Introduction
Crisis
I love the church. I love its worship, I love its preaching, I love its gospel theology, I love its community, I love its witness to the world, I love its ministries of mercy, and I love its leaders. When I have the privilege of standing before a gathering of church leaders, I am always filled with a deep sense of honor and appreciation. I know well the road that every pastor travels because I have walked that long road myself. I know the burden of being a member of the core shepherding and leadership community of the church. I have the highest respect for those who answer the call to give their life to church ministry. I know the average pastor is overworked, understaffed, and underpaid, so I have such appreciation for those who have chosen to live that life. I am a member of a wonderful church, with godly and dedicated leadership and life-giving gospel preaching. Being part of its community is one of the joys of my life.
The love that I have for the church is why I am concerned for the leaders of the church. My concern has deepened as I have gotten call after call, calls that have come as a result of my book Dangerous Calling.1 The particular call that follows came from the head of a local church board with which I had a loose ministry partnership. He was shocked, hurt, angry, and confused. He called for my help, but I’m not sure he wanted my help, at least not the help that I felt constrained to give him. It wasn’t long into the conversation that his anger turned toward me. I wanted to help him and his band of fellow leaders through the dark and rocky road that they would walk over the next several months, but his anger told me I wouldn’t be invited in. I put down my cell phone after our talk and sadness washed over me. It wasn’t the first time, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last. I carry that sadness with me. It drives me to prayer, it makes me celebrate God’s grace, and it motivates me to think that we can and we must do better.
What concerned me with the call that day and many other similar calls is not that my leader friend was shocked, hurt, and angry. He should have been shocked at the duplicitous life of the senior pastor he was calling about. He should have been hurt that his pastor loved his pleasure more than he loved the people he’d been called to feed and to lead. The caller needed to be righteously angry at the violation of everything God designed his church to be. But what concerned me and left me sad after the call was that there was no introspection, no wonderment about the nature of the leadership community that surrounded the fallen pastor, and no apparent willingness to talk about things other than what to do with the pastor who was the focus of his anger.
I wish this conversation had been an exception, but it wasn’t. We have all been witnesses to the fall of well-known pastors with a huge amount of influence and notoriety, but for every public falling, there are hundreds of unknown pastors who have lapsed, have left both their leadership and their church in crisis, or are spiritual shells of the pastors they once were. We have talked about the idolatry of celebrity, about pastoral immorality, and about seduction of power, but I am writing this book because, very often, behind the failure of a pastor is a weak and failed leadership community. We don’t have just a pastoral crisis; I am convinced from conversation after conversation with pastors and their leadership that we have a leadership crisis.
Could it be that the way we have structured local church leadership, the way leaders relate to one another, the way we form a leader’s job description, and the everyday lifestyle of the leadership community may be contributing factors to pastoral failure? Could it be that as we leaders are disciplining the pastor, dealing with the hurt he has left behind and working toward restoration, we need to look inward and examine what his fall tells us about ourselves? Could it be that we are looking to the wrong models to understand how to lead? Could it be that as we have become enamored with corporate models of leadership, we have lost sight of deeper gospel insights and values? Could it be that we have forgotten that the call to lead Christ’s church is not summarized by organizing, running, and funding a weekly catalog of religious gatherings and events? Could it be that many of our leadership communities don’t actually function like communities? And could it be that many of our leaders don’t really want to be led, and many in our leadership community don’t value true biblical community?
I knew when I wrote Dangerous Calling, which addresses the unique temptations that every pastor faces, I would need to write another book addressing the community of leaders that surrounds the pastor. I have needed the years since Dangerous Calling was published, with all of those sad and difficult phone conversations, before undertaking it. I have needed to sit face-to-face with scores of pastoral newbies and veterans. I have needed many hours of examination and reflection. But I am excited to use my voice in the hope that it will ignite a conversation that I am convinced we need to have but often are not having.
This book is not a depressing critique. You can go to Twitter for that—the place that has revealed to us all that judgment is much more natural to us than grace. I want to propose a positive character model for local church or ministry leadership. There is so much written about a leader’s gifting, about having the right people in the right seats, about leadership structures, and about how to make decisions and drive vision. All of these things are important, but they are not the most important thing. I want to turn your thinking toward the foundational character and lifestyle of a healthy church leadership community. My hope is that the result will be insight, confession, and community transformation.
Jim called me because the secret, sordid life of his senior pastor was no longer a secret. Like so many situations, the computer was the tool that had exposed the secret. At first, Jim and his fellow leaders were in denial. They simply could not believe that this stuff was going on in the life of the man they had worked alongside and trusted for years. They thought maybe his computer had been hacked, but when they approached him, they changed their thinking, because he had a denier’s answer for everything. Now they had to work through their disbelief as well as all the plausible explanations their pastor had given and that, frankly, they wanted to believe. The more they dug, however, the more they were unable to deny the truth of what was uncovered, and the more they uncovered, the more they had to confess that there was an awful lot about this pastor that they did not know. They were like ten people in a canoe built for four launched by raging rapids toward a waterfall ahead.
To add to their out-of-control feeling, this crisis had shattered their unity. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the crisis had exposed how thin and easily shatterable their unity was. The men who were most loyal to the pastor argued and debated with the men they thought were rushing to judgment; the organizational guys argued with the men who tended to be more pastoral; and in all of these debates there was way too much judgment of the others’ interests and motives. Meanwhile, a shocked and hurting congregation was not getting from their leaders what they needed.
As I walked with these leaders through their distress and confusion, engaging them in conversation after conversation, it was clear that they were foundationally unprepared for what they were dealing with. It wasn’t just that they were structurally unprepared; they were, more importantly, unprepared in terms of character and relationship. The fact that such basic things were missing complicated and obstructed their calling to lead their church through that very difficult moment. And in their unpreparedness, they spent as much time debating among themselves as they did dealing with the crisis and the man at the center of it.
It’s not just the little, unknown churches that are unprepared. We have all watched flagship churches deal with similar pastoral crises, and we have seen them act and speak too soon, only to then retract what they have said and done and then suggest another view and another course of action that they soon also modify. We’ve seen leaders in these churches publicly disagree with one another. We have seen loyalty, power, and division control decisions rather than biblical wisdom. How many failed pastors will there be, how many more broken and hurting churches, before we humbly ask questions about how we are leading the church that the Savior has entrusted into our care?
I celebrate the wonderful, vibrant, and healthy churches that I partner with around the world. I love the energy that we are pouring into church planting and church revitalization. I love that gospel-centered churches are speaking ever more loudly as advocates for what is just and right for those who have no voice. I am not at all depressed; I am excited. But I am concerned that weaknesses in the leadership community have the power to not only weaken the function and witness of what appears to be a very healthy church but may also, in what seems to be an instant, cast that church into a quagmire that can damage and divert its ministry for a long time. In some situations it appears that the glory will never return.
The courage that propels me to approach this topic is rooted not in my wisdom or experience but in the presence, power, wisdom, and grace of my Redeemer. As I begin writing this book, I am once again remembering what gave me hope and motivation when I wrote Dangerous Calling—Matthew 28:16–20:
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The disciples had been through a whirlwind of unimaginable things; the late-night arrest of their Messiah in Gethsemane, Jesus’s trial and torture, the public crucifixion, the sight of his empty tomb and his post-resurrection appearances. Try to put yourself in their place. Try to imagine the confusion, the internal debates, the fear, the doubt, and the wonderment of the future. Imagine the joy of his appearances crashing against the struggles of belief that would accompany the miracles and the mystery. Consider what happens next in the context of what the disciples were dealing with emotionally and spiritually.
Jesus, knowing that there was both doubt and belief in the room, was about to commission this group of fearful believers to carry the gospel of resurrection life to the world. Yes, he would commission these men at this cataclysmic moment. I likely would’ve thought, They’re not ready, it’s just too soon. They need to know so much more. They need to come to a deeper understanding of what just happened. They need time to mature. But in the middle of the most amazing, confusing, and gloriously mind-bending moment in history, Jesus did not hesitate; he simply said, “Go.”
I love the words that follow because they tell us why Jesus was confident to draft these men, at that moment, for his worldwide gospel mission. He was confident not because of what was in them and what he knew they would do, but because he knew what was in himself and what he would do. So he said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” He was saying to these men that there was no situation, no location, or no community outside of his authority and sovereign rule. He wanted them to understand that everything in heaven and on earth was under his command. Consider why this was so vital for these men who desperately needed his grace in order to bring his message of grace to the nations.
I don’t know if you’ve ever considered this, but the reliability of God’s promises of grace to us is only as great as the extent of his sovereignty. God can only guarantee the sure delivery of his promises in the places over which he has control. I can guarantee what I promise to you in my house, because I have some authority there, but I cannot make the same promises for my neighbor’s house, over which I have no control. Jesus is saying, “As you go, you can bank on everything I have promised you because I rule every place where you will need those promises to be fulfilled.” God’s promises of grace are sure because his sovereignty is complete.
But Jesus had more to say. He then looked at this room of men, with the mixture of doubt and faith in their hearts, and said, “Behold, I am with you always.” These words are much deeper than Jesus saying, “I’ll be there for you.” Jesus is taking one of the names of God: “I Am.” He says, “Know that wherever you go, the I Am will be with you, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one on whom all the covenant promises rest, the one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the one who is Alpha and Omega. I am the I Am, and I would never think of sending you without going with you in power, glory, wisdom, and grace.” The disciples would find all they needed for what they were being commissioned to do in the power, presence, and grace of the one sending them.
It is with the same assurance Jesus gave to the disciples that I write this book. Because of the completeness of Christ’s authority, the inescapability of his presence and the surety of his promises, we don’t have to be afraid of examining our weaknesses and failure. The gospel of his presence, power, and grace frees us from the burden of minimizing or denying reality. The gospel of his presence, power, and grace welcomes us to be the most honest community on earth. We are not cemented to our track record. We are not left to our small bag of personal resources. Because he is his best gift to us, our potential is great and change is possible. And so it is the gospel of his presence, power, and grace that gives me the courage and hope to write about a very important place where change needs to take place. May the same grace give you an open heart as you read.
A Model
The foundation of everything proposed in this book about the shape, character, and function of the leadership community of the church of Jesus Christ is this: the model for the community that is the church, and most importantly its leadership, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, I know that this seems both obvious and vague, but I am persuaded that it is neither, and that if the primary driving force of leadership in local churches around the world was the gospel of Jesus Christ, many of the sad things we have seen happen in the lives of leaders and their churches would not have happened.
I want to invite you to examine with me a passage that lays down a gospel foundation for all relationships in the church, from the average person in the pew to the most influential, culture, and mission-setting leaders. Let me say, before we look at this passage, that no organizational or achievement-oriented leadership model should overwhelm the values and call of the gospel as the core structural and functional model and identity for local church and Christian ministry leaders. As I have reflected upon this passage, my mind has gone to the thousands and thousands of pastors, ministry leaders, elder boards, and deacon boards around the world, and I have wondered if the community norms of this passage are their normal experience as leaders. The passage comes in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Eph. 4:1–3)
It should be noted that Paul’s first application of the truths of the gospel, which he has just expounded for the Ephesians, is to remind them that it is those very truths that are to form the way they think about themselves and their relationships to one another. Those truths are to be the foundation stones of whatever community structures they build. There are few more important applications of the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ than to consider how they set the agenda for the way we live with, relate to, and work with each other as members of the body of Christ. And let me point out that there is no exception clause for pastors, elders, and deacons or some different community model for them in this passage or in any of the similar passages. The gospel, which is our hope in life and death, also sets the agenda for how we live, relate, and lead between the “already” of our conversion and the “not yet” of our final home going.
My purpose here is not to do a detailed study of Ephesians 4:1–3 but to propose how its gospel values can begin to form the way we think about how we function and relate as church leaders. I want to suggest that if you really do want your relationships to be worthy of the gospel you received, then you will value humility, gentleness, patience, forbearing love, and peace, and if you value these gospel characteristics, you will ask yourself, “What would my leadership community look like if we truly valued these things more than positions, power, achievement, acclaim, or success?” Let me answer this question by suggesting six characteristics that will mark out a leadership community formed by gospel values.
1. Humility
Humility means that each leader’s relationship to other leaders is characterized by an acknowledgment that he deserves none of the recognition, power, or influence that his position affords him. It means knowing, as a leader, that as long as sin still lives inside you, you will need to be rescued from you. Humility means you love serving more than you crave leading. It means owning your inability rather than boasting in your abilities. It means always being committed to listen and learn. Humility means seeing fellow leaders not so much as serving your success but serving the one who called each of you. It means being more excited about your fellow leaders’ commitment to Christ than you are about their loyalty to you. It’s about fearing the power of position rather than craving it. It’s about being more motivated to serve than to be seen. Humility is always being ready to consider the concern of others for you, confess what God reveals through them, and to commit to personal change. Humility is about firing your inner lawyer and opening yourself up to the ongoing power of transforming grace.
Dependency means living, as a leader, as if I really do believe that my walk with God is a community project. It means that because of the blinding power of remaining sin, I give up on the belief that no one knows me better than I know myself. Dependency means no longer being afraid of exposure, because I really do believe that there is nothing that could be known, exposed, or revealed about me that has not already been addressed by the person and work of Jesus. It means living as if I really do believe that isolated, individualized, independent Christianity never produces good fruit. It means acknowledging that every leader needs to be led and every pastor needs to be pastored. Dependency means acknowledging theological understanding, biblical literacy, ministry gifts, and ministry experience and success do not mean that I no longer need the essential sanctifying ministry of the body of Christ. It means confessing that as long as sin remains in me, and that apart from restraining grace and the rescuing ministry of those around me, I continue to be a danger to myself.
If you acknowledge the presence and the seducing and deceiving power of remaining sin, you will also acknowledge that everyone in your leadership community is still susceptible to temptation and is still at risk. You know that sins, small and great, will infect your community and obstruct and divert its work. You live with the knowledge that everyone in your leadership community is still in need of rescuing and sanctifying grace. So you set in motion plans for dealing with the sin, weakness, and failure that will inevitably rear their ugly heads. You will not be shocked by, deny, or minimize what God, in grace, reveals but deal with it forthrightly in a spirit of biblical love and grace. You will not be more concerned with defending the reputation of your leadership community than dealing with its failures. Prepared spontaneity means that because you have taken seriously what the gospel says about ongoing spiritual battles in the heart of every leader, you have prepared yourself to deal with the sin that God exposes, even though you don’t know beforehand what he will, in grace, expose.
Inspection means that we invite people to step over the normal boundaries of leadership relationships to look into our lives to help us see things that we would not see on our own. It means inviting fellow leaders to watch for our souls. It means inviting them to interrupt our private conversation with protective biblical insights and restorative gospel truths. It means acknowledging that self-examination is a community project, because we are still able to swindle ourselves into thinking that we are okay when we are in danger and in need of help. So every leader must be willing to live under loving, grace-infused, patient, and forgiving biblical inspection.
We all sin, but we don’t all sin the same. For reasons of history, experience, gift, biology, and a host of other things, we aren’t equally tempted by the same things. You may be susceptible to the temptations of power, while someone else may be susceptible to the temptations of pleasure, while I may be tempted by the lure of material things. This understanding of the variegated seductions of sin and the different way they impact each one of us is vital to the long-term health and gospel fruitfulness of every local church leadership community. True biblical love doesn’t just accept you, bless you with patience, and greet your failures with forgiveness. Along with all these things, it works to do everything it can to protect you from the eternal weaknesses of heart that make you susceptible to temptation.
The words of Hebrews 13:17 speak with a motivational clarity: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.” Leaders are responsible to protect the souls of those who are under their care. The words here are both specific and provocative. It doesn’t say leaders are commissioned to take note of your behavior; of course that is true, but there is something deeper and more fundamental pictured here. It’s souls that leaders are held accountable to protect. Soul points to the inner person, his thoughts, desires, motives, weaknesses, strengths, level of maturity, susceptibilities, etc. It means knowing someone at the level of his heart so that you can predict where he may step over God’s wise boundaries. What is depicted here is a level of protective leadership that will only ever happen in the context of depth of relationship.
If this protection is meant to be the experience of everyone in the body of Christ, should it not be present in the core leadership community? It has saddened me how many times I have been contacted to help a leadership community deal with a fallen leader, only to discover there were indicators all along of particular weakness and susceptibilities that no one in his leadership community seemed to see. Because we as leaders don’t always see ourselves with accuracy, and because we don’t always see the areas in which we are weak, we all need a protective community that is watching for us even when we aren’t as watchful as we should be. If we are to be protected, we need to be known at the level where temptation is its most powerful, the heart.
One of the most beautiful, hopeful, and encouraging gospel themes that courses its way through Scripture is the theme of fresh starts and new beginnings. Fresh starts and new beginnings are a hallmark of the rescuing, forgiving, restoring, and transforming power of God’s grace. For Moses a fresh start looked like a burning-bush voice calling him back to Egypt to liberate God’s people, this time by God’s power. For David it meant being confronted by a prophet, confessing the horror of what he had done, and continuing his kingship. For Jonah it meant being vomited up on the seashore and commissioned a second time to take God’s message to Nineveh. For Peter a fresh start happened on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, as the Messiah he betrayed forgave him and sent him once again into his service. For Paul, a fresh start and new beginning looked like a blinding light on a road to Damascus and words of forgiveness and commission carried by a rather fearful messenger.
Grace means we are not held to our worst moment or cursed by our worst decision. Grace means out of the ashes of sin, leaders can rise because the Savior has resurrection power. I wonder, in the way we think about leaders and the function of the leadership community, would we have restored any of these biblical characters? What is different about the way we look at the sin, weakness, and failure of a leader and the way God looks at the same? In none of the instances that I cited was the sin denied, hidden, or minimized. In each situation it looks as though what was done was so grave that there could be no hope for the sinner’s future. Our tendency in such situations is to think that while God’s forgiveness demonstrates amazing grace, he will nevertheless say, “As far as usefulness in my kingdom, you’re done.” But in those biblical situations, each was restored to a position of spiritual leadership.
I am going to have much more to say about this in a chapter to follow, but what I want to ask here is, Do our leadership communities function with a gospel-driven, restoration mentality? I know so many fallen leaders who were cast away and are supporting their families doing telemarketing, house construction, or computer sales. We should never minimize a leader’s sin, nor should we rush to put a leader back in the saddle who has not yet dealt with central issues in his heart, and certainly there are some cases in which a leader should never be restored to a position of leadership, but we also must not abandon our functional belief in the restorative power of God’s right-here, right-now grace.
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The church is in desperate need of a leadership community whose function is not just structured to achieve with efficiency but is more deeply shaped by the comforts and calls of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As in every other relationship of human life, if you look at your leadership community through the lens of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it will transform your expectations, your commitments, your behavior, and the way you respond to difficulty. It is not just nebulous biblical talk to say that the gospel must be our model for the formation and function of the leadership community that is to guide the church. The focus of this book is the specific call of the gospel on the way we think about leadership.
Twelve Gospel Principles
I meet individually on a regular basis with ten young pastors and ministry leaders. There is nothing in ministry more important to me than this, and there are few things that I enjoy in ministry more. There is a real way in which these men are my ministry heroes. They have given their lives to live in the trenches in the middle of the spiritual battle that is the church. They deal with the full range of joys and hardships that are inevitable in ministry. They have been called, like their Messiah, not only to preach the gospel but also, like him, to suffer for its sake. I love walking with them through the twisted roads, the hills and valleys, and the shiny days and stormy nights of the life of a spiritual leader. But again and again I am saddened that they lack the kind of gospel-rich community that every pastor or leader needs in order to be spiritually healthy and to enjoy ministry longevity. My meetings with them have forced me to think about what that community needs to be like.
So this book is shaped by twelve leadership-community gospel principles. These principles are deeply relational because the gospel is. Remember that the gospel of God’s grace teaches us that lasting change of heart and hands always takes place in the context of relationship, first with God and then with the people of God. One way that I think about the twelve principles that drive the content of this book is that they are a love letter to these dear men whom I walk with and have such affection for. My hope is that not only would these principles protect them and bless them with a long and healthy ministry life, but that they would do the same for you and generations of Christian leaders to come.
1. Paul David Tripp, Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012).