Spiritual Leadership

I’ve been thinking about how Christians approach the matter of “Being led of God.” It seems that some Believers put stock in their education, rationalism, and planning. These people are impressed by papers on the wall (diploma’s), big words, and well crafted flow charts. They value ingenuity and creativeness. So, a young man who distinguished himself in seminary with very high grades, is viewed as though he is qualified to be a spiritual leader.

Does seminary produce true spiritual leaders? I mean, a number of gifted teachers can impart information, and a sharp mind may absorb it, but it seems to me that is the road to making another teacher, not a spiritual leader. A teacher approaches information with a set of skills, and applies them over and over again. If the subject is New Testament Greek, mastery of that language means that one can confidently exegete a passage and know that it will be right. A teacher may be like a map. A map confidently shows the route to take to get to the destination. It doesn’t reveal valleys, or the heat of the sun, or humidity. It doesn’t say to speed up for the coming hill, or slow down for the next. A map is limited to the amount of information it gives, and it doesn’t take into account any physical or emotional information. But that isn’t the same as being a spiritual leader.

A spiritual leader, or guide, knows the route to take, and he has walked it. He knows the view of the sunrise from such and such a place, and the cold and fear of such and such valley. He knows the hundred of physical and emotional experiences that visit the traveller along the route. Because the guide knows experientially, when a friend speaks of the road he is on, and how he feels, the guide knows right where he is on the road.

When I watch the movie, “Twister”, I see a good illustration of what I am thinking. In the movie, there are two teams of tornado chasers, trying to solve the mystery of why tornado’s form and how they work. One leader, “Bill” is a scientist, but he has more than that. He has “instincts”. The other leader is “Jonas.” Jonas is also a scientist, but he relies on his high tech instruments to find tornados. Bill listens to the weather data, but also stops along the road, looking at the sky, smelling the air, watching how a handful of road side dust floats away with the air currents. Jonas always has his nose glued to his instruments.

In the movie, Bill always beats Jonas to the tornados. Bill anticipates what the tornado is going to do. Jonas, and his high financed entourage of black Suburbans are always trying to even equal Bill and his rag tag shoe-string financed team. But they always come in “fashionably late.”

Instincts come from experience. For Bill, his awareness of a hundred subtle weather variables gave him the edge in knowing tornados. How about for Christians? I wonder sometimes about those in leadership of churches, mission agencies, and Christian colleges. How many are being led by the Holy Spirit, and how many just think they are, but in truth, they are not even listening to Him?

I sat in a church elder/deacon board meeting when a question about vacation Bible school came up. It seems that a member of the congregation, had asked the leadership board in advance to consider and pray about whether they ought to run a VBS that summer. The chairman of the board and the pastor neglected to share the idea with anyone else on the board. When the church member showed up at the meeting and asked for a decision, the chairman of the leadership board advised the rest of us of the request. Then, without a pause, he asked, “All in favour of the motion to run VBS this summer raise your hand.”

The hands went up in favour of the motion, but that is not why I remember the event. I remember the look on the face of the church member, a look of shock and disbelief. He asked, “Is this how you do things here? You never even asked God what He wanted us to do!”

It seems that there are some “Jonas’s” that worm their way into Church leadership. They have smarts, and a college education. Maybe they have graduate level education. They have learned the ways of the world and brought them into Christian agencies, churches, and institutions. But they have no instincts of the moving of the Holy Spirit.

The Message Bible says this about 1 Corinthians 10:14, “So, my very dear friends, when you see people reducing God to something they can use or control, get out of their company as fast as you can.”

Pharisees in the time of the Lord Jesus had the religious elite status. They had the diplomas. They memorized huge portions of Scripture. But of them, Jesus said,

“You study the Scriptures because in them you think that you will find eternal life, but they speak about Me, yet you won’t come to me that you might have life.” Most of the Pharisees had no instincts for God. For them, religion and salvation was something they thought they controlled.

Remember the reference to the church leadership that voted “God’s will” without praying about it? I remember another board meeting when a church member came to the meeting. The fellow didn’t have a high school education. He worked as a carpet layer. Yet, when this man spoke about a matter before the leadership, I found myself leaning forward in my chair to listen to him. He had a wisdom which spoke right out of the Bible. Instincts?

For some people, they would say that they want the teacher/map model. They really like the Jonas types and look up to them. It makes them feel like they are in control, I guess.

For me, I am drawn to spiritual guides. I want experienced leaders who have years of listening for the quiet voice of the Holy Spirit. Not only do they know the way, but they encourage, and model a life rich in an attitude of expectancy. An expectancy that God is active, and leading my life.