Leadership in Repentance

What makes a leader in the church a 'Christian' leader?  We can learn a lot about leadership from secular leaders and thinkers.  There are thousands of books on leadership, there are leadership seminars, there are even leadership retreats.  However, none of these sources can help us be a distinctively 'Christian' leader.

Leadership in repentance is one distinctive of a Christian leader.  A Christian leader must lead in obedience, however a Christian leader is not someone who is able to be a 'successful' Christian and then teach that life to others.  Anytime we try to obey we always fail end up failing.  This is true for leaders and non-leaders, everyone fails at obedience.  Christian leaders still sin.  So Christian leaders, must lead in repentance. Repentance is obedience.  This keeps Christian leaders humble, because we will continually realize our need of the gospel.  This is sort of Henri Nouwen's idea of the wounded healer.  Only when we are open about our brokenness can we try to lead other broken people.  May we lead them to Christ and not to ourselves.  See Matthew 18:1-4.

Unity

Two weeks ago the Grace North student ministry went on a mission trip to New Haven, Connecticut.  While in Connecticut we worked with Christ Presbyterian Church.  For that week we were effectively one church.  We spent all day working together and then at night we split up and stayed at host homes.

Sin is a relational problem.  Because of our brokenness we are now in a state of enmity and animosity with our neighbors.  Thankfully God is doing something about our broken relations.  Christ died so that all people may be one.  Unity is a gospel issue.  In Ephesians 4:4 Pauls claims that there is "There is one body and one Spirit... one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all"  Note the repetition of 'one'.  Paul is driving home the point that if we are indeed Christians, we are in fact already united.  However, we do not always live this out.

In New Haven a church full of people associated with Yale University and a church full of Southerners from suburban Atlanta were united in Christ.  At the end of the trip there was a sincere since of loss because we had to leave our family in Christ in New Haven.  It was a beautiful experience, praise be to God.