Sunday, September 5, 2010

Unified Leaderism

A sermon I heard the other day was about unity and how the church won't see God move like we want Him to until we get it.  The text was Acts 2:42 - "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer."  The preacher read the part about the apostles' teaching and right away said, "See!  They were devoted to the apostles!  They were behind their leaders!"  No, it says that they were devoted to the apostles' teraching (ie the truth).  Why is it that almost every message on church unity centers around support for the leaders?  The church is so leader-centric that it makes me sick.  The vast majority of the problems at the church I used to attend over the last few years have been due to the leaders and their inability to play nice with the other leaders like the rest of the congregation is supposed to.  In most churches, the Senior Pastor sees the church as his own domain and guards it as such.  That inevitably causes power struggles.  Also, it eventually sucks all the zeral and creativity out of the church because everything depends upon the pastor and what he wants.  Zealous and creative people hate that and they finally get tired of putting up with it.  Of course, then they quickly become "problems" and are labeled as rebellious.

The church is going nowhere until we all get the same attitude toward leaders that Paul had.  Yes, honor them and treat them with respect because they have more responsibility.  However, as far as their relative importance: "As for those who seemed to be important - whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance - those men added nothing to my message."  (Gal 2:6)  And let us also look to Peter:  "To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ's sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers - not because you must but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock." (1Pet 5:1-3)

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