Leadership Lessons: Difficult Decisions in Today’s Culture, Part 2, Critical Elements

 

In the last post, we saw that the power/control decision is committed to strictly maintaining the status quo in a way that actually penalizes the innovators

First of all, if we’re going to make decisions in the midst of these sort of interregnum situations for which there is no easy answer, it requires of us the capacity to be able to see what it is that God is doing. We’re not just coming up with something blind. 

We have already asked God to impart to us the capacity to in essence, read the signs of the times; to listen with our ear to the ground; to understand as best we can, what the Holy Spirit is actually doing in any given moment; to spend time with people both who agree as well as those who disagree with us; to listen to the voice of the Lord; to be willing to be humble enough to learn from people who are not like us and yet still name the name of Jesus that will allow us and even force to challenge some of our own basic presuppositions. So what are the critical elements we need?

Honoring the Past

Peter and James were not prepared by their rabbinic instruction to come to the decision that they made in this portion of Acts (Acts 15-22). They were not. And yet—they did. They made a decision that, even though it was extraordinarily innovative, was in fact consistent and honored the past precedents of what God had done. In other words, it wasn’t like, “OK, what we really need now are—let me just think, chartreuse vestments for Pentecost.” 

There has to be a connection in some way or another; there has to be that capacity to be able to tie the precedents of what God has done in the past and bring them into the present so that there is a lack of inconsistency, even in the midst of innovation. That is not easy to be able to do. But unless you are willing to listen to the counsel of the elders, and those who uphold for good reason, the traditions that are in fact among us, and honor their voices, you will never ever be an instrument of innovation. You’ll be squashed like a bug. Or you’ll just be treated as a kind of iconoclast who goes and starts his own little denomination. Who needs that? 

Rejoicing in the Decision

Secondly, in making a decision that is asking something new, the end result of that decision has to be that those who receive it rejoice. It is not in a position of power. It is in fact a setting free. 

You see, the whole thrust of what Peter is commenting on, is the fact that in the midst of all that God was doing, their goal was to be a light to the Gentiles. It was to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ. James picks up the very same thing. “Simeon related to us how God first looked favorably on the Gentiles”—to do what? “To take among them a people for his name” (Acts 22:14).

In other words, what is God doing? God is winning a people for his name among the Gentiles, and that’s what we see him doing. Therefore, any decision that we have to make or are called to make has to in effect build upon that, allow it to expand. And it has. We’re not interested in restricting the work of the Holy Spirit; we’re actually wanting to do something that will enable that work to even move further, in fact, to do so in such a way is that not only do the Gentiles rejoice, but also so that other people may see God as a result of what is happening.

In other words, the fruit of a decision that should be made by the people of God is that those who are called to faith in Christ rejoice, and that the gospel is extended, and more people say yes to Christ. In other words, if it’s all just about in-house decisions around ordering what we need to do on the inside, without the missionary implications of how more and more people might be invited to the gospel, that it’s just “Inside Baseball,” and we’re doing our thing while the rest of the world argues about who knows what. And there’s no meeting. There is no, “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28a).

Most of the decisions that are made within many of our councils, including our vestries, are really around who controls the remote. And as a result, people are not brought to faith in Christ. But we look like we’re really busy. And we’re doing a lot. And in fact, this passage calls out that kind of behavior as doing nothing more than perpetuating our own irrelevance to the work of God, our own genuine capacity to grieve the power of the Holy Spirit and his presence, our willingness to maintain our institutions in a way that actually becomes a stumbling block to the community, a stumbling block to faith in Jesus Christ. It calls out our willingness to remain absent from the public square and to speak clearly to the issues of our day among people who hunger for a word of truth because we want to do nothing more than fight about what color the vestments ought to be at Pentecost.

Extending the Gospel

Do you not understand my sisters and brothers, that our silence or better yet, our capacity to remain strictly in conversation with each other, in fact, blunts the evangelistic possibilities that God wants to accomplish through all of our churches? I grieve where we spend our time, not because those things are not important, but because they are not penultimately important. 

We look so good at what we do. And yet where my heart goes, again and again, is to the person who is looking to see if somebody is going to sit, listen, hear her heart, make room for what it is that she has to say, and allow it to become an invitation to know the one who is the healer of broken hearts, the forgiver of sins. And particularly in our day where our reputation amongst so many is that we are known as a place where trauma happens. Trauma, not just internal division, but genuine, physical, emotional assault. After all, who am I in the public square? I could be a predator for what the general public might know. 

That’s the way that’s now where we stand among so many. Not just irrelevant, but in fact dangerous. Dangerous for personal health, dangerous to social progress, so that we must get on the other side of what people assume to be our character just to begin to build a relationship. And so long as we continue to remain silent in the face of those often tragically accurate characteristics, it will be even more difficult for us to speak up. 

In other words, the ground is sinking beneath our feet when it comes to our capacity to be able to speak into the public square. And the more silent we are, the more we affirm for that audience the fact that we are in fact, irrelevant, or worse, guilty as charged. And as a result, we have nothing to say. 

Has it been so long ago that respected clergy were quoted in the news? Their counsels were sought. And they became collaborators in a way that in fact promoted the common good, though in every generation, there have been collaborators who have just been mere collaborators. 

What will we do? Sometimes it requires extraordinarily bold action. In the next post, we’ll see what that looks like.

Where do you think the church could reach out with compassion and draw more people to the truth of the gospel? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer. 

(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on Oct. 22, 2019, at the Clergy Conference, Canterbury Retreat & Conference Center, Oviedo, Florida.)

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.