Culture of Godly Leadership

Listen link: http://www.firstcovenantcadillac.org/#!this-weeks-sermon/c20mw

Hebrews 13:7-17

I like sailing. When I was in high school my friend Bill and I would go sailing. His family owned one of the smallest sail boats you could get, a little sunfish. It wasn’t much more than a kayak but you sit on the upper part and only put your feet down in the hole where kayakers sit. The sail was only about 8 feet tall and the boom was only about 18 inches above the so-called deck. When the boom was swinging over from one side to the other you really had to duck out of the way.

We had a lot of fun sailing in that little thing out on Hudson Bay in Long Island Sound. It was the ocean, salt water, but in that protected area the waves were never very big. It was more like a large lake. Anyway the sailing we did was just for fun. Never any place to go in particular and nothing to do but sail for the fun of it. Even with that, only one person could be the leader, in charge of navigation. Bill was captain. I was first mate and there was no one else on board. No room. Those were good days. There wasn’t much to navigate, just stay upright and get back to port safe, and watch out to make sure we got back to shore before any storms rolled in.

That could be an illustration of how many congregations do church. Just stay afloat and enjoy the tasks required for successful sailing, but really going nowhere, except to quickly head for safety if you see a storm coming. It could look like a pretty good church. People are busy. People are even having fun. But that kind of church life turns out to be pointless entertainment.

The True church is on a mission. We are navigating to a genuine destination. We are aiming for the Kingdom of God. The skills involved in sailing are not just for wandering aimlessly to sail for sailing sake. We use all the best sailing skills we can to actually get somewhere and accomplish something for the sake of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and the Great Commission he gave us just before he ascended into Heaven.

And since we have a definite destination, it means that we have to keep heading in the right direction, even if we have to sail through the storms that come along. There is no turning back to head for safety. The safest place we can be is in the center of God’s will and to stay on course.  That’s church with a purpose, and to achieve this noble objective we must encourage and build a culture of godly leadership. We still need captains who can sense the direction God is calling us, set the course, navigate the waters and weather the storms.

As long as I am talking about sailing, I will just mention here that church leadership works through the constitution and bylaws right? The constitution is supposed to govern the way we make decisions, but it turns out that we have to be careful about that. A lot of churches kind of ignore the constitution and their culture makes decisions in the parking lot or in the kitchen. The constitution can either act like an anchor that keeps us from going anywhere, or it can act like the sail that catches the wind of the spirit so that we move along in God’s will under God’s power. More about that next week when we talk about fruitful organizational structures.

For today we are going to focus on what it means to have a culture of godly leadership. If you would like an outline of the sermon my three points are going to be taken from the three parts of this key verse at Hebrews 13:7. First we will consider the word leaders, then godly, then culture. It is just the reverse order of our phrase culture of God leadership.  We are doing leaders, godly and culture.

Now when you first read Hebrews 13:7 it may sound like simply an instruction to be submissive while the leaders run the show. But it isn’t that simple and it isn’t that unpleasant either. Listen again, it says, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.”

Later on at the end of the passage it does say obey them. But even that is not just a blatant command. It is set in a context that gives good reasons to obey. To begin with, the exhortation to remember might be surprising if you were expecting to be ordered to submit. “Remember” means to be mindful of and to think of them. It is a word that is often used of people who are no longer with us, but in this case it is more about reviewing the character and integrity with which the leaders lead. Perhaps also giving thanks for the good work that they have done. It is an activity that will encourage trusting good leaders and avoiding bad ones.

This is all the more important because the leaders themselves learn from the gospels that Jesus commands us to be humble and not Lord it over people. Christian leaders are servants and as such are not really in any position to make demands and boss people around. Rather, they speak the word of God to you. They serve up the good news of the gospel that forgives sins and saves sinners! If you are a saved Christian you will as I do, be glad to give thanks for the person or persons who lead you to Christ and taught you how to develop a good and close relationship with our Lord and Savior. They were leading only in the sense of a being guide who was taking you only where you wanted to go, into a deeper walk with the Lord.

Leaders in congregations are responsible for pursuing the mind of Christ in relation to the church’s mission values and programs. A culture of godly leadership helps establish a climate of sensitivity to God, trust in each other and a passion for the world which needs to know Christ. If you have ever served with leaders like that, I’ll bet you still do remember them fondly and maybe even wish that they were still with us! Hopefully too you remember whether or not any of the leaders we currently have are being good leaders like that. May all God’s people who are in leadership be worthy of fond remembrance.

Next we take up that part of the verse that says, “Consider the outcome of their way of life.” Of course, that requires memory. But what is meant here is that the author of Hebrews is confident that the outcome of the lives of the leaders has been a picture of godliness. Godly lives reflect the truth that Jesus is the head of the church. Ephesians 4:15-16 says, “Speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

The love of God is shown in Christ and it is expected that the leaders of the church will be reflecting that same gracious love in all the work that they do, a work that is designed to produce harmony and maturity in the body of Christ. In fact, although you can’t expect perfection, you should be able to detect all the fruits of the spirit at work in the lives of godly leaders. You know, that love joy, peace, patience kindness, those attitudes characterize the leaders in the congregation. But the outcome means the end result too. What have they accomplished? Has it been good? Have they left a legacy of blessing?

These are the marks of greatness. Jesus talked about how to be great. He said in Mark 10:43-44, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” Think of all the people you have been personally acquainted with and remember which of them you would call great, as in when you think about them you say, “Wow, that person is a really great person to know.” Probably what comes to mind is people who were kind and loving and possessing a servant’s heart. People who bless others are the greatest. Godly leaders are a true blessing to the church.

So now let’s talk about culture. A really healthy missional church doesn’t just have godly leaders. It has a culture of godly leadership. Now a culture is where things grow. Remember, from your high school biology classes, petri dishes and agar grows a culture? So the last part of our verse actually is talking about growing new leaders. When verse 7 ends on, “imitate their faith,” it means that all Christians in the church are expected to grow and mature to the point where they themselves might become leaders, leading others to Christ and leading the church into the future.

The verse doesn’t say imitate their efforts. It says imitate their faith. That is an important distinction. For one thing if we only imitate their efforts that would mean we would be doing the same things they did, whether God wants us to or not. But if we imitate their faith, then we will walk the same way they did and God can lead us into new things to do as ministry and it might look nothing like the past but it will be fruitful and bring God glory if we keep the faith.

Now for just one example that just popped into my head readily, this church started 9out 135 years ago as a Swedish speaking church. If the leaders of the church today were still imitating today those first church leaders’ efforts, wouldn’t we still be speaking Swedish? But what they did do was imitate those first church leaders’ faith to learn how to do whatever it takes to fulfill the mission of Christ and in their case it was learn to speak English. And in our case it now is learn to relate to a changing culture that is changing way faster than we’re comfortable with, but we have to do that.

This then encapsulates something you may have heard me share with you in the past. I believe the church should be a place where sinners are becoming saints through faith in Jesus Christ. Along the way, visitors become believers, believers become members, members become ministers and minsters become leaders who keep the church growing and carrying the torch of the light of salvation from generation to generation. This 135 year old church has been doing faithfully for many generations. There have been glorious days and there have been hard days. There has been smooth sailing, and there have been storms to weather, but by faith we will carry on.

A culture of godly leadership is always responsive to God’s call and not always entrenched in tradition and comfort. One simple definition of culture is, how we do things around here. If how we do things around here never changes, then the church will stagnate and become unproductive. If how the church does things had always been Swedish, there wouldn’t be any people in this room today.

The two most important leadership tasks are, one, to develop other leaders. We call that discipleship. Everybody sitting in this room is a disciple of Christ and we expect you to make progress in your relationship to the Lord and become more and more sensitive to his call on your life, so that if he asks you to be a leader, you’re ready to do it. And two, to shape and manage culture. Leadership is the process by which a man or a woman, guided by the Holy Spirit, influences a group of God’s people to accomplish God’s purposes for that group.

Jesus did that work when he was saying things that began with, “The kingdom of God is like…” Whenever Jesus said that he went on to describe the culture of God’s kingdom. He was talking about the way God does things around his kingdom. And he was teaching his disciples that they were going to be expected to do things the way God does things. That would produce a godly culture on earth, the kingdom of God on earth, God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven. And that would be a culture of godly leadership, leading the way to salvation and eternal life!

It is an exciting adventure we are on! The healthy missional church is healthy when it is pursuing Christ and it missional when it is pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world. And the same thing is true for each individual Christian. Are you pursing Christ? Then you have a healthy spiritual life. Are you pursing Christ’s priorities, totally devoted to what God wants you to do for him? Then you’re a healthy missional Christian.