Last weekend was an incredible time at our annual Staff Pray & Play Retreat. Honestly, I'm still buzzed just thinking about it. In one of our sessions together, we discussed "7 Qualities of Effective Leaders" and applied them to our lives and ministries. This is really great stuff, so I thought I'd share it here on GWM with you:

1. Effective leaders maintain a learning posture throughout life.

2. Effective leaders value spiritual authority as a primary power base.

3. Effective leaders have a dynamic (vital and changing) ministry philosophy.

4. Effective leaders view leadership selection and development as a priority function in their ministry.

5. Effective leaders see relational empowerment as both a means and a goal of ministry.

6. Effective leaders evidence a growing awareness of their sense of destiny.

7. Effective leaders view present ministry in terms of a lifelong developmental perspective.

I am blessed to be surrounded by men and women who are not only great leaders, but who are daily growing in their leadership to better serve Christ and fulfill His purpose for them in the Kingdom! If you'd like to read more, check out the chapter written by Robert and Richard Clinton in the book, "Leaders on Leadership".

"O Love that will not let me go
I rest my weary soul in thee
I give thee back the life I owe
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be

O Light that foll’west all my way
I yield my flick’ring torch to thee
My heart restores its borrowed ray
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be"

Stabilizing lines, especially for those in darkness. This is one of my favorite hymns for many years and helped to comfort me greatly many years ago when my mother died. I found the history behind this great song on the Gospel Coalition's blog recently, and thought I'd pass it on to you.

Do you know the story behind it?

At age 20 George Matheson (1842-1906) was engaged to be married but began going blind. When he broke the news to his fiancee, she decided she could not go through life with a blind husband. She left him. Before losing his sight he had written two books of theology and some feel that if he had retained his sight he could have been the greatest leader of the church of Scotland in his day.

A special providence was that George’s sister offered to care for him. With her help, George left the world of academia for pastoral ministry and wound up preaching to 1500 each week–blind.

The day came, however, in 1882, when his sister fell in love and prepared for marriage herself. The evening before the wedding, George’s whole family had left to get ready for the next day’s celebration. He was alone and facing the prospect of living the rest of his life without the one person who had come through for him. On top of this, he was doubtless reflecting on his own aborted wedding day twenty years earlier. It is not hard to imagine the fresh waves of grief washing over him that night.

In the darkness of that moment George Matheson wrote this hymn. He remarked afterward that it took him five minutes and that it was the only hymn he ever wrote that required no editing.

O love that will not let me go. Heartening hope for you and me.

Here’s the last stanza.

"O Cross that liftest up my head
I dare not ask to fly from thee
I lay in dust life’s glory dead
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be"

It seems like with the advent of facebook, twitter, blogs and the internet in general; everyone feels free to express their opinions about anything everything. Nowhere is this more evident than in the pulpit and from the mouths of pastors. Obviously, I have nothing against this practice (as you are reading my blog right now). What does seem to be disturbing, however, is how freely pastors and other spiritual leaders give their opinions about all manner of things that they shouldn't. The Bible makes it clear in the area of freedoms that we have, 'just because you can, doesn't mean you should'.

"Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims."
1 Cor. 6:12 (The Message)

I can still remember the day in Homiletics class in college when my professor said these words, "The only right you have as a pastor to stand before a congregation to speak is to answer their question, 'Do you have a word from God for us, what has God said?" The fact is, my opinion doesn't matter to anyone as much as it does to me and people don't really care what my opinion is, they want to know what God's opinion is! As a minister of the Gospel, it is of the utmost importance that I communicate GOD'S opinions not my own. My own opinion never transformed a life. My own opinion never healed a broken heart. My own opinion never delivered one in bondage. Perhaps this kind of meaningless drivel and sharing of our own opinions about everything is what the Holy Spirit had in mind when he spoke through the Apostle Paul these words:

"Stay right there on top of things so that the teaching stays on track. Apparently some people have been introducing fantasy stories and fanciful family trees that digress into silliness instead of pulling the people back into the center, deepening faith and obedience."
1 Timothy 1:4 (The Message)

The truth is; giving your opinion about everything is rooted in pride and arrogance, contrary to the humility of Christ. So what's your opinion about giving your opinions on everything as a pastor or spiritual leader? How often do you give your opinion about things that "digress into silliness instead of pulling the people back into the center, deepening faith and obedience"?

The summer is winding down and we're halfway through our summer study group of Mark Driscoll's book, "Doctrine". In the chapter titled, "Fall: God Judges", Driscoll lists 10 sinful responses to sin; it is an eye-opening experience to evaluate this list and see how many of the ten you've been guilty of yourself (No, I won't share my number here, though it is MANY). If you'd like to read more (and a fuller explaination of each, order "Doctrine" here.

1) There is a propensity to minimize a sin.

2) There is the delusional belief that my sin is different from anyone else’s because I have good reasons that legitimize my sin.

3) There is the common error of rationalizing sin as acceptable because of some extenuating circumstances.

4) There is blame shifting, where someone is blamed for the sin of another.

5) There is diversion, where we try to avoid our sin by, for example, saying we were just joking, someone misunderstood us, or the person who confronted us about our sin was not as loving as we would have liked and hurt our feelings.

6) There is partial confession, where we tell only a part of our sin.

7) There is what Paul calls “worldly grief,” where we merely regret the consequences of our sin.

8) There is victimization, where I appear helplessly pitiful and unable to have done otherwise by naming someone (e.g., parent, Satan, past abuser) or something (e.g., genes, culture, personality) as responsible for my sin.

9) There is mere confession, where I name the sin but do not repent of it and put it to death by God’s grace.

10) There is a growing tendency to speak of sin in secular counseling circles as more of a disease than an evil offense. Indeed, like an addiction or disease, sin affects our entire being; it is painful, tragic, and leads to death. Still, there are many ways in which sin is not like a disease; it is something we do rather than something we catch, and something we confess rather than treat. In the end, speaking of sin as a disease is yet another effort to excuse ourselves and shift the blame for our evil actions away from ourselves.

In attempts to "reach out" to the unchurched in their communities, many churches today have made the conscious and deliberate decision to downplay the seriousness of sin in an individual's life, or in some cases completely dismiss any mention of sin at all. Such folly actually is constructing "a different gospel" which contradicts the clear teachings of Scripture (see 2 Cor. 11:3-4, Gal. 1:8). Recently, I was reminded of R. C. Sproul's excellent book, The Holiness of God, which I read in the first two years I was a pastor. It is a sobering and humbling book that I highly recommend for every Christian, church leader and especially pastors. Consider the following excerpt from Sproul's book as he expounds upon the seriousness of sin in the life of a Christian:

"God voluntarily created us. He gave us the highest privilege of being His image bearers. . . . We are not turtles. We are not fireflies. We are not caterpillars or coyotes. We are people. We are the image bearers of the holy and majestic King of the cosmos. We have not used the gift of life for the purpose God intended. Life on this planet has become the arena in which we daily carry out the work of cosmic treason. . . . No traitor to any king or nation has even approached the wickedness of our treason before God. . . .

When we sin as the image bearers of God, we are saying to the whole creation, to all of nature under our dominion, to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field: “This is how God is. This is how your Creator behaves. Look in his mirror; look at us, and you will see the character of the Almighty.” We say to the world, “God is covetous; God is ruthless; God is bitter; God is a murderer, a thief, a slanderer, an adulterer. God is all of these things that we are doing.”1

Perhaps, it's not our techniques that need to change as much as our character. Perhaps, it's time to take sin more seriously in our lives and in our proclamation of Christ's Gospel, believing that it is only His Gospel that contains the "power of God unto salvation" (see Rom. 1:16).

1. R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2000), 115–16.