"You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything."
2 TIMOTHY 2:1-7
Two wonderful aspects amongst so many in N.T. teaching about spiritual leadership are its crystal clear clarity and intrinsic humility. If you are a spiritual leader, humbly, prayerfully looking for wisdom from God, of how to serve him and the beautifully precious bride of Christ, it is clearly all there, with overflowing grace, and without omission or hesitation. It does not omit the call to suffer or polyfilla the craters of sorrow and challenge which authentic ministry calls us to on a daily basis. It does however equip us to be fruitful for eternity, as we co-work in the kingdom which will outlast all kingdoms.
Praise GOD !!! he has not left us without His Spirit and His word.
In fact you do have to intentionally not look at what the truth says (the obvious teaching of the Bible and the reality of discipleship / leadership after Christ) or be so assured of your own self made pattern of leadership to miss some very basic things.
Why then are some elementary issues so missed ? (2 Suggestions)
a) Subversive arrogance and ego: Have you unintentionally decided to go for a bad / dangerous approach of non Christlike leadership out of being unaware of the bible, you've done your own thing "accidentally" through not really reflecting, meditating on or "thinking over" (2 Tim 2:7) what God has said ?... or have you chosen deliberately to end up in a place where you go against the word of God intentionally ?
- Sadly I am getting more convinced that folks in 2022 are increasingly casual in their approach either way, and the latter seems less of a danger to some, and more inevitable for too many, as minds favour "modern" working patterns, and self defined "best practice". Recent results and contemporary experience are emphasised more than timeless wisdom, and the Master builders plan, which stands the test of all ages. It seems to be the spirit of our age, to think that we are always superior to the past. Ironically this is far from new (1 Cor 4:6, Gen 11:4), it is as old as the hills. This rejection of divine design, is supreme arrogance. It is the humanistic spirit of Babel. The same folks who say they would be bible submitting and sell/ promote both their ministry and organisations on that basis, ironically can be as worldly, humanistic and non biblical in setup, operations, industry and approach.
- Everything in us wants to gently understate and be generously loving, but sometimes spades really are spades. This is especially so when what claims to be christian spiritual leadership or what is being promoted as such, is nothing but overt arrogance or human confidence which is far from subversive, without a shadow of conscience. When this is the case, atcually the most loving thing to do is expose the error, and seek to protect the countless many from the trail of eternal destruction which transpires.
b) The second suggested reason that simple Christlike, NT leadership has been lost, is that promoted thoughts ways and structures have come from leaders who have been internally promoted by self serving (corporate) structures rather than biblically minded servants, who blessed by GOD continue to work hard on the ground and in the organic fields of the mission of GOD.
- This seems to inevitably happen in some measure when local churches / church networks become detached from frontline / frontier mission in some way, or the super structure which pertains to "serve" the local church (or many churches) is populated primarily by those ("administrators, directors, retired workers, thinkers, writers, supporters, sponsors, social media specialists") far away from the frontline of gospel ministry. The individuals calling as frontline gospel worker, and development of their kingdom ministry before God becomes swallowed whole by the corporate whale, or "movement". The direction of travel then becomes non negotiable. Is this issue important in such a day when Christians are told to sign up on the basis that we are being increasingly marginalised ? Absolutely, for without consideration about our core calling, patterns and objectives, making a human institution in the name of the gospel will do no more good than having no connection at all, and in fact may damage the reputation of gospel ministry for generations to come.
- SERVING THE GOSPEL ...OR SERVING THE NETWORK WHICH SERVES THOSE WHO LEAD THE NETWORK TO SERVE THE GOSPEL - Does it matter ? The great irony is that a mass of churches are invariably needed to sustain finances and prop up such a growing structure which tries to gather as it increasingly gathers (and there are many more of them today than there were decades ago which means from the finite resources... less is going to frontline mission and true gospel ministry.) In contrast, organic (His kingdom) growth is less likely when the superstructure becomes the master and not the servant, when investment and time concentrates on structure building rather than kingdom advance. What was to serve the church can easily become the idol we all serve. Paying "ones dues" (amount decided by leaders of network or initiative, and not gospel workers on the ground), with increased "annual subscriptions" to serve such a system should prompt us to some realisation that the tail is somewhat wagging the dog. Something should smell wrong to us if what is promoted as a "support network" or "fellowship" in ministry demands to be subsidised, and imposes a way of working, making you feel so guilty if you don't cough up or submit, citing that this would be devastating for the "gospel cause". Whilst we could easily sign up to a shared doctrinal statement (of which much is made, and you are considered a heretic if you don't sign up), on the basis that this smells nothing like the way Christ operated, has less and less to do with independent (in the best sense) faith driven mission (Hudson Taylor, Whitfield etc etc), and more to do with gathering folks into a ghetto of conformity, we would be wise in hesitating and prayerfully considering at least. Conformity may not be the best vehicle to reach so many diverse nations and peoples in the global village and the millions and millions of unreached in cultures more diverse than we have yet understood, or started learning about to contextualise the gospel.
- Of course non of this trajectory may have initially been intended by individuals or groups who lead a network or structure, the homogenous view of gospel work and culture was just what brought them together and all they knew. This however, little changes the reality or ultimate fruitfulness. It is not about initial intension but adrift tragectory. It does not take long in such a comfortable detached groove, for such friends (however well meaning) to completely forget the reality grind of frontline ministry / gospel work (reaching the unreached), as they become detached from healthy, daily, habitual relationships which are so core to gospel growth. After all they are surrounded by unreal "professional" (Christian ghetto) relationships, people who think the same, rather than the robust life on life discipleship which is relentlessly challenged in the coalface as we work together through the grit of life in a pagan world. Their own (increasingly online/ in conference/ in comfort) identity is promoted as a guru and big bod, rather than a servant and support worker, and the heart is too easily deceived by flattery and seduced by the opportunity to tell people how we want things to be.
- However, we are not called to be overlords over the church (1 Peter 5:3) either in attitude or action, never mind identity and career pattern. We are beautifully and graciously (undeservedly) called to be under-shepherds in the mucky field, we are stupid wayward sheep rescued from certain danger and ourselves, living under the master shepherd who gives his life for the sheep. We are saved to seek lost sheep as he leads. The pattern of the one we follow is radically opposite to our world. Biblical fellowships are about close missional and relational advance, about sheep who know each other in the field, not about a veneer of network affiliation or superficial connection which is nothing other than a semantic agreement of theory or hyperthetical motive. Fellowship demands sacrifice and practicality, and fruitful (generational) gospel ministry demands ongoing, daily, gritty faithfulness on the most fundamental levels.
- I fear we are producing more and more gospel workers who have the gospel equivalent aspiration of being consultants with good handicaps on the golf course after a long lunch, rather than being a care workers in peoples homes. The reality of each culture is significantly different.
- Whilst we might be quick to preach against prevelant corporate greed in the contemporary world of commerce, we may be less quick to recognise it in our own contemporary behaviour in the church, in our hearts, relationships, and structures if they become self serving in the name of gospel ministry.
- Arrogant leaders will incubate and breed arrogant leaders, distant leaders cannot know sheep as shepherds. True servants on the other hand will incubate, encourage and promote servants. True ungdershepherds will train others to love lost sheep, stick to their own fields, give everything of themselves to protect, feed and nurture with limitless compassion.
What the bible is saying / we are saying, is so elementary to those in frontier mission, yet seems however to be rocket science to those whose "career in ministry" (an Athema) is based often around directing large movements/ networks, living separated from their field of calling, or removed at arms length from the locality to which God has placed them. Don't be mistaken, this issue of humanistic spiritual leadership is not limited to the superstructure hierarchy, it is possible to be pastor of a local church and be disconnected from your congregation and reality and therefore Christ's calling. It is possible to be a missionary and not engage with culture and the declaration of the gospel, and to have lost sight of your calling.
It remains a deep conviction that frontier mission or planting with a team in an unreached area is where Christlike leaders often shine brightest, are proven most throughly, developed most holistically, are opposed most rigorously, incubated most healthily and grown most beneficially. This is where true spiritual leadership really grows with strong roots, and this should be given our full attention not only for the fruitfulness of future ministry networks, and the vitality of established ministry (which can be unintentionally removed from frontline activity) but also because this is intrinsic to the directive priorities of the global mission of God . This stands the idea that true leaders are made only in larger, more stable contexts on its head. I wonder if this was an idea promoted by those who came from such a context, who had little or no knowledge of frontier contexts.
- By definition the leadership style of Christlike mission pioneers will unsettle the societal structures, and established norms/ patterns into which they are placed, as Christ authentically plays out in a 1000 relationships, and the smile of God accompanies and authenticates their ministry.
- Life under natural scrutiny is the biblical norm, life behind closed doors in segregation is not. Be wary of any spiritual leader who keeps their distance, and becomes increasingly inaccessible for fear of being seen or exposed.
To be bluntly clear, the biblical patterns are God's omniscient wisdom and hold water, and choosing to promote our own "fresh wave" of thought and impose it on spiritual leadership only ends up in mass mess, and spiritual damage and consequence beyond understanding.
Anyone who follows leadership in the form of Politics in the U.K., U.S, (or anywhere else) would have to miss the wood for the trees when thinking we might have to supplement the bible with "extra wisdom" from our world. There is a thin line between understanding / reading our times to give others spiritual direction, and being obsessed by our passing world and all its minutiae of distracting chaos. As servants of Christ, there should be something qualitatively, obviously different about us in a peculiarly good way. Yet, you'd be surprised at how many "Christian" superstructures have been built on the ethos and patterns of contemporary leadership, in the name of "spiritual" leadership which look identical to human modes and models of control and direction. Many such attempts have nothing to do with biblical directives, the global mission of GOD, and much to do with our intensions to build a kingdom for ourselves.
Some very elementary thoughts about 2 Tim 2 :
The Patterns are Intentional and Work.
These are room 101 thoughts on biblical patterns and wisdom re: spiritual leadership. No rocket science here in this blog, sorry to teach you to suck eggs, but somehow these things are missed, maybe because they are so simple folks think they can graduate past them. There is a reason why the bible often uses reminders. You and I move on too quickly, out of arrogance, dimwitted slowness, or forgetfulness.
1) Spiritual Leadership (or what many call "ministry") is hardworking on the ground, in and amongst the action. Being Christlike means getting stuck in on the habitual level.
The soldier is in a war,
the athlete is in a race,
the farmer is in the muck.
Put another way, they are "on the job" leaders, always in an amongst people and mess. This wipes out any notion (which has great traction today) of corporate style ministry sitting in a room of bureaucracy to direct others, whilst we get everyone else to do the hard work on the basis of our "wisdom". We are not above... our very reason for existence and model we follow ...is to serve the lowest (Phil 2). In the kingdom of Christ we are all equal rank and file, all in need of his salvation, however decorated and exonerated we may tell ourselves.
Spiritual leaders are grafters, with great discipline for hardship.
Think of a group of spiritual leaders who are meeting together not as a room full of lawyers, or academics debating theory and hypothesis, but a load of coal miners who have just surfaced from underground together, after a double shift.
Each of the 2 Tim 2 patterns involves lots of sweat, and no looking pretty.
The Soldier wipes blood, sees catastrophe, sorrow and trauma, and must keep going in pain and tiredness to preserve himself and see others survive. They are not detached but in the battle personally, submitting to all the pressures and realities like every other fighter around them.
The athlete is expert in knowing how to get through the pain barrier and recover from injury, devastation, disappointment or nervousness. Faith, trust and daily dependence are disciplines of those who work out in gospel ministry. Feeling the great insecurity and our finiteness of our abilities is very much part and parcel of the process of being refined as we trust increasingly on Him and his provision, to find our security in him alone, and the growth of our faith muscles. We should never look to human initiatives, human structure or human relationships as a substitute for this. Such reliance only produces increasing spiritual weakness. He has set the course, its rules and is the on site adjudicator. He alone trains us, he alone strengthens, he alone will get us to the finishing tape, knowing all things, and providing all we need to be sustained.
The farmer knows what it is to see great loss before their eyes,
but they work all the harder for those who work with them, without holidays.
Whilst we are wise to take care of ourselves for long term ministry fruitfulness, we also need to remember that early century farmers know nothing of "sabbaticals" for themselves. Sabbaticals in a field possibly, if after consult and consideration working elsewhere gave a field a season of rest for increased fruitfulness. The notion and motivation of personal sabbaticals is really quite different compared to farming mentality. Farmers are tied to the farm, is a gospel worker not tied to the gospel field until directed elsewhere for increased fruitfulness ? Maybe sometimes our contemporary obsession with sabbaticals comes more from being stuck in a dysfunctional farm than a biblical mandate.
Each day will involve some mucking out wherever we farm. This is not a bad foundational principle for gospel ministry.
This is our biblical patterns for fruitful ministry, resting more on the power of God to work in us, and preserve us throughout various seasons than our own ingenuity to establish a new way.
As I reflect on this, I'm reminded that the 3 leaders who impacted my life most, naturally followed these patterns. Because of God's goodness, they were servants in the muck and mess. Two of them actually came from a farming background, and one knew what it was to be on the building site or come home from the coalface every day, with all the language and attitude that entailed. Each of the three had an acutely sensitive heart which sometimes got them off their knees to go and be real with people, spend long days with people in problems, and be busy in the hard graft of the gospel, whether speaking, sharing truth or their lives wholesale (no boundaries) which embodied the truth. Just a thought, but I wonder if we should be promoting more people from a grafting background into ministry and less people from the classroom ?
- Who am I to sit in a room full of neat people and neat brains, or be "set apart" in comfort when there are countless going to a lost eternity ? How could I ever think this was the pattern of the incarnate Christ, and forget the mess he took on for me ?
My fear in contemporary (somewhat sanitised / "educated") evangelical culture, is that we would be more keen to blog, vlog, conference, write or read a book about sharing Christ than to actually do it, and model him to others. Nothing wrong in any of the above when spoken from those who are constantly in the muck, I just wonder sometimes if they are actually in the muck as they tell everyone else how to be ?I am never above mixing cement, plugging holes, cleaning toilets, cooking the basics, clearing drainpipes, unblocking drains, feeding animals, driving others, paying someones debt, running a shower for the street friend, painting the undercoat or seal, wiping up the mess from someones illness or a drunken excess when I follow Christ and serve his people. Neither are you. When done for him, all of the above smell of him, and the beautiful aroma of redemption. 2) Spiritual leadership is easily observed in an objective, measurable, way. It is not as complex as many make it out to be.
Many of my friends at this point are horrified, thinking that only God can evaluate, human perspective is not enough, that his word has great depth beyond our understanding, and that we are accountable only to him alone for the measurement of our fruitfulness. Yes, this is all absolutely true, and some have gone to their grave looking relatively unimpressive and unappreciated because of this spiritual dynamic. Yes, it is possible to appear unfruitful in spiritual leadership (for example due to lack of numerical growth or perceived movement forward) in ministry. Yes, there are many who lay the foundations of mission in frontier territories through a life of faithfulness and prayer, whose pain is only known by the one who matters. There are faithful men of God who stuck at pastoring smaller churches to spread the gospel one person at a time in a frontier context, and women of God who have gone to the most unreached areas alone, whilst being scorned by those who spoke to masses in an already reached environment.
All this is true, however... whether the soldier is accountable to the commanding officer or not it is pretty clear. It is obvious if he is doing badly or well, if he is surviving on the frontline or hiding in the officers' mess of the barracks. It is pretty clear if the athlete runs to win or like some of us did in school to get to lunch break. It is pretty clear if the farmer is well fed on his own crops or surveys a scene of devastation due to his neglect. In other words spiritual leadership does have tangible ramifications, and those who watch will see, either in a good way (Christ in us) or a bad way (our own work in our own strength for our own glory). (2 Cor 2:16)
Essential to the Spiritual leadership dynamic is that we are being watched both by God and people. This is the point of Paul's "life on life" letter to Timothy, out of the context of generational investment. It is the reason that Jesus clarifies good and bad spiritual leadership on this basis (Matt 7:15-20).
- PROVE CHRIST LIVES HERE: The greatest apologetic of the gospel preached is the outworking of Christ amongst his people (John 13:35), and this comes from the bottom of the pile (intentional phrase) as pastors, leaders, elders, evangelists, disciplers, mentors, missionaries, roll up their sleeves and serve. Christ knew he was being watched by heaven and earth when he made the door or furniture in the workshop. He came to take out the rubbish from our world, to remove that which was most grotesque from us by taking it on himself before God.
- SERVE OTHERS UNCONDITIONALLY: We take out the bowl not for show, but out of love, and we wash smelly feet because without such love people will not get it. By definition, things must smell bad in our nostrils before others smell Christ. We don't do it as a political move, we do it from the heart because this is the way Christ has loved us and shown us. Spiritual leadership after Christ is always about doing things with a desire that only His evaluation ultimately matters. However... (and this is important) If we get this right, then what people will see in us will be Christ, and whether that is observed negatively or positively in relation to our esteem does not matter one jot, as long as it bears fruit for Him. It does matter however in relation to eternal consequences and fruitfulness, to an extent that cannot be overstated.
So, whether you eat or drink,
or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
3) Spiritual leadership is seasonal, generational and humble.
We get ready to get out of the way without pride.
Orders and discipline involve humility and instruction to improve. Change is part of spiritual service, and the willingness to be flexible comes with our job description in the global mission of God.
- The Farmer learns the hard way if his crops do not succeed. It is no use having a favourite field or animal on the farm, and treating farming with romantic notions of ideology. Animals come and go, as do crops. They are there for a purpose not for us to be filled with romance or consumed with good feelings of affection... there is no time for that, and no good can come from it, nothing of worth would be achieved.
In the light of N.T. teaching and the formation of the global new community, our service of His kingdom, the kingdom of the one and only LORD, the eternal GOD before whom we all bow, we do well to remember our own limits and mortality.
ACTS 13:36
"For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption."On that basis we seek to live, grow and model in a way which copies Christ, nothing more and nothing less. Without any structure ministry will not grow, but with human structure it will fall and fail. On this basis we work hard, knowing that it would be better to have invested our lives in one person who models Christ well to the next generation, than to be applauded and elevated by many who synchronise with a godless generation, going to eternity without fruitful living. 1 Corinthians 3:12-15
Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
1 John 2:15
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
