Results of a leadership vacuum

I’m involved in several online groups and forums. Some are moderated and some aren’t. Because of recent events on a couple of these groups, I’ve begun to think about leadership and the need for it.

I know that for many of us who are no longer involved in a local church, the thought of leadership brings back some very unpleasant memories. So, before I start sharing my thoughts, let me say that I do NOT agree with the pastoral form of leadership that is used in most institutional churches today. I don’t believe this was the biblical form used by the early church nor was it set in place by the first apostles. Rather than strengthening the church, I believe this form of leadership actually hinders its growth and maturing.

That being said, I think leadership is necessary but should be fluid. The style used will vary and change with the circumstances and I believe the day will come when members of the church will have grown to the point that they will be able to lead themselves. However, if anyone has recently been involved in any online groups, I’m sure you’re aware that many who participate have not developed in self-control and their behavior can become destructive to themselves and to others. For that reason, leadership is still necessary.

However, let me say that I believe the micro-manager style of leadership is NEVER acceptable. A good leader in my opinion must maintain a loose grip over the group and may at times almost seem to disappear into the background. Yet, he will emerge if necessary to deal with issues and to encourage. Then, he will return into the background.

On unmoderated forums, the leader is so far in the background that he almost never emerges and has little influence over how the group functions. That works just fine if the members have matured and are led by love. This style of leadership becomes a problem, however, when the members of the group are not living free and are being controlled by impure motives. In these groups where there is a vacuum in leadership, leadership will ALWAYS emerge. People who are gifted as leaders will naturally begin to move forward and I believe that’s a God ordained flow.

In all of the online groups I’m involved with, I’ve seen this happen. I get excited when I see natural leaders begin to come forward to love and encourage the others. In these healthy groups, it’s not just one person but leadership may move and flow from one person to another to another until the entire group is involved in encouraging and moving the group forward. This is very similar to the V-formation in which geese fly. The geese continually rotate so that each goose take a turn flying in the lead position.

In online groups, the problem usually arises when the group has grown large. Over time, in unmoderated groups, there will eventually arise someone whose natural gift of leadership is tainted by impure motives. They will begin to draw around them an alliance of weaker individuals who will protect and support them. If, at that point the person who has actual authority over the group doesn’t step forward and re-instate order, the group is headed for a takeover. Then, when the takeover is complete, the new leader will rule with an arm of steel to silence anyone who attempts to question them.

We tend to think that spiritual abuse can only take place in an institutional church. However, we need to be aware that spiritual abuse exists outside of the institutional church. It exists whenever a leader forces his own agenda on the group at the expense of the other members. Abusive leaders can infiltrate a home group as well as an online group.

Although the primary purpose of this blog is to share about the life of grace, a secondary purpose is to inform and to encourage those who have been victimized by spiritual abuse. If you believe you’ve been a victim of spiritual abuse, please refer to the resources on my sidebar and don’t be ashamed. There is help and there is freedom available.

The ordinary times of life

I recently read Matthew’s excellent post, "Founded on the Rock." As I thought about what he said, a new picture of Jesus emerged.

The Bible takes Jesus’ three and a half years of ministry and condenses it into a few chapters. The result is that we think Jesus’ life as well as that of his disciples was filled with one exciting event after another. Maybe if the gospel writers had instead given us a daily log of activities, we would have found that there were days and maybe even weeks when nothing really happened. Maybe there were days when life for them seemed pretty hum drum.

Jesus had a physical body subject to all of the limitations we have. No human body is able to sustain a constant life of excitement and adrenaline pumping through it. I really suspect that daily life for him and his disciples consisted primarily of relationship building with an occasional miracle thrown in. Yet our tendency and it may have also been that of the gospel writers is to focus on the unusual and the exciting events of his life.

As a result, we tend to think that the normal christian life is one filled with activity and drama . . . a continual adrenaline rush. We look at our lives and compare them to the fast moving pace of the gospels and think we’ve missed it because we’re not constantly healing the sick and casting out demons and we forget the people who daily cross our paths who leave having been touched by Father’s love in a special way.

We tend to view the Bible as a blueprint for what our lives should look like so, when we don’t match the blueprint, we start to think there’s something wrong with us and that we're not living an authentic christian life. Religion's focus on the miraculous in my opinion contributes to this misunderstanding. Instead, I believe the Bible was meant to be a sharing of various people's journeys and what they learned along the way regarding their relationship with God and how they related to others.

As Matthew pointed out, in the beginning we may experience constant joy and excitement but over time our emotions will level out because what was once new and exciting is now normal for us. In other words, we're now living the normal christian life so it no longer seems dramatic and exciting. Occasionally God may interject himself into our lives in an unusual way and we once again feel the excitement but we can’t base our relationship with him on those times or their absences.

I love how Matthew phrased it. He said: “Maybe worshiping God doesn't mean I have great loving feelings and excitement all the time. Maybe true worship is during the ordinary days of life when I feel nothing.”

This is an encouraging post and to read it in its entirety, follow this link.

The law is a package deal

Darin Hufford’s podcast “Giving in the Wild” has generated a lot of discussion regarding whether tithing applies to us today as New Testament believers. As I read the comments, it occurred to me that the Old Testament laws are a package deal.

Although there were 613 different laws that comprise the law, God treated all 613 as a single unit. The Israelites couldn’t just pick and choose which ones they were going to obey and then ignore the rest. Each of the 613 had to be kept perfectly or the person was considered to have broken the entire law.

The same is true today. If you choose to put yourself under any part of the law, you’ve bound yourself to keep all of it. In the discussion about Darin’s podcast, one person was adamant that the law on tithing had to be obeyed. If that’s the person’s mindset, then she needs to keep the law on tithing PERFECTLY. Just bringing a tenth of her income to church and then putting it in the offering plate does NOT fulfill the law on tithing perfectly since the law on tithing is a series of very different laws. In addition to tithing, that person has also bound herself to keep the other 612 laws.

How stressful and how impossible!

No one can keep the law perfectly and no one ever has except for Jesus. He’s the only person who perfectly fulfilled the law.

The good news is that God never untended for us to keep the law. Its purpose was to enable us to see our inability and to cause us to come to Jesus. So, when we attempt to keep the law, we’ve rejected Jesus’ sacrifice in that area of our lives.

Jesus came to set us free from the Old Testament law with its impossible demands. Today, we're no longer bound by the Old Testament law. Instead, we're now bound by the New Testament law of love. No longer are we bound to an endless cycle of striving and defeat by trying to follow a long list of do's and don’ts . Instead, we're now free to follow love.

God is after our hearts. He put his law in our hearts and has filled us with himself. Now, we give cheerfully because his love in our hearts.

I’ve written several posts on the subject of tithing and giving. To read those, follow the links given below.

Learning to give out in the wild
Majoring in the minors
Great resources to learn more about tithing

Debating doctrine

On some christian online groups, there seems to be a fascination with doctrine. Doctrinal debates will begin that get so intense that they often de-escalate into arguing and name calling and sometimes even cursing. As a result, some members leave the group wounded and hurting. I’ve even seen this happen in groups where the members supposedly understand grace.

These believers will say that doctrine is important and that correct doctrine is critical and they feel it’s their christian duty to defend correct doctrine at all cost. To prove their point, they will cite the fact that Jesus, Paul and the other New Testament writers all wrote about doctrine. I think they forget that Jesus, Paul and the others discussed doctrine in the framework of real life.

The New Testament letters were written as a help and encouragement to believers who were dealing with specific issues. Paul didn’t just out of the clear blue sky write them letters and begin talking about doctrine. Either they had contacted him or he had heard about struggles and questions they had and he wrote to share what he had learned hoping that it would help them in their journeys.

People who focus heavily on doctrine seem to feel it’s okay to correct total strangers who they disagree with and often seem to forget that brothers and sisters should be treated with respect. As I look at the New Testament letters, one thing seems to stand out and it’s the fact that these letters were written out of relationship. They were written by an individual who knew the heart of the people to whom he was writing. That’s why Paul when writing even the most corrective letters could remind the people of the good that was in their hearts.

Understanding doctrine is important but it was never meant to be expressed outside of the natural flow of life. All doctrine is meant to be lived and not merely discussed.

The Misunderstood God

For some time, Darin Hufford has been working with Windblown Media on a rewrite of his excellent book, “The God’s Honest Truth.” Windblown Media is the publisher of “The Shack”, a book written by William P. Young, which skyrocketed to success and was listed by The New York Times on their bestsellers list. Darin’s book is now finished and ready to be released in early November under the title of “The Misunderstood God: The Lies Religion Tells Us About God.”

Darin self-published the original book and I’m excited that this wonderful book will now be available for wider distribution. Anyone who reads my blog with any regularity knows that I’ve been greatly impacted by this book and by Darin’s ministry. Since reading his book and getting involved with his ministry, my life hasn’t been the same. Darin opened my eyes and helped me to see the loving Father that religion had hidden from me. I don’t think any other book has impacted my life as much as this one has and I’m looking forward to getting my copy of Darin's new book.

If anyone hasn’t read “The God’s Honest Truth,” I highly recommend reading it as well as the new version, “The Misunderstood God.”

To read detailed information about this new book by Darin Hufford, follow this link.

Performance Based Acceptance - my story

Although I’d been a believer for a number of years, I knew my life didn’t measure up to what I believed it should as a christian and, to be honest, I didn’t see that anyone else around me was doing any better. Toward the end of 1997, my desire to know God more intimately increased and I began praying what I’ve since come to realize is a dangerous prayer. I told him daily, several times a day, that I wanted to know him. Well, he took me at my word but, if I had known what was ahead, I don’t know that I would have prayed that prayer.

A few months later, he led me to a church that later became abusive. I stayed there over three years and those were the most difficult three years of my life but it was there that God began the process of setting me free from the need for people's approval.

As with all spiritually abusive leaders, the pastor of that church preferred new and inexperienced believers. Since I had been a believer for over 20 years, it was obvious that I was being pushed aside in preference to the younger believers. I even once told him that I felt like I wasn’t wanted there. Of course, he denied it but I knew it was true. The young and inexperienced were definitely preferred over those of us who were more mature and seasoned in our faith.

I struggled to gain this pastor’s approval and I remember thinking that there was nothing I could do to please him. For someone who thrived on the approval of others, that was tortuous. I hated it there and decided to leave several times but each time, God made it very clear that he wanted me to stay. It was only years later that I understood why it was important for me to stay. He wasn’t punishing me as I thought at the time but he was setting me free in ways that I couldn’t even imagine at the time.

After I left, I found Wayne Jacobsen’s Lifestream website and later Darin Hufford’s Free Believers Network. I devoured their teachings and, as a result, I finally understood the bondage I had been in and how God had been setting me free through what he allowed me to experience.

I also learned that I have a Father who loves me too much to let me stay in bondage. My freedom began with a lot of pain as I struggled to make sense of why he put me in an abusive church. Now, I look back on those days and think that knowing what I know now, if I had to do it over again, I would. I sure wouldn’t enjoy the suffering I went through but sometimes to effect a cure, a surgeon has to cut out the sick parts and that’s always painful. However, when the healing is complete, the results are worth it.

For me, this was the start of a very exciting journey and it has been a journey. I haven’t arrived yet and, at times, I still find myself reveling in the praise of man and looking for it. I still struggle at times when family members give me patronizing looks that seem to say that they’re being patient with me but I’ve also learned to laugh at myself when I act like my elevator doesn’t go up all the way.

I’m learning that it’s okay to be me. God created me and gave me my unique personality and he’s pleased with me just the way I am. If there’s any changing to be done, he’ll do it in his own time and in his own way. I’m not supposed to get stressed about it and spend a lot of effort trying to change what I view as faults. I just need to spend my time getting to know him and, through that relationship, he will change what needs to be changed in me.

Friendships without a hook

We tend to want our friendships to all fit into a neat little predictable package but the truth is . . . they don’t. Since we’re all unique individuals relating to other unique individuals, each friendship will be different.

I prefer friendships where the relationship is mutual. I absolutely love it when my friends initiate some sort of communication with me. A phone call or an email just to say hello means a lot to me and makes me feel like they care and value me as a friend.

The friendships that I view as being one sided are very difficult. I get tired of always being the one to make the contact and eventually I find myself pulling back from those friendships. I want some indication from those friends that they care so I end up putting them on a point system. I compare the number of times they’ve contacted me with the number of times I’ve contacted them but that’s a surefire recipe for hurt.

With some friends, I have a real heart to heart connection that goes deeper than other friendships. These get complicated when I feel like they’re one sided. These types of friendships are very emotionally stressful so, sometimes it becomes necessary to pull back from some things for a time in order to avoid further hurt.

I believe we need to come to the place where we understand that God is there to meet our needs and he will sometimes ask us to be a friend to someone who isn’t meeting our emotional needs. It may be, that during this season, the other person needs our friendship and encouragement and God wants us to give freely with no strings attached.

Darin Hufford has an excellent teaching on giving and in it he says, “If you have love, giving will arise from that love. If giving does not arise from your love, it’s not love; it’s just fond of.” In other words, we’ll give because it’s the nature of love to give; it’ll simply be a natural outflow of the love Father has given us.

Learning to give up expectations and to love freely is difficult. It’s a process that I’ve entered into and it’s been hard. I like to be in control and to know how my relationships will work out but I’m slowly learning to just let those friendships be what they’re going to be.

Darin once told me that we tend to care more about what people do than we care about why they do it. I believe this is true. It’s easy to get so self-focused that we don’t look for the reason why. Maybe if we understood the “why”, the “what” wouldn’t be so painful.

God is our source for all things and, as we learn to look to him to provide the emotional support we need, he’ll provide in ways we never imagined. As we allow him to meet our needs, we’ll no longer be controlled by our expectations of others. Although learning to give up expectations is difficult, I believe it’s the only way to successfully navigate through the difficult and unpredictable waters of relationships.