Spiritual Leadership

Each person following Christ is also, in some sense, called to be a leader. None of us are justified in passively following those around us to whatever goals the world might set. Christians must personally be pressing toward the goal of glorifying God (I Cor. 10:31) and enjoying Him forever (Ps. 73:25-26). And we cannot be content in pursuing this goal ourselves, we must also fulfill the Great Commission of our Lord to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19).

In thinking about issues of Christian leadership, I would like to commend the new Total Leadership blog. This is a blog "about leadership issues in the local church" by Tad Thompson, pastor of Harvard Avenue Baptist Church and student of Southern Seminary, from which he is earning his EDD in leadership. One blogger (I believe it was Phil Johnson) once wrote that pastors write the best blogs, and Total Leadership is no exception to this rule. So far the discussions facilitated on Thompson's blog have included the question of how we are to distinguish spiritual leadership from leadership in general and the question of the basic definition of leadership.

It is providential that I found the Total Leadership blog just as I began to study through John MacArthur's book Twelve Ordinary Men.
In chapter 2 of this book about the twelve apostles, MacArthur examines some principles of leadership found in the biblical account of the interaction between the Lord Jesus and Simon Peter. Among other comments in this chapter, MacArthur gives 6 character qualities that a leader must develop and model before his followers:

1. Submission: "Everything the true spiritual leader does ought to be marked by submission to every legitimate authority- especially submission to God and to His Word." (I Pet. 2:13-18)
2. Restraint: A leader must develop and model "self-control, discipline, moderation, and reserve" following the example of Jesus. (I Pet. 2:21-23)
3. Humility: "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble". (I Pet. 5:5-6)
4. Loving service: "The real leader is someone who serves, not someone who demands to be waited upon." (Mk. 9:35)
5. Compassion: A leader must learn from their mistakes and trials so that he may comfort others and be patient with others. (I Pet. 5:8-10)
6. Courage: A leader must be willing to suffer for the ultimate goal. (I Pet. 1:3-7)

In the comments section of the Total Leadership blog, Andy Stanley, the leader of North Point Ministries in the Atlanta area, posed the question, "What is …distinctly spiritual about the leadership you do?" This question is answered in Twelve Ordinary Men on page 47, where MacArthur writes,

Obviously, in spiritual leadership, the great goal and objective is to bring people to Christlikeness. That is why the leader himself must manifest Christlike character. That is why the standard for leadership in the church is set so high. The apostle Paul summarized the spirit of the true leader when he wrote, "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ" (I Corinthians 11:1).

My prayer for all readers of this blog is that you would be conformed to the image of Christ and that you would lead others to also be made into the image of Christ by faith.

Jesus: Good Shepherd or CEO? An Exercise in the Perspicuity and Sufficiency of Scripture

[This blogpost is an expansion of recent comments made in a discussion on the Total Leadership blog.]

In a recent article entitled “The God Who Names Himself”, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary begins with these thoughts:

Calls for theological innovation and the employment of "theological imagination" are now routine among mainline Protestants and others prone to theological revisionism. Dismissive of doctrinal orthodoxy and biblical language as out of date, oppressive, patriarchal, and worse, the proponents of theological reformulation intend to restructure Christianity around an entirely new system of beliefs, playing with language even as they reinvent the faith.

The “theological innovation” Dr. Mohler decries is painfully obvious in situations such as the recent declaration by the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. that different names– such as “Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-Giving Womb”– must be given to the members of the Trinity (this is the situation that sets the context for Mohler’s article), but extreme examples such as the actions of the PCUSA only come about after a long series of small moves away from a full confidence that God has clearly and sufficiently communicated the truth that He means for us to have.

One such “small move” is illustrated by the Spring 2006 Leadership Journal interview of Andy Stanley, the leader of North Point Ministries in the Atlanta area. [This excerpt from the interview is taken from the Ah! Bright Wings blog.]

page 28 -
L: Should we stop talking about pastors as ‘shepherds’?
AS: Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Jesus talked about shepherds because there was one over there in a pasture he could point to. But to bring in that imagery today and say, “Pastor, you’re the shepherd of the flock,” no. I never seen a flock. I’ve never spent five minutes with a shepherd. It was culturally relevant in the time of Jesus, but it’s not culturally relevant any more. Nothing works in our culture with that model except this sense of the gentle, pastoral care. Obviously that is a facet of church ministry, but that’s not leadership.

L: Isn’t shepherd the biblical word for pastor?
AS: It’s the first century word. If Jesus were here today, would he talk about shepherds? No. He would point to something that we all know, and we’d say, “Oh yeah, I know what that is.” Jesus told Peter, the fisherman, to “feed my sheep,” but he didn’t say to the rest of them, “Go ye therefore into all the world and be shepherds and feed my sheep.” By the time of the book of Acts, the shepherd model is gone. It’s about establishing elders and deacons and their qualifications. Shepherding doesn’t seem to be the emphasis. Even when it was, it was cultural, an illustration of something. What we have to do is identify the principle, which is that the leader is responsible for the care of the people he’s been given. That I am to care for and equip the people in the organization to follow Jesus. But when we take the literal illustration and bring it into our culture, then people can make it anything they want because nobody knows much about it.

There are many points that could be made about Andy Stanley’s words in this interview, but I will focus upon two:

1. Jesus was NOT striving for “cultural relevance” in His words about shepherding. When Jesus spoke of being a shepherd to His sheep, He did not choose the illustration of a shepherd based primarily on the experiences of His hearers. In John 21:16, Jesus told Simon Peter, “Shepherd my sheep”. Now we know that Peter was not a shepherd before following Christ, but rather a fisherman. And yet Jesus does not say, “Be like a really good fishing-boat captain to the other fishers.” There is richness in the metaphor that we must understand, where the Bible has consistently named the LORD as our shepherd, Scripture has named us as His sheep, and God’s Word has given church leaders the task of following Christ’s example by living as a shepherd. Likewise, when the Apostle was addressing the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:28, he said,
“Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood” (NASB)
While studying for my under-graduate degree in history at Georgia State University, I was constantly confronted with how erroneous a view of history we often develop. The difference in how people live today, with all of our technologies and innovations, is not as dissimilar from past urban societies as we sometimes think (though things do happen much faster in the 21^st century). Somehow, it seems that we get the idea that half the population in the Roman Empire at the time of Christ and His apostles were shepherds and that a person could not walk through the streets of a major city without bumping into a shepherds' convention. But Ephesus at the time of Paul was, “an important political, educational, and commercial center, ranking with Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch of Pisidia, in southern Asia Minor” [from the 2006 MacArthur Study Bible, NASB, page 1770]. So the urban elders addressed by Paul would necessarily have had any more first-hand experience of shepherds as an individual in New York City would have today. And the thought that Jesus chose the illustration of the shepherd and the sheep due to the experiences of His hearers is betrayed in the fact that neither Jesus nor any of His 12 apostles are said to have held the occupation literally tending sheep. At the time of Jesus people would have held a great variety of jobs– much as people do today– and they would not necessarily have had any more experience with shepherding than the majority of people reading this blog, yet they could understand the simplicity of Jesus’ illustration. I’ve never been a shepherd, but I can understand what a shepherd is and what he does. And any small child or CEO can understand the illustration of a shepherd as well with the slightest bit of explanation. If the Holy Spirit chose to reveal Christ as a shepherd– and names church leaders as shepherds following Christ’s example– then it is our duty, not to change the word “shepherd” to our modern context, but to help our hearers adapt their thinking to the biblical context. It’s less ‘cool’, but it’s not that difficult, and it honors the life-giving Word of God.

2. Jesus IS “here today” and He’s still talking about “shepherds”. Jesus promised to be with His followers always as we go and “make disciples of all the nations” (see Matthew 28:19-20). Jesus said that He would personally build His church upon the confession that He is “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (see Matthew 16:16-18). This confession is not a mere utterance of words on the part of the confessor, but is a statement of true faith, which comes from hearing the word of Christ (see Romans 10:17). Now, the word– or message– of Christ is found only in the Bible– there is no other way that we would have sure information about who Jesus is and what He has done. The Bible is no dead book, but is rather “living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12 NASB). The Bible is God-breathed and is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” (cf. II Timothy 3:16-17 NASB). Therefore, the Bible is sufficient to bring people to faith in Jesus, to instruct them in growing as disciples for Jesus, and in ordering and illustrating the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ, which is charged with making disciples for His glory. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35 NASB). So if we look at Jesus using the word “shepherd” in Scripture, an then make the statement, “That word needs to go away,” then we are contradicting the “living and active” word of our Lord. The Bible is the only blueprint for how God is working His redemptive plan in history. If we step away from the words of Scripture for any reason, whether it be “academic credibility” (as liberal scholars have) or “cultural relevance” (as many modern "evangelicals" have), we are stepping away from the redemptive power of God.

[For some good practical thoughts on the difference between applying Jesus' illustration of church leaders as shepherds and the idea of a church leader as a CEO, please see Frank ("Centuri0n") Turk's current post on the Pyromaniacs blog.]

Thoughts on the Southern Baptist Convention- First Run

Many people have been asking me what I thought of this year's Southern Baptist Convention. I hope to write a few brief articles on my thoughts concerning the state of the SBC- this post will be a 'first run' at getting some ideas down on paper (or on computer screen, as the case may be).

First of all, the highlight of the convention for me personally (aside from spending time with my uncle, my pastor, and my former pastor) was attending the Founders' Conference Fellowship Breakfast on June 13. This was the first Founders' Ministry event that I have had the opportunity to attend. If it were not for Founders' Ministries, I am fairly certain that I would no longer be a member of any Southern Baptist congregation- as so many congregations in the SBC seem far away from biblical beliefs and practice- but the work of this organization has given me hope for real reformation within the SBC. (At the Founders' Breakfast, I also got the chance to briefly meet Dr. Don Whitney, who will be a professor of mine at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.)

Yesterday, the president of Founders' Ministries, Dr. Tom Ascol (whom I also got to briefly meet at the Founder's Breakfast), was on the Calling for Truth radio broadcast. Dr. Ascol brought out two great needs in the SBC that I had also noticed from my time at the convention. I hope to highlight these needs often in thinking about next year's convention and hope to help my Southern Baptist brethren think about how we can address these needs within the SBC.

1. The Southern Baptist Convention needs to build upon the affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture, for which we have fought so hard, by honoring God's Word as sufficient to direct every aspect of our lives. Dr. Ascol notes:

We owe a debt of gratitude to those who laid their ministerial and denominational lives on the line to call our convention back to that embrace of the full authority of Scripture. Praise God for the Conservative Resurgence! There were lots of things done in the midst of that that we should regret, and do regret, but thank the Lord for the effort to re-establish the boundaries of what we are to believe and how we are to live. And I think what we're seeing today, for example, in the growth of Founders' Ministries, is a growth of this theological awareness is the inevitable fruit of re-establishing those boundaries.

Previous to the above statements, Ascol had asserted his conviction that:

Inerrancy- as important as it is to affirm that regarding the authority of Scripture- its not enough. We must not only recognize that the Bible is authoritative, but we must be willing to move forward in saying that the Bible is enough for us- it's sufficient! And we need to be willing to take honestly what it teaches us- its doctrines- we need to be willing to honestly try to apply its guidance and its commandments.

Having listened to almost every speaker at the Southern Baptist Convention, I heard almost everyone who stepped to the podium affirm the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture. However, I heard absolutely no speaker at the convention mention the other great doctrines of Scripture. So we at the convention had two crucial aspects of the doctrine of scriptural authority- inerrancy and infallibility- repeated to us over and over (with little explanation about what was meant by these terms), but we heard little or nothing about the clarity of Scripture- that the Bible is crystal clear in all matters pertaining to salvation. We heard little or nothing about the necessity of Scripture- how there is no hope for salvation outside of the proclamation of God's revelation of Himself through the message of the Bible. And we certainly heard very little or nothing about the sufficiency of Scripture- that God has revealed all things we need pertaining to life and godliness in His written Word.

2. The Southern Baptist Convention needs greater clarity regarding the definition of evangelism and, indeed, of the Gospel itself. Speaking of the purpose of Founders' Ministries and the opposition sometimes brought against them, Dr. Ascol also noted on yesterday's radio broadcast:

We are willing to criticize some aspects of modern evangelism that tend to be superficial- that tend to forget the Evangel. And you can't have evangelism if you don't have the Gospel. And so much of what goes on under the name of evangelism in some places today is intellectual assent- it's make a little decision, it's sign a card, it's get baptized- and there's no approaching the person with the claims of Jesus Christ to surrender to Him as Lord and to embrace Him in faith- to find Him to be our great treasure, our great joy, and our life. And there's a variety of ways, obviously, that we can do that. But where Christ is missing in our evangelistic message, it cannot be evangelism biblically defined.

To again draw attention to what was said before the entire assembly of the Southern Baptist Convention, nearly every speaker implored the messengers to the convention to be more earnest in evangelism, but no one wanted to instruct us as to what our understanding of "evangelism" should be. The nature of true biblical evangelism and the definition of the Gospel can by no means be assumed. With so many different heresies abounding and with the me-centered therapeutic mindset of our post-modern culture, it is foolishness to think that anyone will properly understand the Gospel without careful biblical instruction. As one Christian minister (Al Mohler, I believe) recently noted, people today are programmed to think that their problems are things that come from outside themselves and that the answers to their problems come from within themselves. People must be led to understand that their real problem is not just the frustration of personal goals, but that they are estranged from and at enmity with God. The real problem that people have comes from sin within their own hearts and the answer to their problem must come from outside of themselves, with Jesus making full payment for their sin. If these things are not carefully explained, then people will come to see Jesus as just another means to achieve their own self-centered desires. Southern Baptist congregations must have more than the kind of shallow pep-talks offered by this past convention, we must instead become completely enamored with passion for Christ and His Gospel, and we must dedicate ourselves to a clear understanding of the Good News of reconciliation with a view to communicating this message to others.

Why I will probably NOT vote for the next SBC president

On June 13-14 I have the honor of representing my church, Grace Heritage, as a messenger to the Southern Baptist Convention in Greensboro, NC.

One of the most important events to occur at this convention will be the election of the next president of the SBC.

To understand why this election is so important, read the following information from Wikipedia (This information is consistent with what I learned of the SBC presidency recently in a seminar I attended, which was taught by Dr. Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary):

The SBC President... has the potential to exercise significant influence over the direction of the SBC.

The process starts with the appointment by the SBC President of the Committee on Committees, which consists of two members from each "qualified state" (which includes the District of Columbia). The President has the sole authority to nominate the members (unlike other committee members or heads of institutions, the messengers do not approve the Committee on Committees selections). The appointments must be made within 45 days prior to the next Convention session (in other words, near the end of the SBC President's first term).

The Committee on Committees, in turn, nominates the Committee on Nominations, which also consists of two members from each "qualified state". These members are voted on by messengers at the next session (again, near the end of the SBC President's first term); however, nominations to this Committee can be made from the floor.

The Committee on Nominations, in turn, nominates persons to fill vacancies on SBC institutions (a person serving cannot be removed simply due to a change in leadership). Any SBC member may nominate, and be nominated for, any position; the general criteria for approval are 1) the nominee's support of the BF&M and 2) the nominee's church's support for SBC programs. The vacancies are approved at the next Convention session (in other words, by the end of the SBC President's second term, provided he is re-elected).

During this time, the SBC President is appointing the next Committee on Committees, to begin the process again.

As outlined above, the process by which the SBC President can exert influence is a lengthy, complicated, and overlapping one, which takes cooperation from other, like-minded individuals to successfully accomplish, as the results take at least three years to complete, while the SBC President is limited to two one-year consecutive terms. However, if organized and executed properly, a faction can over time move the SBC in its desired direction. The SBC conservative faction of the late 1970's and 1980's... used the process to its advantage to move the SBC to its current conservative stance.

But, as the title of this post indicates, I will probably NOT cast a vote in this particular election. And the reason is simple: I do not believe that either of the candidates who have currently been announced for the presidency will act in the best interests of my church congregation in particular, nor in the best interest for biblical evangelism in the SBC in general.

The two candidates who have been announced so far are Ronnie Floyd and Frank Page.

Ronnie Floyd and "Fire-Truck Baptism"

Some people in the blogosphere are actually trying to argue that this is no big deal. But the church at which Ronnie Floyd is a pastor- FBC Springdale, Arkansas- has engaged in what must be considered an extreme form of substituting entertainment in place of true worship. As reported in sources such as Christianity Today, the Houston Chronicle, and the Baptist Standard (ht: Tony Kummer) FBC Springdale has had a "former Disney World designer of children's amusement rides to design two 'high tech sets' for elementary age worship areas" (quote taken from a Christianity Today article). Included in these "worship areas" is "a special baptistry which is built around a fire engine. When a child is baptized, the sirens sound and confetti is fired out of cannons" (ht: Tom Ascol). Now, if I were to write a book on how to get a myriad of false converts into the church- attracting them into cultural Christianity and giving them false assurance of salvation at a young age- I could think of nothing more effective than to do what Dr. Floyd's church has, in fact, done. At the most basic level, gimmicks such as Disney World entertainment have no place in being married to any kind of worship service for the church. These kind of methods undermine the foundational doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture. As the leadership of Grace Heritage Church consistently teaches:

Because the distance between God and His creatures is so great, the only acceptable way of approaching God in worship must be revealed to us by God Himself, and He has graciously done this in the Scriptures. Therefore, He may not be worshipped in ways invented by us. This principle protects us from idolatrous worship and focuses our energies on those activities through which God has called us to draw near.

Frank Page and Anti-Calvinism

In a recent e-mail I received, a man who had several times visited Dr. Page's former church (Warren Baptist Church) described Dr. Page as "most decidedly anti-Calvinist." The e-mail concluded, "Page, by reputation, will not be a friend to the doctrines of grace or those who hold to them." These statements seem to find additional support in the fact that Dr. Page has authored the book Trouble With The Tulip: A Closer Examination of The Five Points of Calvinism, which contains statements such as the following:

I want to very clearly state that my intention in this book is not simply to disprove the philosophical system of Calvinism, though I believe that will occur. (p. 7- ht: Big Daddy Weave)

(For why the issue of "Calvinism" is so important in the SBC at this time, please see my last post, A Defense of "Calvinism" as well as former Southern Baptist Pastor Dave Stephenson's article, On the Altar of Self-Will.)

Now, I do NOT think that a candidate for the presidency of the SBC should have to hold to "Calvinism" in order for me to vote for him. In fact, I have recently argued that if Calvinism, or Reformed soteriology, is to truly take effect in the SBC, it must be due to the commitment of individual church leaders teaching systematically through the Bible and demonstrating that the "Doctrines of Grace" come out from the biblical text itself- this kind of reformation cannot be political. And furthermore, it would be ridiculous to for me to withhold my vote from any candidate simply because he does not agree with me on all points of theology. But I believe that there is a vast difference between casting a vote for a candidate even though he is not a "5-point Calvinist" and in overlooking the fact that a candidate is actually ACTIVELY, CONSISTENTLY OPPOSING crucial points of doctrine upon which my congregation is built.

So again, unless there are other candidates offered who I believe will support the interests of my congregation in particular and the interests of biblical evangelism in the SBC in general, I cannot in good conscience cast any vote for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention.