Another leader is being revealed as a fraud with a fatal flaw. A lack of true accountability kept it hidden. The failure is broader than one person.
And, the enemy will attempt to establish a lie that all leaders are frauds, lack true accountability, and have hidden fatal flaws. Why? To further erode honor.
This pattern worked with the American church when dishonor for marriage and sexual purity hit the culture. Then, the enemy used the dishonorable conduct of some very visible leaders to convince the church that every leader had fatal flaws and secret sins. A broader perception formed: attempting to overcome and persevere was no longer considered worthy of great effort. Soon, divorce became as prevalent or more so within the church as it was in the culture.
This pattern will be repeated. The lie that all leaders are jerks with secret lives, lack of true accountability, and generally out for what they can get personally will be disseminated at an alarming rate and used as an excuse for open rebellion among christians. A new definition of “church” has already emerged that totally discredits the leadership strategies of Jesus, redefines the leadership strategies of Scripture, and opens the doors wide open to a mushy fragmentation and the chaos of clubs. The new church is akin to street gangs. They are and will be as abusive as they are exclusive: a place where little puddles make ducks seem big.
Kingdom fragmentation is upon us. Bad leadership is being used as a good reason for no leadership. A strange 60’s mentality is emerging in the Body of Christ with a “its just me and Jesus” out here floating around doing our thing.
In contrast, the nations originating moves of God and revolutionary revival are rapidly returning to the Bible’s clearest descriptions and definitions of the leadership of Jesus. They are discipling, making demands upon people who are newly converted, and creating expectation of real life-change and leadership development.
One city of which I am aware has about 200,000 in population and 55,000 of them are born again believers of one ministry with 56 locations in that city. This ain’t seeker friendly. It is strategic, measurable discipling that produces leaders in an effort to maintain focus and purpose in subsequent spiritual generations. Add the other churches to that number… You can see that true discipling, accountability, setting a strategy to consolidate converted people into kingdom leaders, and actually assuming that people who repent will produce the behavioral fruit of repentance can be powerful!
The loving leadership of these cultural transformations is nothing like the chaotic bite and devour of America’s new christian individualism. Cop out attempts to attract people to a good show and hope they are not offended by anything contrary to their post modern worldview just aren’t cutting it! Of course, this leads directly to watering down Scripture, redefining terms, and making the Gospel relevant in ways that make the Gospel something else altogether. Soon, we are counseling people in coping instead of overcoming.
The leadership dysfunction of very visible leaders does nothing to weakened Jesus’ commitment to His kingdom designs and definitions. He isn’t adjusting His kingdom to fit the mores and values of any culture. His spiritual culture works individually, for certain! But the newly converted becomes part of the kingdom: “Born anew to see the kingdom. Born anew to enter the kingdom.” Then, learn to live a kingdom life by personal behavior transformation. Live a changed life. And, kingdom is all about leadership. The ekklesia is a kingdom assembly, called together by the King who is personally present in the conduct of kingdom business. The two or three gathered are not the model but the picture of personal accountability that makes “the whole church” a place of order and honor. [See Matthew 18]
Much of what we have been doing, labeled “discipleship,” was a turning of the mind more than a turning of the heart, a sort of propagandizing people into a doctrinal systematic. We considered a “good disciple” who agreed with us and our check list of good teaching. The concept of experiencing spiritual power as a means to living a new life so our faith is not in man’s wisdom but the power of the Cross lost its luster, a kind of woo-woo for the modern mind.
We cannot win the world by sneaking up on them. The Gospel is foolishness to them. Preaching is foolishness to them. It is supposed to be that way! If we aren’t making people mad, we probably aren’t doing it the right way. Modern American culture is particularly anti-christian now. It is time we started acting like it as the ekklesia. Time for paying the price in America. Time for sacrificing everything in America. We aren’t making anyone mad, we are being ignored to death.
Now, when we need leaders more than ever before, strong leaders we can believe in, hell has made a valid attempt at undermining all leadership functions within the Body. Books are being written that present a new model for church that sounds like Woodstock complete with emotional orgies and pat-on-the-back “join the club” sentimentality. One would think the kingdom was a subcultural party instead of revolution.
Of course, revolutionaries eat together, sing and dance together – around the fire! Their bond is made by shared spiritual experience, recognition of a sold-out life, mushy sentiment means nothing to a revolutionary. They do not want to go to battle with some moved by sentiment after a night of discussing the latest movies with a prayer at the beginning and the end. The soldier’s life is one of bursts of intense, death-defying action marked by longer periods of strategic rest, sharing the bond of brothers between battles, and learning the strategic battle plans that complex and coordinated leadership dynamics make available to a committed army.
A great battle is coming, and hell would like to find the church fragmented, to pick us off one by one in our isolation. The enemy would like to have us so confused that we don’t know who to trust, who to believe, what message is right, what strategy will work, what teaching is pure, what model makes sense.
We need leaders who can convince us. We need leaders who model sacrifice. We need leaders with a strategy from revelation who can share spiritual experience with us.
Not all leaders are plastic action figures! Don’t run to the desert and find a cave so the acoustics make your voice sound louder in your ears. Don’t allow hell to tell you that you are the only one left. The enemy has stopped trying to openly curse us because the error of Balaam is working much, much better: let ’em rot from the inside. We need leaders who can clean house in a time when judgement begins at God’s house. The righteous are scarcely saved…we need leaders to get us on the thin line, the narrow way, that leads to life. Perhaps we should understand that the few there be that find it may be the leaders who can show us the way.
