Darryl's Blog
The tragedy of leadership as self-performance
A package from Intervarsity UK just arrived in the mail with three books, including the hard-to-get Total Church. Looking forward to reading this one.
Flipping through it, I found this quote that touches on our models of leadership within the church that are performance based:
The real tragedy of leadership-as-performance is that it devalues the work of Christ. Our identity is not rooted in grace, but in the success of our ministry. And so we feel good when we have performed well and we feel down when things are not going well. We become enslaved to other people's approval. We are concerned to prove ourselves and that is just another way of talking about self-justification. We preach justification by faith on the day of judgment, but do not practice justification by faith in the daily routine of our lives. Our practical theology has become disconnected from our confessional theology. Our song becomes:
My hope is built on something less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness;
I trust my skills, I trust my fame,
and maybe sometimes Jesus' name.But we cannot keep it up. Self-justification is always beyond us. The chorus of Edward Mote's hymn which I have taken the liberty of inverting actually goes: 'On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand.' Leadership-as-performance is sinking sand.
This book looks really good. Looking forward to getting into it.
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This is a brilliant post and a quote that cuts to the heart of malady of performance based leadership. Perhaps authenticity rather than "show" would help to keep us aligned with the grace of Christ. Thanks.
Total Church looks like a good book. I love the quote "They critique current trends within the church, arguing that emerging church movements are strong on community but weak on truth, while conservative evangelicalism is strong on truth but weak on community." and "community as context:sharing our lives as Christians and offering a place of belonging to unbelievers."
If we are going to succeed as Christians in sharing the gospel we must encourage friendship evangelism. Our gatherings in Churches and outside of Church must be where non-believers and believers feel welcome and accepted. We must have many social activities within and outside of our churches and encourage open, honest, continuous dialogue between believers and non-believers. This is what Jesus did. We need to build community.
I talked with a former Jehovah's Witness recently at a social activity organized by a group of Christians. He still believes in God but does not attend church. He has attended some churches in the recent past in his search for truth but has not committed to any. He is not sure about Jesus Christ and is very leary of committing to any Church yet as he is still not very trusting of organized religion. He is however open to socializing with Christians.
I believe that by encouraging more social interactions between believers and non-believers it will be good for Christians in their search for relationships and community as well as a bridge to non-believers looking for the same thing. By developing personal relationships with others we will be able to share our beliefs with them. They will know we are Christians by our love.
Leaders need to encourage and support this.
Kevin