Category: christianity

Hebrews 13 has some excellent things to say about how we ought to respond to our leaders:

7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 9 Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.

17 Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

I think in order to lead well, we must, first and foremost, know how to submit to biblical leadership.   The writer of Hebrews clearly had in mind that the leaders he was referring to are teaching sound doctrine, and have lives worth imitating.  Our response to men who are qualified elders who teach the word of God and oversee the church of God is to obey and submit to their authority.

Those desiring leadership ought to first desire to be led by godly men themselves, and have the opportunity to observe and imitate the life of godliness that is demonstrated.  Practically speaking, this is good medicine for young, ambitious leaders to be sanctified, as we are notorious for our impudent and brash behavior that frequently rejects authority in frustration.

I am thankful for the men who lead me, and am grateful they are men with lives worth imitating, and pray that God would continue to raise up qualified men who exercise oversight with great love and care.

I’m definitely not a journalist, but this is one particular piece of news that I am particularly excited about, so I’ll pass it on.

For those of you who do not follow the intersection of science and faith, Francis Collins may not be a familiar person to you.  For an introduction, I’d recommend reading his wikipedia entry, but he in short was instrumental in the mapping of the human genome and an excellent scientist.  He also is a professing evangelical Christian, who has an amazing story of coming to believe in Christ.

President Obama announced on Wednesday that he had nominated Collins as the director of the National Institute of Health, which is an incredibly influential position, and an exciting development for the intersection of the science and faith communities.

I am overjoyed to see a man whose scientific achievement speaks for itself, and is speaking the truth of Christ in a field that tends toward hostility to the God of the Bible.  I pray that this appointment would be for the honor and fame of Jesus in a generation of doubt!

There is a good compilation of resources on Triperspectival Leadership at the 9 Marks blog.  Here’s an intro to the idea from the post:

To over-simplify, the insight is that church leaders tend to be prophets, priests, or kings. Prophets love to proclaim the word of God and dream about where God is leading the church. Kings love to put systems in place to make it happen. Priests make sure that everyone is cared for and feels God’s love along the way.

Understanding your church leadership in light of those strengths (and attending weaknesses) can help you identify blind-spots and make good decisions about staffing and new leaders. I have found this really helpful as our church incorporates new elders and thinks through how we can do things better.

This concept, although not limited to simply to leadership, has been a great tool to help people understand what they naturally gravitate toward in leadership.  I’d also recommend that you take a look at Drew Goodmanson’s material here.

via Church Matters: The 9Marks Blog

I have a friend in need, and you can help!  Below is a call for action from my friend Jeff McWhorter:

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Here is the deal.  For my senior thesis at UT, I made a 10-minute documentary about young men growing up with incarcerated fathers in East Austin.  One of the young men (14 yrs old), with whom I spent a lot of time, was incarcerated himself last week for house burglaries.  (He was caught on webcam, maybe you heard about it).  Anyhow, some of the crimes were unjustly pinned on his older sister because he used her car.  She went to jail, and has gotten out, but she and her mother are really struggling to come up with money to pay an attorney to get the charges off.

Also, there is a risk that they could get evicted because Booker T, where they live, does not like trouble in the neighborhood.  This would really, really put her in a bad spot.

His mother works hard at her job as a waitress to provide for the family (4 kids in the house) and show a good example of honest labor.  She loves the Lord and is trusting him through all of this but is understandably pretty distraught.

I really want to help them out, and I am having a benefit showing of my documentary tonight at 9 p.m. at my house to raise some money.

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Please help Jeff out by showing up!