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Christian Leaders looking for a new perspective

 

Learning to look for a new perspective.

I was talking to a leader who had called me for some advice and help a few months ago. After assessing the situation and listening to his ideas, I made some suggestions on how he could turn the situation around and make some really important and pertinent changes in his church. I believed that those changes were vital not only to his survival personally, but also to the relevance of his church in his community. In the course of the conversation he said to me "I can't do that because God hasn't told me to do that" I find it very difficult to then continue the conversation when I hear statements such as this. Who am I to argue with the Almighty.

 It got me thinking about when God speaks to us and how God speaks to us as leaders. I sometimes- in my more bored moments, watch God TV. I see the TV evangelists selling their wears and telling us they had this great conversation with God. God told them this and God told them that and they laughed and God laughed and the best thing of all is if we support them by sending our monetary gift, then we too can share in the financial blessing that they have received. The question I ask is did they really have an audible conversation with God? Or rather was it a process of reading the scriptures and prayer and that still small voice and the revealing of some revelation through the witness of others, the word of God and a supreme sense of peace that this was the direction that they should go. I am not saying that God doesn't speak audibly to people but in my experience it is rare. The fact is God does speak in different ways to different people. I just don't think he is as chatty as we make him out to be.

 But one of the ways that God speaks is through the witness and wisdom of others that cross our everyday paths. The leader that I was talking to needed help, he asked for my help, I looked at his situation, discussed the situation with him and came to my conclusions. These conclusions were based on experience, observations and my emotional intelligence. But  because he didn't like those conclusions his default setting was "Well God hasn't told me to do that" In that moment in that instant he was clear that God had not talked to him and shown him that he should go down the path I was suggesting. My question was they why did he ask for my help?  His church has continued to disintegrated even more over the last few months.

Sometimes it takes an Ass as in the case of Balaam for us to believe that God is speaking to us. Or like the rich young ruler who came to Jesus, sometimes we are not willing to give up the obvious for the sake of seeing the truth. For many leaders sometimes the answer is staring them right in the face but they can't see the wood for the trees and they become paranoid that a this can't be the answer to their problems. Sometimes the power of a new perspective is always better than an old idea.

 


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