Your Use of Power & Authority?

One weekend, our youngest son, James, and I competed in an Eastern Tae Kwon Do Federation National Tournament. It was fun. We also enjoyed watching other competitors during the day. The power and focus demonstrated by women and men in breaking more than 3 patio concrete blocks with various hand or arm techniques was awesome. The black belt tag team sparring demonstrated a seasoned combination of self-control and power, form and flexibility, gracefulness and firmness, agility and speed, as well as relaxation and tension. The higher black belts were far more seasoned than the lower black belts. The self-control and strength displayed by in the creative productions by various TKD Demo Teams with the awards banquet that night was superb.

Contrary to one false assumption concerning martial arts, the first-degree black belt is more like graduating from college. The fourth degree black belt is similar to gaining a master’s degree. While it takes just a few years to earn the first black belt, it takes many years to gain the others. As a martial artist develops, the healthy use of power grows increasingly important to both them and others. The misuse of power and skills to either bully or to defend with excessiveness is considered very disrespectful to your martial arts master, your martial art, and to others.

The same is true of the training you receive as a leader within Christ’s Church.  No matter how much you lean or degrees you earn, it takes many years of experience and disciplined character development before you begin to master the art of Christian leadership. As the Christian leader develops, your use of power either builds up the body of Christ or builds up themselves by tearing down the church.

Your leadership as a clergy person (pastor, evangelist, District Superintendent, District President, Executive Presbyter, Bishop, Synod President, Arch Bishop) or as a lay person involves a healthy use of power. If you are not continuing on the master quest of Christian leadership by developing seasoned character and skills, you will misuse your power and authority in unhealthy ways. Such misuse is very disrespectful to your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Great Commission, and to Christ’s Church. Much of the poor health in churches today is directly tied to this issue.

Healthy Use of Power

A growing martial artist is soon confronted with the question, “How do you as a clergy person (pastor, evangelist, District Superintendent, District President, Executive Presbyter, Bishop, Synod President, Arch Bishop) or church leader rightly use power? Where does "laying down your life" and defending yourself or others come together?

Real maturity in any martial art is never as much about belt rank as it is about self-control. You never know when the ability to maintain one's focus in the most anxious of situations will come in handy. I’ve seen too many very talented and highly educated clergy (pastor, evangelist, District Superintendent, District President, Executive Presbyter, Bishop, Synod President, Arch Bishop) as well as local church leaders fall prey when a church system or subsystem becomes anxious. Their lack of self-control leads them to loose focus and become controlled by the anxiety of others. They also loose an important opportunity to lead.

Such loss of focus helps no one and often leads to self-destruction of either or both the clergy person (pastor, evangelist, District Superintendent, District President, Executive Presbyter, Bishop, Synod President, Arch Bishop) and the congregation. At the heart of the spiritual master quest of Christian leadership and ministry is self-control, integrity, as well as courtesy.

Self-control or what others call self-differentiation is seen in serene, self-contained people, at peace with themselves and the world around them. God's sanctifying grace empowers a person to mature in spiritual self-differentiation where he or she lives in and operates from the peace of God which passes all understanding for it guards their heart and mind. The Epistle of James would consider such a person as having an undivided soul. A clergy person (pastor, evangelist, District Superintendent, District President, Executive Presbyter, Bishop, Synod President, Arch Bishop) or local church leader with great strength of soul is a spiritually powerful yet gentle individual and a true master of Christian leadership.

Biblical Examples of A Healthy Use of Power

We see such soul strength in Moses whom the Bible calls the meekest man on earth. We see such strength in Jesus Christ who could both chase the moneychangers out of the temple, and choose to lay down his life for the sin of the whole world like a lamb led to the slaughter.

We also see it in the Apostle Paul who would give himself freely to proclaiming the Gospel, yet rebuke the Apostle Peter, stand up for his rights as a Roman citizen, and defend his apostleship. We see it called for in the NT when sometimes the church is called to forgive and other times it is called to discipline the wayward and rebuke the heretic. We see it in the NT call to love one another and yet hold those in leadership in respect, which also includes paying them well, and not looking down on their youth if they are young like Timothy. While the NT calls us to lay down our lives for others, it also calls us to self-defense against the Devil with the full armor of God. While the NT calls people to submit to one another in love, it also calls for people not to Lord it over others or look down on others.

Two Examples of the Healthy Use of Power in a Local Church.

            A.  Wrong Hand in the Cookie Jar.

A pastor friend of mine could hardly believe what he heard in a phone call one day from the bank. The bank president informed the pastor that the FBI had arrested one of that church’s members for line crime at the bank. This person was also one of several treasurers within that church. As a banking person, they had available to them the ability to commit a line crime by going into all of the church’s accounts. A line crime is when you use an authorized name, that is not your, to transfer money from one account to another. This is what this person had done. So far the FBI’s investigation had uncovered $30,000.
To the pastor’s amazement the spouse of the arrested church member came to him with an interesting plea. He asked that no charges be brought against them as a couple and pledged to re-pay the $30,000 plus. Well the FBI caught them. The FBI was the one who was pressing charges. The FBI in that situation was not likely to drop anything. Likewise, the church folks let those two know that until the trial was over they were suspended from all offices in the church. No longer would the spouse be able to use their name to transact church funds.

They also began to remember a comment that person had made almost every month at board meetings. ‘Well them people up in the Conference Building, they’ve just forgotten what real Christianity is all about. They don’t need any money.’ They began to see such words in a new light. They also came to understand why they had struggled for money for years.

            B.  Surprising Accountability

I read of a man who met with a group of elders in the church. He wss being confronted with evidence, concrete, hard, undeniable evidence of his misbehavior with some women in the church’s singles ministry and young girls in the church. What shocked them the most was not that this man denied anything. He did not deny a single thing that they had concrete evidence that he had done. What he did deny was that any of that was abuse.

They told him, “There are all sorts of ways you can get help. We want to offer you all of these, but we can’t have this continue.” “Well, what if I just showed up again?” asked the guy. They replied, “We will have to make a very brief but honest report about your situation, our offer of help and your refusal of it. People will have to use this information to make the wisest decisions possible.”

The next Sunday, the guy was there. Somebody makes an announcement. Before the choir director could even get to the microphone, this fellow flies up, grabs the mike, and made his own announcement which is followed by four elders coming forward, apprehending him, and gently but firmly taking him out of the building, calling the police and having him restrained from their property.

The next week, the church phone rang off the hook. The basic summary of all the calls went something like this one, “We’ve been visiting your church for awhile and wondered about joining here. After what we saw on Sunday, we think this is the church for us and we thank you for what you did. We’ve never felt so safe at a church. We’ve never been a part of a church where wrong doers are actually dealt with—a place where the young vulnerable are actually protected, where people whose lives are out of order are held accountable.”

The Pain of Healthy Leadership

            A.  Straying Youth Leader Released.

I once witnessed the downfall of a very talented and gifted youth worker. Her lack of a vision for ministry larger than herself was not seen until her husband was sent overseas for six months. Then, she changed her way of relating with the youth group. She stopped being their leader and started being their buddy. One of the parents who worked with her tried to warn her of the dangers of doing this, particularly with the boys. Well she did not hear the loving but firm warning. Other adult leaders in the church tried along with myself.
 
Very soon after those warnings, the SS superintendent called me up about some valid complaints from several parents. Thus, I called a meeting of the SS superintendent, several women of the church, the youth worker and myself. Finally, several in the church including some of the adult women met with this young talented person and myself.

We told her that we really appreciated her talents and gifts. We also said we didn’t know what was happening in her life with her husband gone for so long.  However, it is obvious that your life is out of order. While we would like to help you somehow, we also must to do something about our youth group. So, we welcome you to continue with us. We invite you to find some help, but we can’t have you leading the youth group anymore until whatever this is gets deal with. Well, she saved face by saying, “I was thinking about stepping down anyhow because my husband and I will be moving to a nearby town when he returns. Sure enough, they left.

This was a very painful experience for everyone involved and the youth group grieved over the good they had lost in her better months. However, what we did restored health to both the youth group and the church until the next disease came.

            B.  Recovering from the Pain of Healthy Leadership and the Wisdom it Brings.

A rather healthy church went through a spiritual freedom workshop. They were in the part of the workshop where they forgive people who had hurt their church in the past. During this process there are many written prayers and spontaneous prayers.
During a quite moment they heard a man crying. As he cries, he tells the story of a very gifted businessman who had come into that church. He rose to a prominent position of leadership. About as soon as he became a prominent leader, several of the volunteers started dropping out like flies. When they were asked why they dropped out, they said they could not handle this man’s crass and demanding behavior and way of relating with people.

About this same time, this guy entered into counseling with his pastor and was talking about how he could not get along with his sister. She could not understand why he took all the money from his daddy’s account when his daddy moved in with him to live and transferred it all to his account. When his daddy died, he never shared any of the money with his sister.

Well to make a long story short, the various pieces of the puzzle began to come together. This person had a problem. The church leaders had a real problem. They called the man in and shared that his obstinate, arrogant, rude way of relating with people and trying to demonstrate leadership in that church was just tearing folks up. Well, instead of humbling himself, he just became enraged. He and his family just left that church quickly. The pastor and other leaders of this church learned that this was not the first time that this man had done this. Nor was it the first time this man had been confronted for being the kind of harsh, cruel, demanding person that he was. Neither did he repent.

As that other man in that meeting cried, his tears were not of confession, but just releasing the pain of having to deal with people who were gifted but had overly domineering personalities. People like that who just had no brokenness before God at all. Following the time of prayer, the outside group facilitator encouraged the leadership to protect themselves in the future by following the Bible’s exhortations to consider the person’s whole life in selecting them into leadership and not merely their in church behavior.

Healthy Use of Power for Christian Leaders

I see one more important but subtle parallelism between the Christian ministry of clergy and local church leaders and TKD. In each the focus is on power for mastery over oneself in competition with oneself. In neither is the focus on power for lordship over others nor in competition with others. In each this is a matter of the heart far more than in just the fulfilling the outward functions of Christian leadership. As with the apostles your authority and power in Christ is in earthen vessels so that the greatness of the glory may be of God and not of yourself.

Thus, your spiritual authority and power is for the building up of the church. It is not for building you up, (clergy or laity), or tearing others, (clergy or laity ),  down in selfish spite and anger or some other impure motive. If you as a clergy person  (pastor, evangelist, District Superintendent, District President, Executive Presbyter, Bishop, Synod President, Arch Bishop) or as a local church leader misuse power or functions from a competition mode in Christian ministry, you are far from mastering the art of Biblical leadership. Thus, you bring disrespect to their Master Jesus Christ, the mission and ministry of Christ’s Church, and to others.

The shepherd’s staff is both a means of comfort and confrontation. One end is used to pull up fallen sheep out of holes. The other end is an effective tool to fight off wolves attacking sheep. That end is also good for keeping the sheep in line. A good shepherd of the sheep uses power in a healthy and wise manner.

When the Chief Shepherd and Overseer of your soul returns, will you receive the crown of glory that does not fade away? One way to answer this question for yourself now is by answering another question. Healthy or unhealthy? That is the question! Therefore, honestly and prayerfully examining your use of power as a leader, (clergy or lay) in Christ’s Church.

This article is based upon  my dissertation: “PREACHING FOR A WHOLE PERSON RESPONSE IN DEVELOPING A HEALTHY CHURCH.” Diss. Asbury Theological Seminary, 2001.

These stories come directly from my doctoral project’s church health sermon, "Messy Morality.” The contents are protected by copyright.

 Since August 23, 2003

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