Some thoughts on leadership

            Leadership is different from governance because it doesn’t establish the lowest and least that is acceptable, but it inspires people to their highest and best.  …The outcome of leadership is people operating at their highest and best.

                        --John Ashcroft, quoted in George Barna’s “Master Leaders”, p. 12-13.

            When I lived in the Jacksonville, FL area, and also while I was still involved in institutional churches, I attended Celebration Church in Jacksonville. The pastor there, Stovall Weems, had in the past become friends with the leadership and Christian writer John C. Maxwell, and through that influence read many of Maxwell’s works and others on that subject.  While Maxwell on the surface concentrates on the business community, due to his background as a pastor, he is popular in Christian, specifically institutional church leadership circles.  I found his work interesting, and the subject interesting, although it never did me any good (at least so far) occupationally.  Maxwell is notable by his absence in the Barna book quoted above.  I have had the opportunity to hear Maxwell speak once, and I found it a skill he has mastered, but not exceptional.  It is Maxwell’s writing that is particularly notable. 

            That background has guided me to reading the above book.  My thoughts running on this subject run two routes.  The first is, as a follower of Jesus, Jesus is my top leader, but, as He is perfect, and I am not, and that He knows men’s hearts, I can only follow Him to a degree.  I once knew a man who was a Catholic priest, and ran a school in Jerusalem.  He told me and others that at the time, he somehow ran into conflict with the mayor, who was Communist, was arrested for something, and sentenced to death.  He said that one of his thoughts while in jail waiting to be taken to his death (instead, after a time, he was taken to the airport and deported), was that he wasn’t thinking about following Jesus in this aspect.  Most of us believers probably haven’t considered it also.  Dying for one’s following Jesus could be accepted.  The trivial point of geography (dying in Jerusalem) is unlikely, particularly if one is no where near that city or country.

            From that, I approach Ashcroft’s idea, above. Governance, and Barna points out near this quote that he believes he is using the word in a way similar to the way the word “management” is used in business, is a minimum, and leadership is directed to the maximum.  How does this fit simple churches?  Above, I mentioned being, to a slight degree, around Stovall Weems when I lived in northeast Florida.  I know him as a person who has that “it” factor of significant leadership ability.  From what I read from person’s who know many megachurches and their leaders (I am thinking particularly of Leonard Sweet’s book, Aquachurch), and common sense, an exceptional amount of natural leadership ability is a necessity for the head of such an organization.  How does that fit groups that are intentionally small and not, by a government’s standards, organized?  How do I work at my highest and best, to use Ashcroft’s phrase, when I am not in an organization in which there is a person to motivate me and many others to concentrate on certain programmic goals (and it is irrelevant what that goal is)?  We will not be able to have an exceptional leadership figure among every couple of dozen persons. 

            I believe the point is that what I do to honor God is not motivated by a person nearby me.  Someone can, and has, gotten me to do neighborhood evangelism by a certain plan in times past.  The point is how I live and speak to a watching world when only motivated by the Holy Spirit as opposed to being in a program.  Much of the weakness in what the world would call the church comes from persons who may truly want the Savior aspect of Jesus, that one someday goes to heaven and not hell, but only accepts the Lord aspect of Jesus according to the social pressures around them. 

            I am old enough to have seen great changes in American society.  Being from a small town in the Midwest, I cannot consciously remember knowing of where an unmarried man and woman living together lived until I went to college.  Over the last 40 years, the percentage of persons married has dropped and the above situation is more commonplace.  That doesn’t mean the amount of Christians is less; it is just that people feel, to a lesser degree, to fake this custom as 100 years ago here, or for that matter, an Islamic society today.

            I think of a phrase Larry Normal put in a recorded song in the early ‘70’s:  Jesus is the leader/We’re all followers, too/You may be ahead of some other persons in line/But you’re not a leader, you’re a follower.(a)  Norman, in typical prophetic manner, was making a point by going to extremes, and he wasn’t totally correct, but he was correct in an aspect that status quo Christianity didn’t readily speak about, which was all the reason needed for saying it.

            Now that it appears that I’ve dissed traditional leadership, I certainly believe God uses it through persons, but I might suggest that He is fully well capable to make it most powerful in a believer’s life through other believers who do not have an exceptional amount of leadership ability, or persons who, if they have that exceptional ability, are willing to lay that ability down at Jesus’s feet.  There is a brother in another part of the country who has that exceptional leadership ability.  I knew him when he was 19, and he showed that pastor-teacher gift long before he was headed towards getting someone to give him the title.  The last time I ran into him was when he was in the second year of seminary, and just subtly, via his actions, I could perceive that he was intentionally not using his ability to influence persons in a given direction.  That would be the difference between true leadership, and creating a cult of personality within a guise of Christianese.

            Most of us do not have that ability, we do not need such a person in one’s life, and such a person, therefore, can be either a help or a hindrance to those believers around him/her truly growing in following Jesus, with the temptation being following a “Jesus” communicated through that person’s personality and ability.

            A second aspect of a leader operating that people are at their highest and best is in the secular work organization.  In almost all cases I have personally seen, the “leaders” either do not have and possibly do not even care about having leadership ability.  You, the underling, work for the company, you get a paycheck, you wouldn’t be here without the paycheck, so the “leader” assigns work (possibly implicitly), fills out forms, and accepts responsibility for being the “goat” if something in their area goes wrong, provided that they may have the possibility to pass the “goat” tag to someone below them.  Because of this, there is a basic disconnect between the minority of persons who are excited or passionate about their work, and the many that are not.  In such organizations, “well done” has to do with meeting goals, some of them financial, which usually are, to a degree, based on decisions of others of which one has no control of.  I worked at Home Depot for six years, and they had a “success sharing” (profit sharing) plan based on sales every six months.  I worked hard and in that six years only worked with one person I would say was a “below average” employee (and that person was gone after 30 days, and unfortunately, I must say, deservedly so).  This was during the end of Home Depot’s exceptional growth period.  Still, in those 12 6 month periods, I was at a store that reached success sharing goals only once, and that was in north Florida during the year that the area was hit by three hurricanes in five weeks.  For persons who live in other areas of the country, a Home Depot, just before and after a hurricane, looks like a giant game of Supermarket Sweep (that’s an old game show in which contestants fill as many shopping carts as they can in a given time, with the person who filled carts with the highest dollar value the winner).

            Many unbelievers feel that is normal.  To actually be passionate about something (other than sex, music, and sports) is abnormal.  It’s a point that can be easily seen.  They see dictators, and equate it to believer’s running for political office.  They see passionate salespersons, they think con artists.  Some can see the raving coach, they see former professional athletes in wheel chairs from their injuries.  Some can see the musician sing about a cause, and then see him either dead on drugs or sold out to a new record company.  The great leadership talent can never begin to reach those people; the everyday believer, being a friend, being real, will reach a few.

            a)  Working off the top of my head, I believe that was recorded in a song titled “Sweet, Sweet Song of Salvation” (to the National Youth Workers Convention).

Some more thoughts on leadership

Over the past couple of months, I have written few blogs because the medications I was taking was off balance, and I was constantly feeling even too tired to write. As I wrote about a week ago, that has been resolved. Yesterday, I actually felt like reading. As I have indicated before, one of the subjects I concentrate on is leadership.

I got my first does of it when I turned on the tv in the morning. I usually catch sports on ESPN’s Mike & Mike Show, where the lead story was of a baseball manager publicly criticizing one of his veteran players before discussing the subject with him in private. The conversation was centered on the idea of: Was this a stupid thing to do that will mess up the team, or is it a “crazy like a fox” move that will draw the team together, even if it draws the team together against the head guy? There is no answer to that question today, the part of the world that cares will see the answer in the team’s results over the next six months.

During the day, I was running some errands for my son on a schedule that left large amounts of down time. About a week ago, I purchased the book Master Leaders by George Barna. While in this blog I have quoted Barna heavily on his work on the subject of simple church, the main thing he is known for is research on the place of Christians and their faith in our society, and how it changes. For this book, he has interviewed 30 persons we could consider leaders, be it in business, politics, military, and church. He (and others) have communicated that we are affected in our emotions and spirits more strongly via story versus a series of facts, which is reflected in how telling the story of Jesus is moving, reading a cathechism in outline form is about as far from moving as something can get. Therefore, with the quoted persons’ permission, he has taken what he got out of these interviews, and woven them into a story of a leadership conference, in which all these persons are backstage at the conference in a discussion. This isn’t a review, as I only made it to page 30 yesterday. I will say that the quote from Mike Huckabee on page 19 is worth reading the book for.

Since mentioning Huckabee brings up the issue of faith and politics, I caught offhand the study Rick Santorum has been quoting which says that if one graduates from high school, works, and gets married before having kids, the chances of being in poverty are 2%. I looked it up this morning, and can see that there are some minor distortions in that statement by itself, which is normal whenever one boils down a serious work to one sentence, but I was interested in that, before I became unable to work, I walked that 2% borderline with a bachelor’s degree. It appears to me that the reference to that study just might shed more heat than light onto modern society’s social problems, not the least of which is where the poverty line is, given that different groups define it so differently, and inflation/deflation makes it an ever moving target.

To all that, a though crossed my head late last evening. One was a quote from John C. Maxwell, a writer on leadership, trained as a pastor, favorite of megachurch pastors, albeit his writings are as much aimed at the business community, which is: If you think you are a leader, and no one is following, you’re just taking a walk. This implies that, to a degree, numbers are important (and numbers of people are what define megachurches). On the other hand, if Jesus defined church in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them”, the whole paradigm of the most important leaders being persons who are listened to by the most persons is stood on its head. I learned before I even realized it that a huge amount of persons “follow” a person they do not like or agree with because of collecting a paycheck. Hang around military types and one can see the paradox of super-patriotism with constant groveling about the “hurry up and wait” process in the military that is an anathema in the business community which is extremely conscious of getting its value out of the employee time they are paying for. Most of us who are everyday believers in Jesus feel, to a degree, hurt and betrayed by those “leaders” who have used God’s funds in scandal (particularly when the use is officially legal), or have personally promoted what is spectacular and exciting over what is solid, if unexciting, basic wisdom in following Jesus.

Book Review: The Father Heart of God, by Floyd McClung

Floyd McClung, The Father Heart of God (Eastboure, UK: Kingsway, 1985).

            Floyd McClung is a leader in the Christian church who has been associated with the missionary organization Youth With a Mission.  I know that I can first remember hearing his name in the mid-1970’s, although, at that time, I knew little more about him than what I just said above.  At the time of the writing of this book, he was working in Amsterdam, and much of his work was with young adults who had been on drugs, had abusive family experiences, and had been immersed in western hedonistic secular “culture”.   Since I am generally writing from a simple church perspective, I will say that YWAM, without promoting it, has worked quite closely to that point of view during its history, as far as I can see from where I am at.

            This book is about more than the title suggests.  It starts with the obvious: that in the Bible, God refers to Himself as our heavenly Father, and we humans, being made in His image, were created in the male gender to reflect those fatherly qualities.  Due to sin, many fathers have reflected vacant, abusive, and distorted images of what a father is to their children, who, therefore, reflect these experiences in a negative way towards their image of who God is.  McClung first deals with this distortion and what should be the analogy between a father and God’s character.  One major example is the parable of the Prodigal Son, how sin grieves God, but God allows us to make what He knows are bad decisions, and how He, like the father in the parable, is waiting for our return, as God is love.  McClung then deals with how God heals broken hearts.

            About three-fourths of the way through the book, McClung moves to another analogy of God as Father to the spiritual fathers, the leaders in the local bodies of believers.  Once again, the Christian leader should be an imperfect, but good example of the qualities of God for both believers and others around him or her.  Of course, there are situations of failures (1985 was a year of highly publicized failures of well known personalities connected to the Christian faith).  The last quarter of the book deals with that subject in a way that is both sensitive, covers a wide variety of mis-leadership, and practical advice on dealing with it on the non-leaders level.  Given that McClung was working as a missionary, and working with YWAM, which is independent of any denomination and was heavily dealing with the changes in western culture at the time, he deals with the special situation of the missionary organization.  This part of the book reflects much thought and discussion between McClung and others he knew struggling with these same problems, and writing and rewriting the ideas expressed until what he expresses is just right for dealing with this subject, and not just the dominant examples of the time of this writing.

            The first couple of chapters feel like something I’ve heard multiple times in sermons.  The last quarter of the book is excellent guidance on a touchy subject that over the years has been all too often avoided, oversimplified or dealt with incompletely.

            Here in the U.S., this book is still in print.

Thoughts on Leadership

            I will start with a disclaimer:  although I lived in the greater St. Augustine, FL area for a number of years, I do not personally know Tim Tebow or his family, although I cannot help but think I am one introduction away, but by who, I have no idea.  Today, it came across my mind, while watching sports news, that he must be the most divisive athlete in the U.S. since Jackie Robinson.  With Robinson, the issue was race, and this country has seen sufficient healing with this regard that the way it was then is unimaginable to those of us who didn’t live through it (that was about two decades too far back for my memory).  With Tebow, the divisiveness comes from his faith combined with what the media has told us is his exceptional leadership ability at a time where there is more open hostility to believers in Jesus. 

            I live in a military area, and what we hear in the recruitment ads speaks about leadership.  This concept of leadership is nearly totally based on discipline and training.  I occasionally read articles about a military unit, and it seems it always has to be mentioned that, for those in the unit, what they do is a job, and not a matter of passion for the ideals of this country.  The ideals are respected, and mentally saluted, but it isn’t a matter of passion, the way a football team gets worked up before a game.  Of course, that type of emotional excitement only is functional for certain short periods of time, and totally the opposite of functional for many endeavors.  I say this, as my son is in the military working on electronics, where getting excited (upset) is a reason to go take a walk for a minute.

            Leadership is a fascinating subject for me.  I had the honor to be around about two persons in high school and three in college who had a gift for leadership.  One of the persons I knew in college is a believer, and has been involved in leading in traditional churches during his adult life.  I can clearly say that his gifting for leadership was on his life at 19, long before the denomination he is connected to accredited him as a leader.  I didn’t know him before he was a believer, so I have no clue how believing increased his leadership ability.  I fully well know from the other persons that exceptional leadership ability appears in them to be a natural gift, not a learned thing.  At my age, I don’t really know how to separate a natural ability to lead, and the spiritual gift of leadership Paul speaks of in Romans 12:8.

            I can further say that, when I was in high school and college, a gift of leadership, whether natural or spiritual, was more obvious then than when I became an adult, where our society, be it business, politics, church, or whatever, attributes leadership to a position, so it is really hard to tell whether there is giftedness behind it.  First Corinthians 12:10 tells about gifts (plural) of healing.  Further, nothing is indicated in scripture that the spiritual gifts spoken in Romans 12, Ephesians 4, and First Corinthians 12 are the complete list.  Therefore, it is unsaid that there may be degrees of leadership ability.  One problem in the church in North America is the idea on both sides of the divide within the church on understanding spiritual gifts is that the discussion gravitates toward the gifts of tongues and prophecy, and doesn’t discuss the others much.  To that effect, when I walk over to the discussion of leadership, there is a problem on both sides of the previous controversy that leaders are oftentimes recognized by positions given by fellow humans.  One aspect about any spiritual gift is that, if it is truly given by God (I am not questioning God’s giving these gifts, I am using “if” in the sense of a logical if-then sentence), then the gifting upon a believer is not dependent upon whether an organization, or even any other believer recognizes it.  It is God’s gifting that makes one a pastor (Eph. 4), a discerner of spirits (1 Cor. 12:10), a giver (Rom. 12:8), or, possibly, one who possesses a gift God gives over and above the names he has elaborated for us. 

            A further problem with leadership giftings is beginning to show itself here in the West, with the rise of the megachurch, which could not have happened previously without the ability of most people to come many miles, experience the presentation called worship that is dependent on many modern technologies, and the highly able leader.  I avoided the word “gifted” there, in that we have seen such churches built around one person with extreme talent, or is it a spiritual gift, for leadership, and then the world has seen such organizations financially collapse if something happens to that person, and there is no other person who can fill his shoes.

            I come back, once again, to First Thessalonians 5:11, which tells us to edify each other.  Such a gifted person can speak to thousands, but it gets in the way, not only of those persons edifying each other, but in some cases even knowing each other.  I have come to believe that Jesus, who as God had more ability than any of us, chose to intensely mentor 12, and it appears mentor to a significantly lower degree, another 70.  Paul taught 24 young leaders in Ephesus.  We can have “iron sharpens iron” relationships with only a few others.  If you ask me a question that I haven’t thought about lately (or ever), it may take me a little while to think and study through it, and give a proper answer.  ESP is not a (Godly) spiritual gift, and to say that a traditional pastor preparing a sermon is answering the questions those listening to him/her have (knowingly or unknowingly) is implying that something like it is.  I have come to believe that the participatory Bible study, where everyone to wishes to knows what will be examined to examine beforehand for him/herself to prepare so as to help others, makes for a situation in which those who have not grown to the maturity to study for oneself, will ask spur of the moment questions which are far more likely to produce the “teachable moment” in which the right statement, which is actually the Spirit speaking into that persons’ spirit, happens. 

2016--leadership in God's people over history

2016—leadership in God’s people over history

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  In the Old Testament, after Joshua led the chosen people into Israel, the Bible tells us that for about 200 years, God Himself was the leader, with persons called judges as the human leaders.  These persons had wider responsibility than what we think of a judge today as having. For one thing, having responsibility for people before God did and still does have a spiritual element.  Still, as it says in Judges chapter 21 verse 25, “In those days, there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”  There were threats by enemies in various directions, and the people, who were the chosen people not by faith but by to whom they were born, eventually demanded a king, the story of which is in First Samuel chapter 8 and following.

            In the time of the New Covenant, God raised up a new chosen people by faith, not ethnicity.  They were opposed by both the Old Covenant status quo supporters and the government who heard that believers in Jesus saw Him, not the emperor, as king.  The church had no buildings to destroy, and leadership was by gifting, not to which family you were born to or under what person or group you were trained by. As an underground group that wasn’t a true organization, there was no need to collect money, except to help the poor, both from within and neighbors in need nearby AND also to assist fellow mature believers who were constrained by the Spirit to travel to areas where people had not heard the message of Jesus.  Even then, the apostle we know the most about is Paul, who had a skill by which he didn’t have to depend on others as he spoke about Jesus in his travels around the northern Mediterranean.

            Whether it was intentional or accidental, when the Roman Empire made faith in Jesus officially legal, it forced the trappings of religions of the world it was familiar with onto Christianity—buildings, paid staff, regular collection of money to pay for the buildings and paid staff, and tax-favored status for the now formal organizations. History shows that if something is forced onto a culture for a period of time long enough that no one remembers the thing not being around, everyone treats it as normal.  For instance, in this culture, no one remembers not having radio, and almost everyone doesn’t remember not having TV, and with them, news from around the world being whipped to us almost immediately. 

            I grew up with it assumed that a church was a building and a pastor held a job that one went to school for years to be able to do.  When I was in high school, I learned that there were some pastors and people who taught them or were their overseers who did not believe the standard beliefs of faith in Jesus.  Years later, I learned about spiritual gifts, but where I was, most of the talk was about speaking in tongues, not about who was the one who appointed the leaders.  About this same time, I met persons who didn’t have a church leadership title, but did have a special ability to teach about faith in Jesus in a way that spoke to both my mind and into my spirit, or at least the latter.  Some of these people did normal, everyday jobs.  Only in the past couple of years did I learn that the title “pastor” was not used as a title for a leader until after the Reformation, and that that word’s appearance uniquely in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11 in our English Bibles does not reflect a unique word in the original written language, but was a translation decision by persons who reflected their experience of church—whether accidentally or intentionally, only they knew.  Leadership in the true church, the believers desiring to follow Jesus, is not a title for any person or group to hand out, but a responsibility accepted by a believer in Jesus who cannot do other than whatever the Spirit guides, AND if that includes sharing with other believers or not yet believers what he or she has learned about following Jesus rightly AND if that falls into one or more of the categories of leaders mentioned in God’s Word, so be it.

             I can be reached by email at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or by phone at 757-735-xxxx.  To see a transcript of what I just said, my blog is tevyebird.blogspot.com, and this is the posting of September 14, 2011.To find out more about simple church internationally, visit www.simplechurch.com, and in the local area, at, www.hrscn.org.

2067--What if someone...(five minute version)

            Almost everything I have written for the Simple Church Minute commentaries come from the writings of persons who have written notable things about simple/organic/ simple church.  A couple more have come from my own experiences.  Only one of these commentaries, so far, comes from an idea from a brother who is functioning significantly and creatively inside the institutional system.  This idea comes from Glen Davis, an Assembly of God pastor working on the campus of Stanford University (glenandpaula.com/wordpress).  This came from a talk I heard him give in 1998.  I never heard anyone say this before, I haven’t heard anyone say this afterword, except for my repeating Glen’s idea.  It doesn’t directly have anything to do with organic church, except for it being connected with dealing with real life, as opposed to some dream of how believers should react to the world around us.

2067—What if someone asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to?

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  Let us say you are in a conversation with a person who is not a believer, and that person asks you a question you do not know the answer to.  What should you say?  This is a matter of heart, not knowledge, on both yours and the other person’s part.

First, there are questions of the trivial variety, like “Can God create a stone He cannot lift?”  Philosophers through the ages, and in mathematics, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem address this, but it isn’t a serious question for someone seeking truth, it’s a parlor game.  That God is in the sentence is irrelevant; it has to do with the use of positive and negative terms in a certain alignment, and that, in turn, differs in different languages.

            Now, for relevant questions.  First, this situation, for you, has to do with obedience to Jesus.  If you don’t know the answer to a question, tell the person, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Now, at this point, you have given your word as a matter of desiring to honor Jesus.  This matter is, for you, even more a matter between you and God than it is between this other person and yourself, or that person and God.  Next, you need to be connected to mature believers who are willing to struggle with the difficult situations of this life, and not give cleaver answers that pass the buck.  What do I mean by this?  Here’s an example.  I’ve indicated in other spots that I have come to see that New Covenant believers are to be generous, but the tithe was in the Old Covenant only.  If I didn’t, then “Should a believer tithe on the net or gross of one’s paycheck?” would be a valid question.  An answer I have heard given by speakers more than once, “Do you want a net blessing or gross blessing?” may be humorous, but it is not an answer, much less an honest, thoughtful answer of a mature believer, which that speaker is implying that he or she is, one that cares to truly see other believers grow in faith.  I do not care what titles or degrees that person has or does not have—avoiding honest questions is irresponsible before Jesus with being in a position of leading others towards maturity of faith.  If possible, and it is in this culture, we all need to be associated with mature believers that will assist us with these honest answers to honest questions, so we all may grow up to do the same, and, no matter how young one is spiritually, one should desire, as part of honoring Jesus with one’s life, to be that mature believer that assists the next generation.  Might I suggest that part of that is being around spiritual leaders that desire and expect each of us to grow to a level of responsibility in living for Jesus and seeing those around us grow in faith that is equal or higher than where that leader is at.  That is far better done in one on one conversations, not generalized lectures.  There are supposed leaders today who do not want that, either because intentionally or subliminally, they are protecting their position or paycheck, or ego or that just possibly they don’t believe that, if God truly created the universe, that everything in the universe does fit together and make sense-- albeit not in a manner that can be explained in 25 words or less--or even 25 minutes or less. 

            Lastly, there are some questions that God has not told us the answer to.  Francis Schaeffer wrote that God has, in giving us the Bible the way He did, communicated to us truly, but not exhaustively.  That means the Bible tells us that God created the heavens and the earth, and that, in turn, means that God understood before creation all the subatomic small to astrophysical large processes it takes to have this universe work.  I believe it takes less faith to believe the God of the Bible than it takes to believe it happened by a one over one times 10 to the one hundred second power chance. On the opposite side, a Bible doesn’t replace a Chilton’s manual if you need to bleed the brakes on your car, although the whole process works on principles God ordained for this universe.   

            At the point that you have found out the answer, or whether there is none, and you have communicated that, you are not responsible for the other person being satisfied with the answer. You are responsible to live to honor Jesus. We must understand that the Holy Spirit works both through our minds and our spirits, and He can and sometimes does speak to a person through the intellectually unsatisfying answer.  All of us believers have wondered why God didn’t tell us something, and then did tell us some of the things He did in the Old Testament. 

             You can communicate with me at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or 757-735-xxxx.  To read over what I just said, and some additional information on this subject, I have it posted on my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, on the post dated September 7, 2011. For more info about organic churches in this area, visit www.hrscn.org

            I have been a believer since 1968, and I feel that I have desired, albeit imperfectly, to serve Jesus with all that is in me, including my mind.  I have spent some of my life as a believer in a Calvinistic tradition, which tends to overemphasize intellectualism. I have spent part of my life in the charismatic-Pentecostal tradition, which in some places does the opposite.  During the winter of 2011, I ran into the fact that the word in Acts 19 that is translated “assembly”, referring to the mob protesting the work of Paul in Ephesus was “ekklesia”, which in all other places in the New Testament is translated “church.”  As the mob was not just non-believers, but was opposed to Paul’s work, and was supporting the idol makers in Ephesus, and the idols were for the temple of Diana, a fertility (i.e. sex) cult, the question occurred to me, “were the idols the idol makers were making what we, in this culture, would call pornographic?”  I looked at a number of books, and couldn’t find any comment on this.  I already knew that to not be surprising, as all kinds of Christian writers over the centuries have been less forthcoming on the subject of sexuality as God is.  I called a man I know in this area that has had seminary training and has been and still is involved in foreign missionary work.  After a few days, he directed me to some resources which, to my surprise, indicate that, as much as one might expect the answer to be “yes,” and in spite of the archeology done in the ancient Greek world, the answer to my specific question, at this time is, we don’t know for certain. 

What the Carlson & Longman book review has to do with simple/organic church

One of the nice things, for me, about being a part of a house church is getting up Sunday morning and catching up on what’s been going on in the world during the week via CNN’s Candy Crowley (for national political news), Fareed Zakaria (for international news), and Howard Kurtz (for the role of the media).  I know that one could cogently argue that the first two subjects could be better done via newspapers and magazines, but since I have cable in my house, and no place with excellent place for reading, it works for me to the degree that I wish to apply myself to it.  With regard to the media, I subtly learned via Inter-Varsity’s HIS magazine, which by now has been replaced by a website for many years now, that the way media, which in this case includes not only radio, TV, but also books, newspapers, internet news, art forms and any and every other method that develops, covers and does not cover various issue and societal patterns is in itself a pattern of what the present and future holds.

            From that point of view, I wish to explain why I put in the review of the Carlson and Longman book last blog.  I can picture why, for some, it does not fit into the general theme of my blog, which deals with house/simple/organic church.  I will begin to explain via a story.  A few years ago, I was involved in a traditional church in Florida.  The senior pastor was apparently a lively, interesting person to hear speak.  Over a period of five years, I came to learn that he dropped out of high school, went to police academy so that he was able to join the local police shortly after or at becoming 18.  He stated that he originally accepted Jesus as Savior at a young age, fell away, and came back to following Jesus actively at about 21 as a result of God speaking to him to either follow or that He would leave him alone, which he took as a “last call” to either follow God’s ways or not.  My wife volunteered in the church office for about a year. 

            One day, I saw a man at that church who led, of sorts, the “men’s ministry” in the grocery store on a Friday afternoon.  I say, of sorts, in that this brother and his wife had a fairly extensive ministry plan for the community, of which his volunteering to lead the men’s ministry was a part.  It was heavily involved with helping poor persons fix basic needs, such as leaky roofs, build a ramp for handicapped persons, etc.  Over the course of over a year (I no longer remember how much over a year), half or more of the men involved with this were not a part of the church we went to.  This man was somewhat torn as to whether go through the paperwork of establishing this as a separate not-for-profit or closely tie this to our home church.  There were benefits to each course of action.  Anyway, in speaking to him for a moment, he ended the conversation with, “I’ll see you Sunday.”  It so happens that I didn’t see him Sunday, but as we know, things can happen.  Somehow, I wound up calling him the following Friday.  I was on a phone which had an overly loud speaker in the handset.  Just as my wife was walking through the room, he told me over the phone that between when I saw him on Friday and Sunday, the senior pastor told him not to come to that church anymore.  When I got off the phone, my wife told me she would not go back there.  We had a discussion, and I found out that she put up with going to that church because she believed I liked going to it, and I was continuing to go there because I believe she liked it.  Both of us had seen that things happened in that church only because the senior pastor liked it, and, through the stories he had told, it was clear that he liked being the head person so things he was concerned about happened, and things that would be corrective in his life were rejected, unless it came from his father or mother’s mouth. 

            At this time, I worked in a Home Depot, in a city of about 20,000.  As such, anyone who knew me knew where to find me.  After a few weeks of my leaving, when it was clear that I had left, a number of people who knew me walked up to me asking a variety of questions.  It became clear that this pastor had some personal problems everyone who knew him, except himself, could see, and anyone who either attempted to speak to him about such was either intimidated to stop talking to him or asked to leave.

            The point of the above story is, that while Matthew 18:15-17 (I am quoting NKJV) says, ¹⁵ “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. ¹⁶ But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ ¹⁷ And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector,”* with the structure traditional churches have, it is difficult to go to the established leaders when they are wrong.  Moreso, when, due to the unique aspect of our modern society, leaders come to influence large numbers of persons via TV and radio by means of their eloquence and personality, combined with the limitation of the media, that the average person can hear what they have to say in detail, but they cannot hear from the other direction, even if such person was in your city getting access to such person would be near impossible, and it is even more difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary, reputation, and, might I suggest sometimes even ego, depends on their not understanding it, to paraphrase Sinclair.

            Therefore, the importance of the Carlson and Longman book is that, while the facts line up behind their point of view, both scientifically and theologically, most of the best known names in Christian teaching, might I even say, the celebraties, either do not touch this subject, or teach the super-literalistic view because, either they believe it is correct and/or that is what the people who give the money that keeps “their ministry” going and growing expect and/or they are riding the tide of momentum, in that what they taught made more sense 200 years ago, so it is not worth fighting the tide and/or they cannot be personally confronted.  One person in leadership with a personality to attract others can lead (either intentionally or not) many in an incorrect direction.  We live in a society, here in the U.S., where much of our society fears the overly charismatic leader, as they can see at the secular level what has come of societies persons such as Hitler, and within organized Christian structures where all kinds of pastors have taken positions on one subject or another that is obviously incorrect, of which, to an unbeliever, there appears to be no corrective action.  From inside the fellowship of believers in Jesus, there is the one of quietly leaving by the back door and never returning (an option sometimes not available in a dictatorship).

            What I am saying is not just that house/simple/organic church is not merely more correct theology, but also that this problem is alieviated by the church being small enough to self correct.  If someone stands up with an off track teaching, any other believer can correct such a situation.  Further, if no one has their living based on “being the leader”, and no money is collected by an organization which can be directed by the leader (intentionally or not) to hype his/her special idea, it cannot grow further off track.

            Now, an aspect of this is that in, not just every church, but every group of people, some who will just “go with the flow”.  In my story above, because that church is in an area which has consistent population growth, for all the people who quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) leave, people new to the area have allowed that church to grow slowly in membership, helped by the pastor putting his really entertaining sermons on cable TV.  Now, its kind of obvious that I take a fairly intellectual approach to how I approach desiring to follow Jesus, and, as I mentioned above, this pastor, for his ability to naturally lead and captivate persons by his speech, wasn’t great in intellectual achievement.  My wife, long after we left, told me one day that it was mentioned to her, whether by this pastor or someone else, I’m not sure, that he didn’t always understand what I said.  Obviously, being “the pastor”, he couldn’t admit it.  Too bad, maybe he, I, and who knows how many others might have learned something about following Jesus.

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*This quotation needs be balanced from scripture with Lev. 19:17, Prov. 25:9, Mt. 18:14, 21, Lk. 17:3, 1 Cor. 9:19, Gal. 6:1, 2 Th. 3:15, Titus 3:10, James 5:19.  I believe if one examines all these scriptures, it proves that I have quoted this in proper understanding with what is in other scriptures on this subject.

Simple Church Minute 91--Servant leadership

91—Servant Leadership

THIS IS NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            Jesus said, “Whoever would be great in God’s kingdom must be the servant of all.”  The concept of true servant leadership is something that is unique to the church.  Yes, our government workers and politicians are called public servants, but often act like they don’t take that seriously.  From Catholicism, we know “pope” originally meant servant.  It is easy to intellectually understand the concept, harder to actually make it function, especially if one is in a leadership position.

            If I have a business, I can hire employees, and they will follow my direction, without regard to my leadership ability, to collect a paycheck.  Conversely, even among us believers, no one can pay you enough to go to a country which has a law to kill you on sight until the Holy Spirit refuses to give you peace until you go.  Somewhere in the middle are many believers to desire to serve God, and are paid to do so, and ultimately find their service to Jesus compromised by the battle between social expectations, the need for a paycheck, and a lack of any other skill needed by the society around them. 

            The Bible teaches that apostles, believers gifted in establishing new churches, are worthy of being paid, as they must go from place to place.  God gave as the main example of this type of ministry Paul, who had a transportable skill such that he didn’t have to depend on others for his livelihood.  What God did through his obedience is more remarkable when we realize he was working part-time.  Many modern ministries have little fruit with highly intellectually trained leaders, tax-favored status, significant budgets, and marketing plans adapted to target a certain population’s demographics.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  You can find out more about organic church at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

Simple Church Minute 99--Karl Marx

99-Karl Marx

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            History tells us that the parents of Karl Marx were Jewish and converted to Christianity at a time when many German Jews did the same.  Whether it was real or something merely socio-political is God’s business.  Be that as it may, Karl himself rejected faith in Jesus, but was still highly influenced by it, as his utopian ideal society was built on the Christian idea of heaven, with the difference being that he was imagining a way of creating such a society as heaven will be on earth.  Incorrectly, he didn’t have a grasp of the reality of sin, much less how imbedded that aspect of the fall of man is in our souls.  Therefore, he came up with the idea that, when his principles were installed in a society, that government would fade away.

            We, having 20/20 hindsight, can see that the opposite of his dream occurred.  His social idea was not attractive to union workers, but instead took hold where backward nations with weak rulers could be overthrown, and the dictatorship that followed grew in power over time, and instead of all people having equality, there was a small leadership class and a large amount of people who had no hope of getting ahead, removing incentive to doing better for themselves.

            Albeit accidentally, Marx got one aspect of Christian life correct that much of the true church is missing.  The head of the church is Jesus, the Holy Spirit speaks into each believer who desires to serve Jesus.  God is a sufficient leader of his people, that, within the church, when properly operating, the idea of the human leader could naturally fade away, in favor of what would appear to a sociologist to be a headless community.  This is an ideal that takes an exceptional amount of commitment from those with gifting for leadership.  Personally, I haven’t seen it, but, then, I live in a land of freedom, for now.

            If you have a comment, and I know this blip should stir up some brothers and sisters, you can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally, (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.

Simple Church Minute 98--true and false faith

98—true and false faith

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            Recently I was watching some programs on military history of the Middle Ages in Europe.  During that period of time, numerous times one warlord defeated another and forced the people to quote unquote convert from paganism to Christianity, or even Islam, back and forth.  Many of these warlords were looking for a miracle, and considered victory a sufficient miracle.  Many had heard a communication of Christianity which emphasized spirituality in warlike terms, coordinated with alliances between the Roman Empire and its official organizational church.  I can’t read the Holy Spirit’s mind, but will assume minimal true faith was going on there.  Outside the castles, there had been persons who understood faith correctly, and generations forwardly would have persons who would come to true faith.  One cannot totally say one way or another that Martin Luther’s work would have been anything, except for just the right time and place with regard to the politics swirling around him.   The miraculous can be just that; while it isn’t in the words of scripture, Nehemiah chapter 1 happened just at a time when Darius, king of Persia saw a personal political need for rebuilding Jerusalem, which led to his granting Nehemiah’s request. 

            If I mention the phrase, “Remember the Maine” most will recognize the phrase as being part of American history.  I had to look up that it only goes back to 1898, and its aftermath was the Spanish-American War, a battle Spain didn’t want and the U.S. was totally unprepared for, a consequence of outrageous stories in New York newspapers for the purpose of boosting sales. 

             The greater the degree of isolation between ourselves and our leaders, the less we can know whether they are telling us the truth or just being tempted to say something for their benefit, maybe even subconsciously.  In the political realm, that cannot be helped; within the church, it is helped by each of us knowing personally our leaders and their heart, and that can only be done within a small amount of people.  As I’ve said before, Jesus chose to train only twelve.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  You can find out more about simple forms of worship at http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website).

Simple Church Minute 93--requirements for leadership

93—Requirements for leadership

THIS BLIP IS NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            I have mentioned in other blips that for a pastor/shepherd/teacher or any other ministry truly appointed by God, as opposed to any man or organization, that it is a function of gifting—both spiritual and natural, experience, maturity, faithfulness and obedience to the Holy Spirit, according to scripture.  Scripture says nothing about academic achievement or accreditation by any man or human organization.

            Natural gifting is our natural abilities—we believers have no more or less ability to use these as the unbeliever, with the note that occasionally the Holy Spirit will guide a person to specifically not use a natural gift for a reason.  Spiritual gifts are listed in Romans, Ephesians, and First Corinthians without a comment of whether this is a total list, and with the case of a number of gifts, little or no explanation of exactly what it is.  There is no explanation on any of the gifts as to why, other than no one has all of them.  One person I’ve heard has suggested that one of these gifts that seems worthless to the human mind is useful for exactly that reason—if the Creator of the universe wishes to give you something that you don’t see a use for, who are you or I to question his choice to give such a thing to you.  Experience and maturity makes all God’s gifts more powerful, as those are two aspects of wisdom.  Faithfulness is a quality that results in one receiving greater amounts of experience based on doing the right thing.  While God can use even our rebellious acts to His glory, it is a thing far better to be minimized.  Obedience to the Holy Spirit is putting that faithfulness into action.  Given the things we have seen of gifted persons publicly embarrassing themselves and, in turn, dishonoring Jesus and embarrassing fellow believers by their actions, it must be pointed out that obedience trumps gifting.  The Holy Spirit has given gifts of leadership to a sufficient amount of people that there is no need for any one believer to believe that he or she needs to be the mentor to more persons than he or she can physically and psychologically handle.  Jesus poured his life into 12, and possibly to a lesser degree, 70. 

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website)  

Simple Church Minute 90--gnosticism

90—gnosticism

 My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            In First Corinthians chapter 2, as Paul was writing to the church in that city, we was warning about people who were wandering away from true faith in Jesus and toward what would come to be known as Gnosticism. The leaders of the believing church over the centuries have long spoken as if Paul, by the direction of the Holy Spirit, wrote this chapter in such a way that he was unknowingly speaking of many other groups that would claim to be Christian, but were nowhere close to genuine.  Within the past century, Nazism and the KuKluxKlan are most pronounced. 

            There are also groups which, while correct in their teaching 90 plus percent of the time, hold a certain one or few positions which do not align with the historic faith.  Of some, there is general agreement between true believers in Jesus that such groups are cults.  On some other groups, there is honest disagreement, which is fortunately covered by our knowing that God knows men’s hearts. 

            There is one disturbing piece of our fallen human nature that most believers do not struggle with because most are unaware of its existence.  That is the private ethical struggles of institutional church leaders when a leader finds that there is a gap between what he or she has come to see is the teaching of the Bible and what is socially expected of him or her, particularly if the socially expected thing is tied to the person’s paycheck and that person has no other marketable skills.  This doesn’t just affect church leaders who truly believe;  in the traditional churches in which the training institutes have been taken over by unbelievers, that unbelieving leader knows that if the person listening to him or her knew their unbelief, enough would leave as to leave him or her without a job.  Recently, a writer for a major national newspaper predicted that some of those churches will close due to the weight of their payroll and real estate maintenance, and we have begun to see that.

            I appreciate knowledge of the Bible and all the fields that help us understand it and communicate it to a watching world.  We must note that, in the Word, leadership emphasizes practical knowledge in relating to those around us, not cut and dried degrees and titles.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on simple worship, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally (local website).

Simple Church Minute 80--Simson's Thesis #6

80—WS#6

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            Recently, these blips have been discussing Wolfgang Simson’s 15 Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church.  Thesis #6 is “No church is led by a pastor alone.”  On this idea, Simson says, The local church is not led by a pastor, but fathered by an elder, a man of wisdom and engaged with reality.  The local house churches are then networked into a movement by the combination of elders and members of the so-called fivefold ministries (apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists, and teachers) circulating from ‘house to house’, like the circulation of blood.  Here there is a special foundational role to play for the apostolic and prophetic ministries (Eph. 2:20, 4:11,12).  A pastor (shepherd) is an important member of the whole team, but he cannot fulfill more than a part of the whole task of ‘equipping the saints for the ministry’, and he has to be complimented synergistically by the other four ministries in order to function properly.” (unquote)

            The whole idea that a healthy church has a balance of ministry from the five ministries mentioned in Ephesians 4:11 and 12 and with more than one person with each of these giftings is an idea that I, personally, have not heard of being examined, period, but there it is in scripture as a direction for the church.  Much of the church in the west is stuck on one person given the title pastor, without regard to his or her actual gifting, if any, as the end all in ministry and a title within a hierarchy which has words found in scripture as an excuse for the hierarchy’s existence.  Leadership in the church is not to be militaristic, but a structure for the purpose of helping everyone higher up and further into Jesus.

            You can read back and ahead about Simson’s 15 Theses at www.simsonwolfgang.de. You can make a comment or ask a question of me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com , and you can find out more about simple church at http://www.simplechurch.com/ and locally at (local website).

Simple Church Minute 47--reproducing leaders

47—reproducing leaders

THIS BLIP NOT ON FIRST RECORDING

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.

            Vince Lombardi was the most successful American pro football coach of the late 1950’s and 1960’s.  Bill Walsh was the most successful of the 1980’s.  History records one notable difference in their legacies.  Walsh had many of his former assistant coaches move on to become head coaches themselves, with about 16* being sufficiently successful to lead their teams to the playoffs.  The only one former assistant of Lombardi became a head coach, and he was Lombardi’s successor who inherited the position as the team descended to mediocrity. 

            I had a friend in college who applied to enter the seminary of the denomination of church he attended on the 100^th anniversary of that church’s existence.  He was the first person from his church to do so, in spite of the seminary only being about 20 miles down the road.  His church may have had the most basic parts of Christian theology right, but desiring to produce leaders was obviously so low on their priority list that it wasn’t even there.

            Conversely, in the Bible, when Paul started a church, he taught new believers how to be the church while staying in the city about 3 months, once as little as 6 weeks, before leaving for another city.  In that time, he taught everyone to share in leading each other towards spiritual maturity, and trusted everyone desiring to listen to the Holy Spirit to be sufficient ongoing day by day direction.

            The current institutional church system has persons in formal schooling for 3 to 7 years, and then accredits the trained persons to take a job where he or she may be as closed off from the world as every person in the early churches was a part of it.  In that closed off situation, such trained persons create lectures under the guise of teaching, but the people taught never take tests, no one expects the teaching to sink in, and there’s no accountability for the teacher if that happens.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic, simple worship, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or (local website). 
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* I say about, as I haven't been able to conclusively figure out the number

Simple Church Minute 41--candles, table, incense, quarterly communion

41—candles, table, incense, quarterly communion

NOTE:  I originally wrote a segment for each of the 61 points Frank Viola and George Barna make in their book, Pagan Christianity, about traditions in the institutional church not based on scripture.  After writing it, I chose to not include this segment merely as I felt that in wouldn’t be an interesting radio commentary.

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            In the early church, communion was a joyous, simple meal.  Jesus introduced it at a Passover feast.  Over time, from the early church, this simple mean between believers changed to a ritual, in a church building, presided over by a member of a clergy class, the leadership of which was enforced by secular law, and the meal became smaller than an hor’dourve.

            During that time, it was renamed Eucharist, considered to be a symbolic reenactment of Jesus’ crucifixion, with a table called an altar, the ceremony called a sacrifice, and a mystical explanation of the bread and wine becoming Jesus’ flesh and blood upon the ceremony’s leader praying the ceremonial words.

            The Reformation happened—Zwingli promoted the idea, resisted by some Reformers, of having communion four times a year, instead of every service, on the idea that it would be more meaningful if done less frequently.  The altar was renamed the communion table, and was no longer the central feature of the church and service, replaced by the pastor and the sermon.  Many groups eliminated using incense as part of the service. Some eliminated candles sitting on the end of the communion table, a tradition that dated back to the courts of Rome.  Communion was taught to be a memorial.  All these changes were accepted by mainline protestant churches.  The ceremony was done in a solemn manner, and still quite unlike how it started, as a simple meal between believers rejoicing in the joy of salvation and a common purpose in life based on what Jesus did for mankind.

            You…

Simple Church Minute 31--youth pastor

31—youth pastor                               

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            Where did the idea of youth pastors come from?  On other days, I’ve discussed that, in the early church, believers all held the responsibility for edifying each other, and edify is like teaching one’s spirit.  At that time, apostles went to a city or town, taught about Jesus, some came to believe on Him, a gathering or church was established, and the apostle moved on.  Over the centuries, the church sometimes imposed the world’s ideas on itself, and at other times, others imposed ideas on the church.  One of those ideas was the formal, and sometimes governmentally supported leader, at times known as bishop, priest, minister, preacher, or pastor.  The 1800’s in the U.S., saw the frontier evangelist, and the beginning or radio stations saw the evangelist, pastor, or teacher begin to use that medium.        

            In the world, the 1940’s was the term teenager develop—a person somewhere between a child and an adult, fitting the English language’s  structure of the numbers 13 through 19 ending with the suffix –teen.  In the 1930’s and 40’s, special Christian rallies were developed, sometimes by large churches with the idea of speaking specifically to that group.  From there came the idea that large churches in urban areas needed and could financially afford a specialist.  It also made a transition position for young bible school or seminary graduates from studies to a more senior position.  Later came other specialist pastors.

            Plato and Socrates taught that knowledge is virtue, which brings about moral character.  Our educational system, particularly the public college system, stands as evidence of the exact opposite.  A centuries old clergy question is, “How do we prepare the laity?”  The New Testament teaches that all believers teach each other.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, visit  http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website)

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.

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Simple Church Minute 29--leaders and shepherds

29—leaders and shepherds

NOTE:  I originally wrote a segment for each of the 61 points Frank Viola and George Barna make in their book, Pagan Christianity, about traditions in the institutional church not based on scripture.  After writing it, I chose to not include this segment merely as I felt that in wouldn’t be an interesting radio commentary.

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            Why are there so many analogies between leaders and shepherds in the Bible?

We humans cannot read the mind of God to say why he chose to use that idea so often, but it is clear that He did.  Moses, the adopted son of Pharaoh, after the murder of the field manager, hid for 40 years as a shepherd.  There is clearly the contrast of his being born low status, raised to high status, only to flee and hide in a job of low status, to have the humility to be placed by God in the position of the leader of God’s people at a time they would need direction and protection.  David, in Psalm 23, shows how God is the ultimate shepherd to his people.  In John chapter 10, Jesus told us that he is the Good Shepherd, the shepherd knows his sheep by name and defends them.  In the New Covenant, a type of ministry is called pastor, a synonym for shepherd.

            I’ve heard some traditional church pastors say, in sermons on Psalm 23, that sheep are dumb.  We humans are dumb in comparison to an all-knowing God.  If you want a sheep to do a human’s job, they are dumb, and no good at public speaking, either. Sheep are appropriately intelligent for what they are to do—eat, sleep, reproduce, get sheared and butchered, and put up with being around humans.  Wild sheep can hide in steep mountainous areas people and most of their predetors cannot get around well in.  Modern shepherds, like other farmers, differentiate large numbers with ear tags.

            How can spiritual shepherds know a large amount of people?  Farther, Son, and Holy Spirit have no problem.  Humans gifted for a leadership position are a different story.  Ear tags? No. A church phone list?  That’s not what I mean, either.  You, nor I, can lead another much further in faith than where we have already walked, and we can do so better when we know each other.  One person can only know so many people, and it isn’t measured in hundreds.  Jesus intensely mentored 12, and Luke 10 seems to indicate, at a less intense level, another 58 or 70. And that was Jesus!

            You…