When you've been hurt by leaders

I only had a year as a new Christian before I got recruited into leadership. It was against my will. There was no one else to lead the Christian fellowship on campus through which I had first truly understood the gospel, and the alternative was to disband it. How could I say no? By the grace of God, it prospered. I think I can honestly say that I have entered in fear and trembling into almost every leadership position I have held since then. When I told my Dad I felt called into full-time ministry, he quoted Jesus’ words, “Be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove.” Though (just as well) I didn’t really understand what he was saying at the time, it turned out to be probably the best leadership advice I ever had.

So I am a reluctant leader. Can I suggest you should never trust someone who isn’t? Think about that for a minute and you’ll get it.

In defence of leaders, let me first say this. Leaders who try to walk in the way of the cross (and most do) pay a price few people ever know. In our case, they never knew how our two year old daughter was thrown by the son of a church member down a flight of steps onto a concrete floor. They never knew how children of a church leader stole Elaine’s engagement ring, and the parents (who knew) never apologized when it came to light. They never knew how we were verbally threatened with homelessness by a well to do businessman and leader in the church who promised us financing, arranged the purchase of our first house and profited from it, then withdrew the financing after we had signed the papers when his wife’s demands concerning the church were not met, telling us we and our baby daughter would be left on the streets.

God rescued us from all these situations, and they are now all thankfully in the very distant past. Looking back, I don’t know how we survived those days. The answer must lie in the faithfulness of God.

I realize there were also times I acted like Solomon’s son Rehoboam, who took the unwise advice of his young friends to be heavy-handed rather than open-hearted. Sometimes I did this in self-defence, sometimes in insecurity, sometimes in simple lack of understanding. Where I felt I caused hurt through my own actions, I have tried to ask forgiveness. Leaders who leave in their wake a long string of aggrieved ex-followers are a poor example of what Christ called them to be.

When you’ve been hurt by leaders or a leadership, the first thing to do is ask yourself this question: did you contribute to the problem by putting the leader on a pedestal or expecting of them something they could not or should not give? Were you looking to them for the care, praise, recognition or position that can only come from God? To that extent, you need to take responsibility for your own poor judgement. It’s a trap I have fallen into myself.

All that being said, here are some practical steps we can take to avoid falling under dysfunctional or harmful leadership.  Sadly, some of the following scenarios may be all too familiar to you. If that is the case, don’t blame yourself for the failure of the relationship. Be glad you got out of it.

1. Avoid leaders who have more of a position in church than they do in God. A true leader does not need a human position of any sort to exercise genuine spiritual influence. For them, position is incidental, not primary. They can live with or without it. People who need or campaign for position, or people who consciously use position or titles, even Biblical titles, in order to place themselves over others are not to be trusted.

2. Follow leaders who truly have a servant heart. You can only exercise as much authority as you are submitted to. Never follow a leader who demands submission while not walking in it. A leader truly submitted to God is the best servant of those he leads. Leadership is not a stepping stone to personal or ecclesiastical success. It is a footstool on which to sit to wash the feet of those we lead.

3. Never follow an insecure leader. They are always trying to be something they are not. Never follow a leader who talks incessantly about who they are, but whom you have never heard articulate equally clearly what they are not. Insecurity is one of the greatest curses of leadership. An insecure person uses human means to gain a position only God can rightfully give. An insecure leader is surrounded by weak people who will not stand up for their own convictions if it means confronting the leader. Politics surrounds insecure leaders. They damage the church and bring harm to God’s people.

If you have been hurt, disappointed and broken by a bad experience with leaders, here is a piece of advice straight from my heart and from the very real battles I have gone through when I felt hurt and betrayed by leadership over me: Your bitterness will cause you more harm than any leader ever did. You need to forgive. People often fail to forgive because they do not understand the nature of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not paving over the wrong or pretending it never happened. Forgiveness acknowledges the wrong. It acknowledges that God is more angry about the wrong than you are, because it is a violation of his law. But forgiveness assigns to God alone the right to judge.

Hand over your bitterness to God. A person reaps what they have sown. My experience over forty years has taught me that leaders who consistently handle people wrongly are eventually dealt with by God himself.

David was terribly mistreated by Saul, but he would not take the role of judgment upon himself. There are too many Sauls in places of leadership in the body of Christ. Can I implore you to follow David’s example, and let the Lord himself deal with them? Otherwise you are only fighting fire with more fire. You may justify your actions to yourself, but they do not impress the God who allowed his own Son to be nailed to the cross for your sin.

And here’s my last word. Even if you have been let down, you can use the experience to push yourself into deeper dependence on the one Leader who will never fail you.

Keep your eyes on him. He’s still in charge of his church.

When the pain is from church

Why does pain come so often from within the church?

I have been in Christian leadership for over forty years. I love the church.

While it has been the scene of my greatest joy, it has also been the place of my deepest pain. Why is that the case?

This question has always bothered me. The Bible presents the church as the bride of Christ, the body of Christ and the temple of God. Why can there be such brokenness and sin within it?

I guess, if I’m honest, for the same reason there is brokenness and sin within me. Since studying Romans 7 as part of my doctoral studies, I have always felt that its portrayal of the individual torn between the flesh and the spirit was a genuine picture of the Christian life. So why would I expect the church to be perfect if I’m far from it myself?

Yet still that answer does not satisfy me. I have to dig deeper.

Those we love and trust have far greater capacity to hurt us than those we know only casually. And here is the problem. Church is the place where we are called to be open to each other, love each other, trust each other.

Betrayal, as Jesus knew only too well, is the worst hurt we can suffer. Yet it can only exist where there is a love and trust to be violated.

Bob Mumford used to talk about his experience driving down a road seeing a crushed Coke can lying at the roadside. He felt God reminding him that’s how Christians so often treat leaders and each other -- they drink everything the person has to offer, and then crumple the relationship and throw it away.

I used to get to the point when we saw new people arriving at church I wondered how long it would be before, having taken whatever we had to offer, they went on their way, usually with a complaint rather than a thank you. And I began to harden my heart.

A lot of people find an easy solution. Just walk out. There are millions of Christians in our culture who have left church and, short of a revival, will never return.

I understand why they’re doing it, but I feel sorry for them. They are taking the easy way, not the way of the cross.

So then what are we to do? Are we to expect church simply to be the place where we open ourselves only to be hurt? Where we serve only to be betrayed?

Here’s the wisdom forty years of hanging in has taught me:

1. If you want to follow Jesus, you’ll have to take the risk of hurt and betrayal the same way he did.

2. Find your strength in the Lord, just like he did also. Stick the straw of your spiritual and emotional need into God, not other people. Don’t expect from people what only God can give. They will disappoint you, but he won’t.

3. There is no ideal church, and no ideal network of churches. If you’re a leader and still saying that, stop it. You’re lying. If you’re a member and still seeking it, you’re looking for perfection while not living perfection yourself. You’re living a lie too.

4. Hanging in is always worth it in the end. If you hang in, you will gradually accumulate a network of friends who will not fail you. We have friendships going back 30, 35 and 40 years which are still yielding dividends to this very day. We did not give up. They did not give up. Now we have each other. God honours those who commit. Those who drop out often wind up lonely, bitter and away from God. They have shot themselves in the foot. You may have to change a local church, but don’t leave church. If you’re the one who’s been to every church in town and still isn’t satisfied, the problem is not with all of them, it’s with you.

As Christians, we live at the convergence of the real and the ideal. We have an ideal, a standard, we are aiming at. That is why Paul says, “Aim for perfection” (2 Corinthians 13:11, NIV). We will never reach the standard in this life. We live in the real, not the ideal. Yet the ideal pulls us toward itself, thus transforming the reality in which we live. We may call that frustration, but the Bible calls it sanctification.

The church we all long for is not described in the Gospels, the book of Acts or any of the apostolic letters. It does not exist in recorded history. It makes its appearance for the first time in the second last chapter of the Bible. Only those who have proven faithful in this life will be part of it.

Hang in there. It’s worth it in the end.

Photo credit: David Bennett

Encountering the glory (part 2)

If someone walked into my church on a Sunday morning and told me he or she was there to “manifest the glory of God,” I admit I might be inclined pretty quickly to provide a list of other churches in the community they could attend.

However, the fact is that Paul does make this very clear statement: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Paul is alluding to the experience of Moses, who had to veil his face when coming from the Lord’s presence because he did not want people gazing on the light. But now the situation is different. Our faces are unashamedly unveiled. There is no need to hide the evidence of God’s presence. On the contrary, we are to advertise it! But how we do this is not through an outward light show. Instead, the glory of God shines through lives that look like Jesus.

Why am I so certain about this? Precisely because of Paul’s statement. He says plainly that the glory of God is manifest in our transformation as men and women into the likeness of Christ. It is not beyond God’s ability to perform supernatural signs, but the glory is not in the signs. That is why it I have such a hard time when people report findings of glory clouds, gold dust, angel feathers (?) and the like, and then see in these supernatural signs the true manifestation of the glory of God. When we begin to look like Jesus in our lives, that is when the glory comes.

Three things are important about this transformation.

First, unlike with Moses, it is for all of us. It is the plan and purpose of God for every Christian to encounter the presence of the Lord, and to be changed by it.

Second, it is passive. We do not and cannot transform ourselves. We are being transformed by him. Our part is to yield, to give him permission, to submit, to let him have his way. Only he can bring the change.

Third, it is progressive. This is expressed by the way the Greek phrases it, which means: “we are in the process of being continually transformed.” Manifesting God’s glory in our lives is not a dramatic event. It is not a road to Damascus moment. Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, but was still, many years later, in his own words, “being transformed.” Transformation is a process that lasts our whole lives.

At Pentecost, the temple of God fell out of heaven to earth. The same Holy Spirit who came at Pentecost is at work in your life and mine today. His job is to make us look like Jesus. He transforms our moral and spiritual appearance so that it becomes like his. And as that happens, the glory begins to appear.

Paul wrote a short commentary on the same subject elsewhere. It begins with the words: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels,” and it ends with these: “the greatest of these is love.”

Signs may come and go, but as Elijah found out, the glory of God did not reach its highest form in them (see my post, “The thin silence of God,” published May 23/16).

To bear God’s image and to show his glory is our highest destiny and our greatest call.

Encountering the glory

The goal of our lives as Christians is nothing less than to manifest the glory of God. How we do this is explained by a detour into the meaning of the word “glory.”

The Greek word the Bible uses for glory was originally a word meaning appearance. This word figuratively came to refer to our reputation -- how others look at us. We have a physical appearance, but we also have a deeper character appearance or reputation. Behind our outward appearance is the inner core or essence of who we are as a person. Our essence makes an impact. The impact, multiplied over and over by our words and actions, creates our reputation -- what people think of us. This is our moral or character “appearance.” It could be a good appearance or a bad appearance, depending on our life and character.

When the Bible uses this word in relation to God, it takes on a different meaning.  This outward “appearance” or “reputation” of God, his utter perfection, is totally different from ours. It raises the idea of “appearance” to a whole new level. And so in English we began to translate the word as applied to God by a different word -- glory.

As we become like Christ, we ourselves begin to carry a measure of his glory. How? By the fact that we begin to look like him. Our appearance begins to become like his appearance. Some people in the Christian world make a terrible mistake by identifying glory with someone who comes with a dramatic prophecy or apparent word or supernatural manifestation from God, or perhaps someone with a dynamic personality, or someone claiming to be blessed with material prosperity.

This we foolishly call glory, and we follow such people -- and become the blind leading the blind.  But true glory is manifested in people whose essence is so filled with the Holy Spirit that the Spirit is able to produce the love, goodness, faithfulness, joy, peace, long suffering and gentleness of Jesus Christ in our character and our actions. Our appearance becomes more like his appearance.  This is the glory of God in us, for it is ultimately created by God himself through his Spirit.

If we are going to be glory-seekers, this is the glory we should seek.

Next week, a little more on the same subject…

Surrender releases the supernatural

Joseph found peace in the midst of difficult circumstances. This peace allowed him a perspective on the sovereignty of God. Years later, this perspective allowed him to sum up to his brothers his whole harsh pilgrimage in these words: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

Joseph’s battle was not won the day Pharaoh released him from prison. It was won in the depths of the dungeon when he surrendered to the sovereignty of God. He took that tremendous leap of faith to believe that ultimately God was in charge of his life, working things together to accomplish a higher purpose.

When Joseph surrendered himself to the sovereignty of God, God released his supernatural power. Ultimately, in God’s timing, it was that supernatural power, manifested in Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s own dreams, that released him from prison and brought him in a single day from prisoner in a jail to leader of the nation.

As we read to the end of the story, we find out how God raised Joseph out of prison, placed him at the right hand of Pharaoh, and eventually restored his relationship with his family, all the while fulfilling the two original dreams God had given him those many years before. The road to that fulfillment was not at all what the teenaged boy had imagined it to be, yet by the end of it, he could say that it was all fashioned by God for good. Suffering was an integral part of the process. You could almost say it was the process. Joseph was refined and purified by the suffering he endured.

Sometimes we suppose we can have charisma without character. Joseph’s story shows that if necessary, God will suppress the charisma until he develops the character that can carry the charisma to his glory rather than to the glory of man.  Have we truly given God permission to do what he wants with our lives? Have we reached a place of peace and surrender to God’s sovereign plan and purpose for us? If so, we will start to see the power of God flow through us, but in our weakness, not in our strength (2 Corinthians 12:9). He will take us and use us as instruments of his purpose, even if that purpose takes us up a hill like Calvary where, as Joseph did many years before, another man surrendered himself into the hands of his Father, knowing that whatever man or the enemy meant for evil, God intended for good.

This is the victory of Joseph’s faith, a faith forged in the heat of terrible tribulation, through the death of all his dreams, and in the midst of a battle against soul-destroying bitterness. By the grace of God Joseph won that battle, and was raised from prison and seated at the right hand of the throne of Pharaoh. How much more today can we do the same, we who have before us Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2); we who have working so mightily within us the same power by which this Jesus was raised from the dead and seated in the heavens, where now he has taken up his authority to rule.

Joseph’s story is for us. God is still bringing good out of it every time someone reads it and understands its message. Take hold of it for yourself. Allow God to take you up out of your prison and into the revelation of his will, and show you the certainty of his purpose for your life.