faithfully represent the character of the one who sent us. When I think of the message, methods, and character of the King, my mind goes to 1 Peter 2:23: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” May we in every way, in every place, in every meeting, in every relationship, no matter how exciting or hard, represent this one well.
Power-hungry leaders have quit being ambassadors. Controlling, bullying leaders are no longer ambassadors. Sexist leaders who do not respect the God-given gifts of women and who may even relate to them inappropriately have forsaken their ambassadorial calling. Esteeming bigness and greatness over humility and godliness means you have functionally walked away from your ambassadorial commission. Using God-given gifts and positions in ways that are selfish, materialistic, or self-aggrandizing is a forsaking of your ambassadorial position. Institutional advancement that compromises the gospel is a forsaking of ambassadorial calling. Leading by manipulation or intimidation is not the lifestyle of an ambassador. Failing to be patient, self-sacrificing, tender, loving, forgiving, humble, serving, gentle, faithful, and kind is a failure to lead as an ambassador of the Savior King who sent you.
I am persuaded that if we made ambassadorial calling our leadership standard, not only would we no longer allow things in our leaders that we have tended to allow, but we would be filled with such remorse at what poor ambassadors we are that we would fall to our knees in confession and seek the rescuing, forgiving, and enabling grace of God and publicly confess our weakness and failure to those God has called us to lead.
It is time for leaders to confess that in many places and in many ways we haven’t represented our loving Lord well. It’s time for mourning and repenting as we celebrate the grace that gifts us with fresh starts and new beginnings. It’s time for us to confess that personal ambition often moves and shapes our leadership more than the gospel does. It’s time to confess that as leaders we have given into the temptation to be ambassadors of something other than our Lord. It’s time to humbly admit that we cannot serve leadership idols and be ambassadors at the same time. How many times are we going to see the same sad story of the demise of a ministry leader, and the destruction of the leadership community that surrounded him, before we recommit ourselves to God’s values and to our ambassadorial calling, and as we recommit, cry out that he would, in love, rescue us from us?
How Other Things Become Important
Every leadership community needs to recognize that ministry is an intersection of many competing and conflicting motivations. It would be wonderful if every leader in every church and ministry leadership community could say, “My heart is pure and unable to be tempted by any motivations that compete with my allegiance to Christ and his gospel of grace.” The problem is that while every leader’s heart is being purified by sanctifying grace, it is not yet completely pure and beyond temptation. Vinod Ramashandra, in his book Gods That Fail, notes that for the believing community, the most powerful and seductive idols are the ones that are easily Christianized. His words are a pointed warning to everyone in ministry leadership. Here’s how we go astray: a ministry leader pursues agendas other than his ambassadorial calling by doing ministry. A leader whose heart has been captured by other things doesn’t forsake ministry to pursue those other things; he uses ministry position, power, authority, and trust to get those things. Every leadership community needs to understand that ministry can be the vehicle for pursuing a whole host of idolatries. In this way, ministry leadership is war, and we cannot approach it with the passivity of peacetime assumptions.
Sadly, noble ministry leaders become ignoble ministry leaders, and because their hearts have been kidnapped, they are the ambassadors of false gods (power, fame, material things, control, acclaim, money, or the world’s respect), while still doing ministry. In the lifetime of a ministry, leaders change. Sometimes that change is a deeper submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ and to ambassadorial calling, but sometimes it’s a drift toward the service of other masters. Everyone reading this book has been witness to the sad drift that can take place in the heart, life, and ministry of a leader.
As I noted earlier, whenever there is a public fall of a well-known leader, my first question is, “Why didn’t the surrounding leadership community see it and address it before it got to this horrible place?” I ask because there are a couple of assumptions that seem safe to make. First, you know the leader has changed because if he had been in the early days who he now is, he would never have been called, hired, or appointed to this leadership position. Second, the changes did not occur overnight. They happened in bits and pieces over a period of years. This means that there are not only many evidences of a shift taking place in his life, but a growing body of evidence of a shift in heart sensitivities and heart allegiances. So it seems right to ask again the question I began this paragraph with.
How does a biblically based, gospel-committed, Christ-serving leadership community not move to lovingly confront a leader who has changed, seeking to rescue him from himself and to protect him from false ministry gods? I am going to answer my question in a way that will upset and maybe even anger some of you, but please give me the chance to explain. The reason we are often way too passive in the face of troubling evidence in the attitudes and actions of a leader is that way too often, performance trumps character. I have heard statements like the ones below repeatedly:
“But he was such a gifted preacher.”
“But look at the numbers of people who have come to Christ.”
“But look how our church has grown.”
“But think about the number of churches we have planted.”
“But we’d never have had this ministry campus apart from him.”
“But look at the gospel resources he has produced.”
Few leadership communities say that they have come to value performance over character, but performance becomes the logic behind not dealing with issues of character. Here is the inadequate logic: “Look what this great man has done for God; should we really tarnish his ministry?” So a leadership community accepts what it should not accept, is silent when it should speak, and is passive when it should act. There has been no confessional values change, but at the functional level the leadership community comes to value ministry success more than godly character and ambassadorial allegiance. It’s not just that one of their leaders has changed; the entire leadership community has changed, and in many cases, they don’t seem to know it.
Let’s look at how this shift often takes place. My purpose is not to argue that this is how it always happens but that these steps are typical of the way it tends to happen.
In the beginning of a leader’s ministry there is a high level of concern for character and a whole lot of loving encouragement and accountability. In getting to know a leader, he is watched carefully for how he does his work and relates to others. He is surrounded by the kind of community every leader needs. But as the months and years go by and the leader’s gifts bear fruit in rich and exciting ways, the leaders around him begin to close their eyes and shut their ears. Maybe it’s anger in a meeting that is not addressed, or an attitude toward an employee that is not confronted, or something inappropriate said about a woman that is not addressed. This powerful and effective leader now has the power to silence needed gospel voices in his leadership community. Fellow leaders become comfortable with resisting the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Things are said and done that they know are wrong, and when they happen, there is a check in their spirit, but they fail to respond to the prompting, and they sit in silence.
Before long, rather than confronting wrongs with grace, in their own hearts or in conversation with fellow leaders they are explaining them away. As a leadership community they convince themselves that maybe wrong isn’t really that wrong. They produce in their own hearts and with one another alternative perspectives and explanations that make wrong look less than wrong. If all this is allowed to happen, it won’t be long before this leadership community begins defending the leader when charges come from people he has wronged instead of dealing with those wrongs with a commitment to ethical and character purity that is tempered by grace. This once loving, watchful, rescuing, and protective gospel community has morphed into a community of defenders and advocates. The power and performance of this leader have left him unprotected and unpastored. The success of his ministry is loved by his fellow leaders more than he is. The castle he has built has become more precious than his soul. Fellow leaders have cowered in silence when he has resisted loving concern and confrontation, rather than loving him with the kind of sturdy, unrelenting love that comes when fear of God has defeated fear of man.
No leader can be left to himself. No leader should be permitted to drive away fellow leaders who have godly concerns. No leader should command loyalty in a way that compromises gospel integrity and morality. No leader’s ministry fruit should result in his heart not being protected. Every leader, no matter how powerful and successful, should be willing to look at himself in the reliable mirror of the word of God. No leadership community should compromise its integrity to accomplish its vision. No leader should be untouchable by the gospel community that God has lovingly placed around him. Every leader needs confronting and restorative grace.
Ministry is an everyday war of values. But we should not be afraid or discouraged, because we are not alone in this battle. Every ministry leader is the object of God’s sanctifying grace. When it comes to the true values of our hearts, sanctification progressively exposes, convicts, reclaims, and restores. Our hope is not that we will always get it right but that God will never forsake his sanctifying work. We may be willing to compromise, but he never will be. We may give way to fear, but he has no fear. We may be swindled into not seeing things clearly and accurately, but his view of us is always perfect. His presence and work in and through us is our hope, and because it is, we can commit ourselves to doing better. We can own our weakness and our failures and accept his invitation to fresh starts and new beginnings.