“You’re the most spiritual person in the church.”

The statement came from a friend who was sitting outside with me on a bench in the church garden. I was waiting for my wife to catch up to me so we could walk home together after service.

“I don’t think that’s true. There are a lot of other people more spiritual than me. I just get into more trouble than they do.” I smiled at him.

He and his wife were leaders in the church. Most ex-pats didn’t stay for more than two or three years but my wife and I had been there over twenty years. We were old-timers. But this friend was on the Board and his wife worked in the church office. I had a lot of respect for them.

I don’t remember much of the conversation after that, only that it had caught me totally by surprise that anybody would think I was spiritual, especially given the trouble I usually get into helping the poor or insisting on shaping our church into an effective ministry.

In twenty years, neither my wife nor I were ever asked to be on the Board (thank God) although we were involved in worship leading, Christian Education, choir, the Calaway Street Puppet Ministry (with our girls), and the Alpha Ministry. I also preached on occasion and took a funeral when the Pastor was out of town. They only wanted our help but not our advice.

The spiritual bubble that my friend’s comment created didn’t last very long. A week or so later, in front of them both, I took one of the guys off the street, escorted him to the door, and asked him to leave or I would call the police. It was out of character for me, but he got under my skin by demanding help instead of asking for it as if we were obligated to solve all of his problems. He was loud and insistent, and I was concerned that he would get out of control. So, I told him to leave. My friend and his wife were there to witness it all. Not my proudest moment.

Leaving myself out of it, it is still true that there are people in the church who are more spiritual than the Pastor or any of the Board members. Often it is the janitor or the maid or someone who usually goes unnoticed. But if you pay attention to how they treat people, how they pray, what they do in the background, behind the scenes, you will recognize them. And they are worth their weight in gold.

The problem is that they have little “positional” authority to actually make changes in the church. When the Pastor has spiritual authority (and most do not), then things can start to happen. That’s why this post is called The Four Authorities. If you are in Spiritual Leadership whether as the Pastor or as a Board Member, you need to know about these four authorities and how they work together to get anything done.

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In the image above you can see that I have chosen three spots along a horizontal line. On the far left is a point called IDENTITY, then in the middle it is called PURPOSE and on the far right it is called SIGNIFICANCE. I got these three from my studies of Life Coaching (BE, DO, HAVE), but they ring true for spiritual life as well. Our Identity is “in Christ,” and our Purpose is our Life Ministry (a creational context with a redemptive focus on the Ministry of Reconciliation usually as part of a church), and finally our Significance which is to be used by God through our witness in the process of transforming the human heart.

That’s the simple version. A lot more can be said about each one and all of them together. For example, we could say that Identity, Purpose, and Significance create Meaning in Life. The world likes to tell us to create our own meaning in life, but spiritually, we know, that our meaning is “transcendent” in the sense that it isn’t about us at all but about our relationship with God and others in a ministry that changes lives.

So, where do the Four Authorities fit into this picture? If you draw a curved arrow from Identity to Purpose and then from Purpose to Significance along the top and then do the same along the bottom, we will have the structure to talk about the four different authorities (see image above).

Our identity is always relational. How would you describe yourself? As a father/mother, a husband/wife, a son/daughter? These are all relational categories. Some people would try to define themselves in terms of their work or purpose in life and there is some truth to that, but identity is first and foremost about relationships. And out of our relationships, morality, character, and value are created. Call it upbringing, genetics, or a bit of both. Gifts are given to us at our birth, creational gifts that will pull and push us in certain directions when it comes to our life ministry or purpose.

So the first arrow going from left to right, from identity to purpose has to do with Personal Authority. Integrity is probably the main ingredient but there are other values and characteristics as well. It isn’t pure but usually a mixture of good and evil elements at war, in rebellion with each other, especially during the teenage years. Some people resolve it and find their direction, many others do not.

The point being that personal authority comes from who you are and often demonstrates itself in your purpose in life. I knew a man like that once. He was a leader in the church. He was generous to a fault and had the money to make a difference in people’s lives. He never made you feel guilty about taking money and most of the time he wouldn’t say a thing. He would just shake your hand after church with a couple of hundred-dollar bills in the palm of his hand that he would slip into your palm. His advice was generally sound, his integrity was obvious, and he was always chosen to be on the Board (and usually was the chairman). No surprise there. But was he spiritual?

This is where the curse of church politics can start to take root, in good, honest, businessmen who have personal authority but no clue as to how to run a church. They will keep the status quo and make sure the bills are paid on time. They will give sage advice on hiring and firing and how to handle employee issues. They make sure the taxes are paid and that the grounds are kept up. They are usually quite generous and have the money to keep the church running smoothly. And if that is your goal as a spiritual leader, then you have accomplished it.

I can’t tell you how many times a Board, made up of good, upstanding, people have stopped the church from doing effective ministry. And this is true in most churches. It is the rule not the exception. Even then, you sometimes get a bad apple who turns out to be a problem and sometimes you get a few people who can lead a discussion in the adult Sunday School class. But personal authority, as good as it is in general, is not enough to break the curse of church politics. In fact, it is often the cause of it.

So, in the best-case scenario, your personal authority will show up in your purpose in life (usually creational with very little redemptive focus). That’s the first authority but it isn’t the most dangerous. That’s still to come.

Now we draw another curved arrow from your purpose back to identity but underneath the horizontal line. This is where we will put the second type of “creational” authority which I call Relational Authority. Obviously, this is about relationships. It is closely tied to Personal “Integrity” Authority since it serves as the basis for relational authority.

Some people will listen to you because you demonstrate personal integrity and have had success in some sort of creational business or job. Some people will listen to you because you have a closer relationship with them. They are your boss, your mentor, your friend, your elder, or something of the sort. This kind of authority is interesting because the relationship itself is the basis for accepting their influence in your life.

People do this all the time. In business, you may take advice from your brother who you know is honest and good (personal authority) and has your best interests at heart (relational authority) even though they may not have a clue about business or the type of business you want to start. And that leads to disaster. As one author put it, trust requires both character and competence. They may have character (and a relationship with you) but that doesn’t mean that they know what they are talking about.

If that is true in the world, how much more so in the church?

These are good things to have, personal and relational authority but they are still on the “creational” side of the equation. The people may be Christians, they may be involved in the church to one degree or another, and they may be regular attendees at church services but that doesn’t mean that they are ready to lead the church into effective ministry. So far, all you’ve done is deepen your dependence on people who will nicely, with a smile on their faces and with all the good intentions in the world, force you into conformity and ineffectiveness.

Do you remember the story of Jonathan Edwards, considered by many to be America’s foremost theologian even two hundred years after his death? He was the first President of Princeton University and wrote many deep, spiritually defining books. He was also a Pastor during the Great Awakening, and he had a church cursed with church politics. He decided at one point that he would “fence” the Lord’s Supper and require (as the Bible does) acts of confession and repentance as a requirement to participate.

Very few churches do that today. I would probably not have made it a requirement but rather preached about it consistently and let each person decide whether they are “prepared” to participate. But maybe I am already infected with the virus of church politics. Probably. But this godly man and anointed leader was dismissed from his position by the Board and ended up preaching the gospel to the indigenous people in the area until he was called to become the first President of Princeton University. He took a smallpox vaccine (while he was fighting a cold) to show the people that it was safe. He died within one year after he entered Princton University.

Do you see the danger? These are not light matters.

Even someone like Jonathan Edwards had to deal with church politics and failed. But don’t give up. There are a few things that he did wrong which we will talk about as we go along. Most of all, he assumed that his Board was already spiritual and would support him when they were not. That is the first, and biggest mistake you can make. Your job as the anointed leader of a church is to make sure that your Board is filled with people who demonstrate “spiritual” authority.

Let’s talk about that a bit more. It is time to draw a curved line under the horizontal line from purpose to significance. Significance is a hard concept to accept for Christians. In the world, we would say, Be, Do, Have, meaning find a job or business that truly reflects what and who you are. If you love your work, you won’t work a day in your life. And if you do your work well, you will have success in terms of money, success, influence and power. And that’s to be expected. But in the church?

Yes, in the church things are a bit different but not because we aren’t significant to God and to his work, not because there aren’t rewards in this life and especially in the one to come, because there are.

John Elderidge, in his book, Waking the Dead, tells us that there are three truths that Christians must accept. The first is that there is a spiritual dimension to life. We are not secular humanists. We believe that there is another dimension to life filled with angels and demons in which God rules from his throne in heaven. It is intimately connected to our dimension but not necessarily through sight. It remains hidden unless you have eyes to see and ears to hear. The second is that there is a war going on in that dimension that involves us because the war is about us and about our relationship with God and his rescue plan to save us from the second death.

Up to that point, most Christians would understand what you were talking about.

But the surprise comes in the third truth that Christians must accept and that is that we have a key role to play in that spiritual war. We are significant to God. Our testimony is a core part of the process of transformation. People don’t want to hear theology or history, but they want to know whether it makes a real difference in the lives of real people today. That is our role to be a true and faithful witness and that is most effectively done in the context of suffering for the gospel in the Ministry of Reconciliation.

That is a wake-up call to the “sleeping giant of evangelicalism” and should remind all of us of the importance of the local church, together fighting a battle that has eternal consequences for our loved ones and the lost. Believing in a spiritual world at war and then not participating in it even though that is what we are called to do, is a great spiritual deception and the heart of the religious spirit. Most of the Western Church, at least, has fallen victim to it in one form or another, whether it is church politics, liberalism, or prosperity theology. That needs to change and soon.

Our significance comes as a gift from God. It is a transcendent “have” or result from our work. It isn’t done alone but is entirely dependent on God and is done in the power of the anointing that comes from spiritual unity in the church. The anointed leader must break through to that anointing in order to have the significance of an effective, anointed ministry that transforms lives. It is an ongoing battle and there are specific steps that need to be taken. Spiritual power will be necessary and God only gives his anointing to those who follow the way of the cross.

There may be "favor" in your life just because your identity is in Christ and you are walking in the Spirit. There may be "power" in your purpose and life-ministry with people being healed, demons cast out, with signs and wonders following (but Matthew 7:22-23 NIV) but there is only "anointing" for effective ministry when you, as the Anointed Leader, has prioritized spiritual unity in the Way of the Cross in the context of the ministry of reconciliation. Favor and Power are nice and useful but it is the Anointing that we must seek, that we must have, if we are to truly be the church that the world so desperately needs.

Although there is a lot more to say about spiritual authority and power, that will come in the following posts. For now, it just needs to be said that the Board Members need to demonstrate some level of understanding and development of this spiritual authority. A simple way to describe it is to go back to the early church and look at the kinds of people they chose as elders and deacons. Phillip stands out as a perfect example. Although he was chosen as a deacon and was involved in feeding the poor and taking care of the widows, he was also used by God to baptize the Ethiopian eunuch and preach in the region around Samaria.

There’s no use saying that these expectations are unrealistic because these are the expectations of God, himself. If you have a problem with them, you will have to take it up with him. It isn’t like he hasn’t laid out a path to spiritual maturity. It isn’t like he doesn’t want to shower us with spiritual gifts for the building up of the church. It isn’t like he doesn’t always have a remnant of people who do not seek leadership roles but are eminently qualified for it.

The real issue is that we don’t even think about it or try to find these people or even know what to do with them once we find them. Are we really going to spend their time talking about new rugs or whether or not we should have a Christmas Tree in the sanctuary? A number of things are going to have to change, from the structure of the Board to the nature of the Board meetings and the real work of spiritual leadership in the lives of the people. But then again, if you aren’t following the way of the cross and experiencing the anointing of God on your ministry, how can you expect to have the discernment to recognize the people that God is preparing to support your ministry and work with you side by side?

But we have to get on to our last type of authority, the worst and yet the most necessary of all, Positional Authority. This is where things get dicey. Draw a curved line from Significance back to Purpose with an arrow pointing in that direction and give it the name Positional Authority. This is the worst type of authority there is but it is necessary in this world of sin and evil. Even in the world, they tell you that if you have to depend on your positional authority to get someone to do something, you’ve already lost the battle.

Still, in the church, especially a church cursed with church politics, this is the authority most often used. Positional Authority is basically saying that because I am the Pastor, my way goes and you have to obey me. I have been in churches that are much “softer” in their language but a lot “stronger” in their use of positional authority. Each year around Christmas time, they would have a special service in which they would “honor” their pastors. All of the other church leaders would come forward with stories of how their pastors (in this case a husband and wife couple) did such and such a thing for them and they would like to honor them for it. Almost a vow of loyalty. And if you did something against them or something that diminished their authority, you would not be “honoring” them and you would be considered disloyal. I know. It happened to me.

Jesus didn’t like positional authority very much either. He had strong words for the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Chief Priests but even his own disciples fell into that trap of politics and position and authority “just because I said so” and it wasn’t pretty. Jesus made it clear that we don’t do things that way in the church. Servant Leadership is what we call it today. So, you can strike out the word Positional Authority and replace it with Servant Leadership just so long as you recognize that the church is not immune to this kind of worldly thinking.

Originally, we said that Personal Authority and Relational Authority on the left side of the diagram are really in the “creational” realm, we can also say that Servant Leadership (or Authority) and Spiritual Authority are in the “redemptive” realm on the right side of the diagram. Now, that is true, and it is not true of course. The redemptive “new creation” experience that we have as believers, transforms the creational into one whole new thing in Christ. It is all redemptive now. But the priority is on the right side where spiritual and servant leadership is focused. If you have that working for you, then your Personal and Relational Authority is empowered by your Spiritual Authority and demonstrates itself in Servant Leadership.

One last thing needs to be said. The New Testament still had “positions” such as pastors, evangelists and the like but Paul turned the pyramid upside down (Ephesians 4). Those who held such positions were there to teach the rest of us how to do what they were gifted to do. Evangelists did evangelism, of course, but, within the church, they had the job of teaching those who didn’t have the gift of Evangelism how to do it. The same with prayer, and service and the preaching and the like. Just because we don’t have the gift, doesn’t mean we don’t have the responsibility.

We have it all wrong. We think that we are supposed to hire someone into a position so that they can do the work. Wrong. They are there to teach the church how to do the work. So, I prefer to talk about “roles” in the church rather than “positions” since it is more biblical and easier to keep the focus on servant leadership.

So, what is there to say?

This was more of a teaching post than anything else, but I believe it is necessary to focus our attention on spiritual authority demonstrated through servant leadership as the main requirement for any kind of leadership in the church. That spiritual leadership is created and developed as we walk the way of the cross, picking up our cross daily and entering into the Ministry of Reconciliation with true focus and passion. The sad thing is that there may be very few people in the church that meet that requirement. So be it. That means that it is time to start preaching and teaching the Way of the Cross. No one says that you have to have a twelve-member board. Start with three or five (or even just one) and go from there.

Yes, I know. Every church has a constitution of sorts, usually required by the government, that stipulates how many board members you have to have. You may be able to get around it for a time, or not. If not, then you will have to do what Jesus did which was to put up with it until he could fulfill his purpose. You may be mocked, ridiculed, spit on, rejected, maybe even fired.

Jesus worked outside of the walls, in the backwaters of Galilee, with a motley crew of disciples that he trained himself. You may have to do the same for a period of time. If the Board does not have the spiritual authority to run the church, let them manage the budget while you work with a few chosen disciples to lead them in the Way of the Cross. Slowly but surely, they can become Board members and you will have a spiritually unified team behind you as you lead the entire church into effective ministry.

The Desert Warrior