The Leadership Malaise
The economic mess we are currently experiencing is bad enough but the other is what I would call a Leadership Malaise. The approval ratings for the President and Congress are the lowest since modern day polling has been in practice and one of the major aspects our current crop of leaders lacks is “the vision thing” as George Bush the first coined it years ago.
In addition, in light of the up and coming election these thoughts come to mind:
Isaiah 51:18, 20, “Of all the sons she bore there was none to guide her; of all the sons she reared there was none to take her by the hand. Your sons have fainted; they lie at the head of every street, like an antelope caught in a net.”
We are currently caught in an “economic net,” and leadership has fainted.
Looking at that Scripture in the context of the President, Congress, and Wall Street in many ways is a clear picture of the present world system and even the church. One of the ways God judges a nation that strays from Him, is the removal of qualified leadership and vision. Remember Israel?
This expulsion included all kinds of leadership, civil and religious, prophets, priests and kings. However, in the midst of this shakedown, God is looking for a few good men and women who will be faithful to walk in with Him and each other.
Every generation is responsible for the Word of the Lord to them. As it was with King David, “after serving the purpose of God in his own generation, died and was buried.” However, there is a flip side, as stated by commentator Harold Rosenberg:
“The people of an era must either carry the burden of change assigned to their time or die under its weight in the wilderness.”
I don’t want to die in the wilderness. However, I do want to carry the burden of the Lord. And then in addition, fulfill another very important mandate: pass on our spiritual heritage to the next generation. It is the responsibility of each generation to pass on its spiritual heritage to the succeeding generation so that “none of the words of the Lord fall to the ground.”
Our Lord Jesus, as the Chief Shepherd looked upon the multitudes and saw that “they were sheep without a shepherd.” Even as the Chief Shepherd, He did not meet the needs of the people alone. Certainly as God He could have. Rather He called and chose, His disciples to be with Him so that He could train them, and then commission and send them to meet the needs of the multitudes.
Today our general practice is to approach this process through institutional teaching. There is a place for the classroom, however, in looking at the Scriptures it’s not the way Jesus did it. His way was apparently a “school without walls.”
It is my opinion that the Lord (if I may be presumptuous enough to speak for the Lord) is in the process of changing and shaking down “the forms.”
Years ago I was impressed with the challenge to approach building as if modern technology and infrastructures did not exist. I was to “build people not things.”
Certainly I use things, such as media, to serve the end purpose; however, media was to serve the message not vice versa. That flies in the face of Marshall McLuhan’s thesis that Media Is the Message. It is not. No more than church buildings of mortar, bricks and stone are the Church. The people are the church and the message is the message and the message is, “the Kingdom of God has come unto you.”
Don’t politicize it, because His Kingdom is not of this world!
Nothing has changed.