Tag: Church Leadership

Expired Fruit: Why Past Faithfulness Doesn’t Excuse Present Dysfunction

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As discussed in my last post, there is a difference between honoring leadership and respecting image preservation.

While Scripture commands us to respect those who labor among us, it also refuses to place any leader beyond examination, correction, or accountability. Somehow, in many churches, ministries, and organizations, we’ve managed to preach the first half while burying the second, using “protect the anointing” phraseology as an umbrella where insecurity, favoritism, micromanagement, even misconduct are tolerated.

But it usually doesn’t start there.

Most toxic cultures don’t begin with self-serving intentions. They begin with leaders who once did tremendous good.

Perhaps they pioneered something meaningful. Maybe they sacrificed deeply. Maybe they built ministries, companies, schools, nonprofits, or movements that changed lives. Maybe they weathered storms that others never saw.

All of that can be true.

But yesterday’s faithfulness does not exempt today’s behavior from scrutiny.

Past fruit is not a lifetime immunity badge. No organization is above the law. No leader is above correction. No “good old days” testimony can serve indefinitely as a veil covering present dysfunction.

The danger emerges when the narrative becomes: “Look at all the good they’ve done.”

As though that somehow settles every concern. As though the people closest to the problems simply lack perspective. As though those asking questions are disloyal. As though silence is maturity.

It isn’t.

Because the moment preserving an image becomes more important than pursuing truth, the culture has already begun to drift.

Jethro Saw What Moses Couldn’t

One of the most overlooked leadership moments in Scripture comes in Exodus 18.

Moses loved God. Moses was called. Moses had demonstrated extraordinary faithfulness. Yet Jethro looked at him and essentially said: “What you’re doing isn’t working.”

“What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out.” (Exodus 18:17-18)

Imagine that.

Moses—the man through whom God parted the Red Sea—was told that his leadership structure was unsustainable. Jethro wasn’t dishonoring Moses. He was protecting both Moses and the people.

He recognized something leaders often miss when responsibility concentrates at the top: The people suffer.

Jethro’s solution wasn’t blind loyalty. It wasn’t, “Everyone just support Moses harder.” It wasn’t, “Stop questioning and trust the process.”

It was accountability through structure. Shared responsibility. Distributed leadership. Healthy support systems.

“Select capable men from all the people—men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain—and appoint them…” (Exodus 18:21)

Notice the qualifications. Capable. God-fearing. Trustworthy. Hating dishonest gain. Not merely agreeable. Not merely loyal. Not merely protective of leadership’s reputation.

Their purpose wasn’t to become professional yes-men. Their role was to support both Moses and the people.

Middle Managers Aren’t Human Shields

Healthy organizations understand this instinctively.

Middle leadership exists to bridge. To advocate upward and downward. To communicate concerns from subordinates to executives. To translate vision into practical care. To equip teams. To identify problems before they become crises.

They do not exist to absorb dysfunction generated from above. Nor do they exist to suppress concerns to preserve appearances.

If every concern raised by frontline employees dies in middle management because someone fears upsetting the Executive Director, CEO, President, Senior Pastor, or founder, then leadership has ceased to function as stewardship and has become image management.

The lower half of an organization cannot continually compensate for the gaps left by the upper half. Subordinates cannot indefinitely provide the emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, humility, and accountability that senior leadership refuses to exercise.

People eventually run out of capacity. They burn out. They disengage. Or they leave.

“If You Don’t Like It, Leave”

Sometimes that’s exactly what happens.

And ironically, unhealthy leadership often interprets the exodus as validation.

  • “Good riddance.”
  • “The wrong people are leaving.”
  • “God is purging the disloyal.”
  • “They couldn’t handle authority.”

But what if the departures aren’t evidence of rebellion?

What if they’re evidence of unresolved problems? What if sensible people with both healthy minds and compassionate hearts simply recognize smoke when they smell fire? What if repeated turnover isn’t proof of purification? What if it’s proof of suffocation?

The irony is painful.

The tighter toxic leadership closes its fist to secure control, the more people slip through its fingers. The very thing they fear losing becomes the outcome their methods produce.

Because fear can force compliance for a season. It cannot cultivate trust. Manipulation can manufacture unity for a moment. It cannot sustain genuine loyalty.

Unity Is Not Uniformity

Biblical unity was never intended to mean unanimous agreement with leadership.

Why? Because real unity makes room for truth. For questions. For dissent without retaliation. For hard conversations conducted with humility.

Paul publicly confronted Peter when Peter’s actions compromised the Gospel (Galatians 2:11-14). The early church gathered to reason together through conflict in Acts 15. Even Nathan confronted David.

Correction wasn’t viewed as betrayal. It was understood as love.

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend…” (Proverbs 27:6).

Yet some environments redefine unity to mean certain cooperation, even silence.

Don’t ask. Don’t challenge. Don’t notice patterns. Don’t connect dots. Just smile. Support. Protect the anointing.

At that point, unity becomes something entirely different. It becomes coercion wearing spiritual language.

Everyone Has a Voice

  • Will every complaint be valid? No.
  • Will every accusation prove true? No.
  • Will every frustrated employee be completely objective? Of course not.

But when concerns repeatedly surface from thoughtful people across different levels of an organization, dismissing every voice as bitterness eventually becomes its own form of deception.

Especially if those voices are consistently met with defensiveness rather than curiosity.

People can accept difficult answers.

What they struggle to accept is being unheard. A voice that perpetually falls on deaf ears eventually stops speaking. Not because it lacked merit. But because it learned the outcome had already been decided.

James instructs believers to be:

“Quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19).

How often do organizations reverse that order?

Quick to defend. Quick to explain. Quick to protect. Slow to listen.

The Strongest Leaders Don’t Fear Accountability

The most secure leaders I’ve encountered don’t panic when questioned.

They don’t interpret feedback as mutiny. They don’t demand perpetual affirmation. They don’t surround  themselves exclusively with people who echo their opinions.

They understand something profoundly important:

  • Accountability doesn’t diminish authority. It legitimizes it.
  • Correction doesn’t weaken leadership. It strengthens it.
  • Transparency doesn’t destroy trust. It builds it.

And repentance—when necessary—is not evidence that anointing has departed. It’s evidence that humility remains.

Perhaps protecting the anointing has less to do with shielding leaders from scrutiny and more to do with protecting the integrity of what God entrusted to them in the first place.

Because God’s people deserve healthy leadership. Leaders deserve healthy support.

Middle managers deserve the freedom to advocate truthfully in both directions. And organizations deserve cultures where righteousness is valued more highly than reputation.

Christ-centered institutions should be the safest place in the world to tell the truth. Not because truth is painless. But because Christ Himself said:

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32).

Anything less may preserve appearances for a season.

But eventually, every veil wears thin. And when that happens, the question won’t be whether concerns existed. The question will be whether anyone had the courage to listen before people felt they had no choice but to leave.

Cover graphic creds: Pkfuel.com

Faith at Work: The Trinity as Structure (Part 1)

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So lately, I’ve been thinking about church and marketplace leadership.

Contrasts and comparisons, how the Kingdom applies to governance, management, and authority, things like that. Yeah, yeah, I know this isn’t a new trail of thought. If you’re a regular on here, you know these ideas define a deep-rooted passion within. Still, I can’t help but return to this well especially in a time when there’s so much disruption and disorientation.

In days like these, knowing the grassroots of our identity and calling is critical. As mentioned in past posts, we are all designed as Kingdom agents with appointed influence and spiritual gifts. From the beginning of time, we had a name and a purpose – a destiny to abide through, a God to abide in. The question is: How do we model the everlasting within the expirations of this life? How do we reflect and capture the Trinity in our way of conducting everything from behavior to business? 

While the answers are many, I figure for today we can assess some new angles and later on address how these issues might be changing in the years ahead.

As always, let’s dive in…

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To understand the Kingdom is to see the Trinity wherever there is appointed structure. This not only includes what God has established for our good but also ‘original intent’ when structures stray from this good.

A classic example of this is the principle we’re all created diverse in function, co-equal in value. While many accept this truth in theory, few default to and apply it due to cultural programming and our quest for meaning. To be fair, this shouldn’t surprise us. After all, in today’s world, we’re told if we want to make a difference, we have to make something of our lives; if we want to change the world, we need to attract attention to what we have to offer. Unfortunately, this not only inflates a sense of survivalism but hinders how we trust in communal contexts. With a societal rise in cynicism as self-preservation, no wonder so many struggle to define servant-based leadership given serving, leading, and relationships are regarded as mutually exclusive.

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Wherever we find ourselves concerning this, we must be unified in our aim to lean on Jesus. By leaning I mean trusting God in what He has modeled and shared from the very beginning – from His love, delight, and compassion to His heart for community and habitation. Remember before there was a creation, there was a culture of safety enjoyed by a Godhead who foreknew the Cross and the ministry of reconciliation to come. By proxy, we can know the Trinity was identifying with our uniqueness long before it existed. As the Psalmist and prophets declared, we were searched and consecrated before our birth (Psalm 139:16, Jeremiah 1:5, Romans 8:29); hence, why we can rest knowing God was engaging relationship with us before we could reciprocate.

Applied to leadership in marketplace and ministry, we can champion these Kingdom grids knowing serving is the leading and the way we approach worship and prayer as a lifestyle. In essence, leading by serving is not only the ‘radical middle’ (i.e. the Spirit/Truth life) at work but also an affirmation of prayer and worship as the core to vocational ministry. Locked into this belief, we can better discern the difference between our aims and what we experience as overflows.

For instance, one of the signs of a healthy church and/or work environment is a culture of humility. To facilitate a culture of humility, one must first trust God to inspire a culture before sowing prophetic encouragement into it. This makes sense given to facilitate at all, there must be people to facilitate to. As the Trinity implies, before anything can be created and developed, there must be time and space granted in the context of rest and relationship. This is why in any setting, people must come before process and procedures.

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In business, we see this practically in formation phases: People create the program, not the other way around. If you want to accomplish ground-breaking initiatives, don’t just seize the opportunity to serve, but pour into connectedness and maximize your availability. Don’t simply seek to learn, but seek to burn for what motivates your team. Whatever you do, do until the glory of God knowing you can cultivate community through prayer and worship…even if you can’t always pray and worship together. Remember as servant-leaders, the greatest impacts start by perceiving each function, each engagement as an expression of praise to God. From there, the Spirit/Truth life at work becomes clear, which in summary, is as follows:

  1. Value comes before function.
  2. People come before program. 
  3. Safety comes before creation.

A few words to the wise: Don’t ever use programs to manufacture safety and or emotional margin as leverage for productivity. While dependency keeps us accountable to community, this dependency must always be anchored in Christ alone; otherwise, whatever expression of fearless love we convey will be contained or misleading. Also, comparisons based in insecurity can be just as lethal as untimely agenda. If you ever need a litmus test to gauge the purity of your relational intentions, ask yourself, “Am I resting in my faith? Am I giving God room to invade? Am I helping others taste and see that God is good?’ In doing this, you calibrate to God’s faithfulness operating within you and are rest assured any effort rooted in striving will ultimately not succeed.

Selah.

Cover photo creds: https://www.forbes.com

Two Way Street: The Next for Next Gen (Part 1)

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I got to get something off my chest.

As a Millennial, I’m starting to wonder if the church is exhausting the ‘next’ in ‘next generation’…if what she considers ‘next’ is ‘new’ and what she considers ‘new’ is ‘more’1.

‘Cause truth is: While I’m all about the emerging generation being poured into, I can’t help but think we, as the body, need to re-evaluate ‘next’ relative to God’s discipleship intent. Granted, I’m a part of the rising leadership community and have much to learn; still, the splinter lingers in the back of my mind:

Should the church replace, ‘The future of church leadership is the next generation‘ with ‘The future of church leadership is discovering the next for each generation‘ in its ‘life on life’ vernacular?

If ‘yes’, then I believe the Lord wants to unveil specific strategies on how we’re to walk this out. But before we can dive into application, we must first bask our context in the Word.

As always, let’s dig in…

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Starting in Psalm 1452:4…

 “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.” (ESV)
“One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty and remarkable acts.” (AMP)
“Generation after generation stands in awe of your work; each one tells stories of your mighty acts.” (MSG)
“One generation will declare Your works to the next and will proclaim Your mighty acts.” (HCSB)
“Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power.” (NLT)

Right away, we see why contrasting different translations is important when studying Scripture. For instance, if you read the ESV, HCSB, AMP, or a similar translation, you might interpret ‘one generation’ to literally mean one generation; however, in context, this is not what David is implying. Rather, David is stating how worship should be a successive and progressive tradition – a two-way street from which one generation can learn from another. Had David been posed with the idea praise3 could only be experienced from top to bottom, it would have been a compromise to adoration in his mind.

As such, the key takeaway here is delighting in God is not only at the core of who we are, but also the core of our unity…which cannot be reduced to a unidirectional expression.

Now, let’s collate this with the parable of the wineskins:

“’No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, ‘The old is good.’” ~ Luke 5:36-39 (ESV)

Exegesis applied, Luke is illustrating the fact no one can mix legalism with new faith or religious tradition with divine grace; however, in this case, let’s assume old wineskins apply to older generations and new wineskins apply to rising generations. When Luke suggests the old is good4, he’s not saying aged is better in all regards (though with wine, this is certainly the case) as much as he’s emphasizing the Ecclesiastes 3 reality that for each option, there is a season, a time, and a place.

In other words, what’s new and what’s established are not only meant to co-exist, but partake under the heading of ‘fresh’ or as Hebrew translates it, ‘mechudash’ meaning ‘renewed’. Accordingly, while the literal pouring of wine from new skin to old skin doesn’t make sense, when we consider ‘fresh’ relationally from God’s perspective, we can know God as faithful to renew fresh works in all men for cross-generational education and exultation.

Think of it this way: As disciple-making Christ followers, we can be like wine poured out as drink offerings (Philippians 2:17, 2 Timothy 4:6) upon the sacrificial offering of faith; however, unlike wine, we can serve free from the yoke of wineskins seeking to compartmentalize how that faith operates in action! For example, if you’re an elderly leader, you don’t have to feel your place in church is limited to on-call mentoring and if you’re a teenager, you don’t have to feel disqualified due to youth. Christ in you…if anything is possible, who says you can’t team and serve alongside those twice or half your age? If God has called you, then go for it!

As the Spirit impressed upon me before writing this…

…how sweet it is knowing each generation has the capacity to pour into another? That no matter who is involved, as long as God is being praised and exalted, there is a place for His fresh work in all modes and peoples of life.

To tie this up, I’m all for Millennials, Post-Millennials/Zennials having their opportunity and time to step up. But I also don’t believe the retired generation has to be retired from leadership roles if they’re called and appointed in that season. History has constantly shown the emerging generation to approach the older ones with a ‘what about me‘ mentality. And don’t get me wrong. I get my peers looking around wondering who is willing to pour into them. But the flip side is also true. We can’t neglect pursuing places for those who naturally have more insight or pigeon-hole them where they’re not called as a plug-in for program.

After all, leadership is not a function of age, but a) a way the God can be glorified and b) an outlet for the fear of the Lord to be known. If the body wants to know the fullness of ministry as God intended, age can’t be a primary (key word) filter in finding the balance between giving/receiving…pouring in/pouring out. As long as you have breath, you not only have a purpose, but a place for that purpose to manifest.

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Stay tuned next time when I’ll dive deeper into the ‘next’ vs. ‘new’ vs. ‘more’ dichotomy as alluded to in my opening. Until then, be blessed and refreshed even when pressed and don’t forget to rest in His best.

Selah.

Footnotes

  1. Or visa-versa
  2. One of David’s favorite psalms
  3. In any form, be it discipleship/mentoring, teaching, prophesying, pastoring, etc.
  4. Or ‘better’ in some translations
Cover photo creds: The Beck Group