I will leave a meek and humble people among you, and they will take refuge in the name of the Lord.

Zephaniah 3:12 (CSB)

The question that church leaders need to ask themselves and their elders is this, “Am I modeling humility and meekness as a leader?”

Maybe I’m a little bit cynical, but when I look at the worship service videos of many large churches, I don’t pick up a lot of humility. Or, at least, humility is not the first thing that pops in my head when I see them.

Polished, professional, groomed, smooth; these are words that come to me first.

Perhaps we need God to step in and reshape our expectations as to what church should be.

I am reminded of how the Apostle Paul described his own pulpit ministry:

“When I came to you, brothers and sisters, announcing the mystery of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom. I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power.”

1 Corinthians 2:1–5, CSB

Can we please have a little bit more of the Apostle Paul and a little less of the flashy, hip, bringer of sermonettes? Can we have the humble servant instead of the CEO? Can we have a shepherd and not a vision caster?

Please!

A good friend recently gave me a copy of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman. In the introduction, Trueman put words to something that I have thought for a while when he wrote:

“As for the notion of some lost golden age, it is truly very hard for any competent historian to be nostalgic. What past times were better than the present? An ere before antibiotics when childbirth or even minor cuts might lead to septicemia and death? The great days of the nineteenth century when the church was culturally powerful and marriage was between one man and one woman for life but little children worked in factories and swept chimneys? Perhaps the Great Depression? The Second World War? The era of Vietnam? Every age has had its darkness and its dangers. The task of the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them.”

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman

The words of Mordecai to Esther seem appropriate here when he said, “Who knows, perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this” (Es 4:14).

Rather than be nostalgic for something that never was, we can participate with God in responding correctly to the time in which we find ourselves.

If you are encouraged by this post or would like to make a comment, please use the comment form below to offer your feedback. I enjoy hearing from you.

Scripture is very clear on the tendency of each of us to go wrong if left unchecked. We need to be constantly aware of our propensity for self-deception. This is especially true of church leaders.

This morning, I read this in Deuteronomy where Moses lays out guidelines for anyone who was to be king in Israel.

“When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. “And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.”

Deuteronomy 17:14–20, ESV (emphasis added)

Basically, the king was not to abuse his power and lose sight of the fact that he is a man just like every other man in the country. When we look at the actual history of Israel, we should note that the abuses that Moses warned them about were what actually took place.

This should be instructive to us as we look at how the church should be structured. We have too many examples of how celebrity pastors have gone astray by assuming power that was never theirs to assume. My guess is that every reader of this post could name at least one pastor who has made headlines for scandalous behavior.

Each of us, and especially those of us who are called to leadership in the church, needs to honestly face our ability to deceive ourselves and allow ourselves to be held accountable to the standard of Scripture.

In the denomination with which I am currently associated, the church constitution recognizes this need for accountability by stipulating that elders have equal authority to pastors. In other words when the pastor and the elders vote on a decision, the pastor has one vote, just like each of the elders.

I think that this is healthy because when followed, it protects the church from manipulation by a pastor who has an unhealthy agenda for the church. This should prevent the pastor from pushing the church in an unhealthy direction if the elders are willing to stand for what they know to be true.

Much heartache could have been avoided if the kings of Israel had followed Moses’ command.

Much heartache could be avoided today if church leaders recognize their own ability to deceive themselves and willingly submit to their fellow elders.

But unfortunately, in many cases, we set up our pastors for failure by expecting too much of them. We expect them to “cast a vision” for the church which will promote growth and popularity in the community. We expect them to be the draw for new people to attend the church. We expect them to dazzle us every Sunday with their polished presentation full of pop-culture references. We set up our celebrity pastors to begin believing their own press clippings to the point where they feel they are superior to the people that are called to hold them accountable.

In short, we too often set up the very structure that allows for things to go wrong.

It is my hope that we can begin to learn from our mistakes and rather than make a flawed human the focus of our Sunday, we could get back to focusing on Christ and what he has done to set all of us right, including the pastor.

If you are encouraged by this post or would like to make a comment, please use the comment form below to offer your feedback. I enjoy hearing from you.