At our Relay Worship Conference: RISE UP! last weekend, I had the honor of hosting a panel conversation about Spiritual Authority. The panel was made up of people I wanted to learn from: Benny Stofer, Kim McLean, and Jacob Holmes. These are very different folks, from different denominations, and with experience in different size churches in multiple staff positions. They were even better than expected!
A couple of lingering thoughts are worth sharing with you, dear readers:
If a leader is doing things that benefit the followers much more than the leader, he/she is operating in a healthy place of authority. If, on the other hand, the leader gains more than the follower, it may be a spiritually abusive situation. Beware.
Just because the person under authority isn't happy with the decision of the leader, that does not mean it's abuse. When a path to restoration (spiritual discipline) is unpleasant, it may simply be unpleasant. When in doubt, approach people who are older, mature in their faith, and have enough distance from the people/situation to offer wise counsel.
If you are the person in leadership, your authority is designed to be a covering for those you lead. Your role is to serve them, to pray for them, to protect them, to encourage them, to cover them. I shared a resource along these lines, a chapter from the book Pursuing Christ, Creating Art by Gary Molander. The chapter is simply called "Covering," and it profoundly challenged me when I read it a decade ago.
There was one part of the conversation we didn't get to have, and I want to share it with you.
Just as dark as overstepping your authority is under-stepping your authority.
The theme of the whole day was RISE UP! There is a vacuum of Godly, anointed, thoughtful, excellent leadership in the modern church, and especially in music/worship ministry. In fact, in just one denomination (Southern Baptists) a full one-third of churches in the state of Kentucky did not report anyone taking leadership of the worship ministry in their church. That was 800 out of 2,400 churches who did not report a person responsible for leading the musical part of worship.
We need you to rise up.
And if you're already leading, thank you! Now, find someone (or a dozen someones) to come alongside you so they can learn from you and start filling some of those gaping holes in leadership in this region and around the world.
*Note: The report of Kentucky churches may also mean the forms were returned incomplete.
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