Video Transcript: Basic Governing

You’ve got a lot of action words in here, but really what it is speaking to is this whole notion of serving and not lording over one another. Jesus spoke of this when He came down from the mount of transfiguration. When Peter had the opportunity to see the veil of Jesus pulled back, they came down from this incredible experience. Now, what did they do? They walked in and right into the mess. And this whole mess, you have this man and he brought in his demon-possessed son. He’s probably running around screaming and acting crazy and the disciples are trying to rebuke him. And cast it out and it’s not working. And Jesus comes and He takes care of it.

What happens? The disciples go over and start fussing and talking about, why can’t you do it?

Listen, because I was sick today. Whatever the reason was, they get into the saying, “I’m greater than you. They get into this whole thing of who’s the greatest and Jesus came over. And He said, “Listen, if you want to understand greatness, you need to understand greatness from the standpoint of serving.” It is serving. It is from the bottom up. It’s the least that is greatest in the kingdom of God.And so, this speaks to that. This whole thing of being generous. This whole thing of being diligent in mercy and grace and doing it cheerfully. And this is in light of the challenges of leading because if you’re leading from a serving standpoint, you must understand it will be a challenge. It will be a joy as well, but it will be a challenge. So when we think in terms of governing, we want to govern diligently.

Now, in the house church. The leader who starts the group is the leader. Now, that is true. But with that said, you also have to understand that a person needs to be called into leadership. So a call to start the group that does not come from himself is very helpful. And even if we think in terms of Paul’s life and here he was on the road to Damascus and he was knocked off that horse. And Jesus walked up on him and said, “Listen, why are you persecuting me?” And he calls Paul to himself and to ministry. But Paul still went to the apostles and they affirm Paul and sent Paul out. And so it is important that we don’t have leaders who call themselves and send themselves out in their self-proclaiming.

They need to be called and sent out. Just imagine when a person gets up to speak and the power of someone explaining to them, this is who this person is, this is who their credentials are, it has greater impact than a person walking up to the podium and saying, “Okay, I’m about to speak to you. But first, I’m going to tell you about myself and how great I am.” It doesn’t work that way. And it doesn’t work that way in the kingdom. We are to walk in context.

And actually, when you think in terms of Timothy and Titus, it talks about the quality of a leader. Ninety percent of them are character qualities. Ten percent is competencies. They have to teach. But those things are being seen within the context of community. And that is why we do not need to be quick to set the expectations for elders. But we need to mobilize heads of homes to lead in their homes. This is the most important thing because scriptures speak of this. If a person didn’t rule their home well, how can they lead the church? And so, we want to encourage people and equip them to effectively lead in their home.

So when you think in terms of governing vigilantly, a church organization, the theology of leading, we’re really not going to do that here that’s going to be dealt with Systematic Theology 2. I think you’re going to be greatly blessed and definitely you’re going to learn a great deal when you take that course. And it’s going to take you through the theology of governing. I encourage you to sign up for that class. Now, your walk and the office bearer’s walk needs to be in unity. This is what I’m saying is your walk and the office bearer’s walk needs to be in unity with God and you both need to have the same vision of the church.

Meaning, if you are a topical communicator and a person who you’re walking with, this potential office bearer, you all might have a lot of things in common and agree in a lot of things. But at the core, if they desire to have an expository communicator and you’re more of a topical communicator, there’s going to be problems. Particularly, it’s one thing to have a layperson in your church or even in your home group to have differences of that nature, but it’s a whole another thing when you have leadership because they’re never going to be really happy with your preaching. And there’s always going to be a source. So you want to make sure that you’re definitely in the same page as far as vision. And you want to be slow to settling leadership particularly in the house church because you don’t want to have four elders governing four families. That’s overkill.

So leaders with the gifts and temperament. That’s another thing you want to look in. Does the person have the gift and the temperaments to lead? Do they have leadership gifts? You are in meetings and you talk about oranges and they’re talking about onions. You’re talking about bananas and they’re talking about trees. You never seem to be on the same page. And so you want to make sure actually has the competencies to lead. What are their track record? Is this the first place that they’re leading? Is there a track record?That is so important, the track record, because I remember, a pastor one time told me that when you’re establishing leaders that you want to look a person’s track record. If you don’t look at their track records, actually what you’re doing is you’re judging the person. You’re saying, “Hey I think they’d be a good leader because they’re a nice person.” Or you’re judging them. And to not judge, you need to be able to look at their track record. And part of that is looking at their past and as they are walking in that relationship with you. Also you need to look at their temperament. Are they easily angered? Do they hold grudges? Are they able to ignore persons for an extended period of time? They might have some gifts but they don’t really have the temperamental lead.