Don't Take Anything for Granted

Yesterday Kevin DeYoung had a great post entitled Things People Should Never Say They Never Heard at Your Church. In it he highlighted ten items that we often (wrongly) take for granted that people in the church know:

1. “Being a Christian is more than going to church and being a good person.”
2. “We must be born again.”
3. “We need to develop a personal relationship with Christ.”
4. “Mature Christians develop lifelong habits of Bible reading and prayer.”
5. “Christians suffer.”
6. “God can be pleased with me.”
7. “Beware of false teachers.”
8. “There is one God in three Persons.”
9. “There are many people in the world who don’t think Christianity is true and some of them are very nice and very smart.”
10. “There is a reason we worship the way we do.”

Click here and read the whole post. If you're a pastor, a church leader, a Sunday school teacher or a parent it will be well worth your time

A Biblical View of Church Leadership

Far too often our idea of church leaders is that they are to be a board of directors who run the business of the church.  Doug Wolter provides a helpful corrective to this view of church leadership:

The image of a spiritual leader in the church is not a CEO but a good mother and father. Someone worthy to imitate and follow. 1 Thess. 2:7-8, 11-12 says, "Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.  For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory."

May the Lord raise up more leaders who lovingly train and guide the people of the church, not just oversee its administration.  Click here to read the whole post.

Good Questions for Church Leaders

The other day Tullian Tchividijian posted a letter at his blog which he had sent to all of the elders and deacons of his church.  In it he had asked them to consider the following questions, which he had already addressed to himself:

Do you rejoice in position, power, accomplishments, entitlement, control, degrees, knowledge, status, authority, numbers, and rank? Or do you rejoice in service, mercy, sacrifice, pastoral care, love, prayer, prudence, grace, relationships, and repentance? Are you proud or humble? Do you put others before yourself? Do you find your daily security and significance in your own accomplishments or in Christ’s accomplishment for you? Do you seek first place or last place? Do you boast on yourself or on Christ? Do you talk about yourself a lot? Are you prone to envy and do you get defensive easily? Do you weep with those who weep? Do you love people and look for opportunities to serve and shepherd them? Do you revel in self-confidence or self-sacrifice? Do you have people in your life that you confess specific instances of sin? Do the people in your life find it easy to correct you?

May all of us who are in church leadership be willing to examine our lives against such a list.  And as we do, may God give us the courage to be honest with ourselves, the humility to repent of our sins, and the grace to fully know that our righteousness is not found in anything we do, but only and always in the finished work of Christ.