Leadership

Frank Viola has written a blogpost on leadership in the church. I posted it to my Facebook page, but also want to link to it here. This is what I said about it on my FB page:

I am in great agreement with this post. I think much of what has gone wrong in the church is that we no longer trust the Spirit to lead and instead set up barriers in order to protect what God has promised to sustain. In essence, we desire to control and mechanize what is a living organism, the body of Christ.

Why would we want to do that if we really believed that Jesus gives life and leads and protects? What would the church be like if we functioned as a body, instead of like a business or government?  Jesus stood the world's ideas of leadership and authority on their head. What if we embraced that truth instead of trying to turn them back around?

These thoughts have been bubbling up in my consciousness for a while now, as those of you who read my blog know, at least a decade. Yes, I'm a slow learner. They go against everything our world tells us, don't they? No wonder the church keeps sliding into these models when we as members continue to. Moment by moment I want to live in the upside down world in which Jesus lives. It means giving up control, authority, and self interest. I hope that one day I see Jesus's view of power and authority as the real, intuitive way.

Kyrie Eleison.