So You Want to Be a Leader...

If they knew the real me, they wouldn't want anything to do with me. No matter who you are, there's no need to do this for you. You'll never be enough. If it was right to know your truth, I might always be alone.

I'm just looking for a place to count on myself. 1 Corinthians 4, if you have your Bible with you this morning, and I hope that you do. 1 Corinthians 4, this is week number 3 of a study through Paul's letter to the Corinthians called Cutting Through the Noise. That's the title we've given our series. 1 Corinthians chapter 4 this week. As you are turning there, we have a generation of Americans who, for the most part, distrust authority.

Right? Many will say that is because our generation inherited the legacy of Vietnam and things like President Nixon and his line and resignation with Watergate. We remember things like President Clinton building an entire justification for lying to the American people based on a tortured parsing of the word is. We are pretty sure that whatever institutions or powerful people tell us, we're pretty confident that it's not the full truth and that it's been carefully spun by experts to protect their interests.

We have seen how institutions that claim to represent truth and morality will use those very powers to perpetuate unjust practices that protect the powerful and benefit only themselves. Let's just be honest. We have long since given up on objective, unbiased media.

Everything. Everything feels on one level like fake news because we are aware of how selective and how biased everything we hear is. I'm sure you're like me. Sometimes I just check both sides. MSNBC or CNN and then look at Fox News and it's like I think we all live in two different worlds because we're reporting on the same thing but from entirely different vantage points. It's always funny for me to hear news commentators speak disparagingly of the media. Now big media will try to make you think and I'm like you are big media.

You're talking about yourself. If you are in a position of authority, you likely know the struggle to maintain credibility. This trust of authority is in our bloodstream as Americans.

I mean think about it. Our entire country is based on not trusting authority. Sorry Britain. No taxation without representation. You can keep your tea.

We are leaving. When our forefathers got around to setting up our government, they created a three branch government system. It was unique at the time and pretty much still is unique in the world because one branch can basically cancel out the other two because we just don't trust any of them.

Amen? My point is for both good reasons and bad, we distrust authority in this country. And of course, that attitude affects our view of leadership in the church. Sadly, very sadly, we see in the church a lot of the same abuses of power that we see in the world. TV pastors stealing money, Catholic priests abusing children, church leaders covering up pastoral abuse. Most of you know that in my time that I served as the president of the SB Southern Baptist Convention, that was something that we had to deal with.

Churches in our country who prioritize the reputation of the institution over the safety of a victim. So all of that, I share all of that to say that makes Paul's explanation in 1 Corinthians 4 of how we ought to view leadership in the church, it makes it so incredibly important. Verse 1, the apostle Paul says, this is how you should regard us. Us in that sentence meaning church leaders.

Now let me just be clear right up front for you, okay? The Bible is pro-leadership. It is even pro-authority. And it says that all of us ought to be submitted to leadership and authority on some level. But there is good authority and there is bad authority and in this chapter, Paul is going to give us four characteristics of good authority in the church. If you are a leader, if you are a leader of any kind, these are what you should aspire to be. You say, well, I'm not a leader, how is this going to apply to me this morning? Well, these are the traits that you should champion and call out and affirm in those you elevate in the church. Evangelical churches have a tendency to elevate leaders who are high on charisma even if low on character.

So you have to look at this chapter and we have to commit ourselves to avoid that here. But even more importantly, I would say to you that everybody, all of us at some point plays the role of leader in somebody else's life. Maybe you are a parent or maybe you lead a small group or maybe you teach kids or maybe you run the nursing floor in your hospital or you are a shift leader at a restaurant.

Maybe you are just trying to be a good influence in somebody else's life. Which means that in some way you are leading any of those people that I just talked about. All of us play the role of leader at some point in somebody else's life which means what Paul is going to say about himself in this chapter applies not just to me, it applies to you also. So look at verse one, you'll see the first two characteristics of the leader, Christian leader. The Christian leader Paul says is first, a servant of Christ. This is how one should regard us. As servants of Christ. You might be a leader of others, Paul is saying. You might even have authority over them. But your fundamental identity is that of servant of Christ.

That means a couple things practically. As a servant, it's never about your will or your desires for that person or group of people. It's about his will. A servant does not execute his own will, he follows the will of another. Interestingly, the word Paul uses for servant here is not his typical word. Usually the word translated servant in your Bible is the word doulos. Which just means slave or servant.

What he uses here is the word hyperitas. Which literally means under rower. Like on a boat. You know, like think of coxswain and you have all these rowers that are following the beat of the coxswain. Paul is like Jesus is the captain, he's the coxswain.

My job is to row and beat with him. Have you ever seen how a crew team works? You have one guy who is facing forward and all the other men and women are looking backwards at him. They can't even see where they're going and he's just kind of drumming out a beat. And they've got to keep in line with the beat. And if they start kind of going on their own beat, even if they're really really strong.

Even if they're rowing faster than everybody else, they're going to mess everything up. The point is to stay as an under rower in line with the captain or the coxswain. The mission statement of our church begins with this phrase, following the Holy Spirit. What we're trying to acknowledge is that Jesus is the captain, he is the one who is calling the beat. All of our jobs, including mine, is to say what does he want from this church.

God, where do you want it to go? It's not about my agenda, it's not about what I want, it's not even about what these people want. It's about what the Holy Spirit intends for us. So first, being a servant means it's his will, not mine. But second, being the servant of Christ means that I, or whatever leader, sees the group of people that he or she is leading as belonging to Christ, not to him. For me, for example, I know that God is the owner of this church. This church does not exist for me or my purposes.

I am, quite frankly, dispensable. That means I have to look at this church, not through the lens of what's best for JD. I have to look at this church through the lens of what's best for Jesus. And if what's best for Jesus is going the opposite way of what's best for JD, then we're all duty bound to go with Jesus and not JD. One of the best biblical examples of this is John the Baptist. You know, at one point in John the Baptist ministry, Jesus, his cousin, was starting to get more popular than John. And so a lot of people asked him, a lot of his close buddies asked him, like, hey man, doesn't that bother you? I mean, you spend all this time, like, building a following and then Jesus kind of comes along and he's got some miracles and some cool analogies and some sermons and he just upstages you? And John the Baptist responded in a way that every leader should respond. He said, no.

No, he must increase, even if it means that I must decrease. John then compared his role of leadership in the church, he compared it to being the best man at a wedding. How many of you men have ever played the role of best man at a wedding?

Raise your hand. Okay, we got a pastor in our staff named Ade who told me he has been in 30 wedding parties. I was like, bro, you need less friends, am I right?

Okay, just get rid of a bunch of them. But traditionally, the role of a best man in a Jewish wedding is to support the groom. He's the servant of the groom.

That's all basically what he does. His job is to make sure the wedding happens as planned. In our tradition here in the West, the best man always stands right behind the groom.

He's got a very important role, but if he's doing his job, you shouldn't really notice him. Nobody should end the ceremony talking about the best man, am I right? I mean, in fact, in the greatest moment in any wedding, everybody agrees there's one awesome moment. Unfortunately, it's not when I deliver the wedding sermon. Nobody even remembers what I say. In fact, I'm very aware as I'm up there, I'm saying words that no one will ever remember because they're just focused on the bride and the groom.

That's as it should be. The greatest moment is when that back door opens and the music crescendos and there she stands, right? All of her resplendent glory.

There has never been a bride in the history of the world that did not look amazing in that moment. And everybody turns and they look at her and where's the next place they look? Always back at him because you're waiting to see, is this man who's macho, is he going to crack and is he going to get a tear?

And that's what everybody, people exchanging money, they're betting, is he going to cry? And everybody loves it. Everybody loves it because this is the moment. She's looking at him, he's looking at her and the focus is on the two of them. You got the best man back here. Now say you got a best man, he's standing right over here behind the groom. And let's say that at that moment, she's coming down the aisle and he kind of leans out from behind, over the shoulder of the groom. He starts raising his eyes at her and winking or whatever, however he's trying to flirt with her. What is the groom going to do in that moment?

He's going to turn around and punch the best man in the throat, right? Because this moment is not about you. And who are you to jump into this moment and distract the bride from the bridegroom and get the attention onto you? And John says that is the pastor leader who is more concerned about what the church is thinking about him than he is thinking about what the church is thinking about Jesus. I ought to be fine in this church and so should you with being totally invisible.

If the whole ceremony goes off and no one ever knows my name, that is totally fine because I am the servant of Christ. I'll tell you one of the ways I had to learn to apply this was when God really started to put on the heart of this church, church planting and sending out missionaries. I don't know if you know this, but the kinds of people that volunteer to go on church plants, they're not sideline people. We've had 1,500 or so people uproot their lives from this church to go out in one of our church planting teams. All of them had one thing in common.

They were super involved. And church plants, they don't benefit our church a lot either. I always say church plants are like teenagers. All they want is your money and your affirmation and then for you to leave them alone.

That's all they want. So it doesn't benefit us as a church. And I remember when we really started to do this and we were giving our church planters permission to recruit some of our best leaders. It was like one of the first years we did this, I was meeting with these planters that were recruiting people from our church.

And I'm like, all right, let's go around and tell me who you've recruited. And they started to go around the table. And I don't know if I'd call it a panic attack, but it was panic. I was hearing the names of like friends and worship leaders and elders and big givers.

Not that I know who gives what, but big givers. And I was like, no, no, not her. And I remember this moment where the Holy Spirit was like, this is not your church. I remember, I've told you this before, I literally had to put my hands on the table. I was having a little moment while they were all talking, nobody knew about it.

I had this moment where I just had to take my hands and open them out, stretch them out underneath the table. And to say, this is not my church. And if God, you're going to grow your kingdom by taking out some of the very best people from our church, then that's how it has to be because you must increase and I must decrease. I read about a really famous pastor in the 1800s named Charles Simeon. Dr. Simeon had built this big church, similar I guess to ours. And in the midst of it, God raises up a younger guy in the ministry who could really preach better than Charles Simeon could.

The problem was that Charles Simeon didn't feel like he was quite ready to retire. But after praying about it and consulting with his leaders, he knew that it was better for the church and for the city for him to step aside and let this other leader lead. He said it was one of the hardest things that he had ever had to do. I remember reading that in a biography and thinking, I hope that when that day comes for me, I hope that I will have the same attitude because I understand I am the servant of Christ and this church doesn't exist for me. We all exist for him.

The question for you is this. If you are assigned to a leadership position, do you see that leadership position as service? Do you see your leadership role as a place of power over others or do you see it as a place, a position that you can give service to others on behalf of Christ if you are a boss? Do you see that as a place from which you can lift up your employees on behalf of Christ? To help them, to help develop them and bless their lives or are they cogs in your machine?

If you manage a company, is your goal, is your goal of the whole company to produce something that blesses society and helps make people's lives better? If you are a parent, do you see yourself as just Christ's tool to grow your kids for his purposes? You get a temporary window. Kids don't really belong to you, they belong to him. You get a temporary window and you are ready to open your hands and let them go wherever he wants them to go.

And I know that sounds so obvious. I cannot tell you how many parents we have of kids in this church that grow up in this church. And when God begins to put his hand on the kid and tell them he wants them to be a part of going to be a missionary, the parents say no.

As if they were the ones that owned the kid and they are going to tell God what to do with his child. The point is any leadership position has to be seen first and foremost as an act of service to Christ. Where you see yourself as just a tool, just a tool in his hands. That ties into Paul's next thing, number two. A Christian leader, he says, is a steward.

This is how one should regard us. A service of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Now the mysteries of God that Paul is referring to here is not whether Adam had a belly button or if there is an area 51 in the Bible or anything like that. The mysteries of God here that Paul refers to are the gospel. That's what he's made clear in chapters one through three, the mysterious thing that God has been doing all along in history.

And sending his son to die on a cross to reconcile the world to himself. Paul says, I didn't write those mysteries. I didn't come up with them. God did.

I'm just passing them along. I'm just a mailman. Paul doesn't use the analogy mailman. He uses a similar one and that is steward. The word there in Greek is oikonomos and it literally means household servant. Household manager.

It might be my favorite one word description of a pastor. You see in those days big families often had a steward that oversaw the affairs of the house. That steward managed the kids. He or she taught the kids. He took care of the property. But even though he was hyper involved with the kids and the property, they weren't his kids.

And it wasn't his property. His job was to execute the master or the father's will. Here's what that means for me as a preacher. I don't decide what God's kids eat.

The father and the mother choose that. My job is just to prepare it into a meal. This book right here, this is what our father has said we should eat spiritually. My job is just to deliver it to you. If you don't like some of it, we'll take it up with dad. I just want my preacher to serve up Twinkies and hot pockets all the time. Too bad.

Dad knows we need to be healthy and sometimes he describes vegetables for us. Don't hate on me. I'm just a steward.

That's all I am. Servant and steward. In the next three verses, Paul will show you how those first two words address something, help you address something that every leader faces and that is criticism. Believe me, if you are a leader of any kind, you are going to get it. Lots of it.

Good and bad. Paul got it. Paul says, look, I first process criticism. I put it all through the lens of servant and steward.

Check it out. Check it out, verse three. Paul says, because I am a servant of Christ and because I'm his steward, he says, verse three, with me, it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.

Why? It's the Lord who judges me, not you. At the end of the day, I don't answer to you.

I answer to him. And by the way, if you're really a Christian leader, you shouldn't be surprised by criticism, right? I mean, we are charged to represent Christ in a world that murdered him. And Jesus said, what they did to me, you can expect them to do to you.

Because I was actually a better version of you anyway. So if they did it to me, they're going to do it to you. So expect criticism when it comes. When it comes, keep your eyes on me because you answer only to me.

You're my servant and my steward now, not theirs. Now, let me be very clear, and this is a very important caveat, I think. I want you to know I welcome a lot of criticism because I know that I'm not infallible. Sometimes, often, God uses other people, sometimes friends, and sometimes even adversaries, to point out inconsistencies and shortcomings in my life. Some of the best things that have happened to me in terms of shaping me into who I am have happened through people who were critical of me.

So I want to remain open to that. Over the years, countless people have spoken into my life, and they've shaped me into the leader and the man that I am today. One of the things I've tried to lead our team in here at the Summit Church is being open to criticism.

Not just open, but to seek it out. Because Proverbs, for example, says things like Proverbs 26, 12, the one who is wise in their own eyes, there's more hope for a fool than for him. I don't ever want to get to a point where I feel like, no, no, no, I don't take criticism because I know what I'm supposed to do.

That's more hope for a fool than for that guy. I need the eyes of others. But the point is, at the end of the day, as a servant and as a steward, my soul answers only to God. People say to me sometimes, they're like, man, when I look at you online, you seem to get a lot of criticism. How do you handle that?

Well, first, I don't pay attention to it, so stop pointing it out to me, okay? But truthfully, I mean, yes, criticism bothers me like it would anybody else. I mean, I want people to like me. In fact, I'm a people pleaser.

I like people to like me. And so, yes, it bothers me, but here's what Paul's saying. I've got this vision. In fact, it used to happen a lot when I was preaching early on, not as much anymore.

But I get really nervous and feel like this is not going to go over well, but I feel like that's what I'm supposed to say. I would get this image in my mind of like, basically, think God the Father in heaven watching me preach. And he's standing there at the edge of heaven. He's looking down on earth. And he's watching, and he's like, oh, here he goes. He gets all the angels together. He's like, y'all, come on, look. Look, watch, this is not going to go well. This is JD.

He's trying to preach again, and he's going way too long like he always does. But that's my boy. And he's doing what I told him to do, and I'm proud of him. And that vision, that thought of God the Father being pleased with me gave me the strength to just not be devastated by other people disapproving of me. Y'all, I gave up long ago. One of the greatest things I ever gave away. I gave away trying to manage everybody else's opinions of me. It's exhausting.

I'm just worried about him. I perform for an audience of one. 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 Apollos 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. Y'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 as 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. Like I said, the first week, there will always be famous people in the church. 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, hear me, 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 3.

If we look at one chapter, this is where he starts this. But I, brothers and sisters, I cannot 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?

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 have all the books written by one guy, listen to everything he's preached, that is not a sign of maturity. In fact, the analogy here with parenting is great. 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 Ten Commandments. The first four commandments are about you and God. Don't, you know, worship any other gods, don't have any graven images, remember the Sabbath, don't think it's name. All 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 protect, 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.

Right? 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, you know, 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 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 that. 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 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 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. If 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 could 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. And 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? 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 to angels and to men. To the present hour we hunger and thirst. We're poorly dressed. Our clothes don't match. They don't fit right.

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

I don't even draw a salary, Paul is saying. I've got to work over here on 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. 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 8.

Look at it. Paul says already you have become rich. Without us, you have become kings. We apostles are fools for Christ's sake. 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's sarcasm? Remember how he described the Corinthians in chapter 1? Remember this? I pointed this out. Paul's like, hey, not a lot of you are wise or noble or amazing. Remember I pointed out this is actually an actual group of people. 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, who's he 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. 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 to 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've 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.

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, you know, in medieval Rome was 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 have I 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. Maybe you're just listening in to this podcast. 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. If you don't remember him, he died in a plane wreck in 1982. He was a hippie, got saved, was 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. So 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 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 phrased 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 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.

Now let me tie a bow on this with one very special and very important word. Listen, some of you in the church have been hurt in the past by a spiritual authority. And I just want to say to you, as a spiritual leader, I am sorry. Because for a person to abuse their spiritual authority, that is a horrible sin. And I want you to hear this, from a pastor, you should always feel free, to flee from spiritual abuse. We would love to hear be a help to you in this if you can, if you need to heal. Right, we try to be very accountable.

We try to have the opposite of that kind of leadership culture. And we want to be here for you if we can and you are comfortable when the service is over. Some of our team will be down front here.

There will be men and women, staff members and volunteers at every campus. Come tell us. Please tell us if you've suffered. We want to pray with you. We want to help bring healing where there's been pain. We just want to be able to walk through this chapter with you because that is a horrible thing. And I hope you see that it's not what God intended for leaders.

As you bow your heads at all of our campuses, bow your heads. Let me ask you a question. 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 says a man who isolates himself will end up seeking his own desire and will rage against all sound judgment.

It's like we often say around here, things that grow in a secret garden will always grow mutative. 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? One of the best ways you can do that is join this church. Hey, finally, maybe you just start now in this whole process and you're like, look, I'm ready to learn more about Jesus. I'm ready to start.

Let us know that. Text the word ready, R-E-A-D-Y to 33933. Text the word ready to 33933 right now or at the end of the service, come talk to one of our prayer counselors down front whenever the service is over because we want to start that conversation. Father, I pray it would be a place where you would lead and the leaders that you put in place would resemble you in how they serve and how they sacrifice and how they give. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.