WHAT IS YOUR SEED?
The Lord lamented to His people in Jeremiah 2:21:
Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?
(Strange here means foreign, different, adulterous, outlandish - as in a strange woman.)
It's hard to be a leader among God's people these days. Pastors seem to struggle with finding ways to reach those they lead in ways that can be understood, and to pass on a message that will be relevant to the issues people face every day. The faithful, especially in America, don't like to be challenged to change, and don't want to hear about the fellowship of suffering in Christ, or the reality of modern-day persecution for His sake. So messages often devolve to predictable lines of popularity. These pop themes usually involve the promise of big, and preferably expensive, blessings, that's always guaranteed to get a positive response. Or, they touch on the notion that we who have been unfairly treated will eventually triumph over those who have wronged us. Now really, I think the screaming and shouting we see people do on TV (or we do ourselves in church) here is because we're really hoping that God will send some "payback" to the person that we haven't forgiven for wronging us. That's something to think about. Anyway, pastors who care work diligently to get us past these "flesh traps" and others we may fall into when the message is being preached. Then, as one of my friends put it, they fall into the role of nursing those who are always in need of spiritual care. That's a tough job, and it's a noble calling to serve God's people.
Being human, however, we don't always get it right. I turned on a TV service the other day and heard something I've heard elsewhere as well, which raised a concern yet again that I've had for a while. I'm going to try to explain it here in as balanced a fashion as I can.
Many current day leaders are quick to remind us of the truth that those who are in positions of spiritual authority among God's people should be treated with respect, and even honor. That is truth. These leaders also say that if what they do before God or man is unrighteous, it should be accepted anyway without question as the work of God, and that God's people should turn a blind eye, no matter how absolutely godless it is. That is not truth.
I’m very aware that it foolishness to look at one person and to esteem them worse than we are because they sin in a different way than we do (and surely we all do sin). And I weep with those who weep over the great losses we have seen of people who left the Lord's service. However, it is not being critical or judgmental when we can clearly see and determine that a person’s life, motives and behaviors are not centered on the will of God. To use a pretty benign example, let's say the Word of God says we shouldn’t tell a lie against our neighbor. If we see someone doing just that, we can recognize that something is wrong without being judgmental. It’s right there before us, and requires no addition of our opinion or any other facts to come to a conclusion. In law, the term for this analysis is res ipsa loquitur, meaning the thing speaks for itself.
Today, we have a corruption of soul in our leadership that is harming the body of Christ in the same way. Lives spent in the busy work of managing, planning and preaching lack prayer and are out of tune with the Holy Spirit. Secret sins have thrived like weeds to the point where they are now visible for all to see and shedding abroad their own seed. Talk of the kingdom of God is really code language for personal empire-building. Leaders will not work with each other for the good of the Lord’s business, because that might harm their business or financial interests, or the chance for their little corner of the kingdom to be ranked more highly than someone else's. There is competition among them, in ways that would bring shame if the whole truth were told.
So what we have are leaders whose lives are telling their real story, who don’t want to face up to their own personal issues that are affecting their ministries, and are instead passing the blame back to the sheep within their own sheepfold. A story from my freshman college days might help to illustrate my point. A young preacher came to call on me. During the course of the visit, he made an improper advance. I put a stop to it and he left. I saw him a few weeks later at a youth conference and called him on it, because he had behaved in a way that was wrong as well as disrespectful, and he had not even apologized. While I had to forgive him, I also thought it was important that he should deal with the potential harm of his behavior. To my mind, he was a walking time bomb and there was clearly an issue in his life that could present a danger to others. But when I approached him he became irate and shouted, “Don’t talk to me about that,” and walked away.
The same thing is happening on a broader scale within the Church. The leaders say to the followers, “I’m the leader God chose, and you dare not wonder, even in your mind, about what I’ve done.” Then they go on to cite the story of David and Saul. Saul, mind you, was a self-obsessed lunatic who had become deluded by power and strayed from God. David refused to hurt him, but he didn’t condone his sin either. After a while he also figured he would be safer not hanging too closely around Saul. Another Bible example used to keep sheep following a leader who is badly off course is the story of Korah and Moses. This time it was Korah who was in the wrong and became consumed with a lust for power. Moses was a man who was walking righteously before the Lord, not one who was hiding or justifying his own error. In either of these examples from the Bible, the Lord stood behind the blameless man, not the one who did wrong.
One might ask what I mean by doing wrong. To be sure, we can’t always know what that is, because what may seem wrong or “off-kilter” to one person may actually be an act of obedience to God’s specific instructions. For example, Jesus walked into the temple and threw out the money-changers. Imagine if that happened on a Sunday morning these days! The religious folk thought He was wrong and wanted to punish Him for it, but He was doing the will of God. My only measure then, as I said earlier, is what the word of God says. If God’s word clearly says no, then no amount of justification or even bullying by someone else can make me believe that person’s position, and my assessment will be that he or she is in the wrong. If God has given an instruction or direction to the leader that he or she does not heed, then he or she is in the wrong. It’s that simple.
I think sometimes what we're seeing with the dismissive attitude from our leaders might be a reaction to having experienced so much stinging betrayal and unfair criticism. They get a lot of that. Another cause for the type of denial of which I speak though is just human nature rising to the fore.
No one should take a leader to task for being human, because humanity is unavoidably prone to failure. However, as my beloved grandmother used to say, “You can’t be wrong and strong,” meaning a person can’t continue to do wrong and expect to be respected. That’s exactly the position coming from many leaders of the Lord’s church today. Sometimes it comes as clever persuasions, and in some environments it may be more open bullying of the people, but either way these are manifestations of ungodly manipulation and control.
What should the people of God do if they find themselves in that kind of situation? As bad as it is, overthrowing the leader is not an option. But I believe accepting evil as good and falsehood as truth is also not necessary. We should long for, pray for and submit to Godly leadership that is truly after God’s heart. And it’s also very important to have a personal relationship with our Father God for ourselves. We should be walking the moments of our lives with God, not just meeting Him at the church. That way, He will lead us into an intimacy in which He can increase our understanding, and also increase our compassion to pray for failing leaders who are struggling with repentance.
For those who lead, it’s important to be transparent, and at the same time to be willing to deal with our struggles. There’s little value to being transparent if no one can see the progress we’re making in our own spiritual development. There is a management principle which says that every flaw in an individual is magnified when that person becomes a leader of people. In the business world, it’s recognized that there is a limit to what can be done to retrain a manager toward more effective behavior. But in the spiritual realm, we don’t have to settle for a discouraging lack of change. We have God’s power, which can transform our flaws into loving leadership informed by His grace.
I believe that the Lord’s heart is grieved because of the harlotry of His people, and this is just one example of how we are disappointing Him. Those of us who are followers have issues too. But God wants a people, meaning leaders as well as those they lead, whose hearts belong to Him. Whom shall He call if there is no-one to hear? Whom shall He send?
Still, God is so full of mercy. He only longs for us to come to Him so He can help us with the insufficiency of our hearts. In the fall of 2004, I was sitting at my desk late one evening when out of the blue, the Lord moved me to another room and there prompted me to pray for a TV preacher who has recently become quite prominent. This woman, to all intents and appearances is a successful co-pastor of a large church and has broadcasts on various networks. She is counted among the Who's Who in televangelist circles. But I was led to pray that she would choose God above all those things. I believe at that time, this pastor was being called to lay down the growing ministry that she prized at His feet, in much the same way Abraham was called to lay down his beloved Isaac. This is a very difficult thing to do, so I felt compassion for this preacher.
I do not believe that God would have taken away her ministry, but yielding it to Him would have made room for His mightier presence upon it. I sensed later that this preacher was not able to make the choice, then. The result shows in her ministry today, not a surface level, because anyone can preach and shout and rouse people emotionally, but there now seems to be a lack of depth in the Spirit. The call of God that she used to speak of continually, that she was sent to those who do not know God, is no longer mentioned. Now, there are glitzy, packaged general-interest programs on all sorts of topics that have been recorded on fabulous sets with famous people, but none with the passion of that original call to a lost world. In spite of all this, I believe that God intends to offer this daughter of His another opportunity, and I am praying that she will have the strength to surrender the ministry to Him so He can give it back to her afresh.
And I've never forgotten the day I was first called to pray for her, because God intended it as a warning for me.
We all have to weed our gardens.
Deanna
