If you’ve seen the last video, I’ve started talking about politics in the church.

If that subject doesn’t make you wince, you probably need to spend some more time with Jesus. And if you don’t think that politics is necessary in the church, you need to spend some more time with Paul.

I’ll probably say this in the video series but just in case I forget, one of the important spiritual gifts for a pastor to have is a “mean streak.” Well…uh…maybe that’s not the best way to put it. But then again, maybe it’s best to use the harsh ascription and then let the Holy Spirit’s gifting sand it down a bit.

But with that being said, it does worry me sometimes that so many pastors, in their efforts to be kind and Christlike (a good thing), end up being a target for neurotic people whose calling in life is “get the preacher.”

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Ben Haden, but he’s been my friend for a whole lot of years. (Check out “changedlives.com.“) Ben was one of my predecessors at the church on Key Biscayne where I served, the longtime pastor at First Presbyterian in Chattanooga, and a former newspaper editor.

Ben is quite strong in his leadership style. One time he called the church treasurer into his office, locked the door and pocketed the key. “Both of us can’t run this church,” Ben said, “and when this meeting is over, one of us is going to resign.”

It wasn’t Ben.

I must restrain myself from telling you more stories…but you get the idea.

We were talking about leadership once and he told me that the congregation (even if they shouldn’t and even if it was wrong) would think of God the way they think of their pastor. He said that if they could manipulate their pastor, they would think they could manipulate God. “So,” he said, “you have to be strong even if you don’t want to be strong or don’t feel strong.”

I’ve never locked a treasurer in my office (Ben’s meaner than I am), but I have prayed for some deaths. (Joke…sort of.) And I’ve tried to heed—sometimes to varying degrees of success—Ben’s advice about being strong even when I didn’t feel like it.

Inside “the warrior is a child.”

Have you ever been in those revival meetings where the evangelist, in order to get people to come forward at the invitation, did a bit of manipulation? Sometimes the evangelist would say, “Turn to the person next to you and say, ‘If you go, I’ll go with you.’”

While I don’t very much approve of that kind of thing, that’s exactly what God says to his servants, to wit, “If you stand, I’ll stand with you!”

He does, you know?

He said that to me this morning and then told me to tell you.

Don’t you shilly-shally!

 Email This Post This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Read, Steve Brown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.