How to fight the system.
Broken Rising Blog | 005
By Gary Don
Systems are designed to be robust and unmoving, that’s why you design or put in place a system. The most important goal of a system isn’t its principles or even its physical structures. The goal of implementing a system is to cultivate a particular culture you want to see in a particular field of influence, or an organization. Say like a church. Culture is a multi-dimensional intangible thing that can often be hard to define. We fall back on the principles, programs and even the physical structures we’ve built (or are building) to define a particular culture. Those are starting places that are helpful in defining and putting in place a particular culture in a church, but there is also the intangible aspect of culture that can not be fully grasped. For the Christian, it is the very presence of God, resting on a house with grace, intention, manifestation and power. We know this because even though we can’t often well define a specific church culture, we definitely know when it’s good and healthy, and we definitely know when a church leadership culture is sick and toxic.
Here’s the thing about culture, either secular or sacred; culture cannot be redeemed, it can only be exchanged. Now, every living breathing human within a culture can be redeemed and saved by a loving God, but the culture itself that they live in cannot be redeemed. We see this in the most ridiculous and heinous of historical examples. The pornography industry cannot be redeemed. God is not going to anoint the production of pornographic media for the kingdom, ever. The only course is to tear down that industry and, in its place, grow a culture of a biblical understanding of human sexuality. A biblical culture of human sexuality produces dignity, wholeness, family and God centered romantic purpose within God’s only intention for human romantic love, monogamous marriage. Again, every woman and man near destroyed in this industrial sub-culture can absolutely be redeemed, healed and made spiritually pure again by the love, grace and salvation of Christ. However, pornography as a current component of our culture, is unredeemable and has to go. Culture is like a freight train, its built for one purpose, to move in one direction with intention and power, resisting almost anything that stands in its way. Just try getting in the way of the pornography industry and the billions of dollars they make raping people’s bodies and minds.
a demolition site makes a poor place for a nursery, and a civil war in a church is a horrible place to try and make disciples.
So, what do we do when we find ourselves in a particular church and leadership culture that is emotionally and spiritually abusive? How do we fight something as unmovable as a toxic church leadership culture? The answer is we don’t fight, tear down and destroy, we build up and construct something that looks more like Jesus and His followers. Can you change the abusive culture that your senior leader puts in place, and has spent time and treasure into building bulwark's to keep that abusive culture there? The answer is, most of the time, no. So where does that leave you as the staff pastor or lay ministry leader? What does a good church leadership culture look like? One of my favorite passages of scripture is the Acts two snapshot of the early church and how it worked.
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
(Acts 2:42-47 NIV84)
You get the sense that the church you see in Acts two had a powerful revelation of valuing people for the God created eternal beings they are, and they set out to make sure the church’s culture had that as a preeminent value. God is calling you to strike out to set in place a similar culture that’s rooted in the same scriptural understanding of valuing people in the areas of influence you have in the body of Christ, no matter how small or isolated that influence may be. Are you a small group leader? Love and value your people like Jesus did His. Are you a Sunday School teacher or youth leader? Love your students like Jesus loved children. Are you a worship pastor? Set in place a culture of servanthood and spiritual unity with your team. Are you a campus pastor responsible to a larger leadership team for your site? Shepherd your people the way Jesus shepherded His. You get the point; Jesus is our example and basis for setting in place a new church leadership culture. One that values people and puts what they contribute to the body of Christ ahead of even systems so important in crafting leadership culture. Jesus shows us how to “be” as a kingdom leader.
Fighting a toxic, abusive church leadership culture is almost always useless. There have only been a handful of times in church history where someone was called to tear it down to rebuild it, Martin Luther and the reformation as an example. Even then, he didn’t intend to tear it all down, only that church leaders would extract the hypocritical elements of the current church culture, but the systems and culture held. Most times fighting a church system does not produce the outcomes we think it will. That's because a demolition site makes a poor place for a nursery, and a civil war in a church is a horrible place to try and make disciples. We pray for those commanding the toxic unhealthy house, that they would see their errors and repent. However, we must resist the temptation to fight a toxic church leadership system with the same principles of devaluing people, because we risk falling into some of the same errors. No, instead, God is calling us to build a healthy spiritual and emotional church leadership culture in its place, when we do, we find we’ll be partnering with the Lord in His kingdom and making healthy disciples of Jesus that in turn produce more healthy disciples of Jesus. Then, the toxic system of church leadership abuse can begin to end.
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