Video Transcript: Lesson 21 Character

Hello, Friends, welcome back to Christian leaders Institute. We're talking about  you today, as we have in the last couple of lectures about what God's calling you to be your absolute very best for him for his honor and his glory, and also for the  sake of your people. So the last couple of lectures, we've been talking about  some really key things about one, your relationship with Jesus Christ, the vitality that you have, how important that is, you're not going to be able to help your  people have a deeper knowledge and understanding and love for the Lord. You  know, if you're not there yourself, and so putting that first. And then just then  also talking about just kind of your role as kind of a spiritual leader, and taking  charge of, you know, being the shepherd to lead and guide and not not worry  about being like the strategist so much. But really being reclaiming that office of  a holy man or a holy woman who can get a sense of what it's like to be with  God, because they've been with you. There's a prayer that I have on my wall, in  my office, and it says, May those who know us, not at who don't know, God, may they know God, because they know us. I know, I just jumbled that up. But the  idea is like, if people don't know God, but they know us, they'll come to know  God, because they know us. And that's part of that, like, spiritual directing, and  being close to the Lord in our own life, and having those things kind of work  together in tandem. Today's lecture, we're gonna play an absolutely critical thing. No, it's just as important as those other two. I think all three of these kinds of we  might think of these as like the trinity of spiritual leadership. Today, we're really  talking about character, in what is character and why it is so important in  ministry. Because I, kind of starting right off here, I think the single most  important personal quality of a Christian leader is character. Now this is different, you know, so Well, I thought you said it was being spiritual direction, reclaiming  the role that well that's more like your vocation, and the other one on your  relationship to the Lord. That's kind of a spiritual connection you have with the  Lord, this is kind of like, you know, quality characteristic about you. And that is  truly, I believe, Christian character. So let's get into this. Let's talk about  character then. Father. When we think of character, we need to look no further  than you Lord to see the ultimate perfection of holiness and morality. And all that is good Lord, within you, there is no corruption, there is no darkness. Lord, we  pray that within us Lord that Your Holy Spirit is doing work, to take away those  things that we might become more and more like your son, and bear his image  to this world. So Lord in areas where we need to develop our personal  character. I pray that you would, even in the words of lecture that I speak, you  would be challenging and confronting and building up for a new character that  brings honor and glory to your name, amen. Okay, so let's talk about character.  And kind of this claim that I have here that the single most important personal  quality of a Christian leader is character. Well, this isn't my opinion. I think this is  this is a biblical truth. So Paul writes to Timothy and he gives him in I Timothy an outline of what he thinks, you know, his, the kind of leaders that he needs to get 

around him. So he's Timothy, you need to build up your leadership team. And  these are the kinds of people you're going to be looking for. And so in I Timothy  3, there's a long list of things. There are 17 of them. Okay, so Paul was set and  I'm not going to read them. Now you can look in First Timothy 3, Paul has 17  qualities of leaders in the church. 15 of the 17 items are character related. 15 of  the 17 are character related. It doesn't have to do with how competent they are.  He doesn't say go out and find the most the greatest Bible scholars and the  most charismatic teacher And if there's all character related, you know,  somebody who is not into quarreling, the husband, of one wife, somebody who  doesn't drink, it's the character issues 15 out of 17. So truly the model we have  here, just from I Timothy 3 is the overwhelming weight, of quality of leadership is character. Scripture provides a number of other examples to affirm the priority of character and leadership. Again, Paul writing to Timothy in I Timothy 4, he says  to him now, not who you're recruiting, but he's talking to him, he says, Timothy,  watch your life and your doctrine closely. Watch your life that matters and your  doctrine, I think it matters that he says, Watch your life, that comes even before  doctrine, you have to walk the walk, in order to be a leader. So you've got to  watch your life, as well as what you believe. And to Titus, who was another one  of his upcoming protegees. He says, in everything, set them an example by  doing good. Again, talking about church leadership, set an example do good, be  the right kind of person. And we talked about we touched on this in last lecture in talking about Acts 20:28, Paul's farewell address to the elders in Ephesus. And  he says, you know, take heed, or keep watch over yourselves, and the flock that God has given you charge over. But again, he begins with, keep watch over  yourself, that comes first, it wasn't keep watch over everybody else. And then  yourself, it's no First, keep watch over yourself, your character, the kind of life  you're living. And when you do that, you can then watch over others, I think we  might even be able to say, you know, keep watch over yourself, and in doing so  then keep watch over others. And I think that what what we see here in these  texts is that apart from exemplary moral character, character, ministry is really a  meaningless venture in the eyes of God, regardless of the results that you could be seeing great things happen. But if you're kind of moral, kind of lowlife or dud,  it's really meaningless. And you know, this might be a challenging thing. For  some people listening, because on the outside, as you can see, like, all these  great things are happening, but nobody knows about kind of the secret side of  my life. Brother or Sister, you know, the Lord knows all about you, you're not  hiding anything. All right. And if that's where you're at, I just call you to  repentance. You know, the Lord is gracious, there is no condemnation for those  in Christ. And if there are character issues, I mean, there's character issues for  all of us. And so whatever character issues that the Holy Spirit brings to your  mind, brother and sister just repent, know that the blood of Jesus Christ covered that, and that the Holy Spirit will work to in you, yield to that, to change your 

character, in this and just how important that is. So let's talk about character and we can really understand character in one of two ways. Probably the first is what we would naturally think of as being morally in right standing with God  consistently honoring God with our lives. That really is the cornerstone of our  ministry. And as I'm recording this, just, we could probably say this at any time  any videos are being recorded, just within the last several months are some  really significant megachurch. Pastors who've been their whole ministries that  they've had for decades, have been compromised and has a big black mark on  it. Why? Because of compromised character, because they made choices that  did not reflect the moral law of God. And so everything they did, now God used  them, not because of who they were. God used them in spite of who they were  and God's purposes just were accomplished. But these people, particularly  these men, have so much like a because their character just was never where it  needed to be, and they lost it, so we want to have ives that are consistently  honoring God and reflect the God who we serve. Going back to my good friend,  Richard Baxter, our buddy from the 1600s, this is excuse me, Philip Jacob  Spener. We talked about him a number of lectures ago, in his book Pia  Desideria, the pious desires or pious longings, or holy longing, or something  along those lines kind of or for translation. Again, he was calling he lived at the  same time, Baxter did. And they were writing about the same time and about the same sort of thing. So this is what Spener observed about the moral character  of pastors, he says, Since ministers must bear the greatest burden in all these  things, which pertain to the reform of the church revitalization. And since their  shortcomings do correspondingly great harm, it is of the utmost importance, that the Office of the ministry be occupied by men who above all are themselves true Christians, and then have the divine wisdom to guide others carefully on the way of the Lord. So, Spener is really basically saying, nobody's going to bring more  damage to a congregation than a pastor who lacks moral integrity and character. Now, I serve at a church where three of my previous predecessor, my  predecessors as pastors, there was great moral scandal and failure. And I can  tell you, that destroyed the church in it just fractured the church in so many  ways. Now, since I've been the pastor of my church, there have been people  who have made really bad choices in their life. And it's been difficult to work  through and they either left the church or they've had to seek some kind of  repentance and renewal. And each of those are very difficult, and it's been a  blow to the church. But I can tell you, nothing to the scale of when the pastoral  leader fell into great sin. That just is just, it has just a tremendous impact on on  the life of the church. And so we should all think that as as leaders, that there is  a bullseye on our back that, that the enemy the devil seeks will seek to take us  down, because if he can, you know, bring down the leader, you know, Jesus,  you know, strike the shepherd, all the sheep will scatter, and Satan tries to do  that very thing. So there's this inseparable link between pastoral leadership, and

character. More recently, another guy, kind of in our lifetime right now, Dan  Dumas, D-U-M-A-S has written this. God is less concerned with what you know,  as a leader, or with what you do as a leader. Because he's primarily concerned  with who you are, as a leader. The character of the one leading God's people is  most vital. The good of those under authority depends on the faithfulness of  those in authority. If the leader's character of one of leading God's people is  most vital, the good of those under authority depends on the faithfulness of  those in authority. If the leaders are unfaithful in their lives in ministry, their  people suffer. So, in the end, I think our our, our ministry is only going to impact  others as much as our character will allow. Alright. That's just kind of like a  straight up sort of a thing. And I agree with Dan Dumas wholeheartedly that God is not nearly as concerned with what you know, or what you do as with who you  are. And you can you can just be a shining light for the, for the kingdom of God  just in your character. Okay. So are any of us perfect? By no means, as Paul  would say in Greek, Me kanena tropo, by no means are any of us perfect. Do  we all make mistakes? Yes. Are we all hypocrites at one time or another? Of  course we are. But we don't want to have these deep seated patterns. We don't  want to have all these blind spots. We don't want to be dealing with secret sins.  Because sooner or later your sin find you out it will be exposed. So deal with it  and be the kind of person others inside the church and outside the church can  look at and just admire, were given that admonition in the New Testament and  live you know, just such holy lives that people within and outside of the church  will kind of be drawn to you and be have affection for you because of your  character. Okay, so that's often what we think of with character on second. In  terms of character, we want to define it as a kind commitment to do the right  thing, regardless of circumstances, okay, so this is kind of like the inner fortitude  kind of a character, not that just you're kind of what we say, a good person and  you're trying to follow God, but there's, there's, like, internal strength, a  commitment to do the right thing, no matter what. So that's kind of the other side of character we're talking about. Now, this is really important and revitalization.  Because church renewal is hard work, it takes a long time, and you're gonna  have many difficult and unpopular decisions along the way. And, and under  those kinds of conditions, you know, that kind of constant pressure and force,  the resolve of a leader can be, can be compromised. And so obviously, we don't  want to, we don't want to be in in put ourselves in that sort of a situation. And I  think of Paul in, I believe it's chapter 2 in I Thessalonians. He's talking about his  ministry when he was in Thessaloniki, because, you know, when I was very  good, it wasn't to please people, it wasn't to make people happy, like I was there to serve God, I was there to do the right thing, I was there to honor the Lord, not  just you know, you know, scratch people's itches and tickle their ears, so they  would hear what they wanted to hear, I did what God called me to do. That's the  kind of character we're talking about here. Now, my friend, my mentor, Harry 

Reeder, who I've often referenced throughout this, he has a wonderful book on  leadership called the leadership dynamic. And in the leadership dynamic, he  uses this wonderful illustration of two different kinds of leaders. And if I'm not  mistaken, a number of people have used this, and I believe it. Martin Luther  King, Jr. may have been the first one to use it. I'm not sure on that. But I believe  Martin Luther King jr. did in fact, use this as a way to talk about quality of  character in the leadership. And so but in his book, we'll talk about Harry  because that's where you can read about it and the leadership dynamic. He  says, there's two kinds of leaders. One is a thermometer leader, in one is a  thermostat leader. So let's talk about those. What does a thermometer do? We  put a thermometer up on the wall, it tells you what is the current temperature in  the room. So if we put on air conditioning, the temperature would lower if we  turned on the heat, the temperature would go up. So a thermometer is very  responsive to the atmosphere to the conditions that surround so the  thermometer doesn't stay the same, it's kind of going up and down all the time.  Now, the difference with a thermostat is it doesn't respond to the temperature, a  thermostat sets the temperature, it dictates what the temperature is going to be.  Now, we think about this in terms of leaders. So a leader is going to either act in  one of two ways. They're either going to be kind of like a thermometer  temperature and and kind of be moving and changing with the atmosphere and  with whatever's going on. Or it's going to be the thermostat leader who sets the  tone sets the direction, you know, sets the temperature in and kind of leads from that. So obviously, hopefully, if you're hearing this, you can demise or you can  discern not to demise, you can discern that we want to be thermostat leaders,  right? We want to be leaders that set the directions set the temperature set the  atmosphere, rather than just responding. Because if you're a thermometer kind  of leader, you it's not about like you have that inner fortitude in you, it's you,  you're going to try to appease your congregation by by doing whatever they  want. Now, most often probably with revitalization. It's going to be about  maintaining the status quo traditionalism, you know, because that's what the  thermometer in the room says, Hey, this is what we all want. So we're going to  try to make everybody happy. So we look at the thermometer to see what what  everybody wants and what we're supposed to do. And I think there are just  countless people who've been in ministry, who who've made that choice. They're just unwilling to call the congregation to repentance and change. And it just  leads to the death and the decline of the church. I mean, the the thermometers  at a place where it's just cooking the church and they're just dying and there's an unwillingness to make a change. The change. But it's not just within the church.  It's kind of outside the church. And I see this in many churches today that the  leaders, what's not the thermometer inside the church? But what's the  thermometer out in the world? And what's the what's the readings, what's the  temperature in secular culture. And so the church begins to compromise the 

integrity of doctrine, or practice. For just the sake of numbers, in you're driven  more by kind of trying to get a crowd or numbers or to be well liked or something because we have the right temperature. We have the right kind of atmosphere,  the right kind of environment, we adopt these certain beliefs or whatever or  these kinds of practices. I don't care what the results are. You've kind of  abandon your your post, you know, you, you're failing to glorify God and you you might have drawn a crowd but or you might become popular in your community,  but like, who cares? I mean, like, really, who cares? Like you now seek the the  praise of men, rather than the praise of God? Right. That's what a thermometer  leaders doing and trying to seek the praise of men, rather than the praise of  God, which is, again, the complete opposite of what Paul says when he showed  up. He's like, I didn't seek your praise, I sought I sought to honor God. So it  takes no character to be a thermometer leader, right? You're just kind of like a  mirror, you're just reflecting back what everybody wants. But it takes character to be a thermostat, sort of leader willing to make difficult, unpopular, yet biblically  grounded decisions that will bring the church health and vitality. A thermostat  leader is one who was confident in their calling. They're confident in their identity in Jesus Christ. Thermometer leader is seeks really to only honor God. And they understand what what is required of that. Thermostat leader is willing to absorb  losses in order to achieve a God given goal, and yet is unwilling to take  shortcuts to get there. This is godly character friends, and this is the sort of thing that gives birth to true revitalization, this kind of character lead leadership, I  hope you're just like, a lot of yeses, and a lot of amens as you're going through  this. And maybe you've been challenged to, to lower your character or to take  shortcuts or to do Oh, no, you know, God is going to honor you. You will never  regret taking the high road, following the Lord, you know, it may not end well in  the worldly way. You know, it didn't end that great for John the Baptist, it didn't  end that great for Peter, it didn't end that great for Paul, but they were faithful to  the end and how the Lord honored everything they did. And again, that's our  audience is the Lord. It's not, it's not the crowd around us or the, in our churches or the crowd out in the community that we're trying to connect to. It's always for  the Lord. So I'd like to just wind up with a couple few bullet points here, on kind  of what is this integrated vision for leadership? We've got to kind of wrap up the  last three lectures about what does it mean to be a revitalized leader? What  what do you have to do? What do you have to be? We'll hit that in a second  here. Okay, number one. We covered this in the first lecture, I'm not going to  pound on it. The pastor has to have a strong and vital relationship with Christ,  you must know Christ, you must love Christ, you must regularly be engaged in  spiritual disciplines. Not only do you grow through that, but you model it to your  congregation, you truly become a living example that others can see and and  aspire to be. Okay. So we've, we've talked about that enough, I'm not going to  say any more on that. Two, an uncompromising commitment to preach the 

gospel. The pastor, so if you're a pastor, hearing this, you are the primary  instructor for the people of God in your ministry. And if they do not to hear you  preach the gospel, then who are they going to hear it from? And if you offer a  lukewarm or an only an occasional gospel message And if somebody does that,  well, then they're no pastor at all to the people under their charge. So a  commitment to just preach the gospel to just, you know, grind that down into the  deepest places of their brains, who Jesus is what he has done and who we are  in him. Okay? And the all the implications of that. If you're not doing that, then  then you need to start doing that, right? I mean, we have to make the gospel,  the center of all things, right. There is no real visionary, gospel leadership apart  from the preaching of the gospel. second, or third, I should say, a God fearing  leader who understands who knows the call and the urgency of gospel ministry.  This is a thermostat leader kind of thing. So you're not swayed by the demands  of the congregation or the whims of the culture, you're a servant of the Lord, and you're actively bringing the congregation to God's agenda, you know, you know  what needs to happen and you are driving them to that, you know, unflinchingly.  Okay, so, keep on going. Number four, in our integrated vision for leadership is  you need to be able to personally evangelize and disciple not just be able to, but you are doing it. Again, you are responsible, I'm sure, in some ways for the  general oversight of the church. But your primary role is not that of Executive  Administrator, your first call is to tend souls, and to vacate this responsibility is to vacate the office of pastor or whatever leadership role that you are in. So you  need to be sharing the gospel with those who don't know it, and you need to be  building and training up those who do know it and what the gospel means for  them now, helping them in their sanctification and, and their ministry as a as  they grow. So that's, you need to be doing that. If you're not engaged on that  level, you're not doing ministry at all. And then finally, last one, you need to be  continually growing in sanctification, and skill. The demands of ministry, just just  ministry are complex and demanding. And then you throw revitalization on top of that. And it's really, really hard. And if you're going to be in this for the long haul,  which I hope you are, you're going to need to have a deeper experience of  Christ, and you're going to need to hone your skills, you're going to need to do  classes like this, you're going to need to do other CLI classes, you're gonna  need to read spiritual classics, you're going to need to, you know, go to  conferences, read books on preaching better, and, you know, all these kinds of  things. So you just need to kind of keep on growing, keep on developing, as a  person and as a leader. So I think if you can kind of work on these five things  kind of as your model for your own life, and it's direction you're going and who  you want to be, you're gonna be well on your way to what God's called you to  be. And I can't promise any results because I have no idea what the outcome  will be other than the Lord saying to you well done good and faithful servant,  and brother and sister. That's all the applause you needed all the praise you 

need. And so with that, I'm going to just close out the prayer. And just give you a  hopefully some of these things to kind of think about and linger on as you  prepare to lead in revitalization. Father in heaven, once again, we turn to you in  prayer, we give you thanks and praise for the blood of your Son, Jesus Christ  that has taken away all our sin. Lord, as we consider our morals and our  character Lord, we do confess that we are not perfect. And we do believe we  plead the blood of Jesus Christ. And we thank you that we may enter your  throne room with boldness and confidence, knowing that we have been made  right with you. So Lord, I pray for all my good friends, watching this right now.  That you might build in them. A character that is in the image of Jesus Christ,  that they would no longer be conformed to this world but that they might be  transformed by the work of your son in a renewing of their minds and heart and  character Lord. As others see them Lord they would see they would see your  glory and and your love and your mercy radiating in and through them. Lord  many have seen that their lives become just a sign pointing to your glory. And  we pray this Lord, all in your name, amen.