SoulWork
So, You Want Some Respect?
We spend our whole lives learning to lead with love. By that I mean learning to love and learning to believe that we are loved, because it is the latter that makes the former possible. We love because God first loves us—when we really believe that God first loves us.
Each of us in our callings will likely grow in expertise, and we know—or will soon know—the legitimate authority of an office or calling. This is all part of the normal order of growing in authority. But it is not in the normal order of things, and is in fact a divine gift, to recognize the futility of the love of authority and the blessedness of the authority of love.
Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today and author of Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Liberating Power of the Holy Spirit (Baker). This essay was adapted from a recent commencement speech given at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania.
SoulWork
In "SoulWork," Mark Galli brings news, Christian theology, and spiritual direction together to explore what it means to be formed spiritually in the image of Jesus Christ.
Mark Galli
Galli is editor of Christianity Today and author of God Wins, Chaos and Grace, A Great and Terrible Love, Jesus Mean and Wild, Francis of Assisi and His World, and other books.
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Maurice Smith
Mark, I think you handled Stanley in exactly the correct way. What I hear you saying is that not everyone is a Stanley. I agree. An old mentor of mine, Harold O.J. Brown, once told a class of 300 eager Campus Crusade students (I was Joe's teaching assistant that summer), "Authority is the ability to command voluntary obedience". After all these years I've never fogotten Joe's words. A genuinely Christ-like example gives leaders the "authority" to "command" the voluntary obedience of those around us. And for the Stanley's of the Church, there's still the direct approach.
Caleb Fitting
Insightful stuff.
Pax Paws
Mark, pls hear my gentle voice: Are you basically saying that a lot of Pastors out there who feel unloved, & thus are fearful of confronting their people & are feeling bullied by their Boards? In all honesty, I saw your straight-forward dialogue with Stanley as effective, loving, and instructive. You said that the discussion was fear-based, but perhaps it was just normal nerves when one addresses another about a perceived wrong. Stanley certainly respected your directness, it appears. But this really isn't about you, or Stanley. If church families that have poor ways of handling disputes or disagreements... if we have church families where a leader feels disrespected, or ANY MEMBER feels disrespected... we have serious need of changing the way we do things. If we are indeed listening to HIM, there will be no power plays by any, at any cost. Perhaps we need to re-examine the authority we were ALL purposed to have to build mature disciples... and stop feeding Churchianity.