:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

If I wanted to tell the story of how God led me into my writing ministry, I may need to work on being completely honest, but I certainly wouldn’t need to be all that brave. My story is my own to share, and at least in the Christian community, I should have nothing to fear—nothing that should require bravery.

Ah, but once we talk about a woman’s ministry story, that is another matter altogether.

When I started the Women in Ministry Series, I wanted to create a safe place for women to share their stories. So far, it has worked. Women have filled every day since the start of January 2012, and we’re booked just about through October.

Women want to talk about how God has called them into ministry.

I receive e-mails every week about this series and see many tweets about it. Over the past four months, a certain word has started to really bother me: brave. People say that women are brave to tell their stories and that I’m brave to share them. While I don’t disagree that these women are brave, I’m bothered that they must be brave in this particular circumstance.

Why must women be brave just to talk about God’s call for their lives if they’re just telling the truth?

Why do women fear telling the truth about the ways the church has treated them?

I saw a few of those reasons last week when a female minister wrote a guest post on a top blog about some of the ways she’d like to see the church change in its approach to women. So far as I could tell, she didn’t suggest anything all that radical, but a few of the commenters resorted to slander, name-calling, and other mean-spirited tactics.

These are the kinds of comments that I work really hard to avoid at the Women in Ministry Series. They’re the reason why I have a very clear comment policy that aims to keep away from endless debates, let alone name-calling and personal attacks.

I know that many women hold their breath before posting anything that suggests that perhaps the church may be wrong about a few things or that perhaps women have an equal calling with men. They don’t necessarily fear disagreement. They fear the attacks. They fear the bullies.

The bullies are the reason why women need to be brave in order to simply tell their stories.

I’m not out to defend someone who writes an angry or critical story. There are poor ways to tell the truth. However, in the case of the Women in Ministry Series, women are really just trying to tell the truth, and sometimes the truth paints certain men in a bad light. Telling the truth does that sometimes.

One of the main tactics used by a bully is to blame the women for taking offense. Just by telling the truth they are immediately placed in the wrong because they are trying to change the status quo—and bullies like to retain control of the status quo. In the bully’s mind, there is no “right” way for a woman to tell her story. She just needs to ask God to forgive her for not seeing things the same way as the bully.

The world of online conversation is a murky one where there are few rules, but I’d like to suggest a few.

For one, a woman who desires to respectfully tell her story with integrity should have nothing to fear. She shouldn’t have to muster up her courage to talk about a ministry calling or anything else, much like I don’t have to worry about the consequences of my own ministry stories calling down condemnation and name-calling from fellow Christians. Disagreements will come, and we should not fear them. I’m talking about the vitriol, name-calling, and anger that comes from bullies.

As to another step, I’d like to suggest that we stand up to bullies. I have three suggestions for doing this:

Bullies need grace too.

Hope for the best and tell the bullies how their remarks are being perceived. Offer them a chance to back peddle and to apologize. I’ve done this a few times and have been amazed on several occasions at how an online bully turns out to be a nice person once he realizes there are real people behind the hyperlinks and pictures of comment forms.

Bullies must be stopped.

Sometimes reaching out to a bully doesn’t work. They are either too angry, fearful, or controlling to respond to kind words and hope. In that case, every blog owner has a right to delete bullies. The internet makes it possible for everyone to set up his/her own website, Facebook page, and Twitter account.

Andrew Jones is one of the early Christian bloggers I first read, and he often spoke of his blog in terms of hospitality—a front porch where public conversations could be joined by anyone passing by. I’ve found that a helpful way to think of websites and bullies. I would never let a bully ruin a conversation among neighbors on my front porch, and I have no tolerance for bullies who want to control conversations by attacking others.

By the same token, if we reach out to bullies in person and they refuse to stop attacking others verbally, they need to understand that they themselves have created conditions where community with them cannot happen.

Make the right mistakes.

The problem here is that I’m also asserting control over bullies. Can I become a bully in the process? That is the risk. The difference is that website owners and Christians in general need to create space for discussion and healthy debate. The point isn’t silencing all dissent—only the bullies. How can we create the best environments for conversations?

I have really wrestled with the comment policy at the women in ministry series, but I think closing the comments to theology debates has saved the series from becoming just another dumping ground for the same debates that really smart theologians can’t even sort out. In the process, many women have told me that the safety of my comment policy makes it possible for them to contribute to the conversation.

I’m sure I’ve made mistakes with moderating comments on my blog, but I think those are the right kinds of mistakes: mistakes made on behalf of creating more conversation among those who have feared the reactions of bullies. If bullies know they won’t be tolerated, they don’t bother showing up, and that has made a big difference.

A Final Question for Men

I am well aware that the Women in Ministry Series is primarily read by women. That’s a shame. The e-mail list has a few men. I’m not even sure if I can count the comments by men on one hand. That makes me so sad. Men are really missing out on stories they need to read. These stories are happening in their churches every day.

In addition, by ignoring this series, men are avoiding a really important question they need to consider:

Men, why are women afraid to tell their stories?

I’m asking men, “Are you willing to explore whether you’ve played have a part in creating an atmosphere where it takes courage for women to just speak their minds?”

I would not tolerate any group of people trying to silence my wife and to strike fear into her. In the family of God, we need to ask why women are afraid and whether us men have the guts to do something about it.

We can stand up to bullies both online and in person so that women have nothing to fear in the church. I applaud women who are brave, but I also long to see a day when they can use their bravery in places other than among their Christian family.

If we truly serve a God who drives out fear with his perfect love, why do women need bravery in order to speak the truth among God’s people?

Over all of my years immersed and banished from the church, I have boiled down everything that is important about Christian community to one, 4-letter word: LIFE.

Seek community where there is life. Where God is present and free to move. Where people are encouraged to pursue God’s calling for their lives. Where a community moves as one toward God’s throne of grace.

If you don’t feel the freedom of God’s life in a church, it will be hard to belong. It is God’s life that animates us and joins us together. We can find belonging through other means and activities, but it will never create the bonds God intended to create for his family.

I don’t’ want to offer a template or blueprint, but I do have one rule I follow: Look for the life of God around you.

Where is God free to convict you, to change lives, and to lead you? Cling to community where you can find that. Any community without the life of God is just a club, both an organization centered on common interests and a weapon that will, sooner or later, leave you broken.

Does gathering in community bring you closer to God and his life? Does community leave you more bound and trapped? That is my test.

God is doing stuff in us. We need to link up with the people who are also experiencing God in similar ways. Otherwise, we’ll only fight and struggle with each other. This is not to say we should avoid diversity. That can be good. However, if God is cultivating reverence and silence in you, then liturgy will be a healthy place to find community and to grow, rather than fighting through a more charismatic style that may leave you feeling confused and uncertain.

At this point in my journey, I feel like I’ve had teaching up to my ears. I feel so much more life in a church that emphasizes worship and prayer—as in actively praying for one another at the end of the service. There have been far more Sundays where I’ve longed to receive or offer prayer than to learn something.

I find God’s life in a community that reminds me I can’t learn my way into spiritual health or minister to others solely by imparting information. I suspect that the things that bring life to me today may shift or change a little over time, and that we all experience the life of God a little differently. Perhaps some of us need a little more instruction and knowledge to keep us grounded.

When I can sense the conviction of the Holy Spirit about sin in my life and seek out a friend who is waiting in the wings with the other prayer ministers, I know I’ve found a place where I can belong…

As my friend lays his hands on me and blesses me with confirmation of God’s forgiveness and healing, I can sense the unity of God’s Spirit, knitting us into one people, slowly becoming the image of Jesus in a broken world.

When certain people read that I’m putting together a series of guest posts about women in ministry, they may be tempted to think and say that I’m out to destroy the Bible, nay Christianity itself. They may assert that I’m misconstruing clear passages from the Bible based on loose speculation and undermining the very faith I claim to support.

If women are allowed to teach and serve as equals in ministry, what will become of Christianity and the church? I’ve conducted a very thorough risk assessment of my series that kicks off next week, and such detractors are certainly right. There are tons of risks. Here are just a few that I’ve thought of:

Under the cold-hearted leadership of female leaders and ministers, men will be rounded up and locked in the nursery. Children will puke on their shiny shoes. Pastors will lose their expense accounts. Secretaries will stop answering the phone.

THE COFFEE WILL NOT BE MADE!!!

Yes, it is a terrible thing when sinners fall into the hands of an “angry woman.”

Sermons will start to include illustrations based on raising kids and cooking dinner instead of sports and war movies. Women will start to speak their minds to the male authority figures in their lives, thereby causing strain on men who are forced to utilize neglected parts of their brains. Men will have to start vacuuming better, moving the chairs out instead of just going around them. Dinners will not be cooked. Children will stop eating their vegetables.

Dangerous heresies will sweep through the church by “easily deceived” women—just like Eve. In fact, women will start forcing their husbands to eat apples all of the time. The line for the men’s restroom will become oppressive. The parking lot with become a scrap heap of twisted vehicles piled upon one another. The back rows will buckle and break under the weight of disinterested, dispirited men who feel like the church is way too feminized.

Without a man to wear a suit up front, men will no longer know how to dress on Sunday morning. First they’ll forget their ties, and then they’ll soon denigrate to stained t-shirts, slippers, and dirty Carhartts. They’ll stop reading their Bibles because they’ll become convinced that only a woman can interpret it for them. They’ll stop signing up to lead anything in the church. Even the hunting group will be organized through the cabal of the lady’s knitting group. Camouflage will be replaced by knit teddy bear sweaters. Venison dinners will be replaced by crusty, inedible scones and fruity teas.

Yes, letting women teach, speak in church, hold authority, or call themselves “ministers” in any sense of the word could destroy Christianity as we know it. And even if my little series of stories about women in ministry won’t do any of the things I mentioned above, I do hope it destroys part of Christianity as we know it—the part where women think they are somehow designed by God to be inferior to men.

This will be a destructive series. However, we’re not destroying something for the fun of it. This is a matter of obligation, a dirty job that someone has to do: undoing the wrongs of the past and restoring women to their proper place in the church through empowering stories.

I’m not interested in forcing anyone to join me in this. I know there are some men and women who are comfortable with male-dominated systems. That’s fine for them. I’m not forcing them to change anything. I’m far more interested in speaking to the women and men who think there is something wrong with that—who sense in their times of prayer and readings of scripture that God created men and women to be equal partners in salvation, ministry, and the home.

And really, what’s the worst thing that could happen? A woman may discover her calling into ministry?

I tend to be on the more suspicious end of things when it comes to trends in the Christian blogging world. If I want to make myself sound virtuous, I’ll say that I’m discerning. If I want to confess I vice, I could say that I’m critical and a tad grumpy.

When I heard that a bunch of people were choosing “one word” as a kind of resolution for the coming year of 2011, I confess that my discernment/critical nature kicked into high gear. I can’t say why I was suspicious. I knew very little about it. I just saw that it was becoming a trend.

There are enough “trends” in the Christian world that I think you can’t help becoming suspicious. So many trends are based on flawed theology or at least an imbalanced perspective of discipleship. Need I mention the “me first” prayer of Jabez that Americans love?

I can’t remember the exact details, but one day in late 2010 I was praying and God started to work on my critical attitude. In fact, God gave me a word for 2011: redemptive. At first I was a bit miffed at the Holy Spirit. “Dang it! You fell for this trend too?” As I reflected on what that word could mean for 2011, I realized that God was converging a bunch of stuff that had been accumulating for years.

I realized that God wanted to use me to bring healing, growth, and hope. I began to look at everything I did through the lens of what lead to “redemption.” Were my words and actions helping someone heal or grow into a place of restoration and wholeness?

That really messed up my year in the best way possible. I had to delete a lot of potential blog post and book ideas. My arrogance and selfishness appeared over and over again.

I could tell all kinds of stories about the past year, but two significant projects arose out of that word: “redemptive.” One is my series of guest posts in 2012 called the Women in Ministry Series. I hope to offer an alternative to the women in ministry debate by sharing the stories of women who are actually in ministry.

Rather than slinging scripture at one another, I think it’s time that we just acknowledged that we’re divided on this one. While we all serve the same Lord, it’s time for those of us who believe in the role of women in ministry to find ways to encourage more women to pursue God’s calling for their lives. I also hope that those with a more limited view of women in ministry will be challenged to reexamine scripture after reading some stories in this series.

Along similar lines, I also began rewriting a series of blog posts on unity and exploring some practical principles of Christian unity. I have been putting these practical thoughts on Christian unity together in an E-book titled Divided We Unite. It will be released this January. A lot of our faith-fights can be traced back to trying to force unity where there can only be division, while also losing sight of what truly binds us together as followers of Jesus.

In an extreme understatement, my one-word for 2011 radically changed my ministry and work.

Is There a Word for 2012?

I don’t want to just “think” of another word for 2012 just to have one. Perhaps that was my skepticism of this project at the outset. We’d all just think something like, “Ooooh, this is cool! Let me think of a word… How about ‘awesomeness’?”

However, there is something to this format that really works. I think God likes to speak to us in simple ways, and just listening for one word can take a lot of pressure off us, making it easier to hear the Spirit speak.

The One Word website talks about the power of the word: “if you let it, your word will shape you and your year. It will guide your decisions and help you grow.” I think really does miss something. Like I said, I’ve got that critical edge to me. What you or I choose for ourselves doesn’t mean all that much in terms of life change and discipleship. The power here comes from focusing on what God wants to do in and through us. To that end, God can use this One Word project to help us focus on what he wants to accomplish in our lives.

Setting aside “skeptical me,” I asked God if he had a word for me in 2012, and I sensed that he certainly did: freedom.

In an election year, we’ll be hearing a lot about “freedom” and “liberty.” Most of the time these words will mean being able to do whatever we want. Freedom is often linked with individualism and individual rights. It can mean that, but I think God wants to teach me about freedom with boundaries and interdependence on others.

God’s freedom restricts us in some ways so that we are truly “free” to be the people he made us to be. One practice that has already started is the practice of saying a simple prayer each morning where I “offer my day” to God. He’s been impressing on me that living as a disciple who is free from sin and who is able to serve God means taking an intentional step at the start of each day. Paul often writers about “offering ourselves to God.”

This exploration of freedom is both exciting and challenging. The results are tantalizing, but the road forward will no doubt be filled with restrictions and struggles.

Who knows what could happen in 2012 with a word like freedom…

I have this persona that I adopt on vacation that my wife and I call, “The Clam.” If you’re not familiar with clams, they don’t do a whole lot. They mainly sit around and say nothing. That describes both my ambition and my “action” during vacation.

I have a restless personality. I always like to have something going on. My journal is full of ideas. If some people don’t know what to write, my problem is picking which idea to pursue.

I push myself hard until the inevitable crash, which often happens during vacation—hence, the clam.

Clams don’t make for good company. You wouldn’t want a clam as a friend or a spouse. They just sit around and take up space. My new goal of late is to prevent myself from a severe case of the clams. My remedy? A season of rest.

Defining Rest

I was praying about rest in church yesterday, and I sensed that rest for a writer means not forcing myself to think hard about what I want to write. In other words, if an idea hits and I jot down a few pages about it, that’s easy and even enjoyable for me. However, work is something like this: telling myself, “OK, you’ve got to write something now, start brainstorming, outlining, and writing in order to hit a word count of 600 words.”

We leave tomorrow for a trip out east to visit family throughout Maine, Vermont, and Philadelphia. It’s going to be busy with all of the family we need to see, and as I thought about a season of rest, I decided that it was time to give this blog a rest for a few weeks. However, rest doesn’t mean that I’ll write nothing. It only means that I’ll be posting more irregularly and only when the “Spirit moves.”

Irregularity is a big “no, no” in the world of blogging. You’re supposed to schedule guest posts or set up a schedule of blog posts. As much as I love the idea of doubling my work load before vacation, I have a few reasons for making a full stop season of rest, despite the challenges it creates:

Rest Means the Discipline of Forcing Myself to Stop

There is a battle for control going on. Am I creating a cycle of activity that ends up crushing me? Rest takes me out of that cycle and lets my mind clear for a season.

Rest Means Facing Who I Am

Each day I face the tension of straining to cultivate a quiet inner Spirit that is sensitive to God, while staying on task and pursuing life-giving leisure activities. Once I remove work from the equation, I have a surplus of time to face who I am and what God wants to do with me.

Rest Means Risking the Loss of Momentum

The risk of rest is that I could lose momentum in my projects, readers of my blog, and focus. It will most likely be hard to jump back into the swing of things and to reassert my work schedule and rhythm.

Having said all of that, here are some benefits that I see coming from a season of rest:

Rest Reminds Us That We Have a Choice

When I am removed from the cycle of activity, I can reevaluate my choices. I can see myself in different circumstances and then identify the sources of stress. I can even cultivate new habits that will help my lead a more balanced life when I get back to work.

Rest Reminds Us That We Aren’t Defined by What We Do

Bank accounts and praise from colleagues are important, but rest removes me from those good things that I can raise to unreasonable heights of importance. I’m not defined by what I do each day, but by what God is able to do in and through me.

Rest Reminds Us That a Step Back Can Be a Step Forward

Our culture prioritizes progress, accumulation, and growth. Rest is resistance to these idols—or rest-istance perhaps. When we pull ourselves out of the race, we may be terrified by the unknown. Can rest really bring benefit?

When I have successfully stopped myself, I have found that I often return to my work with renewed focus and energy. Work can be a wonderful blessing, but when allowed to grow too large for us, we’ll find that it can become self-defeating.

There’s a certain inevitability that we all face with rest. We will all need to rest at some point. The difference will be whether we choose to stop or whether we shut down involuntarily, turning into clams that are unable to handle even the simplest interactions.

Choosing rest while we can will save us from the worst of “the clams” and ensure that there’s something left of us for our loved ones during holidays and vacations.

I once heard an interview with comedian Dennis Leary who shared that his grade school teacher told him that anyone could be president. He returned home that day and asked his dad, “Can anyone be president?”

“Sure, anyone can,” his dad replied.

“Could I be president?” young Dennis asked.

His dad snorted and replied, “Are you kidding me?”

I like conversations like that because Leary’s father didn’t necessarily discourage him from pursuing a successful career. He simply understood who his son is and where he would be successful—i. e. not politics.

Why I Want to Fail

I have a little hobby on Twitter where I unfollow everyone who posts pithy motivational sayings about never giving up, never quitting, and failure being a choice we don’t have to make. I wrote about this a little while back in a post called Jesus Hates the Smell of Failure, and I wanted to follow up with some additional thoughts about the pitfalls of “never” giving up.

For instance, I want to fail. I don’t want to exclusively fail, but I’ve been thinking lately that I want God to expose everything that is not part of his plan for my life. I want anything outside of his plans for me to wither and die.

Arriving at this point wasn’t easy.

The Success I Crave: God’s Path and Provision

After seeing a friend of mine receive some fresh opportunities from out of the blue, I began to think, “Gosh, I wish God would affirm my direction in life like that!” Some days I feel like I’m just slogging along with the same old list of things to do. I begin to wonder if anything is going to change, if something big will ever happen again.

Sitting down in church yesterday, I recalled that God had actually affirmed a new project in several ways. In fact, he had even provided the way to develop it that I’ve always craved. In many ways, God has affirmed and provided for me. I had just missed it.

That startled me. How dense could I be? God has already been providing for the path he wants me to follow?

The next obvious question was this: Am I missing anything else?

Why yes, there was. Of course there was. A note from a friend later in the day affirmed something else I’ve been working on.

As soon as I began to ask God to cut off anything that wasn’t from him and to affirm anything that was from him, I began to see his fingerprints in several key areas of my life. I have no doubt that I’ll always find new paths to follow. I need to keep praying this prayer: “Frustrate what is not from you, affirm and provide for anything that is part of your plan.”

I pray that I will be frustrated, that plans will fail, and that I’ll sing God’s praises while walking through the ruins.

May God frustrate us until the day he reveals the path laid out for us. May God give us grace, patience, and courage to wait on his timing, to submit to his process, and to leap at the opportunity when the time comes.

I was careful to avoid saying that I would never go to church again, but it was certainly hard to imagine how it would ever happen again. Nine years ago I left a season of rooted stability in my faith and entered into a six-year season of transition into another expression of Christianity.

The basics remained the same, but over that time my perceptions of the church, salvation, the mission of God, the ministry of the church, and my own life calling passed through a major, major overhaul. I don’t know if you’ve ever done major renovations on a house before, but much like house renovations, my faith renovations were not pretty.

I was angry, frustrated, and disappointed at various times. I had a hard time tolerating those who remained rooted with their faith in tact. Sometimes I struck out at them, and sometimes they struck out at me for asking unsettling questions.

I’m now in a season of relative stability, rooted in a take on God that fits my limited perspective. As I look back over the past nine years of transition, I can see how others around me are in similar seasons of being either rooted or transitioning.

• Some have been disappointed by Christianity for various reasons and left the faith.
• Some have switched from one denomination to another.
• Some are still wandering.
• Some have found loving Christian community in new places that had previously been off their radar.

If we hope to keep the unity of Christ in the midst of our divisions, we need to understand these seasons. Besides our divisions over beliefs and practices, we can also divide over our seasons of belief.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, here are three seasons I have observed:

The Rooted Season of Faith

Many of us are in a rooted season in our faith where we have a certain level of comfort with our understanding of the Bible, our spiritual practices, and the ways we serve others. Those who are rooted need to be aware of welcoming those who are sprouting in their faith and have yet to find their place, while also remaining patient with those who are being transplanted.

The Transplant Season of Faith

For some of us who have been rooted in one spot for a while, sometimes the old answers and ways of doing things stop making sense. We all have our different reasons for pulling up our roots and moving elsewhere, though sometimes wider trends emerge.

Transplants are often in vulnerable positions, as they don’t feel like they fit anywhere, their beliefs have been shaken in some way, and they may be hurting enough to become combative. The hardest thing for a rooted person is patiently loving an argumentative transplant. I reached a point during my own transplant process that I actually couldn’t go to church for a season because I wasn’t in a healthy place to deal with it.

Besides spreading conflict, another problem with transplants is they sometimes rush into something new without dealing with their previous hurts and disappointments. I saw this a lot with folks who were disappointed by the church and then jumped right into house churches or emerging churches without seeking healing first.

The Sprouting Season of Faith

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the more jaded transplants are the sprouts, Christians who are still enthusiastic about their faith. The danger with sprouts is transplants can snuff out their zeal with their grievances, while those who are rooted may fail to reach out to them and nurture them in the faith.

A sprout can wither easily and get trampled down if it isn’t guarded with care. Sprouts will have lots of questions and they may feel overwhelmed by the maturity of those with deep roots. Those who are rooted must make sure they protect the sprouts from storms and hard times, ensuring they receive the nourishment from God they need so badly.

Besides different beliefs and practices, Christians differ with their seasons of faith. I’m sure there are folks who would claim to be hybrids or something different altogether, but these three seasons keep coming up for me. When we understand the seasons of faith of those in our communities, we’ll be able to love them right where they’re at today.

Do these seasons of faith make sense to you?

Have you passed through a season of transition or of being rooted?

As a veteran of Catholic elementary school and a survivor of fundamentalism, I like to think of myself as rather experienced in the realm of poorly exercised authority. My elementary school seemed to teem with sadistic teachers who only knew how to punish us in groups because of the one undiagnosed ADD kid.

At their worst, the fundamentalists figured out a way to make the Bible feel like my sadistic Catholic school teachers—a guide to the punishments we’re bound to receive unless we’re perfect. As a child, most of the religious authority figures I knew were rather heavy on the guilt and punishment end of things, save for a few women who were amazing teachers and Christians.

Attaching the word “loving” with authority strikes me as impossible in some unguarded moments, and yet, for Christians, this is really the only way authority truly works.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have something surprising, if not shocking to share with you. It’s something so astounding, that you may not even believe me.

Nothing can quite prepare you for this. So I’ll just go ahead and say it:

There are Christians who love Jesus, serve Jesus, and are even saved by Jesus who… disagree with me.

I know, I know, that is shocking news for you. I sometimes find it hard to believe some days.

There are divisions in the church that separate the sheep from the goats, but these divisions don’t necessarily lead to breaks in our fellowship with one another—even if these divisions take issue with my awesome perspective…

If you’ve read my book Coffeehouse Theology, you know that I’m a firm advocate for dialogue with other Christian perspectives. In fact, the diversity of Christian views available makes the Christian faith stronger in today’s context.

Over the past year I’ve given a lot of time to thinking over redemptive approaches to others, and I think division itself can play a somewhat redemptive function, provided we know when to unite.

My grandparents used to have this huge German Shepherd. They loved that dog, but it growled at the grandkids. Every time we came over, the dog was relocated upstairs. We were divided on our views and experiences of the dog, but for the sake of visiting with each other, the dog was hustled upstairs and locked away.

There are some issues in Christianity today where we have sharp disagreements, and so far as I can tell, we’ll always be divided to a certain degree. We can play around with our word choice here, but I think the word “divided” is in the only way I can honestly describe the nature of some debates.

I’ve seen some Christians do admirable work at fostering dialogue and understanding. There is real value to such dialogue, but I’m curious whether each side enters dialogue thinking, “If I just expressed my views perfectly, those other dummies will change their minds.”

There simply are issues where Christians both love Jesus and remain divided. In most cases that come to mind, civil dialogue won’t bring us to a place where many on either side will change their minds.

Our divisions are real, but we don’t have to let them consume us.

Our divisions are real, but they don’t have to cut us off from one another.

Our divisions are real, but we can actually remain united in spite of them.

For the foreseeable future, I don’t see myself attending a church where women aren’t allowed to teach. I will continue to acknowledge spiritual gifts and healings. I can’t imagine ever again tying the Republican party to my Christian faith. I don’t see the point in trying to ban same sex marriage, but I know I’m not as progressive on this issue as many of my left-leaning friends.

Those are just a few of the issues where I differ from some other Christians that I know. These are issues that “divide” us on one level, but I don’t have to let them get in the way of what actually unites us.

Let’s face it, we’re going to hang on to different theologies, support different cases, and attend different churches. The solution isn’t getting everyone on the same page, and sometimes the solution isn’t always dialogue.

Christian unity does not come from our heads. Unity isn’t a list of bullet points. Unity comes from the life of God’s Spirit within us. Our fights and divisions can’t undo the presence of God among his people.

However, we can decide that our issues and divisions are more important than God’s Spirit. We can fail to recognize the means by which God has made us one—sabotaging his uniting work among us in spite of our divisions.

If someone is good enough for God’s dwelling Spirit, then who am I say I’m too good, too right, or too “just” to have fellowship? How could I ever think I have higher standards than God? 

Yesterday, I searched for general “leadership failure” and the overwhelming results mentioned the failure of Christian leaders.

From affairs to power struggles to personal meltdowns, the internet results suggested that Christian leaders have issues with time management, character, sin, relationships with colleagues, and communication. Are Christian leaders alone in the failure department?

I dug into general leadership failure trends, and I found an article at Psychology Today that shared the following numbers:

“In the past two decades, 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs have lasted less than 3 years. Top executive failure rates [are] as high as 75% and rarely less than 30%. Chief executives now are lasting 7.6 years on a global average down from 9.5 years in 1995. According to the Harvard Business Review, 2 out of 5 new CEOs fail in their first 18 months on the job.”

Those are some pretty staggering numbers. The article goes on to suggest a number of reasons why leaders fail. These include hubris, resistance to change, and hostility toward colleagues.

It’s hard to say whether the existing conventional wisdom on leadership is inherently flawed or whether these washed up CEOs are simply failing to execute wise practices. Likewise, it’s hard to point to a cause behind the failure of Christian leaders. Do we expect too much from them? Are they just as sinful as the rest of us?

I’m honestly the last person to prescribe a path forward for Christian leaders, but I’ve seen what seminary students and pastors read when it comes to leadership. I know what church leaders talk about and where they look for their examples of excellent leadership.

Our church leaders look to the business world for lessons on leadership.

Can we learn something from good leaders? Sure. This is not a black and white matter.

The main point for consideration in my view is that we need to ask whether the high failure rate of CEOs in the business world tells us anything about the quality of the advice in our business books. Even if a small percentage of CEOs can rise to the top, overcome tremendous odds to succeed, and publish a book about “how they did it,” should we fawn over the advice they offer? What works for a small group of successful CEOs may not apply to other CEOs, let alone the pastors who read leadership books.

What’s more, if that Psychology Today article is right about CEOs failing because of pride, resistance to change, and failure to communicate, the solutions to these problems are not necessarily found in leadership books.

Do you struggle with pride? The cross has something to teach you about that.

Do you fight change? The Holy Spirit can change your mind.

Do you fail to communicate effectively? Love will help your relationships stay healthy.

The failure of a church leader is a tragedy, but today it’s not surprising. In fact, church leaders are in good company, since the leadership models that many churches follow seem to produce high failure rates in the business world as well.

Christianity has something to say about leadership, failure, restoration, and rethinking a new way forward. A good place to begin is admitting that the CEO leadership model is not the most healthy way forward for our leaders and their churches.

The solutions to our problems may be right under our noses.