Discipleship Letters 65, 69

Discipleship Letter 65                               Dec. 13^th, 2009

“Congregational mess provides a particularly perilous condition for convincing us that we are necessary. Others have messed up, done it badly, behaved irresponsibly, and we are called in to make a difference…We always work in sin conditions, but they don’t define our world. They just provide the material for our world, for our gospel.” [Marva Dawn and Eugene Peterson, The Unnecessary Pastor: Rediscovering the Call (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 121-122].

Timothy is called to deal a particular congregation and her particular mess with sound teaching. “Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ…” (1 Tim. 6:2b-3; see 1 Tim. 1:10; 6:3; 2 Tim. 1:13; 4:3; Titus 1:9, 13; 2:1, 2).

“The Greek word for ‘sound’ is hygiein, from which we get hygiene. The main thing that Timothy is to do in Ephesus in order to clean up the mess is to teach sound words, sound truth, healthy thinking and believing. Verbal hygiene. Healthy gospel.” (p. 132)

Sound qualifications for sound leaders are as follows:

“As you select them, ask, ‘Is this man well-thought-of? Are his children believers? Do they respect him and stay out of trouble?’ It’s important that a church leader, responsible for the affairs in God’s house, be looked up to—not pushy, not short-tempered, not a drunk, not a bully, not money-hungry. He must welcome people, be helpful, wise, fair, reverent, have a good grip on himself, and have a good grip on the Message, knowing how to use the truth to either spur people on in knowledge or stop them in their tracks if they oppose it.” (Titus 1:6-9, The Message; cf. 1 Tim. 3:1-13)

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Discipleship Letter 69                               Jan. 10^th, 2010

“Every role or ‘hat’ you are asked to wear has its own responsibilities and objectives. If you change hats, keep in mind that the context changes.” [John Maxwell, The 360 Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2005), p. 47]

In ministry, it’s not good to put on too many hats. Each hat that you put on has responsibility, and pressure comes along with it. My suggestion is that we shouldn’t have more than three steady roles in ministry. Every hat that we put on, we should achieve its goals and objectives as much as we can. It’s not good to put on the hat and not be able to put up with works. This is just common sense.

Changing the hat means changing the context, for we work with different people in different context. We won’t interact with everybody in the same way. This is just common sense.

Think about your hats. What do you need to do in order to do your jobs well? Finish your tasks strong? Don’t do too many things, yet merely do the minimum. Our great God is not pleased with minimal service. When you go to a restaurant, you aren’t pleased with bad service either. This is just common sense.