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How Should Pastors Handle Power and Authority · The Jim Bradford Podcast

0:00
Chase Replogle: You're listening to the Jim Bradford Podcast, conversations on faith, life, and leadership.
0:04
Chase Replogle: I'm your host, Chase Replogle.
0:09
Chase Replogle: As a part of our ongoing series answering listener questions, today we're discussing how churches and pastors should think about power and authority.
0:20
Chase Replogle: Authority is a hot topic in our culture, and it's often misused in our churches.
0:25
Chase Replogle: Particularly, there's a temptation for us in leadership to misuse the power and authority we've been given.
0:31
Chase Replogle: So, we ask, what does Scripture have to say about power, and how can we handle it with wisdom and discernment in the churches and in the ministries that we help lead?
0:39
Chase Replogle: I hope you find our conversation helpful.
0:41
Chase Replogle: As always, thanks for listening.
0:42
Chase Replogle: Pastor Jim, I'm always grateful for an opportunity to sit down together, and particularly, we've been having fun in this kind of series.
0:55
Chase Replogle: We worked through a lot of weeks through the entire Bible, one book at a conversation.
0:59
Chase Replogle: We've kind of taken a short break here to talk through Q&A, questions that listeners have submitted, and we've gotten some great ones, so I'm grateful to those who have submitted them.
1:08
Jim Bradford: Yes, we are grateful for that,
1:09
Chase Replogle: yeah.
1:09
Chase Replogle: Today's conversation, I think, is a great question, but a hard question as well, too.
1:13
Chase Replogle: So we got a question that was basically pretty broad, saying, how should we as Christians think about authority in the church.
1:19
Chase Replogle: I'm keenly aware this is one of the conversations when it comes to abuse of authority and power people have experienced, when it comes to the different denominations and how they structure authority.
1:30
Chase Replogle: I think it sort of dovetails with broader cultural conversations we're having about just authority in the home, authority in the culture.
1:37
Chase Replogle: Not to set this up as too much for us, but when I got this question, I thought, man, this really is, I think, for a lot of people, even without realizing it on their minds right now, how should we be thinking about authority?
1:48
Chase Replogle: And so I'd be interested, maybe as a starting point, just for us to reflect on.
1:50
Chase Replogle: How has the Church thought about authority?
1:53
Chase Replogle: What's been your experience of how authority is handled within the Church?
1:57
Jim Bradford: Culture always leaks.
1:58
Jim Bradford: Secular culture always tends to leak into the Church.
2:02
Jim Bradford: So in secular culture, the idea of submitting to authority is not a concept that's looked at kindly.
2:12
Jim Bradford: Authority equals control, manipulation, abuse, Submission becomes victimization.
2:24
Jim Bradford: Hard to separate those two in the cultural context that we live in today.
2:32
Jim Bradford: There's a lot of...
2:34
Jim Bradford: You see it in children, you see it in teenagers, young adults, a lot of disrespect for authority.
2:43
Jim Bradford: You know, disrespect...
2:47
Jim Bradford: was the one...
2:48
Jim Bradford: We could get away with some things in my family when I was a kid.
2:51
Jim Bradford: Disrespect, never.
2:53
Jim Bradford: You lipped off at your parents if you definitely swore at them or yelled back at them or pushed back too hard.
3:02
Jim Bradford: If you were in any way disrespectful, that was the cardinal sin.
3:07
Jim Bradford: You were taught to be respectful of authority.
3:10
Jim Bradford: But you don't see that.
3:12
Jim Bradford: It's not a popular way of parenting anymore.
3:15
Jim Bradford: So...
3:15
Jim Bradford: So you see a whole generation coming up that has probably a low view of authority when it comes to ideas like respect, obeying authority, and things like that.
3:26
Jim Bradford: So that's on one edge, and the church is affected by that.
3:31
Jim Bradford: Low view of authority.
3:33
Jim Bradford: Even reinforced more by all the spiritual abuse stories out there.
3:38
Jim Bradford: All of the pastors who haven't been trustworthy when it comes to transparency.
3:43
Jim Bradford: of influencing people, not controlling people, not being manipulative, not being self-serving in their authority.
3:51
Jim Bradford: So there's a lot to be cynical about authority.
3:55
Jim Bradford: And I think you end up coming short of biblically what is asked of us as followers of Jesus in terms of attitudes towards authority.
4:03
Jim Bradford: On the other end, especially in the charismatic world, you've had the emergence in the last 20 years of cultures of honor.
4:12
Jim Bradford: And I've been in some settings where cultures of honor are taught like you get introduced as a guest speaker and people are on their feet, they're cheering, they're giving you a standing ovation.
4:27
Jim Bradford: You haven't done a thing yet.
4:29
Jim Bradford: And they're just taught that we honor everybody.
4:35
Jim Bradford: However, as scandals around sexual abuse, misuse of finances and all of these things are emerging everywhere especially in the charismatic pentecostal world um you know the culture the honor culture thing which took submission to authority and trusting authority to such a degree that you don't confront like it the honor culture has removed accountability from people and if you're an authority An adage I kind of grew up with, you can't be in authority unless you're under authority.
5:15
Jim Bradford: The honor culture says you're in authority, but nobody can question you.
5:18
Jim Bradford: We only honor you.
5:20
Chase Replogle: It tends to be, in my view too, usually just externally focused.
5:24
Chase Replogle: Very much.
5:25
Chase Replogle: So, you know, a speaker at a church will honor the pastor and, you know, talk about how honorable they are, even knowing basically nothing about their personal life, nothing about how they lead behind the scenes.
5:36
Chase Replogle: As long as the church looks successful...
5:38
Chase Replogle: then they're worthy of honor.
5:40
Chase Replogle: And I think it does sort of corrode away at the definition of honor as well.
5:43
Jim Bradford: Yeah, I do.
5:44
Jim Bradford: And I confess, to be honest, when I was general secretary, traveling a lot, preaching in churches on Sundays, and not being a pastor myself, you know, you always want to say something kind of, you know, you want to affirm the leadership.
5:55
Chase Replogle: You're not going to open by saying, I'm still trying to decide about your
5:58
Jim Bradford: pastor.
5:59
Jim Bradford: But yeah, but you know, it's probably true that I probably gave honor without being sure they deserve that kind of honor and who knows what's really going on in their lives.
6:09
Jim Bradford: It's just become a hard thing.
6:14
Chase Replogle: Well, it's why we're having this conversation because there is, it's not simple to figure out how you fulfill what the scripture teaches.
6:20
Jim Bradford: So somewhere cynicism towards authority on one end and the honoring of authority in other cultures within the church.
6:28
Jim Bradford: There's got to be a sweet spot in the middle.
6:32
Jim Bradford: And Scripture does clearly not endorse an independent spirit.
6:41
Jim Bradford: I was having breakfast with a guy today, a really seasoned, experienced minister.
6:46
Jim Bradford: He said, you know what?
6:48
Jim Bradford: The word independence doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible.
6:51
Jim Bradford: And I go, you know, independent churches, I mean, all the fast-growing large churches are generally independent, charismatic churches today.
6:57
Jim Bradford: But independence and that idea of not being under authority...
7:02
Jim Bradford: and of just not having authority over us.
7:08
Jim Bradford: I mean, independence is in the air, and it's compatible with our culture right now.
7:15
Jim Bradford: And Scripture calls us to something different than independence.
7:19
Jim Bradford: It calls us to submit to authority.
7:22
Jim Bradford: Like Hebrews chapter 13 and verse 17 says, Have confidence in your leaders.
7:33
Jim Bradford: Submit to their authority because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account.
7:41
Jim Bradford: So do this that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
7:47
Jim Bradford: So he's saying, you know, he's talking about pastoral leaders in the church in that context.
7:51
Jim Bradford: And to submit to their authority, make sure that you're not making it miserable for them to lead because you lose in the end if that's the case.
8:00
Jim Bradford: But but submit to their authority because they're watching over you in a way they're going to be accountable to God.
8:06
Jim Bradford: And so you've got this, ultimately, we're all under God's authority, and everyone in authority is going to have to give account to God for how well they cared for those over whom they were authority figures.
8:21
Chase Replogle: I would like to talk a little bit, too, about where you see the sort of abuses of authority coming from in the Church, and I think it's important to kind of figure out what is causing it.
8:29
Chase Replogle: It's really easy to say that pastor is abusive of his authority.
8:32
Chase Replogle: Okay, clear enough, but where is that sort of coming from?
8:35
Chase Replogle: How is it making its way into our culture?
8:36
Chase Replogle: One of the books that's been really helpful, Nancy Piercy has a book, Total Truth, and she really draws on Francis Schaeffer's idea about how truth has been divided.
8:45
Chase Replogle: He calls it into two stories, a bottom story and an upper story.
8:48
Chase Replogle: He says that the spiritual things are put on the upper floor, the soul and spiritual experiences, and the sort of body and matter and material are on the bottom floor.
8:58
Chase Replogle: They're both truth, but one is sort of a higher truth.
9:00
Chase Replogle: And so Nancy Piercy draws out the idea of the sort of sacred-secular divide, that things in our life become sacred, and then there are other things that are just secular.
9:08
Chase Replogle: She ultimately says for the Christian, all things are under the domain of God, all things are sacred.
9:13
Chase Replogle: But I see this happening in the Church in that Everybody knows worship and the sermon is sacred.
9:18
Chase Replogle: We know the devotionals are sacred.
9:20
Chase Replogle: But when it comes to the organization, the institution, leadership, it's interesting how much we use even that language.
9:28
Chase Replogle: Well, that's kind of secular, right?
9:30
Chase Replogle: Doing a budget and leading a team and let's just adopt what's pragmatically successful because that's not quite as spiritual as the more spiritual things we're called to do.
9:39
Chase Replogle: And so I do think we start allowing things.
9:42
Chase Replogle: We don't ask.
9:43
Chase Replogle: how does Scripture expect us to act as a leader?
9:47
Chase Replogle: How does our faith impact the way we're leading?
9:50
Chase Replogle: So I do think, as you mentioned early in the beginning, it's easy for the ways of the culture to sort of infiltrate into the ways we're thinking about leadership and authority as well.
9:58
Jim Bradford: Right, yeah.
10:00
Jim Bradford: I think if you're in authority, if you are a pastor, you've first of all got to manage your insecurities, understand and manage your insecurities.
10:11
Jim Bradford: I think As I look at pastors, I think the two things I see most in them that can lean them towards abusive styles of leadership as authority figures are anger and insecurity.
10:27
Jim Bradford: And those two probably are kissing cousins.
10:29
Jim Bradford: You know, they're pretty linked.
10:30
Jim Bradford: Unresolved anger and insecurity, especially the insecurity piece.
10:36
Jim Bradford: Insecurities make you too self-promoting.
10:39
Jim Bradford: You've got to be at every meeting.
10:41
Jim Bradford: Your idea's got to be the best idea.
10:43
Jim Bradford: And you get intimidated by having strong, gifted people around you.
10:48
Jim Bradford: We've all run into stories of a lead pastor, a youth pastor.
10:55
Jim Bradford: Word gets around the church that maybe sometimes a youth pastor is a better preacher than the lead pastor.
11:00
Jim Bradford: And you can be pretty sure once that gets out that that youth pastor doesn't have a job two months later.
11:06
Jim Bradford: You know, I mean, it's just our insecurities can't stand situations where the spotlight's on somebody else and not on us.
11:14
Jim Bradford: I think my latest working definition of humility is an accurate assessment of yourself without needing to be the center of attention.
11:23
Jim Bradford: But when you constantly need, need to be the center of attention and the spotlight's got to be on you, your insecurities will make you either too self-promoting, like I got to get, I got to keep pushing myself to the center, to the front.
11:39
Jim Bradford: Or you're too self-protecting.
11:43
Jim Bradford: You make decisions that medicate your insecurities.
11:46
Jim Bradford: They're not the best for the organization.
11:48
Jim Bradford: You won't have a hard conversation with somebody because of what they might do back, what they might think of you or your own anxieties that'll come with that.
11:56
Jim Bradford: So you hurt the whole because you won't have a difficult conversation with somebody who does need to be confronted.
12:03
Jim Bradford: You like preaching to a packed house.
12:07
Jim Bradford: You don't care that non-Christians can't find a seat anymore.
12:11
Jim Bradford: But your ego needs to be able to preach to a packed house.
12:15
Jim Bradford: So you don't go to two services, mainly because you're protecting your own ego and propping yourself.
12:22
Jim Bradford: You're not making decisions that are good for the whole.
12:25
Jim Bradford: You're letting your insecurities make your decisions.
12:28
Jim Bradford: So I think unmonitored, unmanaged insecurities become...
12:33
Jim Bradford: become part of the seedbed for then abusive, people-demeaning behaviors.
12:43
Jim Bradford: Because we always have to be the center.
12:44
Jim Bradford: Things always have to be our way.
12:47
Jim Bradford: And that may not mean we're immediately being manipulative and shaming and mistreating of people, but it sure is a seedbed for that.
13:01
Jim Bradford: I just finished...
13:02
Jim Bradford: Chuck DeGroat's book, When Narcissism Comes to Church.
13:05
Jim Bradford: And it is, you know, even Christianity Today's expose on Mars Hill and the collapse of that church, it raises the question, why do so many evangelicals like narcissists as their pastors?
13:22
Jim Bradford: But a narcissist, if you're married to a narcissist, it's really difficult to live with that person.
13:28
Jim Bradford: They're totally self-absorbed.
13:30
Jim Bradford: They don't care about how they impact others.
13:33
Jim Bradford: Narcissism is extremely toxic, and yet congregations love narcissists as their leaders because they seem self-confident.
13:43
Jim Bradford: I mean, it is their way or the highway, you know, but so their way is always so clear, and they got a vision, we're going somewhere.
13:53
Jim Bradford: and congregations love narcissists leading them and then five years later you pull away the layers and you see this like dead bodies everywhere all kinds of hurt people um and uh sometimes uh we get what we ask for anyway i think insecurities and in the extreme form narcissism sets us up.
14:22
Jim Bradford: I've got to kick this back to you because I'm really curious, even through your generational lens, how you see this.
14:28
Jim Bradford: I've come to decide this.
14:31
Jim Bradford: Here's what a godly leader looks like.
14:33
Jim Bradford: Three things.
14:34
Jim Bradford: Leaders influence people.
14:36
Jim Bradford: They don't control people.
14:37
Jim Bradford: You don't control through guilt, manipulation, shame, punishment.
14:42
Jim Bradford: You influence.
14:44
Jim Bradford: You don't control.
14:45
Jim Bradford: Leaders don't use people they serve people you don't use people for your own benefit you serve people and then leaders don't resist accountability they they expect accountability in their lives you don't expect accountability when you're just using people when you're manipulating controlling people rather than just influencing them uh you're into very toxic leadership yeah
15:13
Chase Replogle: Yeah, I worry a lot about the way that a lead pastor often gets sort of absorbed into the brand of the church, and they become kind of a synonymous thing.
15:23
Chase Replogle: And I do think there's an interracial thing happening where younger people are more and more skeptical of the institution, the brand.
15:29
Chase Replogle: They tend to be kind of drifting to more historical churches, I think partly because it's less of the brand.
15:34
Chase Replogle: But the really important part, I think you've said there too, is it's so easy for us to sort of take a narcissist who is abusive of authority, who is also not wanting accountability, and to sort of all collectively point our finger and say it's the problem.
15:49
Chase Replogle: But it's not realistic to the fact that we do tend to put those people into positions of authority and power, and we tend to give them our authority and our power.
15:59
Chase Replogle: And so we are often culpable.
16:03
Chase Replogle: I mean, that's to your point.
16:04
Chase Replogle: It's amazing how so many of these pastors who do have failures, often because of abuses of power, how it's really a long line of us people who have empowered them to do it, partly because of the success, partly because of the brand.
16:17
Chase Replogle: But being willing to ask ourselves, why do we do that?
16:22
Chase Replogle: I think there's a tendency to want to live vicariously, to live our faith vicariously into the success of another person.
16:29
Chase Replogle: That's so true.
16:29
Chase Replogle: So in some way, their success and the success of the church, because I'm associated with it, makes me feel successful, even though it may have nothing to actually do with my own life.
16:40
Chase Replogle: my own faith in Christ.
16:42
Chase Replogle: The association is enough to feel like my own progress.
16:45
Chase Replogle: And so we do, we sort of, you know, we give away our own power, we give away our own authority, we give away our own involvement and sort of put all of that often, you know, probably imagining it as a good cause in the church, but really it's often in that particular leader and their vision for the church.
17:02
Chase Replogle: And you see that, I think that happens more broadly than the church.
17:05
Chase Replogle: I mean, I think there's I think there's a lot of men who live vicariously through sports teams, right?
17:09
Chase Replogle: I love sports.
17:10
Chase Replogle: But you see sometimes where people get a little too attached.
17:13
Chase Replogle: I think that happens through celebrities.
17:16
Chase Replogle: I think it happens through politicians.
17:18
Chase Replogle: But I do think there's a particular way it happens within the church where we mold ourself into that leader and their success becomes our success.
17:27
Jim Bradford: Yeah, exactly.
17:28
Jim Bradford: And I find that if you're going to play into that.
17:35
Jim Bradford: Churches, even in their governance models, become less congregational.
17:40
Jim Bradford: Some churches go to where there's no voting members anymore.
17:44
Jim Bradford: It's just the pastor who appoints a board, and that board makes all the decisions for everything.
17:50
Jim Bradford: And that creates its own kind of toxicity as well.
17:55
Jim Bradford: You know, the celebrity culture...
17:59
Jim Bradford: I don't know if we have a lot of heroes anymore.
18:01
Jim Bradford: We've got a lot of idols in our culture and the celebrity thing even.
18:05
Jim Bradford: It was Beth Moore who said the celebrity culture is something that ought to terrify us in the church right now.
18:13
Jim Bradford: And only the foolish have no fear of it.
18:16
Jim Bradford: She says at the foot of every podium is a trap door.
18:21
Jim Bradford: And speakers and communicators and leaders can...
18:27
Jim Bradford: can get swallowed whole in that trap door.
18:30
Jim Bradford: Just the spotlight can do terrible things to our souls.
18:35
Jim Bradford: But the whole culture, the celebrity culture, everything kind of sets us up and feeds that in some of us as leaders.
18:44
Chase Replogle: I don't think as leaders, I don't think we're honest enough with people too about...
18:47
Chase Replogle: how tempting and dangerous celebrity is.
18:51
Chase Replogle: Just to have a little taste of that.
18:53
Chase Replogle: I don't think people understand when they put that on a pastor, how addictive that can be for a pastor too, right?
18:58
Chase Replogle: You want to have a good relationship with your pastor.
18:59
Chase Replogle: You want to respect them.
19:00
Chase Replogle: But when you start to make them something more than they are, that is a temptation that few of us are capable of escaping.
19:07
Chase Replogle: How do I say this story?
19:10
Chase Replogle: But, you know, I've had some cool opportunities through ministry.
19:12
Chase Replogle: I got through what I believe was the random Lord's leading.
19:15
Chase Replogle: I got to go to Times Square and do an interview on Good Morning America.
19:19
Chase Replogle: You know, they put me up at the penthouse suite at the Millennium overlooking Times Square.
19:23
Chase Replogle: Like, this is usually out of my budget range, right?
19:25
Chase Replogle: Yeah.
19:26
Chase Replogle: Yeah.
19:27
Chase Replogle: And like, let's not forget, I came home and mowed the yard.
19:29
Chase Replogle: You know, that was how it went.
19:30
Chase Replogle: It definitely didn't change the trajectory of my life.
19:32
Chase Replogle: But I will tell you this.
19:33
Chase Replogle: I became really aware of how intoxicating that can be.
19:37
Chase Replogle: Even in my own writing, I will catch myself thinking sometimes, oh, if I wrote it this way, would that keep me from getting some of those national media interviews?
19:46
Chase Replogle: Instead of saying, is this true?
19:49
Chase Replogle: Is this what the Lord would have me write?
19:50
Chase Replogle: I've just become more and more aware of how tempting those little bits of success and celebrity influence and exposure can be.
19:59
Chase Replogle: And it gives me a little bit of sympathy.
20:01
Chase Replogle: I do understand where some of these pastors, just when that's being put on them over and over, how it just becomes a kind of drug that's really hard to break away from, and then mixed with the sort of way we can justify it as spirituality, justify it as sort of doing work for God.
20:16
Chase Replogle: I think we create things, we put our pastors in situations where perhaps, you know, no human has the ability to turn that kind of power, that kind of celebrity down.
20:28
Jim Bradford: Exactly.
20:28
Jim Bradford: It's good.
20:29
Jim Bradford: That's a good word picture.
20:31
Jim Bradford: You know, the whole addiction word picture, it becomes addictive to us.
20:36
Jim Bradford: I've been coming kind of disillusioned lately.
20:42
Jim Bradford: I've run into several situations where even very godly people, when they have both money and power and people don't question what they do, or they distance people who might care enough to tell them the truth.
20:58
Jim Bradford: It's very few godly people who can resist the corruption of money and power.
21:07
Jim Bradford: I've just been disappointed to see supposedly spirit-filled men and women of God who very few seem to be able to stand.
21:17
Jim Bradford: It's just too addictive.
21:19
Jim Bradford: Money and power gives you immense control, influence, And the church historically has never done well when it's had both money and power, whether it be political power or any other kind of power and a lot of money.
21:33
Jim Bradford: We have not followed the way of Jesus.
21:37
Jim Bradford: We've not looked anything like the Sermon on the Mount.
21:39
Jim Bradford: We've gone the way of selfishness, self-serving control, marginalizing people.
21:50
Jim Bradford: It's just never good for us.
21:53
Jim Bradford: I was listening to an interview with one of Eugene Peterson's sons, you know, Eugene Peterson, The Message, and all
22:01
Chase Replogle: these great books.
22:02
Chase Replogle: Probably Eric, his son that's a pastor.
22:05
Jim Bradford: And he said, one day, my dad said, I had an invitation to speak to 30,000 people at a conference in Latin America, and I turned it down.
22:12
Jim Bradford: And his son said, you what?
22:15
Jim Bradford: Why ever would you turn down an opportunity like that?
22:19
Jim Bradford: And Peter just said, because it would not be good for my soul.
22:22
Jim Bradford: And you really pierced me when I heard it.
22:27
Jim Bradford: I thought that is something.
22:29
Jim Bradford: Maybe it's not a good excuse not to steward a moment like that.
22:33
Jim Bradford: You maybe should step up to a moment like that.
22:35
Jim Bradford: But to be that self-aware of what the spotlight does to you, what celebrity does to you, what the adrenaline rush of, I get to invest, speak into 30,000 people's lives at one time.
22:52
Jim Bradford: I get to preach at my church of, you know, what, 200, 2,000 every week.
22:59
Jim Bradford: You know, it doesn't matter.
23:00
Jim Bradford: It can go to your head.
23:02
Jim Bradford: It can become a drug, and it can become about what reinforces you.
23:07
Chase Replogle: Yeah, I want to read a passage and then ask you a specific question about how then do we keep ourselves from that place?
23:14
Chase Replogle: How do we actively as pastors sort of push back against that?
23:17
Chase Replogle: But I love the place in Luke's gospel.
23:20
Chase Replogle: You know, Jesus is passing them the bread and the wine and talking about his body that's going to be sacrificed for them.
23:26
Chase Replogle: And then they immediately begin to debate which among them is the greatest, right?
23:29
Chase Replogle: So, I mean, they cannot get, they struggle so much through Luke's gospel to understand.
23:33
Chase Replogle: And so Jesus says this, and it's in chapter two, a dispute also arose among them as to which of them was to be rewarded as the greatest.
23:40
Chase Replogle: And Jesus said to them, the kings of the Gentiles Man, I just think it's hard to reconcile, I think, so many of our models of church leadership with what Jesus says about to his own disciples, that the model of being a leader will be one who serves.
24:17
Chase Replogle: If the way we're painting the scenario is true, there is a culture that teaches congregants and people to vicariously want to attach themselves to a leader, Ministry has a tendency to attract people of insecurity.
24:31
Chase Replogle: I'm saying this as somebody who went into ministry myself.
24:33
Chase Replogle: It is a promise that you can do something meaningful if you feel unmeaningful.
24:38
Chase Replogle: So I think it tends to attract people who may be feeling insignificant or insecure.
24:42
Chase Replogle: And then you've got people putting on you and increasingly giving you spiritual praise and honor and more and more authority and a model of church leadership that says, accumulate all that power and influence.
24:54
Chase Replogle: It's good.
24:55
Chase Replogle: How do we as pastors sort of say, stop?
24:58
Chase Replogle: And how do we actively reject some of that influence and power to keep ourselves from falling into this temptation, this trap?
25:07
Jim Bradford: Yeah, that's a $100,000 question right there.
25:11
Jim Bradford: And...
25:12
Jim Bradford: You need to, referring back to what we talked in the early part of this podcast, you've got to know your insecurities and manage them well.
25:25
Jim Bradford: And you probably don't know your insecurities all by yourself.
25:28
Jim Bradford: It's too much we can be blind to.
25:29
Jim Bradford: So that leads me to the second thing.
25:32
Jim Bradford: It's really important that all of us have people in our lives that love us enough to be honest with us.
25:40
Jim Bradford: And we've got to make the choice to listen to them.
25:43
Jim Bradford: That could be a spouse.
25:46
Jim Bradford: I have a few people in my life I love enough.
25:49
Jim Bradford: I think I'd put you in that circle, Chase.
25:51
Jim Bradford: I would trust you love me enough that if you saw things in me, you'd talk to me about it.
25:57
Jim Bradford: I would hope I loved you enough to do the same thing to you.
26:00
Jim Bradford: But that's where we do our homework.
26:02
Jim Bradford: We make sure we have those kind of people.
26:05
Jim Bradford: We make sure that there are people who do know us.
26:08
Jim Bradford: We're not so removed, so secretive in our lives that people just don't know us, that know us well enough to be able to recognize when things start changing in us, when they start seeing patterns.
26:22
Jim Bradford: And I need people who I trust will be honest with me and tell me the truth.
26:29
Jim Bradford: When, you know, the book Good to Great, and they do what companies break out among their peer group of companies.
26:39
Jim Bradford: And They said they were surprised what their research showed them is these level five leaders who were personally humble, but missionally passionate.
26:48
Jim Bradford: And that that's Jesus personally humble, but passionate about the mission.
26:53
Jim Bradford: He calls us to be humble, to be servant.
26:55
Jim Bradford: So that means like in good to great, they would say the CEOs who had their faces on magazines usually ended up ditching their companies.
27:05
Jim Bradford: Why?
27:06
Jim Bradford: Because Nobody was telling them the truth anymore.
27:10
Jim Bradford: The truth about market trends, the truth about the effectiveness of their products.
27:15
Jim Bradford: People were only telling them what they thought the boss wanted to hear because he was a celebrity.
27:22
Jim Bradford: So you've got to have people in your life.
27:24
Jim Bradford: We're up a creek without a paddle if people aren't telling us the truth as leaders.
27:30
Jim Bradford: So you make sure you manage your, you try to understand your insecurities and how they affect you.
27:35
Jim Bradford: how you treat people and the decisions you make.
27:37
Jim Bradford: And then you make sure you've got people around you who will tell you the truth.
27:41
Jim Bradford: And then you monitor your own thinking all the time.
27:43
Jim Bradford: If I'm thinking more about how people are serving me than how I'm serving them, then I'm going to get in trouble.
27:51
Jim Bradford: And you do have to retrain your thinking.
27:54
Jim Bradford: If you tend towards entitlement, you've got to take it to the cross.
27:59
Jim Bradford: That entitlement has to die.
28:02
Jim Bradford: It's not like...
28:05
Jim Bradford: I'm living with a myth if I think the world owes me something.
28:08
Jim Bradford: And you can't take that into healthy leadership.
28:12
Jim Bradford: You've got to be thinking, how am I serving them?
28:14
Jim Bradford: People are not there for you if you're a leader.
28:17
Jim Bradford: You're there for them.
28:19
Jim Bradford: And if they can sense you love them and you truly are for them, they'll follow you to your grave.
28:24
Jim Bradford: It's infinite.
28:25
Jim Bradford: You don't have to manipulate them.
28:26
Jim Bradford: You don't have to control them.
28:27
Jim Bradford: They will respect you.
28:28
Jim Bradford: They will want to follow.
28:29
Jim Bradford: You want to follow anybody who believes in you and loves you.
28:33
Jim Bradford: So your whole mentality has to change from how are people serving me to how am I serving them.
28:41
Jim Bradford: They are not there for me.
28:44
Jim Bradford: I am there for them.
28:45
Jim Bradford: And that can become instinctive by the work of the Spirit in our lives.
28:52
Jim Bradford: We've really got to crucify some things in us.
28:54
Jim Bradford: But I think it's possible.
28:58
Jim Bradford: And that's what Jesus was calling us to.
29:00
Jim Bradford: He said, you're the servant.
29:02
Jim Bradford: That means...
29:03
Jim Bradford: You see, the master's not there for the servant.
29:06
Jim Bradford: The servant's there for the master.
29:08
Jim Bradford: So if we're serving, we're there for them.
29:11
Jim Bradford: We're there coming under them, lifting them up.
29:14
Jim Bradford: We're not sitting around like, am I appreciated enough?
29:18
Jim Bradford: Am I getting what I think I deserve as a leader?
29:20
Jim Bradford: How do I exploit the perks that I'm entitled to because I have a certain positional title?
29:27
Jim Bradford: You just can't be thinking that way.
29:30
Chase Replogle: Yeah.
29:30
Chase Replogle: I think a lot about Sabbath in the Bible, and I think it's a testament to this sort of poison that's in us that we often think of Sabbath as, if I take one day off, I can get even more done on the other six.
29:42
Chase Replogle: Sabbath is some sort of life hack for productivity.
29:45
Chase Replogle: I don't think that is what the Scripture is saying.
29:47
Chase Replogle: The way I've been trying to force myself to think about Sabbath is, I'm going to accept the fact that I will only achieve six-sevenths of what I'm capable of achieving.
29:57
Jim Bradford: That's something.
29:58
Chase Replogle: Because what it does is it forces you— it forces you to stop for a moment and to recognize that the logic or justification of, I can do more, I can make more happen, I can achieve more, is destructive.
30:10
Chase Replogle: And it's not the mindset God wants us to live in.
30:13
Chase Replogle: There is this intentional margin where I just stop myself and accept.
30:17
Chase Replogle: And I think there's good models of that, like as driven as we are by the work and the mission.
30:20
Chase Replogle: I love the image of Paul, desperate to make it to Spain, right?
30:24
Chase Replogle: This great vision to go to the ends.
30:26
Chase Replogle: But recognizing what God has for him is to return to Jerusalem, where he knows he will be arrested and knows, you know, ultimately he'll die in Rome.
30:34
Chase Replogle: He won't fulfill that great vision.
30:36
Chase Replogle: Or I always love the passage of Moses saying, who for 40 years leads these people to the promised land.
30:41
Chase Replogle: And then God takes him up to Mount Nebo and shows it all to him and says, but you won't enter the land.
30:46
Chase Replogle: Like, oh, the bitterness, the frustration, the injustice of it.
30:49
Chase Replogle: But Moses seems to sort of accept it, even goes down and preaches this sermon, Deuteronomy, to remember the Lord and trust him as they enter the land.
30:58
Chase Replogle: I think so much of the abuse happens in that last seventh chapter.
31:02
Chase Replogle: of what we're trying to do, right?
31:04
Chase Replogle: That's
31:04
Jim Bradford: a great point.
31:05
Chase Replogle: So what does it look like for us as leaders to say, look, I'm going to work hard, I'm going to give everything I have to what God's called me to do, but at the end of the day, I will not slip into manipulation or abuse or desperation, because there's always this margin.
31:19
Chase Replogle: We may not get there.
31:20
Chase Replogle: It may not be everything I imagined it to be, and that's okay, right?
31:23
Chase Replogle: I don't have to prove myself by that last seventh.
31:26
Jim Bradford: No, you don't have to prove yourself.
31:27
Jim Bradford: I think it was Brutman wrote a book entitled Sabbath as Resistance, which is a great title.
31:32
Jim Bradford: And of course, he was pointing out that as slaves in Egypt, they would work seven days a week.
31:37
Jim Bradford: And they were working for the god of productivity.
31:41
Jim Bradford: And in defiance of that, you take a day off because life isn't defined by all of that.
31:49
Jim Bradford: And when too much of our identity is wrapped up in that, we slip into some...
31:54
Jim Bradford: difficult behaviors that mistreat people.
31:58
Jim Bradford: And, you know, a lot of it, again, comes back to humility and truly being driven by the love of Christ.
32:06
Jim Bradford: Why do we do this?
32:07
Jim Bradford: Not because we have to, Peter said, but because we love people.
32:10
Jim Bradford: We just want to care for people and just having Jesus' heart for people.
32:14
Jim Bradford: Dr.
32:15
Jim Bradford: George Wood, who used to be the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, walked into his office one day and said, you know, we hear so much about leadership.
32:21
Jim Bradford: I mean, whatever happened to just loving people?
32:24
Jim Bradford: And And servant-modeled, non-abusive, humble leadership comes back to just having the love of Christ in our hearts for people and seeing people with Jesus' eyes.
32:37
Jim Bradford: And he'll reward us some days whether we get enough thank-you notes or not.
32:42
Jim Bradford: And that need to control people, that need to push them, to shame them.
32:48
Jim Bradford: Even simple things we do sometimes...
32:50
Jim Bradford: You know, I think it's just easy to you need to preach against sin with conviction, but we should not be shaming people, make him feel worthless.
33:02
Jim Bradford: Even simple things like if you don't feel the presence of God today, your feeler is broken.
33:07
Jim Bradford: There must be something wrong with you.
33:09
Jim Bradford: I mean, we do these manipulative shaming things, you know.
33:12
Jim Bradford: So what about the lady sitting out there who five days ago had a miscarriage and she's still devastated?
33:19
Jim Bradford: What about the guy who just lost his job?
33:22
Jim Bradford: You know, feelings, you know, don't manipulate people into feeling certain ways.
33:27
Jim Bradford: Don't make them feel shame if they don't feel certain ways.
33:30
Jim Bradford: Or if maybe they're I'm not talking about moral sin, but maybe they don't come to church two times a week instead of three times a week.
33:39
Jim Bradford: I mean.
33:39
Jim Bradford: I mean, you know, maybe they're full-time caregivers, you know, and I know people have guilt.
33:44
Jim Bradford: They apologize to me.
33:45
Jim Bradford: I'm sorry I can't volunteer because I'm caregiving my elderly mom.
33:51
Jim Bradford: It's 24 hours a day.
33:52
Jim Bradford: You know, I'm saying, please be free.
33:55
Jim Bradford: If I've ever manipulated you with guilt to get you to do what I think I think you ought to do.
34:00
Jim Bradford: I mean, when we don't just care about people, we do cross that line as well.
34:08
Jim Bradford: We just need to stay humble and love people.
34:11
Chase Replogle: And build churches that are also 6th, 7th of their potential.
34:15
Chase Replogle: 6th, 7th of their potential.
34:17
Chase Replogle: I kind of have this big bet, if I can say it that way.
34:19
Chase Replogle: This is my big gamble that what destroys many churches is trying to reach that last 7th And I think in the long run, if churches could embrace that same kind of restraint, I think most of those churches would still be around.
34:32
Chase Replogle: There'd be a lot less burnt people in the process.
34:34
Chase Replogle: I actually think the best way to grow the church, the best way to grow the kingdom, is for us to live within these constraints of being human, loving people.
34:43
Chase Replogle: I love that.
34:43
Jim Bradford: It's that last seventh that forces us to push, manipulate.
34:47
Chase Replogle: Well, we can't do these Q&As forever, because we always go too long with these.
34:51
Chase Replogle: They're all such interesting topics, probably a multi-part one.
34:54
Chase Replogle: But man, we've talked about so much that I'm just keenly aware I want to be so careful in these conversations you and I are not above these temptations you and I know these temptations anything we've said is because I've I've seen my own tendency or temptation to accumulate power, to use it the wrong way.
35:10
Chase Replogle: So for anyone who's listening, maybe our way of praying would just be, God, help us.
35:13
Chase Replogle: By your Spirit, free us from this temptation.
35:16
Chase Replogle: I mean, this is one of his promises that I'm going to cling to, right, is he leads us not into temptation.
35:21
Chase Replogle: So give us ears to really hear what God's saying and to follow him, not down that path, but to free us.
35:27
Chase Replogle: I mean, that's the promise of Sabbath, right?
35:29
Chase Replogle: You're no longer slaves, but free.
35:30
Chase Replogle: Free us from this temptation that's so prevalent in our churches today.
35:34
Jim Bradford: Lord Jesus we're humbled that you would give us influence in our positions of authority help us to steward them with the fear of the Lord help us to steward our influences the different arenas in which we influence people Lord God help us to do this with the fear of the Lord forgive us for where we push too hard hurt people Forgive us where we've done the seven day a week instead of the six day a week in terms of our pushing of people and our own need for productivity.
36:14
Jim Bradford: My God, just help us, we pray.
36:16
Jim Bradford: Give us hearts for your people.
36:19
Jim Bradford: Help us to see the people we lead with your eyes.
36:22
Jim Bradford: Help us to correct and rebuke where we need, but not to manipulate and control.
36:31
Jim Bradford: Help us to know the difference.
36:33
Jim Bradford: Help us to treat people as if they belong to you and not us.
36:38
Jim Bradford: And Lord, give us grace to lead well.
36:41
Jim Bradford: Lord, break the drivenness in our own hearts.
36:45
Jim Bradford: Lord Jesus, break that tendency to use people to define our own success.
36:54
Jim Bradford: My God, just help us.
36:56
Jim Bradford: Cleanse our hearts.
36:58
Jim Bradford: Here we are.
36:59
Jim Bradford: Make us servants.
37:00
Jim Bradford: Lord, where you said the greatest will be the servant of all.
37:03
Jim Bradford: Lord, thank you for your example of being the servant of all, for laying your life down for us.
37:09
Jim Bradford: And help us, Lord, to be willing to serve in the same way the people around us, to lift them up, to be there for them.
37:18
Jim Bradford: My God, help us, we pray.
37:20
Jim Bradford: Thank you for your example.
37:23
Jim Bradford: Thank you for the power of your spirit to do this.
37:26
Jim Bradford: Keep us, Lord, from the spirit of our age and keep us, Lord, humble and broken.
37:30
Jim Bradford: available to you, and yet confident and courageous because of you.
37:35
Jim Bradford: In Jesus' name, amen.
37:46
Chase Replogle: You've been listening to the Jim Bradford Podcast.
37:48
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37:52
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37:56
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37:59
Chase Replogle: We're looking forward to a lot of the conversations to come in the weeks ahead, and it would mean a lot to us if you'd be a part of those.
38:04
Chase Replogle: If you have questions or topics that you would like to ask Pastor Jim to hear him cover, we'd appreciate it if you'd take the time to send those in.
38:12
Chase Replogle: You can do that by email by going to questions at jimbradford.org We'd love to be able to take a look at those and get them featured on the podcast.
38:19
Chase Replogle: As always, thanks for listening until next time.