Churches That Give Life

Life Giving Relationships Between Leaders and Members

If we survey the Christian scene at any time we will see that God raises up leaders who move his kingdom on and help His people grow. A major part of our church life concerns the relationship between leaders and congregations. Today this aspect of our Christian life is global because the influence of leaders through modern technology and the media extends throughout the world. People can be lifted up and reach great public prominence. As long as they are faithful then all is well but if they fall into sin or heresy they can lead a lot of people astray. There is also the problem of the media if they get hold of the story of their failure. Unfavourable headlines make their way into the national news which brings the church into disrepute and gives ammunition to the enemies of the Gospel. Also this tragedy is compounded by the fact that the body of Christ quickly turns on its fallen leaders and the bigger the leader the bigger the hostility they have to suffer. This results in innocent believers working with Godly integrity getting caught up in the fallout. We had just such a situation a good while ago when Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Bakker fell to temptation. The result was devastating for the body of Christ because their sin involved money so many people stopped giving to Christian work in general and all sorts of faithful honest ministries suffered serious financial difficulties.

At that time I asked God about the whole situation; after all, these people were our Christian brothers even if they had fallen prey to the wiles of the devil. I asked Him how are we supposed to relate to our leaders, what is your heart for their function in the body and how can we as rank and file soldiers in the army of Jesus help them to stay on track? God gave me an answer which I believe will help us get leadership into perspective and enable us to assist any who are clearly called to prominent public positions to remain faithful. Here is what I believe He told me.

1 Leaders are the same as us

Leaders are not some sort of super Christian as if God has put them in a special category of their own. It is true they are people who have been willing to completely abandon themselves to the call of God but they accomplish their extraordinary feats through the same Holy Spirit that dwells in us all. For example, it is not a different Holy Spirit who is in Benny Hinn from the Holy Spirit who is in you. Admiral Horsey achieved great success in the Second World War by turning the tide in favour of the Americans against the Japanese. When someone called him a great man because of what he had achieved he replied that there were no great men only ordinary men who rose up to great challenges. We need to respect and honour the people whom God raises up and respond to the challenges put before them but we must not put them on a pedestal as if they were in some way superior to us. We are all joint heirs with Christ and we all have the same resources available to us. Don’t devalue what you do and judge yourself unfavourably to them. Public prominence does not determine greatness in the church as it does in the world.

When we examine the details of why some of them have fallen into temptation we find that we are not as innocent of their downfall as we often think we are. We, the body, put them under so much pressure to perform to the reputation we have given them. We criticise them unmercifully when they don’t come up to our expectations. Some of the partnership materials with Andrew Wommack Ministries where I worked for a while involved other speakers, like Tape or Video of the Month. From time to time we had some people leave the partnership because they only wanted to hear Andrew. Some people came to the conference only wanting to hear Andrew. Jesus was not an exclusive leader and He was always investing Himself into His disciples. Matthew 28:19Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Mark 6:7And He called the twelve to Himself, and began to send them out two by two, and gave them power over unclean spirits., Matthew 14:15 – 16When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food.” But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” and John 14:12“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.. We have a duty of care towards these leaders that we do not lay expectations on them that it is not lawful for us to do. If we fail to hold on to the blessing that God gives us through their ministry then that is not their fault it is ours. We need to join our faith with their faith so we can keep what the Lord gives us through them.

2 Live under the right Covenant

The Lord showed me that the real problem with the relationship between leaders and followers is that the body of Christ tends to relate to its leaders as if they are living under the Old Covenant instead of the New.

(a) God’s leaders under the Old Covenant

Under the Old Covenant God did not indwell His people like He does in the New. When there was a need God came upon a person and raised him or her up to meet that need. The people were dependent on their anointing to do the task for everybody. This system operated in all aspects of Old Testament life, from a national crisis to ordinary domestic situations because the general populace related to God through their specially anointed and appointed leaders. Hebrews 3:16 – 19 shows us that the failure of the generation that crossed the Red Sea to enter the promised land was because they didn’t believe. Moses was the only one who really believed God. Except for Joshua and Caleb the rest had a ride on his faith because they didn’t believe for themselves. People in the Old Testament who wanted to enquire of God did it through others 1 Sam 3:19 – 21 & 9:9(Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he spoke thus: “Come, let us go to the seer”; for he who is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer.), Jer 42:1 – 4. Even in the small issues of life they took the man of God along just in case they needed a miracle to get them out of a sticky situation 2 Kgs 6:1 – 7. The people came to God through the priesthood and the temple system of worship. They were instructed in God’s will for them through the anointed leaders God raised up to teach them and show them what to do because they could not do it for themselves.

There was a divine purpose in this system for it pointed towards the One who would eventually come and be the final anointed person raised up to do the one thing we could never do for ourselves – our salvation. Jesus was the last man raised up under the Old Covenant and had the job of the ultimate deliverance of mankind from the power of sin and the devil Acts 2:22 – 24 & 36 – 39. After that great final work the Old Testament way of doing things came to an end and a New Covenant with a new way of doing things was ushered in by the resurrection of Jesus. We naturally like the Old Covenant way of life because if we can get someone else to believe God for us rather than us rising up to the occasion, taking personal responsibility and using our own faith, we will.

(b) God’s leaders under the new covenant

Life under the New Covenant is radically different from life under the Old Covenant and Jesus drew our attention to it in Mat 11 v 11“Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. where He told us that the person who was the least under the New Covenant was greater than John the Baptist who was the greatest under the Old Covenant. Jeremiah prophesied in Jer 31 what the New Covenant way of living was to be like. The radical change that took place through the work of Jesus was that every member is now a partaker of the divine life so we all have access to God without the need of an intermediary. Jesus did the ultimate work for us so that we could, through the indwelling Spirit, using our own faith, overcome for ourselves. The spiritual power of miracles, deliverance and victory and the ability to communicate with God that was done through His anointed leaders now becomes available to us all. There is now complete equality amongst all believers in the New Covenant from the newest believer to the oldest most experienced believer so none should be despised and none put on a pedestal. 1 Cor 3 v 5-10 After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together with the same purpose. And both will be rewarded for their own hard work. For we are both God’s workers. And you are God’s field. You are God’s building. Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. What one can attain, all can attain; we respect God’s calling and anointing and the experience of older believers but we are inferior to none. We might be more carnal or inexperienced or less committed, but not inferior.

The reason that God still raises up people under the New Covenant is that he equips them so that they may help us to believe for ourselves. They are not there to believe or hear God for us. Under the New Covenant there are no Prophets Priests and Kings to stand in the gap between us and God like those under the Old Covenant. We are all Prophets Priests and Kings. There is still a valid ministry of praying for each other and having ‘words’ for each other. The difference is that under the New Covenant, along with others’ faith and power we must have faith for ourselves if we want the blessing we get from them to last. One of the reasons we fail to hang onto things we get when people pray for us is because we are relying more on their faith than ours. Often the main motivation for asking someone to pray for us is because we have no faith in our own faith. I am not saying that other people’s faith is not part of our life and experience and cannot benefit us when we seek help but the bottom line of our spiritual development is the faith we exercise out of our own hearts. We must combine the faith of Christ that lives in us with the faith of Christ that lives in those who help us. We are not to rely entirely on their faith because that is Old Covenant living which is the cause of much of the failure and loss of blessing that we experience. That is the reason why before the list of things given in Mk 16:15 – 18And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” that we are capable of as a Christian it says those who believe will………..

To summarise, God raises up leaders to lead His people. Under the Old Covenant it was to do for the people what they could not do for themselves. Under the New Covenant it is to help us to personally enter into the benefits of our relationship with God and have faith for ourselves. The downfall of many a leader is the pressure our unrealistic expectations put on them to perform to the reputation we have given them. Remember when you next go to a big meeting you are as much responsible for the results of the ministry as the big name you have gone
to see.