(From Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World)
Four
Unhealthy Commandments of Church Leadership
Unhealthy
Commandment 1: It’s Not a Success Unless It’s Bigger and Better
Most of us have
been taught to measure success by external markers.
Numerical
growth is what the world equates with power and significance. It is an absolute
value — bigger is always better.
Jesus’ stunning
success in teaching and feeding the 5,000 at the beginning of John 6 is
followed just a few paragraphs later by a corresponding numerical failure: “At
this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him” (John 6:66).
Unhealthy
Commandment 2: What You Do Is More Important than Who You Are
We cannot give
what we do not possess. We cannot help but give what we do possess.
We can give
inspiring messages about the importance of spiritual transformation and
enjoying the journey with Christ. We may quote famous authors. We may preach
rich truths out of Scripture and craft clever blogs and tweets. But if we have
not lived the truths we teach and been transformed by them personally, the
spiritual transformation of those we serve will be stunted. I am not saying
there will be none. Just not much.
Unhealthy
Commandment 3: Superficial Spirituality Is Okay
Just because we
have the gifts and skills to build a crowd and create lots of activity does not
mean we are building a church or ministry that connects people intimately to
Jesus.
I love the
Lord’s instruction to Samuel, “The LORD does not look at the things people look
at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart”
(see 1 Samuel 16:7). In other words, we don’t look simply on the outside; we
are concerned about the heart, beginning with our own.
Unhealthy
Commandment 4: Don’t Rock the Boat as Long as the Work Gets Done
Too much of
contemporary church culture is characterized by a false niceness and
superficiality. We view conflict as a sign that something is wrong, so we do
whatever we can to avoid it. We prefer to ignore difficult issues and settle
for a false peace, hoping our difficulties will somehow disappear on their own.
They don’t.
