Discerning Spiritual Leadership

The writer of Hebrews is concerned with some churches who were struggling and being tempted to walk away from their beliefs about Christ. What these Hebrew Christians didn't realize was that their very spiritual lives were at stake. So why were they vulnerable to some of the false doctrines promising them things that the Gospel never had?

Hebrews 5:12-14

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of God's word. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the world of righteousness, for he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

Hebrews 6:1
Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity...

"You hear it said [these days], with a great air of religious common sense, that it is the man that the modern age demands in the pulpit, and not his doctrine.  It is the man that counts, and not his creed. But this is one of those shallow and plausible underparts which is blandly offered for the arduous whole. No man has any right in the pulpit in virtue of his personality or manhood in itself, but only in virtue of the sacramental value of his personality for his message. We have no business to worship the elements, which means, in this case, to idolize the preacher ... To be ready to accept any kind of message from a magnetic man is to lose the Gospel in mere impressionism.  It is to sacrifice the moral in religion to the aesthetic. And it is fatal to the authority either of the pulpit or the Gospel. The Church does not live by its preachers, but by its Word."

Peter T. Forsyth - a speech in 1907

We live in a society of people who want to remain children. Children think in very simple and concrete terms: yes or no, black or white, good and bad, my group and your group. This is the crowd most ready to latch onto or commit to "dynamic leaders". They want leaders who will make the complex simple, the profound manageable, the painful anesthetized, and consequences inconsequential. But the mature and the discerning, i.e., "those who have their faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil" will not tolerate such things. They are mature and live a life of complexity, discipline, and patience.

Instead of using the church as a spiritual crutch, those who are mature will desire both truth and accountability. The mature will stop church shopping when the going gets tough (or uncomfortable) and commit to a messy but grounded covenant family by which to use their gifts for the kingdom of God, They will accept the complexity and transcendence of God's great character, ways, and salvation, and lay aside the facade of personal control and self-preservation.

Or - like most Americans - Christian or not, they will continue to follow the dynamic leaders and churches that promise things they can't deliver and American dreams that God never promised.

Do you want to be a spiritual child or a mature adult?

If "adult" is you answer, then stop following the salesmen, pop stars, and ringleaders, and start following Jesus through those clergy who are more concerned with giving you Christ and His Kingdom rather than their own answers, visions, and empires; who are committed to leading the church by walking with their people through the joy, confusion, pain, grounding, eternal hope, and lasting peace that Jesus Christ came to give us.