Leadership

The Saint Wore Negligee

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I’ve long held a theory that while women are generally more sensitive to spiritual issues in their broader context, the nature of men to take bigger risks will mean that they will best women in seeking out the deeper aspects of the faith. That may not be a popular view with some, but it explains a great deal. That theory has also been the cornerstone of the advancement of Christianity since the age of the apostles.

I have to admit, though, that a brief survey of American Christianity bears a strikingly different picture. When I look at the composition of most churches, the sex on the leading edge of ministry is, more often than not, female.

Which sex predominates on Sunday mornings? Women.

Which sex predominates in small groups? Women.

Which sex predominates in non-leadership roles of ministry (which comprise the largest total numbers of participants)? Women.

Which sex reads Christian material in order to grow their spiritual lives? Women.

Which sex drives the spiritual life of the average home? Women.

This concerns me because a quick overview of the hotspots of revival around the globe always reveals the same truth: men are at the forefront.

So what’s going on here in America?

I have a few theories on this:

1. Men choose money over ministry. This has led to an abdication of the masculine role of leadership on spiritual matters. It’s not that Christian men aren’t truly Christian or fail to hold a Christian belief system. It’s just that Christianity occupies a secondary station in a man’s life. American Evangelicalism continues to hold out a standard of the male as breadwinner (and preferably sole breadwinner) that forces men to choose which role they will more ably fill with their increasingly limited time, breadwinner or spiritual leader. Men aren’t stupid; they chose what was presented to them as the best option by those held up as leaders within the Faith. Being a captain of industry who mouths Christian platitudes plays better than struggling to make ends meet while being faithful to the demands of true discipleship.

2. Women have encouraged #1, whether they realize it or not. The demands of cultural conformity coupled with the (false) sense of security that predominates in the American Dream only amplifies men’s abdication of spiritual leadership. This has led Christian women to prefer men who are captains of industry over those who are poorer in the pocketbook yet richer in treasures in heaven. Having one’s kids in an expensive private Christian school looks a whole lot better on paper than sending little Joey or Janie to the wreck they call public school, especially when that public school is vilified from the pulpit each Sunday.

3. The pursuit of #1 has enabled/forced women to pick up the spiritual slack. With men pursuing the American Dream, women have been freed in some respects to bolster their spiritual lives, even if this comes at the expense of men’s overall spiritual health. However, while some women gladly take up the mantle of leadership, a few are resentful that their men have laid it down for them to carry (though, in most cases, those wives fail to understand the hidden forces bending men toward that abdication).

4. The Church no longer preaches godly rewards for faithfulness that in the past appealed to the souls of men. While the prosperity gospel has some traction in some sectors of the American Church, men, in general, are engaging in self-examination that finds them asking where the real reward is. Work is not always its own reward, nor is the Church embodying any example of the rewards of faithfulness outside of reinforcing the American Dream. In time, this lack leads to spiritual malaise in men. They end up, more often than not, merely going through the spiritual motions, either to please the Church or to satisfy their wives.

5. Because Church leaders have not gone deeper, they are unable to lead other men to that deeper place. Shallowness breeds shallowness. While men may be capable of great depths of faith, more often than not those depths are achieved through spiritual heroes who have gone on before to mark the way. Modern Evangelicalism is a vast spiritual wasteland devoid of true spiritual adventurers. Rather than holding up as examples those men who have made it to “the third heaven,” Evangelicalism holds up for emulation those men who have made it to the corner office or the boardroom. Much of the blame here lies with today’s American Evangelical leaders, men who are a mile wide and an inch deep. The end result? Far too many men in America are tasting what is being held out as the ne plus ultra of the Christian life and are asking, “Is this it?”

The upshot of all this is that the bastions of faith in the country are the women. Satin and bows...and spiritual headship?The real saints in America 2008 wear negligee.

Some people seem perfectly fine with this. In fact, if you polled a lot of pastors in Evangelical churches, you’d find that most of them think everything’s just fine and dandy. Actually, George Barna’s already done that polling. Sure enough, he’s found that few male leaders in the Church today are alarmed that men have largely handed over the reins of spiritual leadership in church and household to the ladies.

Something has to give for the proper order to be restored.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been engaging the readers of a few other blogs that have linked to my posts on these issues of money, ministry, work, and economics. What I’m finding is a total inability to question the status quo on these issues and to ask what the true Christian response might be. We have become so fused to our way of living that even if that way of living cannot be reconciled with genuine discipleship, we’ll forgo the discipleship before we give up the lifestyle. How that’s going to play before God is beyond me.

I’m convinced that the only way the Church in America is going to catch blaze like the church in the Third World is if we radically rethink every part of how we live. This may seem like the same chronic drum I’ve been beating for years on this blog, but unless we change, we will definitely become irrelevant. Our cultural conditioning will extinguish our lampstand and God will remove that lampstand to whatever place is willing to keep it ablaze. That removal may already be in process.

Here’s 10 questions I ask you:

  • How do we break this pattern of living that reinforces the five issues I raise above?
  • What does a truly countercultural Christianity in America 2008 look like?
  • What can we do to not only break the hold our jobs have on our spiritual lives, but replace our current ideas of employment with genuinely Christian models?
  • What would those models of work look like when practically enabled?
  • What do you believe are the rewards for faithfulness that we are failing to emphasize in our churches today, rewards that appeal to men as much as to women?
  • What must we do to encourage our leadership to go deeper?
  • How does the average American Evangelical man take back his proper position as spiritual leader?
  • What tools is that man lacking that he will need to be all God intended?
  • How do we sharpen those tools?
  • What is the first step toward making these changes?

Thanks for your input. Have a blessed weekend.

The Church of the Redundant

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MC knows the scoreNo one wants to think about a pastor dying unexpectedly, but what if yours did?

The church I attend had their 46-year-old pastor die of cancer a few years ago. It wasn’t completely unexpected, but he’d appeared to make a full recovery—only to succumb shortly after returning to the pulpit. People were shocked.

Now the elders in my church held the church together for a year or so while they sought a new pastor. My wife and I came on-board right as the new pastor was called. We feel blessed by this timing.

Some churches don’t recover, though, when a pastor dies or simply leaves for greener pastures. Or the children’s ministry director steps down and no one wants to step up. Or the worship pastor follows that dream to stardom in Nashville and the worship band sort of “goes to seed” in the aftermath of that departure.

It seems to me that a good many churches out there are cults. Not like Jehovah’s Witnesses, but cults of personality. They revolve around a few dynamic individuals. Should something happen to those dynamic individuals…well, you can see the handwriting forming on the wall.

It should never be that way.

Blame it on something in the drinking water in America, but we don’t do a very good job seeing ourselves as replaceable. Worse, people in leadership positions in churches take this to the extreme and find ways to keep from grooming successors. That dog-eat-dog, business world, CEO model permeates too much of our thinking, making us resistant to doing what’s best for the church, even if that best may not be the best for us personally.

The Bible has this to say,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
—John 12:24-25

The church that makes a difference is the one that understands that nothing good from anything that hasn’t died first. In this case, the truth is that I, along with you, must die to any preconceptions I have about “my ministry.” It’s not my ministry anymore than it is yours. It’s the Lord’s. And He only works wonders when the people trust Him enough to do it His way.

When we build our churches on a handful of talented individuals, we only set ourselves up for failure. Our goal instead should be to build a church where each person is replaceable, no matter how much a person might give to the ministry of the church in terms of time, effort, and money.

You see, when we’re dead, none of that worldly striving for position matters. It no longer becomes “my ministry.” The goal isn’t to play out my ministry, but to ensure that Christ plays out His, even if it means I wind up martyred for it. Because I’m replaceable.

Viewed that way, our entire perspective on how we disciple and raise up leaders must change. It forces us to see every person in the seats as a leader on some level or other. It means that anyone should be able to step up into any position within a church at a moments notice. And that’s because God often taps people for ministry on a moment’s notice.

Instead, we’ve created a model where a few of the dynamic people carry those who are all too willing to take up space. And this is what passes for church in far too many congregations out there.

Or we have the reverse where the leadership doesn’t resemble the boardroom of Procter & Gamble, so a handful of self-appointed leaders in the pews clamor to do it their way. Talk about toxic! So much for dying to self and putting the needs of others first.

When you look around the world at places where the Church is growing exponentially, it’s largely in those places where the Christians understand that everyone should be replaceable. The leaders realize they may not be around tomorrow, so redundancy is key. The Enemy can’t cut off the heads of leadership because, like a hydra, more will just grow out of the stumps.

But we’re not at that place in the U.S. Our own history of self-made men and pioneers makes that kind of selflessness impossible without a serious overhaul of our own identity as Americans. But our identity is found in Christ, not the Founding Fathers. And even they were pretty selfless when it came to founding this country.

I suspect that Darwinistic survival of the fittest concepts drive too many of us for us to see ourselves as redundant. But I also think that’s the only way we’re going to weather the storms that come our way as a Body of Believers in America.

Should it be so difficult, really? I don’t think it needs to be. It just means putting down “me” and taking up the cross. It means not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought and esteeming others better. It means working to ensure that no one in our churches is irreplaceable. It means making disciples that conform, each and every one, to the image of Christ and not our own image.

I started out 2008 writing that this needs to be a year where we listen to the Holy Spirit like we’ve never listened before. I also think that 2008 is the year where the Church in America gets serious about laying down self. If it’s about maximizing the 401k plan, then we’re not going to work to make ourselves redundant. If it’s about maintaining a pretty Evangelical kingdom of our own making, then we’re never going  to be humble enough to say, “Lord, here I am. Use me up.” We’ll never make ourselves expendable for the only Kingdom that counts.

Aren’t we all tired of living for ourselves? Aren’t we all a little bit burned out of rushing to and fro to keep the world’s plates spinning?

So where do we go from here, army of the redundant?

The Condition of Your House and Mine

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This morning, I planned on going back to reading Philippians as part of the Bible reading plan I talked about earlier this year, when the Lord redirected me elsewhere: to Haggai of all places.

Haggai.

That’s probably not a book in the Bible that you’ve spent much time perusing. I really only am familiar with one well-known passage out of Haggai, and then I even forgot it was in Haggai. I thought it was in Isaiah:

The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, declares the LORD of hosts.
—Haggai 2:8

So I cleared the cobwebs off my mental filing cabinet and stashed that passage in the Haggai folder.

But what struck me from the redirection I received this morning was the following passage. I think it fits perfectly in the theme that’s been running here for the last several weeks:

“Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
—Haggai 1:4-6

The state of our spiritual temple?Context: the Jews had returned to the land after captivity in Babylon, had restored much of their old land, but the temple lay in ruins. God didn’t appreciate that the people had restored their former dwellings, but left his dwelling place a shambles.

Notice the contrast here of working hard and receiving little, while the house of God lies neglected. The people ran after their own satisfaction, but it was never enough. Meanwhile, God dwelling place rots.

Most of us reading this post are seasoned Christians. We know the lingo and know enough Bible to be dangerous. I’m sure most know about the symbol of houses in Scripture. I’ll lay out a premise anyway.

God never intended to live in a house built by human hands. His intent, before the spirit inside of Man departed at the Fall, was to have His Spirit animate us and lead us:

Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?'”
—Acts 7:48-50

After the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, our dead spirits were made alive when we repented and believed in Him. Now the Spirit of God can return to the home intended from the beginning:

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
—1 Corinthians 3:16-17

And more than just you and more than just me, the Spirit of God dwells in the sum of us, His collective people. This explains the necessity of the Church. (Evangelicals forget this truth to the detriment of the Church Universal: Jesus isn’t just a personal Jesus.) While God restores each of us by dwelling in us individually, he also dwells in the community of the saints:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
—Ephesians 2:19-22

So while it is important to understand Haggai’s prophecy in terms of its original context, we must not ignore God’s reasonings behind it and what those reasonings mean for us today.

How many of us continue to build our houses, our little worlds, in the physical but neglect the spiritual house of God? You, I, and us together are that spiritual house. We are the dwelling place of God, His temples.

It saddens me that men and women will spend thousands of dollars and hours decorating their homes, but spend so little time resurrecting the ruined house that is their spiritual lives. We live in McMansions on the outside, but we’re content to let God dwell in the dump that comprises our inner lives, the house in which He came to dwell so long ago when we first came to Christ.

And what is the result of this?

You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

That last sentence just slays me. A bag full of holes. If that doesn’t describe the state of the American Church today, I don’t know what does.

If we’re to restore the ruin that comprises our spiritual house, the dwelling place of God, then we need to get serious about what distracts us from that purpose. We’ve been talking about materialism and discontent the last few weeks. We’ve looked at how overconsumption makes us sick, not only in our bodies but in our souls. In short, we’ve examined how well we’ve “paneled our houses” as Haggai notes, while the house of God lies ignored.

The refugees who’d returned to the land got the message of Haggai and repented:

Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him. And the people feared the LORD. Then Haggai, the messenger of the LORD, spoke to the people with the LORD’s message, “I am with you, declares the LORD.” And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and worked on the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
—Haggai 1:12-15

Th people took seriously the word of the Lord. They turned from picking out new drapes for the kitchen and worked to rebuild the most important house in their community: the temple of God.

The results?

Now then, consider from this day onward. Before stone was placed upon stone in the temple of the LORD, how did you fare? When one came to a heap of twenty measures, there were but ten. When one came to the wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were but twenty. I struck you and all the products of your toil with blight and with mildew and with hail, yet you did not turn to me, declares the LORD. Consider from this day onward, from the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Since the day that the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid, consider: Is the seed yet in the barn? Indeed, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, and the olive tree have yielded nothing. But from this day on I will bless you.”
—Haggai 2:15-19

If we wonder why so little spiritual prosperity shows up in your life and mine, if we go to the vat of wine and find twenty measures instead of the fifty we thought were there, perhaps we’ll understand why now.

What’s the state of your spiritual house? Are you spending all your time on the material in your life, neglecting the dwelling place of God? Should you be surprised when the spiritual reserves aren’t there in times of trouble (or even in times of plenty)?

God isn’t going to contend with Man forever.