Spiritual lightweights

About 7 years ago I heard Terry Wardle (a prof. of mine from seminary) say something like, “Congregations are quickly realizing their leaders are suffering from ontological lightness.  That is, their pastors are spiritual lightweights.  And because of that, the church is powerless and is losing her influence.  Most pastors today don’t have a vibrant walk with God.”

Spiritual lightweights…that’s a pretty heavy indictment.

When Bethany and I began looking for a church we wanted to find a community that was developing a culture that encouraged and drew people to take their walk with God to the next level.  I didn’t want a church that was going to give me a management system for sin and success.

The lynch pin is leadership.  If the leadership isn’t taking their walk with God to the next level, then they won’t lead their people there.

We had been attending Grace Chapel for about 6 weeks when I had breakfast with our pastor.  I remember peppering him with a series of questions:

Who holds you accountable?
What is God stirring in you?
What books are you reading?
What is your brokenness and how is God using that?
How do you want to lead our church to the cross and not to a personality or style?

To my relief he was comfortable with these questions.  Since that first meeting we’ve had additional breakfasts that dove deeper into this topic.

Most chuches (like the world we live in) focus on competencies.  That is, how well you can do something (which isn’t all bad).  But Christ calls us to lead out of the core of who we are.  That is, how well we are surrendering our brokenness to Christ and how He is using that brokenness to draw us to Himself.

We settle for competencies because they focus on metrics that allow us to play the comparison game.

When we drill down to the core of who we are, we can only compare ourselves to Christ…and that is a messy story.  But it’s the story that has power because it is a story every soul on this planet can identify with.

Drilldown, and be a heavyweight.