So You Want to Be a Leader…, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. I want to know Christ. Yes, I want to know the power of His resurrection in my ministry, but that only comes, Paul says, through the participation of His sufferings. I'd have got to become like Him in His death if I want a taste of the power of His resurrection. The fellowship of His suffering is the only way to the power of His resurrection. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian, J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Think for a moment about your favorite leader. My guess is that two of the most attractive characteristics of that person are that they are humble and that they serve others in their leadership. You know, in order for a generation of leaders to be raised up in the church, in the workplace, and in the home, they must first be grounded in the resurrection power that enables those types of behaviors.

But what exactly does that mean? Today, Pastor J.D. explains further the four characteristics the apostle Paul says should be championed in those who lead.

Now, if you'd like to follow along with the transcript of each message, you can always find them free of charge at jdgreer.com. We're jumping in where we left off yesterday with a message Pastor J.D. titled, So You Want to Be a Leader. Paul says, I am a servant.

I am a steward. He says, number three, a Christian leader is only a surrogate. That's verse six. Verse six, I've applied all these things to myself and to Apollo as for your benefit, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written about any of us, that none of you may be puffed up in favor against one another. You all remember real quick, remember in this whole section, chapters one through four, I told you Paul is dealing with the problem of divisions in the church. Paul said that a lot of these divisions ultimately came from the Corinthians being overly dependent on some earthly leader.

And Paul says, you got to cut that out. My goal here, he says, is for you not to think more highly of any of us than what you really should. Earthly leaders, they're just temporary, broken, faulty stand-ins for Jesus. Even better, think of them like instruments in his hand. Ultimately, he and he alone is responsible for your salvation. Yes, God uses different people at different times in our lives, and it is if for a time, they are like the voice of God to us. But God is always the one working in them and through them. Think of it like a hand in a glove. If a doctor puts on a pair of latex gloves and performs a life-changing surgery on you, the miracle is not in the glove.

The miracle is in the hand that fills the glove. The same is true with God. There will always be people that God uses mightily. There were in the early church. Peter and Paul and Apollos were evidently types of celebrities at Corinth.

People knew who they were. And I told you, there's nothing wrong with you feeling connected to one of those people or even feeling indebted to them because of how God used them or uses them in your life. The problem is when you don't eventually transfer the roots of your identity off of them and onto Jesus, and you never transfer your dependence off of them and onto Christ. Being overly devoted to or overly dependent on an earthly leader is a sign of immaturity, not devotion. Real quick, look at how Paul even starts this section back in chapter three, flip back one chapter.

This is where he starts this. But I, brothers and sisters, I could not address you as spiritual people. I had to talk to you like people of the flesh, like babies in Christ, infants. For you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, I follow Paul, another says, I follow Apollos. Are you not merely being human?

Or you could read that, are you not being childish? Paul says your dependence on an earthly leader is a sign not of your spiritual depth, but your spiritual immaturity. The fact that you got all the books written by one guy, listening to every single thing that he's preached, that is not a sign of maturity. For a while, parents, we parents, we stand in the place of God with our kids, right? When my kids were toddlers, everything they learned about the authority and the care and the love of God, all of it came through me and their mother. And that's by design. We are supposed to learn to love and trust and obey God by learning to love and trust and obey our parents.

By the way, that's why, you know this, right? That's why the command to honor your father and mother comes right in the middle of the 10 commandments. The first four commandments are about you and God. The last five are all about you and your neighbor. Horizontal relationship, no murder, kill, steal, adultery, all that stuff.

Don't lie. In between those, there's a hinge commandment. The hinge commandment, the fifth one is honor your father and mother. And it kind of bridges the two relationships. It's about your relationship to God, and it's also about your relationship horizontally. Because the way that you learn to obey and worship God, at least for the first part of your life, is by learning to obey and submitting to your parents. Got it?

Right? So that's all well and good. But over time, every parent knows, every good parent knows, you want your child to wean their faith off of you and put it onto God. And if your child is not doing that, they're not growing up. If your child is 18, 19, 20 years old, and still depends on you for everything, and still obeys you like your God, then they've never actually grown up.

They're not even honoring you. It's not even what the Bible's talking about. By the way, I know a lot of parents who seem to want this perpetual continual relationship. But that's not the point of parenting. The point of parenting is for you to transfer their obedience gradually off of you and transfer their obedience off and their dependence off of you and put it onto God.

And then you just totally release them to God and trust them with Him because they never belong to you in the first place. Paul says that's how we leaders in the church ought to be with you. In fact, if you've read this chapter, you see Paul is actually going to refer to himself as a spiritual father.

You look at verse 14 and 15. He says, I'm writing to you as children. I'm your father. I am your spiritual father.

And that's how I see myself. I'm not here. I'm not here to be your leader or your savior or foundation on your wall with God.

I'm just here to get you to Him. I asked you the first week of this series, I said, if I died tomorrow, wake up dead, would you leave this church or would you stay? And I said, remember, I said, if you think I'd probably stay good for you. That is awesome.

You have grown up. Your allegiance is to this body. Your allegiance is to our shared mission. But if you're like, yeah, I don't know if you woke up dead tomorrow, I'd probably, I'd probably go come a week or two and then I'd probably leave and go to a different church. Well, I would just say humbly that shows you're still a child spiritually because your allegiance is to me.

And that's a huge problem. There's nothing wrong, there's nothing wrong, I told you, there's nothing wrong with coming to a church because the preaching connects with you or because the worship really engages you or your kids love the student ministry. There's nothing wrong with coming for that reason. But over time, you've got to put your roots into Christ. You've got to put them into His church and not into a particular earthly personality.

I was like, I put, I applied all these things to myself and to Apollos for your benefit. Because I wanted you to learn not to go beyond what is written and trust us for things you should be looking to Jesus for. Who is Paul?

Who is JD? We didn't die for you. You weren't baptized into our name. It's not our spirit that fills you. The Lord is your shepherd.

And the rest of us are just temporary and dispensable stand-ins. In fact, Paul uses the phrase in Christ over and over and over and over in these verses. In Christ, in Christ is your identity. In Christ is your hope.

God wore me like a glove for a while, but the saving hand was always His. Human leaders come and go. Some of them will disappoint you. Some of them will disappoint you bitterly.

Hear me, okay? This church will disappoint you. I will disappoint you. I've never disappointed you.

It's just because you don't know me that well yet. The people that I'm closest to are the ones who are the most disappointed with me, not the least. But Christ will never leave you or forsake you. So put your roots in Him.

I'm glad I can be here for a time to be a help in that, but put your roots in Him, not me. There's two kinds of authority in the church. There's bad authority. That's where leaders use their power and privilege and position to direct attention to themselves.

Then there's good authority where leaders use their power, privilege, and position to direct people to Him. That leads me to the last one, number four. A Christian leader, Paul says, is a spectacle of suffering. A spectacle of suffering.

You're like, did you just come up with all these S's because it's time to get... No, no. Paul does. Watch this. Verse nine. For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we've become a spectacle to the world.

See, told you. Both the angels and the men. To the present hour, we hunger and thirst. We're poorly dressed. Our clothes don't match. They don't fit right.

They got holes in them. We're buffeted, not buffeted, buffeted and homeless. We labor, working with our own hands. We got two jobs. We can't even support ourselves in ministry.

I don't even draw a salary, Paul is saying. I got to work over here and this other thing so I can make money to come preach to you. When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure.

When slandered, we entreat. We have become and still are like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. Paul says to Christian leaders, you should expect to suffer. In fact, you should even expect to be a spectacle of suffering.

A lot of leaders feel shocked or scandalized when they suffer. Like God has somehow let down his end of the bargain. Hey God, I did my part, right? I was faithful. I did what I was supposed to do.

I did what you asked me to do and now this? Paul says, yeah, that's what we're called to. We follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

He lived perfectly and suffered and died. The Corinthians had bought into something that Martin Luther would later call the theology of glory. It is every generation of every Christians and every culture buys into this. The theology of glory. It sounds good, right? Theology of glory.

It sounds awesome. The theology of glory is where you assume that God's presence on earth will always be accompanied by earthly vindications of success. We all think that. What the New Testament teaches, however, Luther said, is not a theology of glory. It teaches a theology of the cross. The theology of the cross teaches us that the one on earth who was most endowed with the spirit of God was the one who suffered the most.

And so those who follow in the footsteps of that one should also expect to suffer like he did. By the way, don't miss the brilliant example of apostolic sarcasm. It's in verse eight.

Look at it. Paul says, already you have become rich. Without us, you have become kings. We apostles are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak.

You are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. How do I know that sarcasm? Remember how he described the Corinthians in chapter one? Remember this? I pointed this out. Paul's like, hey, not a lot of you are wise or noble or amazing. I remember I pointed out like, this is like an actual group of people. And it's like me standing up here and being like, hey, look around. There's not many of you out there that we would call good looking, right? You're not that smart. Nobody really hears that impressive.

And you're looking around like, what are you talking about? Paul says that to the Corinthians church, like, hey, not many of you are wise or noble. He says, but we apostles, we suffer more than anybody. And that should disabuse you of this idea that closeness with God equals earthly success.

A Christian leader is called to suffer and should not be surprised when it comes. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer, where the gospel cuts through the noise of the world each and every day. We'll be right back with the rest of today's teaching in just a moment. But first, have you taken a look at our new monthly resource that's available to our Summit Life family? If you're ready to take your study of God's word to the next level, our monthly premium resource, Cutting Through the Noise, 14 five-minute studies in 1 Corinthians is available with a gift of $35 or more. And this study guide will not only take you deeper into the message of this most important book, but it also serves as an easy entry point into spending time each day with the Lord. Set aside five minutes and get to know Jesus better by studying His word and applying it to and applying it to your life.

Give us a call today at 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgreer.com to support this ministry and receive this new study as our thanks. A few years ago, a very successful businessman in our church, he and his wife and their two teenage kids felt called to go serve God in a Muslim unreached people group across the world. So he resigned his high-paying executive job in corporate America, a great company here, left his very comfortable home in Chapel Hill to get trained to go live overseas in a Muslim unreached people group. He did it. He followed through with it. He resigned his job.

They sold their house. He was getting trained to go. And right in the middle of this, their son develops a pretty significant medical condition. And in his journal that he shared with me, he wrote this.

He said, wait, Lord, this is not what was supposed to happen. We submitted to you. We submitted your will for our lives. We've sold just about everything we have. We're disassembling the American dream piece by piece, leaving everything and everyone familiar. We're moving our family from the medical capital of the southeast to a place with little to no health care and a place that is hostile to the gospel to be your witnesses in obedience to you.

And then you do this. He said, all these feelings of it's unfair are God have you forgotten us. Later he said he learned that this was all part of the process through the suffering, through the unfair treatment, through the criticism and the slander, the difficulty, the hardship. Christ was revealed in them and then made better known through them. He always told me he loved this quote by A.W.

Tozer. It is doubtful, it is doubtful whether God can use a man greatly before he's first hurt him very deeply. Or to quote Paul's version of that, I want to know Christ. I want to know Christ, yes. I want to know the power of his resurrection in my ministry, but that only comes, Paul says, through the participation of his sufferings. I think God had become like him in his death if I want a taste of the power of his resurrection. The fellowship of his suffering is the only way to the power of his resurrection.

You get that? There's a famous story about Saint Dominic, 12th century church leader. Think of him like an early reformer of the church. The story goes that he's visiting the Pope. And the Pope in medieval Rome is surrounded by all this wealth and splendor and even military might. And the Pope kind of jokes, sort of condescendingly to this poor monk. He's like, yeah, I guess Peter can no longer say what Peter said in Acts 3 is silver and gold, how about none? Am I right? The story goes that Saint Dominic looked back at him and said, yep, but neither can Peter say anymore, rise up and walk.

Because with the increase of silver and gold, a lot of times what that comes with, the cost of, is a decrease in the resurrection power of Jesus. Parents, you feel wrong by your kids? You feel wrong by your kids? It's part of the process. It's part of the process of God bringing salvation into their lives. Suffer well. Suffer well. Suffer patiently like Christ.

The vehicle for the power of the resurrection in their lives is often the suffering of the parent. You're getting unfair treatment. You're getting pushback from friends you're trying to help. I will tell you the wrongest I have ever been treated in my life is by people.

Friends, I was just trying to help, trying to encourage to do the right thing. Is that happening to you right now? Suffer well. Suffer well.

It's just part of the appointed process. You're a Christian leader. You're a pastor, maybe a missionary. You're wondering why people are treating you so unfairly. Suffer well, my friend.

Suffer well. The power of the resurrection only comes through the fellowship of the sufferings of the cross. I tell you, a lot of pastors have turned ministry, a lot of leaders have turned ministry into an idol.

It's a great place to get big power, big pulpit, big notoriety. God cannot bless people being in ministry who are not servants and stewards. At least he won't bless it long term. You've got to lay that down on the altar. You've got to say, I'm going to be a servant, just a steward.

I'm going to expect to suffer. Only then is your ministry going to have power. It's only when you take what's most precious to you and put it down on the altar that God picks it back up and he anoints you. There was a famous Christian singer named Keith Green. I wish you don't remember him. He died in a plane wreck in 1982, but he was a hippie, got saved. He's already a great musician, so he started to sing for Jesus. He did well. He was successful, so to speak, but he just knew. He was like, it's not.

It's just not. He said, music was always my idol. Ministry became my idol, so he said I had to come to a point where I laid it down. I said, God, I'm not going to pick up an instrument again. I walk away from that.

I'm just going to serve. He said, God, let me be like that for about a year, year and a half. He said then about a year, year and a half later, he communicated to me very clearly, okay, you laid it down. Now it's time to pick it back up.

He said, I picked it back up. From that point on, people who knew him and listened to him will tell you that there was an anointing, a resurrection power that filled his music that had not been there before. It's because God only resurrects things that you let die.

Whatever that position is of leadership, you've got to let it die. You've got to let it die because only then does he fill it with resurrection power. Now look at how Paul ends all this. Verse 16, I urge you, I urge you to be imitators of me. That's what I sent to you, Timothy, my beloved and faithful child of the Lord. I wanted to remind you of my ways in Christ, like I teach them everywhere in every church. Paul wants you not only to observe these things about his leadership, he wants you to become these things in your leadership with others. That's why I said it's not just about Paul and me, it's about you.

He said, hey, do what I do. We want every leader at the Summit Church on every level to be characterized by those four things. By the way, I love how Paul emphasizes, right, just be like me, I'm not different than you. As an apostle, I'm not on a different plane, I'm not called to sit in positions of privilege and power while you are called to serve and sacrifice and suffer. I'm not called to be a pastor, I lead in all those things, just do what I do. A few years ago, I heard this mega pastor say that pastors of large churches should not really work the way he's praised it is, they shouldn't work in the church, they should work on the church.

What he meant by that was, when you become a pastor of a large church, you know what, it's not really helpful for you to serve, to live in accountable relationships because people just don't understand you. You don't need to do the hard work of relationship building and getting your hands dirty or sharing Christ or sacrificial generosity. My greatest service is to be an effective CEO of an organization that helps you do those things. That's the greatest way that I can serve. I just want you to know that we fundamentally reject that view of leadership here at the Summit Church. We want our team to model all of these things that I've mentioned, servanthood, sacrifice, generosity.

We want them to be accountable in small groups, sharing Christ with others so that they can say to you, I can say, and they can say, just do what I do. Just do what I do. Just serve like I serve. Share like I share. Be generous like I'm trying to be generous.

I don't want to stand up here and tell you, give your money so that I can enjoy it. It is, hey, follow me as I sacrifice and give. By the way, tragically, the pastor that made that statement was one who would end up abusing his power and falling for ministry. God did not design leaders for the stage.

He didn't design anybody for the spotlight. He designed us for the towel and the washbasin to serve others and wash their feet like he did. It's the only place that you'll find resurrection power.

It's the only place that there's spiritual health. So Summit, listen, let's champion that cultural leadership here, and let's raise up a generation of leaders in the church, in the business place, in the home that want to lead like this. If you're a leader, are you seeking to lead like this? Maybe you just need to have a few moments to repent. God, give me the heart of a servant. God, make me a steward, just a surrogate.

Help me to suffer well. Let me ask others of you this question. Have you put yourself under spiritual leadership? Are you under the spiritual leadership of somebody else?

If the answer to that is I don't think so, that's a huge problem. Listen to me, men especially. Proverbs 18, one says, a man who isolates himself will end up seeking his own desire and will rage against all sound judgment. God wants you to be under godly leadership. He wants you to be under godly authority. He wants you to surround yourself with people who will push back on you and call out things in your life.

Have you put yourself under leadership like that? Thank you for joining us for today's message on godly leadership right here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. Our current resource is titled Cutting Through the Noise. J.D., I know you have a specific aim in mind, so what do you hope that listeners will take away from this study when it's all completed?

Thanks, Molly. We really wanted to find a way to help everybody study the Bible, no matter what kind of time they have. You see, in 1 Corinthians, Paul follows a pattern. He defines a problem for the people of Corinth, and then he leads us to see that problem through the lens of the gospel. It's like he's giving them an instinct so that problems he doesn't cover, they'll have the right instinct to know how to apply the gospel to their situation. We're going to follow that same pattern in this resource to give you that instinct. So we'll answer questions like, how should I think about a difficult marriage or singleness?

How should I think about a difficult marriage or singleness? We're one of my favorites. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul helps you see whether or not you're worshiping an idol. Each of these little five-minute devotions will give you a question to answer, some scripture, a point to ponder, and then a way to pray and apply what you've learned. It's written in 14 parts, so it would take you, what, 14 days, two weeks, three weeks, and you can go at whatever pace works for you.

We've designed them so they really will only take about five minutes each, for real, because we know that for some of you, that's how long it needs to be for you to really make this work. And so the goal is growing consistently daily. I'd love for you to take a look at jdgrier.com. I do think you'll find it helpful. Like Pastor JD said, head to jdgrier.com or give us a call right now at 866-335-5220 to receive your copy of Cutting Through the Noise, 14 five-minute studies in 1 Corinthians.

Again, that's 866-335-5220. Because of our generous partners, we are able to continue to spread the good news of the gospel nationwide and online. So thanks for being a part of this ministry. I'm Molly Vidovitch, inviting you to join us again Friday as we continue through 1 Corinthians, right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.