Category: Leaders

Freeing the Slaves

~ jim0211 ~ Leave a comment

The Lord’s Prayer starts with a focus on God and His purposes. After acknowledging His holiness, the first request is for His kingdom to come and His will to be done. These days, it sometimes seems that things are actually getting darker and we yearn to know how the light can be brought forth more clearly.

Of course, the best starting point for such questions is to look at Jesus. When starting His ministry, He began by presenting a picture of what it looked like to be bringing the kingdom.

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
 because he has anointed me
 to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
 and recovering of sight to the blind,
  to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:17-19 (ESV)

One of the things that strikes me about this passage is how it seems to point to a fundamental shift, more than just some people being provided for, liberated, healed, and set free. It seems to be about the end of the very forces that cause such suffering. He seems to be declaring the end of slavery, not just the freedom of some slaves. This would truly be an example of the kingdom coming and God’s will being done, wouldn’t it?

And in fact we have seen this happen in history. When wealthy Romans became Christians, they started providing money to establish hospitals, instead of public works projects with their names on them. This provided healing for many more people than had been available before.

A similar story exists for the establishment of organized education, allowing people to become much more able to improve their position in life. And again, when slaveholders had their eyes opened to their own involvement in the evils of slavery, that institution ended.

Note that slavery ended when the slaveholders became freed – freed from the level of greed that blinded them to the evil that they were perpetuating. So in a sense, freeing and bringing sight to the slaveholders is what really freed the slaves because that ended slavery as an institution, and that had much greater impact than even the precious task of freeing individual slaves.

There are still many places that need to be transformed in ways that go beyond mere human effort. We can do many good deeds on our own, but bringing the kingdom involves more than a lot of good deeds. We need the Spirit’s help to bring transformation of the sort described above.

Part of working in the Spirit is to see beyond the physical to spiritual realities, like Jesus did when eating with the “tax collectors and sinners” in Matthew’s house.

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Matthew 9:10-13 (ESV)

Like Matthew, most of the people there would have been comfortable, maybe even wealthy and influential. Jesus, however, didn’t see them as rich and comfortable, but sick and in need of a physician. Focusing on the unseen, He didn’t regard them according to the flesh.

This is a view that is often absent from Christian ministry. It’s common to quote Jesus’ comment about the rich as part of the rich young ruler episode, in which the focus is on what’s possible with human ability, and shake our heads at the hard-heartedness of such people. But it’s far less common to acknowledge the Spirit’s fruit among the rich in Acts 2 or among powerful Christians throughout history.

As a result of our focus on human ability and what’s physically seen, our actions focus on what we can do physically, allowing us to feel good for stepping out and doing good. We may talk about wanting to do more, perhaps feeling chagrined that we’re never doing enough, but we still readily accept the acclaim from the world for what we do. Jesus was also highly regarded for the things He was doing and the compassion He showed people, but He was also reviled when He was with those who didn’t need such help.

Do we feel uncomfortable with reaching out to those who don’t need our physical touch? Perhaps they just need prayer and eyes opened to God working in their lives or a word of clarity about Jesus. Is it that we’re afraid of being reviled like Jesus that we don’t deliberately pursue such opportunities?

As disciples, we are supposed to grow into greater and greater likeness of Jesus, our master. However, it’s all too easy to focus on those aspects of Jesus’ walk that we like and that agree with our theology. Who is being made in whose image as we slip into the all too comfortable place of freeing slaves while ignoring slavery?

The fact is that Jesus reached out to everyone around Him with both physical and spiritual ministry. Some individuals do the same today, yet it is common for local bodies of Christ, congregations of diverse individuals, to focus only on one area such as physical ministry. It’s as if the important thing is for the body to reflect the pastor’s interests rather than Jesus’ character.

In a sense, we’re still following the way of the rich young ruler, seeking whatever can be done with human power, rather than following the leaders in Acts and the early church in seeking what can be done by the Spirit. Of course we need to reach out to the poor, sick, and oppressed and be willing to sacrifice of ourselves to demonstrate God’s love to them. But why stop there when Jesus didn’t?

Instead, we need to recover the belief, seen throughout history, that the Spirit can work through all people regardless of their station in life, and go into the places of power to open eyes and free slaves. For when that happens we may see slavery ended instead of just freed individuals, diseases eradicated instead of just some people being cured, hunger ended instead of just some people being fed.

This is when the world will change and the kingdom will come.

Prayer for Leaders

~ jim0211 ~ Leave a comment

Prayer for each other is a key aspect of Christian faith, and it takes many different forms, with many different goals. One particular need is to pray for our leaders, for they determine many aspects of our lives and so need to be guided.

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:1-4

Paul’s direction to pray covers a wide range in both the type of prayer and for whom we are praying. However, he calls out one group in particular: our leaders, those in influential positions. We need to pray for guidance for all leaders and be thankful for good ones.

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Doctrinally Humble

~ jim0211 ~ Leave a comment

Throughout history, great debates have raged over theological issues within the faith. These are important because we do want to have a clear understanding of our faith, at least to the extent possible given what God has revealed to us. And of course, we want to honor God with our minds, and this seeking process is one way we can do that.

In these cases, it’s common for people to choose a position on issues for themselves, and often to use that understanding to guide their choice in denomination, church, and perhaps even with whom they associate.

Whenever we do this, however, we are basically passing judgment on another Godly, highly educated Christian, often a leader. I sometimes think to myself: “Who am I to correct that person?” Even though it’s an easy thing to develop strong opinions about complex issues, that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to be correct, and if it’s not that easy, then perhaps we need to be careful.

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Leaders and the Ends of the Earth

~ jim0211 ~ Leave a comment

There is a spiritual darkness, a spiritual hunger, growing in our culture today and our religious institutions seem unable to address it. The reasons for this are various and only partly known, but we clearly need a new effort to go into the darkness and declare the light.

Unfortunately, it often seems that our religious organizations are even holding us back. The effort needed to keep organizations running smoothly keeps leaders focused inward, which is natural. The leaders, in turn, keep the lay believers focused inward. Unfortunately, this all works in opposition to the “go” mindset. Even when churches reach out, they do so from an organizational perspective.

For example, a lot of outreach consists of inviting people into church. Such invitations may be to religious services or largely secular activities designed to be welcoming and attractive to non-Christians. This is not the same as sending people from church into the darkness, however. Consider that the ways spiritual truths are shared almost always use Christian terminology and often even Scripture, which is not the way people share ideas in the darkness.

As we’ve seen elsewhere, there is a need to reach those who are spiritually furthest from church. They probably will not respond to invitations, have little interest in learning about Christianity (the religion), and so on. They may well need to be brought into a relationship with God before finding a church, and the best church for them may not be the one associated with whoever led them to God.

Thus, those furthest from God (at the spiritual ends of the Earth) are not good targets for typical organizational outreach efforts. In addition, leaders are so focused on the organizations that they seem not to recognize the need to send their people out. Rather than encourage individual seeking, they encourage passive listening to in-church teachings that continue to focus internally.

In a sense, I think something similar is pictured in Acts. When the persecution started after Stephen’s death, the apostles stayed in Jerusalem while the other believers scattered, preaching the word as they went. In other words, in the face of persecution, they redoubled their efforts to spread the gospel (Acts 8:1-4).

This continued until these believers reached areas that were far from Judea, both physically and spiritually. The final breakthrough to people completely separate from God occurred in Antioch, through the ministry of these unknown believers (Acts 11:19).

So, the picture seems to be of the leaders focusing on keeping the church healthy, while the lay believers focus on witnessing of Jesus.

Some of the things I’ve read about the early church also seem to echo this. Writings of the church fathers seem often to do with organizational matters, doctrine, liturgy, and so on. Things that are (rightly and necessarily) focused on keeping the church healthy, but not necessarily growing the kingdom.

On the other hand, one of the earliest clear apologetic writings is by an unknown author (The Letter to Diognetus), apparently a lay believer who simply felt the need to share the gospel clearly with someone who needed to hear it.

To be sure, there are numerous stories of the apostles spreading the gospel in different regions, but these extra-Biblical accounts seem to be exceptions, rather than the rule.

Whether these observations of the early church are correct or not, it does seem that the reality today is that current organizations, and the people who lead them, are not interested in reaching far into the darkness. This leaves an opportunity for lay believers to make that journey, just as happened in Acts.