A Potential Peril of Leadership - 4

This is my last post based on Eugene Peterson's essay, Returning to the Basics. The focus has been on how Christians must continue to love their neighbors when they move into leadership positions, particularly within the church. Peterson concludes this part of his essay with some thoughts from religious philosopher, Martin Buber:

Martin Buber, in one of the most important books of the century for people like us, I and Thou, showed how easy and common it is to treat people as It instead of Thou. He also showed how awful it is, turning what God created as a human community of men and women whose glory it is to love one another into depersonalized wasteland of important roles and efficient functions. Buber also conceded that we cannot continuously maintain the open intimacy of "I/Thou" in our relationship - it would be totally exhausting; we need to be able to escape from time to time into the less-demanding region of role and function to carry out some of our basic routines. But the moment that region becomes our permanent residence and the neighbor becomes and object, an It to be used, no matter how righteous and glorious our use, sacrilege has been committed.

In other words, the ends do not justify the means when it comes to how we engage with other human beings. St. Augustine in On Christian Teaching wrote extensively on how all things can be divided into two groups: Things to be used and things to be enjoyed: "To enjoy a thing is to rest with satisfaction in it for its own sake." Too often, perhaps, we receive joy or satisfaction from others because of what they can do for us or produce for the organization. The person becomes an object not a subject. When we lead people we need to remember that they are not tools to be used and discarded, but individuals within the church who share the image of God and are to be loved: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35).

On a related note, the Acton Institute produced an excellent video that answers the question, "What is a human being?" Here is the link.

A Potential Peril of Leadership - 3

Continuing from yesterday's post, Peterson discusses how Christians can treat others as functional resources instead of fellow image-bearers:

Love, the commanded relation, gives way to considerations of efficiency and is interpreted by the abstractions of plans and programs, goals and visions, evangelism statistics and mission strategies. After all, we are ordained to something beyond and more intense than simply "Christian" - we have work to do. These people with whom we find ourselves placed in a responsible position of leadership need to be put to kingdom work, or at least church work. Loving neighbors recedes to the background as we go about making recruits, lining up allies, arguing the opposition into compliance, motivating the lethargic, and signing up participants to insure the success of a project or program.

Something to consider. I'll conclude this tomorrow.

A Potential Peril of Leadership - 2

Continuing from yesterday's post, I want to focus on Eugene Peterson's comments regarding ordination and loving one's neighbor. While Peterson is addressing leadership within the church, I think his comments apply to Christian leadership in any context.

Peterson begins:

It is a strange thing: the first casualty on the field of ordained leadership is usually the neighbor. The men and women with whom we live and work become objectified; instead of being primarily persons whom we love, whether through natural affection (spouse, children, friends) or by Christ's command (love your neighbor as yourself) they gradually become functionalized. Under the pressure of "working for Jesus" or carrying out the church's mission" these former neighbors get treated in functional terms: they become viewed as "resources" or as "deadweight," as "assets" or as "liabilities." as "point man or woman" or as "dysfunctional."

Do these words and phrases sound familiar? Do you ever hear this language in your church or religious-affiliated organization? As a Christian, have you ever used this language when referring to employees at your workplace? When the organization's good becomes the greatest good, the good of the individual may be consistently subsumed under the organization's.

More tomorrow.

A Potential Peril of Leadership

For some reason, I started receiving a newsletter called Theology Matters a couple of years ago. It is a publication out of Greenwood, SC and appears to be from a Presbyterian perspective. I think it comes out quarterly. I don't always read each entire issue, but sometimes there is an article that catches my eye. In the Fall 2018 issue, they reprinted an essay from Eugene H. Peterson. You may know this author from his publication of The Message, a paraphrase version of the Bible written in modern English. I don't know much about Peterson except that he was a PC-USA minister and may or may not have leaned a bit left. In any case, they reprinted an essay from him entitled, "Returning to Basics," which discusses the ordination vows taken by - at least some - Presbyterian ministers. In particular, he focuses on the sixth vow: "Will you in your life seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, love your neighbors, and work for the reconciliation of the world?" Peterson notes that this seems quite odd to include in ordination vows. This may be something you would ask a person entering the Christian life, not a question for someone who is about to be ordained. This question seems so basic to the faith...shouldn't we assume that a minister would already be committed to this?

But Peterson notes that "[m]any a Christian has lost his or her [this is a hint a left leaning - MP comment] soul in the act of being ordained. This vow returns us to the basic vocation of being a Christian, a mere Christian." The essay goes on to discuss the vow, analyzing it according to each of the three sub-vows.

Over the next couple of posts, I want to focus on "Will you in your own life love your neighbor?" I think the subject of this vow is not only important for ministers as leaders, but for any Christian who is leading people in any context.

Confirming One's Calling and Election

As a follow-up to yesterday's passage from 2 Peter, Paul David Tripp offers the following words of encouragement from Heart of the Matter:

God "has given us everything we need for life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3). The first few verses of the passage lay out the glories of our identity as God's children that Peter says we must not forget. God has given everything we need, not only for eternal life, but also for the God-honoring life to which we have been called until he returns. Notice the tense of the verb. Peter says God has given us everything we need. It has already happened! This is a fundamental Gospel truth. God will not call us to do anything without providing a way for it to be done. If he calls us to cross the Red Sea, he will enable us to swim, send a boat, build a bridge, or part the waters!

Don't forget who you are. You are the children of God who have inherited riches beyond your ability to conceive. You have been given everything you need to do what God has called you to do. Don't give in to discouragement. Don't quit. Don't run away from your calling. Don't settle for a little bit of faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, brotherly kindness and love. Get everything that is your inheritance as God's children.

1 Peter 1:3-9

"His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

"For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins."

Happy New Year!

As the new year dawns, it's time to put the past behind us and look forward to what God will do in the new year.

The following devotional from Oswald Chambers helps us to understand this perspective:

You shall not go out with haste,…for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. —Isaiah 52:12

Security from Yesterday. “…God requires an account of what is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15). At the end of the year we turn with eagerness to all that God has for the future, and yet anxiety is apt to arise when we remember our yesterdays. Our present enjoyment of God’s grace tends to be lessened by the memory of yesterday’s sins and blunders. But God is the God of our yesterdays, and He allows the memory of them to turn the past into a ministry of spiritual growth for our future. God reminds us of the past to protect us from a very shallow security in the present.

Security for Tomorrow. “…the Lord will go before you….” This is a gracious revelation— that God will send His forces out where we have failed to do so. He will keep watch so that we will not be tripped up again by the same failures, as would undoubtedly happen if He were not our “rear guard.” And God’s hand reaches back to the past, settling all the claims against our conscience.

Security for Today. “You shall not go out with haste….” As we go forth into the coming year, let it not be in the haste of impetuous, forgetful delight, nor with the quickness of impulsive thoughtlessness. But let us go out with the patient power of knowing that the God of Israel will go before us. Our yesterdays hold broken and irreversible things for us. It is true that we have lost opportunities that will never return, but God can transform this destructive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness for the future. Let the past rest, but let it rest in the sweet embrace of Christ.

Leave the broken, irreversible past in His hands, and step out into the invincible future with Him.