Thanking God for a great time at Munguishi Bible College, Arusha, Tanzania. One of the things we did was to look at what the world values in terms of leadership and compare that to what Paul tells Titus to look for.
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Three observations:
- There is some overlap between the leadership the world desires and the leadership the church needs. The world is increasingly recognising the need for integrity and servant-heartedness on the part of leaders. But there are still areas where there is a clear difference between the two lists – particularly on the areas of commitment to family, fellowship and Truth.
- Paul doesn’t actual use the word ‘leadership’. As Craig Hamilton points out in his new book on the subject, “the Bible doesn’t talk much about leadership in the sense of the package of skills and knowledge needed to lead effectively.” What we are given in Titus 1 is mostly a list of character attributes – basic Christian virtues. So there is a sense in which pursuing leadership directly as a subject to learn or an area in which to be equipped may be a false trail.
- C S Lewis observed a cultural shift from the ancient language of ‘rulers’ (who enforce a static rule and standard, commending good and censoring evil) to the modern language of ‘leaders’ (dynamic visionary, not necessarily having any standard but their own, with ‘followers’ who they envision and motivate and lead to a new place). In Titus the elder is first and foremost himself a subject of the great Servant King and then he is a servant of others. There is a dynamic in Titus, but it is the divine vertical dynamic of top down grace, the dynamic of the God who saves us and the One who is returning soon. The role of the elder, in contrast is not really to lead people off anywhere but to keep them standing firm in the trustworthy word, just as he has received it, to keep insisting on these same (wonderful) things until the pennies start to drop.
