Excuse me. I'm about to commit a faux pas. I'm introducing an issue of Leadership on a topic that virtually everyone will have a problem with—sins.
For some, the very concept is hopelessly out of fashion, an anachronism. For others, it's too negative or theologically troubling.
Today many in the church prefer to use other terms—"brokenness" or "alienation" or "imperfections." These are helpful words in some ways, but they can also have the unintended effect of suggesting that we are victims, that our condition was inflicted upon us, that we really aren't to blame.
Yet Jesus' response is the repeated command, "Repent" (literally, "Turn!") and "sin no more." Why would he tell us broken, alienated, imperfect people to repent of something beyond our control or turn from something we can't escape?
Other Christians, especially those in churches that emphasize the importance of conversion, still use the term but tend to capitalize it—Sin. It was the Reformers who shifted the focus from sins to Sin—the great interrupter of our relationship with God. They stressed Sin as a condition and justification as God's solution. They were radicals, going to the radix, or root, of the issue.
They pointed out that leaf and blossom and fruit will take care of themselves if the root is sound. And the Reformers were right—you can't solve the Sin problem by tinkering with the myriad sins that are merely symptoms of the condition.
But for those who've repented, who've turned to Christ, who've dealt with the Sin and salvation issue, who've heard God's calling into ministry, what do we make of the sins—the individual acts and attitudes—that continue to so easily beset us? Most of us get decidedly uncomfortable talking about persistence of sins—plural and present tense—after conversion.
That's why we're committing this faux pas and talking about sins in the polite company of church leaders. Because the reality of sins in the lives of church leaders continues, even after conversion, even after ordination, even after repeated consecrations. And it's the sins that threaten to sabotage our ministries.
God has chosen the sorry, sinful likes of you and me.
A few weeks ago, 1,700 of us gathered at the National Pastors Convention that Leadership helped to sponsor. Honestly facing our sins was a recurring theme.
Despite our sinfulness, God is sovereignly working his holy purposes. He places his treasure in us fallen people as in jars of clay, "baked dirt" as Philip Yancey dubbed us, "to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us" (2 Cor. 4:7). Acknowledging our sins only highlights the value of the treasure.
Speaker after speaker and conversation after conversation centered on the mystery of God's working through less-than-deserving human beings.
One pastor, Bill Griffin, said, "What I experienced at the convention was a full embrace and elevation of the 'unfathomableness' of God, His uncanny, sometimes irrational yet earth(l)y way of loving us into life."
As the Leadership editors put together this issue on "Eight Deadly Sins of Ministry," we confronted that unfathomable mystery: that God has chosen to do his eternal work through the sorry, sinful likes of you and me.
Ben Patterson, who offers the final word on this topic, sent us this insightful prayer from Soren Kierkegaard: "Father in heaven! Hold not our sins up against us, but hold us up against our sins, so that the thought of Thee when it wakens in our soul, and each time it wakens, should not remind us of what we have committed but of what Thou didst forgive, not of how we went astray but of how Thou didst save us."
Amen.
Marshall Shelley is editor of Leadership.
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