Evaluating Spiritual Leadership: Humility, Service, and Faithfulness

1) "Spiritual leaders are servants and stewards subject to the standard of the gospel. The standard of scripture showing those that they lead what it means to serve Christ. I think what Paul deals with in this passage can be captured. This statement kind of captures what he's dealing with. Right? Spiritual leaders are servants and stewards subject to the standard of scripture showing those they lead what it means to serve Christ. Like we can package that up and take that home and be like, I have an understanding. Of what Paul is talking about." [10:58] (35 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "When you think about us as spiritual leaders, this is the framework. This is how I want you to think of it. Now think of us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. And now when he uses this word servants, a lot of times if you want to get nitty -gritty with the Greek stuff, which I know not all of us really care about, typically there's this word doulos that's used for servant. But here he uses a totally different word. He talks about this word that literally means an under rower. It doesn't mean servant in the general sense, but servant as an under rower." [13:21] (34 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "Paul is saying, listen, don't think of us like we're the captains of the ship. We're not the captains. We're merely the under rowers. What that means is we're taking commands from somebody who is ranking higher than us, who's just telling us what to do. And we are doing what they're telling us. Now, the interesting thing is, with this role, it also involves a great deal of unity, right? Because you would need to row in unison, which is again, going back to what are these issues that the Corinthians are dealing with, that Paul and Apollos, they're conflicting. They're conflicting. They're conflicting. They're conflicting with each other. He's like, no, they're not. We are working together because if one person rowed out of order or out of unison, suddenly your oars would start smacking each other." [13:21] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "Paul is saying, listen, it doesn't matter so much to me what you think of my ministry. He's like, I don't even judge myself. You're like, what? You just working through this like off the wind? You know, like some people are like, yeah, wing it, dude. Like, that's my life. But what Paul's getting at here is down at the end of verse 4, he says, it's the Lord who judges me. All right? So it would be one thing if Paul just said, with an attitude of arrogance, like, I don't care. Listen, say what you want. It doesn't matter to me. I'm doing my own thing. As a matter of fact, I don't even care how I judge myself. He's like, I don't have anything against myself. He's like, I have a clear conscience with that, but that doesn't mean that I'm innocent." [17:10] (45 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "Faithfulness matters an awful lot. So it's timely, but it's also thorough. You'll notice the end of chapter 5, or not chapter, verse 5 there. It says that when the Lord comes, he will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Right? It makes you think in some ways back to that judgment of David with Samuel, right? Where it's like the man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. And on that day, the Lord's going to bring and put on the table and shed light on everything. That the apostles, those who would lead in the church, are going to give an account and you're not going to be able to deceive anybody any longer." [20:57] (43 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "Character really matters. And then you get into something like what Paul is dealing with in the first part of this passage. you have the quality of their faithfulness over the quantity of their following. Faithfulness matters. And faithfulness is measured in time. It's measured to the very end. Right? Faithfulness to the end. And so nowadays, we will love to follow some of these pastors that they go out and they garner for themselves huge followings. Massive groups of people that are following their teachings online go to these huge churches and we assume that where there's a multitude of people, there is a quality of ministry. And Paul's saying we need to pause for a second." [26:04] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "So I pray. I pray for pastors. I pray for our elders that we would lead faithfully. Not about making village some mega church, but about being faithful to the call that God has placed on us. To lead well according to the scriptures. And then the last one. you have up there is to the standard of scripture calls to evaluate how they equip the church rather than how they entertain the church and that takes us over to ephesians chapter 4 that these these leaders these roles these these pastors and teachers they are given to equip the church for ministry not to do it all themselves okay so it's it's easy you may find pastors and leaders that are doing every which thing but if they're not equipping the saints to do ministry should pause just on that so maybe when your elders come and say hey would you serve would you would you go to this training could we equip you in this way it's not because they're trying to be lazy they're trying to do the job that god's given them how are spiritual leaders equipping the church it's not just about entertaining people it's not just about coming on sundays and having people feel good when we walk out that's not the role for this just like a coach right coach doesn't show up to practice every single week and every single day to say hey i want you guys to feel real good when you walk out of practice today sometimes a coach's job is to shed light on areas of weakness and to coach and counsel and train and and prepare for something to to fix areas of weakness and a team all right the problem was that if that's the standard of scripture and just a snapshot at it the corinthian church had gone beyond it he's like i don't want you to go beyond what's written and so so what that means is they have taken for themselves different qualifications for leaders that the bible doesn't call for and the end result of that is it results in pride and a pitting of one leader against another he talks about this being puffed up right and it's literally like if you took this this if i had a balloon and you blow that balloon up." [26:04] (135 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "Paul's like, hold on. Serving Christ is gonna involve hard service. It may involve sacrifice. It might involve suffering. It's definitely gonna involve a lot of self -control because when we're reviled, we bless. Right, everything that the human nature wants to kick back with in these negative stories, he's like, no, we do the opposite. I was like, that's the example that you were given. That's the example that I'm setting. This is not a boastful, arrogant, prideful example. Or Paul would be saying, you guys are the ones who are hungry and thirsty while we're up here living it up as kings. Paul's like, it's flipped on its head. He's showing them, again, bringing them back to that example. This is what it means to serve Christ. This is how it works itself out." [35:19] (58 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)