The theme on which I am about to
speak is the maturity of a leader.
And I would invite you to read with
me from Paul's letter to the Ephesians chapter
4.
And we'll read from verse 11.
It was he who gave some to be
apostles, some to be prophets, some to be
evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers
to prepare God's people for works of service
so that the body of Christ may be
built up until we all reach unity in
the faith and in the knowledge of the
Son of God and become mature, attaining to
the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Then we will no longer be infants tossed
back and forth by the waves and blown
here and there by every wind of teaching
and by the cunning and craftiness of men
in their deceitful scheming.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will
in all things grow up into Him who
is the head, that is, Christ.
From Him the whole body, joined and held
together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds
itself up in love as each part does
its work.
And then in Colossians chapter 1, verse 28,
where Paul tells us the objective he has
in view in his ministry, verse 28, he
says, We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone
with all wisdom, so that we may present
everyone mature in Christ.
To this end I labor, struggling with all
his energy which so powerfully works in me.
This verse enshrines the goal of the Christian
ministry.
The last clause gives the leader clear guidance
concerning the road he is to travel, so
that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
And it is good for those of us
who are preachers to ask ourselves, Is my
preaching calculated to secure this end?
Is it producing mature Christians?
You'll notice that it is a blanket instruction,
everyone.
The leader is to be concerned for the
growth and development of everyone who is in
his group or in his congregation.
He must aim at leading everyone in his
group, old and young, new Christian or aged
saint, into an increasingly mature Christian experience.
The corollary is, of course, that if I
am to lead others into a growing spiritual
maturity, I myself must be making progress along
the same road.
An immature leader will never produce mature followers.
The leader need not be perfect in the
absolute sense, and who is, but he must
be conforming to the exhortation of Hebrews 6
.1. Let us continue progressing toward maturity.
I remember Bishop Horton telling me that whenever
he was looking for a man for a
leadership position, the first question he asked himself
was, Is this man growing?
And it's a good question to ask ourselves,
Are we growing in spiritual maturity?
The growth in maturity must be visible to
his followers.
In his first letter to Timothy, chapter 4
and verse 15, Paul, after giving wise counsel,
said to Timothy, Be diligent in these matters.
Give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone
may see your progress.
You would have thought that Paul would have
said, so that you may see their progress,
because that's what a leader is looking for.
He's earnestly desiring that those for whom he
has responsibility will be growing, and he's looking
for their progress.
But Paul turns the question back, and he
says, So that your followers may see your
progress.
His progress in maturity must be visible to
others.
I find this tremendously challenging.
We who are leaders spend a lot of
time telling others from scripture how they are
to become mature.
But are we ourselves growing in maturity, or
is our experience static?
I remember Dr. Sprogge on one occasion giving
an address which the title was, Stuck Between
Easter and Pentecost.
He pointed out that many Christians knew what
Easter stood for.
They knew that Good Friday stood for the
fact that Christ died for our sins.
They knew that Easter Sunday stood for the
fact that Christ rose for our justification.
But he said, Very many Christians never get
as far as what God intended them to
experience through the gift of the Holy Spirit
on the day of Pentecost.
And it's good for us to challenge ourselves
as leaders and see whether we are stuck
in our Christian experience, or whether we are
growing in likeness to Christ.
I would suggest an exercise that I myself
have found very salutary.
Take the nine manifestations of the fruit of
the Spirit in Galatians 5, 22, 23, and
ask yourself such questions as this.
Am I a more loving man than I
was three months ago?
Has it been visible to those I live
with?
How has my love found expression?
Who has been the beneficiary of it?
Am I a more joyous man than I
was three months ago?
Or am I still not very wonderful to
live with or to work with?
Am I enjoying more of the peace of
God and manifesting more of the peace of
God than I did three months ago?
Or is my experience static?
When we ask these questions, I think we'll
all be convinced that there is room for
much growth in these areas.
Nothing will forfeit leadership more quickly than when
a leader reacts in an immature manner in
a time of crisis.
And it's the unplanned situation, the situation for
which we've had no time to prepare ourselves,
it is this situation that tests our maturity
and reveals the degree in which we are
mature.
The possession of spiritual gifts is very important
because it is through spiritual gifts that the
body of Christ is built up.
But the possession of spiritual gifts is not
to be equated with spiritual maturity.
In writing his powerful letter to the Corinthians,
in which Paul dealt with serious disorders in
that church, he said, you do not lack
any spiritual gift.
Obviously, every spiritual gift was in exercise in
the church at Corinth.
And yet, surprisingly, he went on to say
to the same people, I could not write
unto you as spiritual, but as worldly, mere
infants in Christ.
That's a startling statement, possessing spiritual gifts and
yet mere infants in Christ, not spiritually mature.
I think this is a clear indication that
one may possess a variety of spiritual gifts
and yet be spiritually immature in our actions
and reactions.
This is a sobering thought.
The problem Paul faced at the church in
Corinth was not heresy, it was spiritual immaturity.
The possession of spiritual gifts is not the
measure of our spirituality.
The Corinthians had these, but they were tragically
lacking in the fruit of the Spirit.
And this is the true proof, the true
measure of our spirituality.
As we've seen, spiritual gifts can be counterfeited,
but you cannot counterfeit the fruit of the
Spirit, you cannot counterfeit love, you cannot truly
counterfeit joy or peace.
No, these things cannot be counterfeited.
It is when the fruit of the Spirit
is being produced in our life in an
increasing luxuriance that we see the way in
which the Holy Spirit has been working in
our lives.
The degree of our maturity as leaders is
evidenced in our actions and in our attitudes,
but also preeminently in our reactions, the way
in which we react in different situations.
And this was true of the church at
Corinth.
Listen to what Paul says, You are still
worldly, for since there is jealousy and quarreling
among you, are you not worldly?
Are you not acting like mere men?
For when one says, I follow Paul, and
another, I follow Apollos, are you not mere
men?
You see, the leadership in this church had
broken down.
They were tolerating blatant immorality.
Believers were resorting to litigation against one another
before the heathen in heathen courts.
There were disgraceful disorders at the Lord's table,
and these were manifestations of spiritual immaturity in
both leaders and congregation.
They had failed to keep progressing toward maturity.
If we are going to make a real
impact for God in the service of the
kingdom, it means that we must keep on
growing.
My wife died of cancer, but about 10
days before she died, I was attending to
her and trying to make her comfortable, because
she was in a good deal of pain.
When she turned to me, she said, Dear,
don't make things too easy for me.
I must not get fussy at this stage.
I must keep on growing.
Well, she might very well have been occupied
with her own pain and the fact that
she knew she had only a few days
more to live, but instead of that, she
was concerned that she might continue progressing toward
maturity right to the very end.
Have we got a passion like that?
Have we got a desire like that?
The Lord wants us to keep on growing.
Our maturity is evidenced even more clearly in
our reactions in unstudied and unexpected situations.
The leader is always under the microscope.
People are always looking at him or at
her.
The leader is not a private person.
He lives in public and under public scrutiny.
And people watch how we react in difficult
circumstances.
We are models to our followers.
And for that reason, we need to be
very careful how we act, how we react.
And of course, the reactions are very often
unstudied.
We haven't had time to prepare ourselves for
it.
How do we react, for example, when our
hopes are dashed?
When we've been expecting something and hoping for
it and praying for it, and then suddenly
our hopes are dashed.
How do we react?
Do we drop our bundle?
Do we lose heart?
Or do we pick up the pieces and
go ahead and move on?
How do we react when adversity overtakes us?
Do we blame God or blame other people?
Or do we say, as our Lord did,
even so, Father, for so it seemed good
in your sight?
How do we react when sorrow strikes?
Do we indulge in an orgy of self
-centered emotion?
Or do we turn our eyes outward?
Do we turn our trouble into treasure and
turn our sorrow into song?
Many years ago, I was traveling in Asia
with Mr. Fred Mitchell, who was the British
Director of the China Inland Mission.
We had lovely fellowship together.
We concluded our tour and at Singapore, I
bade him goodbye as he got on a
plane to return to England.
He had traveled only as far as Calcutta
when the plane blew up and everybody on
board was killed.
His widow was a delicate lady and, of
course, it was a tremendous shock to her.
She was expecting to have breakfast with him
the next morning, and instead of that, he
was taken from her side.
And for quite a while, she was laid
low.
But when she had recovered, she told me
her experience.
She said, I thought, now, how could I
use this experience in some way that would
bring glory to the Lord?
And she said, it occurred to me, why,
you're only one of thousands of widows who
are in exactly the same position as you
are.
You've experienced the Lord's help wonderfully in your
sorrow.
Why not, when you hear of another widow,
why not write to them and share with
them your experience of my goodness?
And so she said, I began, when I
heard of a widow, I began writing.
And before long, quite a considerable correspondence sprang
up.
And then when I'd read in a newspaper
of a tragedy and somebody left a widow,
I would write to that person.
And you know, she had a marvelous ministry
to people in sorrow.
She turned her trouble into treasure.
She turned her sorrow into song.
Is that the way we react?
How do we react when we've been unjustly
treated?
Isn't there a temptation to pay the person
back in kind?
And yet, is that what the Lord wants
us to do?
Or instead of doing that, instead of retaliating,
do we demonstrate an invincible love and love
them more in spite of what they have
done?
How do we react when a crisis arises,
a crisis coming totally unexpected out of the
blue?
Do we panic or do we remain calm?
I believe that the way in which a
leader reacts in time of crisis says a
tremendous amount to his followers.
And when they see that this man is
relying upon God, and in the midst of
devastating circumstances, he maintains his integrity and his
walk with God, that does more to cement
the leadership link than anything else.
These are the kinds of situations that test
the maturity of the spiritual leader.
Leadership should not be entrusted to the immature.
That's a principle that should be always acted
upon.
Paul made this crystal clear in 1 Timothy
chapter 3, verses 5 and 10, when he
said this, he must not be a recent
congregate, or he may become conceited and fall
under the same judgment as the devil.
Then verse 10, they must first be tested.
These are important principles in the development of
leadership.
Tremendous problems have arisen when people who are
naturally gifted are too quickly elevated to leadership
positions.
And this is a tendency which is very
common in our present-day climate.
A prominent person is converted who may be
very gifted and competent in their own sphere,
and then they are suddenly thrust into a
spiritual leadership position for which they have had
no training and are not competent.
And many problems arise from that.
I remember going to conduct a campaign in
a church, and I found when I got
there that the church was in terrible turmoil.
The reason had been that they appointed to
one of the leadership positions a man who
was very gifted, but had been converted only
nine months.
He hadn't had time to mature, and the
decisions he made would have perhaps been all
right in a worldly situation, but they wrought
havoc in a spiritual situation.
I think we need to be very careful
before we elevate a person to positions of
leadership.
Paul says concerning deacons, they must first be
tested.
Give them responsibility if a person is competent.
Give them limited responsibility so that they can
grow into it.
And if a person is not willing to
take a lower leadership position in the church
or in Christian work, they are not qualified
to take a higher one.
The word that Paul uses, not a novice
it says in the King James, the word
is the one from which we get neophyte,
and it means newly planted.
If a tree is to withstand the storms,
it must have time to get its roots
down deep.
The novice lacks the maturity to handle the
tests to which the leader is constantly exposed,
and the process cannot be hurried.
Oh, it's possible to force plants, and sometimes
you buy at the nurserymen's plants that look
very wonderful, but they've been forced, and before
very long they wilt and fade.
They don't stand the test.
They're not robust.
And sudden elevation to office often throws people
who have not yet gained spiritual maturity off
balance, and oftentimes they fail and are discouraged,
and sometimes they drop out.
Let them first be tested.
However, it must be said that age is
not the prime factor to be considered.
In fact, some young people are very much
more spiritually mature than some old people.
It's not a matter of age.
It's a matter of development.
It's a matter of the degree in which
they have followed the promptings of the Holy
Spirit and have been obedient to the word
of God.
Timothy, to whom Paul was writing, was a
comparatively young man.
He was young by the standards of those
days, and then sometimes, as now, a young
man was not listened to very seriously by
the older men.
But Paul didn't disqualify him on that account.
And as you read Paul's letters, you see
that Paul entrusted this young man with some
very heavy responsibilities.
And he encouraged him.
He said, now don't let anyone look down
on you because you are young.
You can't help being young, and time will
look after that too.
Paul said to Timothy, you're young.
The older men at Ephesus, where you're going,
may not be inclined to listen to you,
but I'll tell you how you can compensate
for your youth.
You can compensate for your youth by the
quality of your life.
And then he told him how he was
to do it.
He said, set an example for the believers
in speech, in life, in love, in faith,
in purity.
I think you'll agree that some of those
things are points at which youth is rather
deficient at times.
So he says, Timothy, if you set an
example in these five areas, people will listen
to you, in spite of the fact that
you're young, because there is no answer to
a godly life.
We are to be models in a world
in which there are too few models.
And we need to be models that will
represent Christ.
And if we are walking close with him,
and being daily transformed increasingly into his likeness,
then others seeing us will want to follow
him too.
Have you noticed the stress our Lord laid
on quality of life as opposed to quantity
of activity?
For example, when Jesus gave the eight Beatitudes
in Matthew 5, when he was announcing the
manifesto of his kingdom, the eight qualities of
character that he mentioned were not activist qualities.
Now, we live in a tremendously activist age,
don't we?
We are laboring under the illusion that the
more we do, the faster we go, the
more noise we make about it, the more
we achieve.
But is that really correct?
Do we achieve more?
No.
Jesus would rather lay the emphasis in another
direction.
He didn't suggest new techniques that they could
adopt, or new methods of Christian work.
He didn't tell them how they could engage
in money-raising schemes.
What did he do?
He set before his followers the type of
person he expected who would be the ideal
citizen of his kingdom.
And in the eight qualities of which he
spoke, they are passive and not active qualities.
And we ought to take notice of that.
What are the qualities he mentioned?
Blessed are those who feel inadequate.
Rather a strange quality, isn't it, for the
person who is going to be successful in
God's work.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who
feel inadequate.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after
righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for my
sake.
Every one of them, a rather passive quality.
You see, the Lord is emphasizing not so
much quantity of activity as quality of life.
Jesus made it clear that he wasn't looking
for a bunch of workaholics, but people who
reflected his own spirit.
Now Paul had no different outlook from his
master, although he himself was a great activist.
He knew that the quality of his work
would determine its effectiveness.
And so he stressed the same thing.
If you take the fruit of the Spirit
in Galatians 5, 22, 23, and then analyze
them, you will find that all nine manifestations
of this fruit were passive.
Indeed, every one of the nine could be
reproduced in the life of a paraplegic who
couldn't move a muscle and couldn't do anything.
These are qualities of character.
And these are the things that the Lord
values very highly in a leader.
They make one a mature leader.
When we're living a quality of life, we'll
achieve more even although we maybe seem to
be doing less.
The word Paul uses that is translated perfect
or mature in our versions carries a dual
idea.
First of all, it means the full development
of one's powers, or the attainment of some
standard or goal.
Now our Lord perfectly fulfilled both ideals, did
he not?
All his powers were fully developed and integrated.
He attained the standard God set.
He reached the goal his father had set
before him.
He perfectly fulfilled both ideals.
And this is the standard he has for
us.
He wants all our powers to be fully
developed, to become mature, that we might have
a fully integrated personality.
He wants us also to attain the standard
that he was set and how tremendously high
it is.
We may think it's impossible, but remember the
exhortation of Hebrews 6.1, let us continue
progressing toward maturity.
The question is not whether we have arrived,
but whether we are moving forward.
No one on this earth ever has or
ever will attain absolute maturity in the sense
in which our Lord attained it.
But we can be progressing toward maturity and
moving on toward it.
How can we rise to such a standard?
None of us is perfectly mature, but there
is something to encourage us.
I used to have trouble with Matthew 5
.48, which says, be perfect or be mature
therefore as your father in heaven is perfect
or mature.
That seemed an impossible goal to have in
view.
However could I become like God in maturity?
But I was encouraged reading a book of
Dr. A.T. Robertson, where he pointed out
that the word for perfect or mature can
be used of our Lord in the absolute
sense, but not so of us.
However, the word is used of the relative
maturity of a child as compared with an
adult.
And here is hope for us.
Jesus is saying that we must press on
from an infantile to an adult maturity.
And this is what we should be doing.
We press on.
Paul said, not as though I had already
attained, either were already perfect, but I press
on.
And this should be our attitude.
Moving on from the infantile to the adult.
The spiritual maturity of a leader is not
merely a matter of age or aging.
We don't automatically grow more mature because we're
growing old.
There is no necessary link between gray hair
and maturity as we see in some of
us older people.
Now you can't measure our maturity by the
calendar.
No, it's not merely an aging process.
It's not something that's instantaneous.
It's not final.
No living thing matures in an instant.
You never find a child who goes to
bed an infant and wakes up an adult.
There is growth.
There is development.
No single decision will secure for us all
the blessings of sanctification, although sometimes those crisis
experiences give us a tremendous push forward.
But there has to be the progressing.
Let us continue to progress toward maturity.
It involves moral effort.
It involves discipline.
It involves perseverance.
In his wonderful poem St. Paul, F.
W.
H.
Myers has this verse.
Let no one think that sudden in a
minute all is accomplished and his work is
done.
Though with thine earliest dawn now shouldst begin
it, scarce were it ended in thy setting
sun.
Spiritual maturity is not something that's automatic as
a result of the mastery of scripture.
I would be the last to say anything
against mastering scripture, but remember that our Bible
study is of value only as its principles
are worked out in daily obedience.
Otherwise it's just an intellectual exercise.
No, it must be worked out in daily
experience.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer made this perceptive statement.
The difference between a mature man and a
callow youth is that he finds his center
of gravity wherever he happens to be at
the moment.
And however much he longs for the object
of his desire, it cannot prevent him from
doing his duty.
In other words, the mature leader will function
wherever he is placed.
The immature leader will want to be put
somewhere where he likes or where he feels
comfortable.
The mature spiritual leader will function wherever he
is placed.
And this is something we should covet and
aim at.
To the Greeks, the ideal frame of mind
is enshrined in a word that occurs in
Romans 12 and verse 3, a word sophrosyne,
which means to think with sober judgment.
They regarded this as the fundamental virtue, an
ideal balance of mind.
You know, a virtue is a mean between
two extremes.
For example, take the virtue of courage.
It is not difficult for it to slip
off on one side and become rashness.
Or it can slip off onto the other
side and become cowardice.
Or take the virtue of purity.
On the one hand, it can turn to
prudery.
On the other hand, it could turn to
impurity.
But the virtue is the mean between the
two.
And this is the ideal.
Well, spiritual maturity, as we read it in
the scriptures, is a very delicately poised quality.
And both Paul and the writer to the
Hebrews indicates that there are two extremes into
which it can slip.
On the one hand, it can be an
unduly protracted infancy, not making progress toward maturity,
stuck between Easter and Pentecost.
And many Christians are immature.
They are still drinking the milk of the
word, totally dependent on what they receive from
other people.
An unduly protracted infancy.
On the other hand, it could slip into
an unduly premature senility.
Many Christians have gone into this condition.
Instead of progress, there has been regression.
And the writer to the Hebrews, speaking to
people who are in that state, he said,
you've been a Christian long enough that you
ought to be teaching others.
Instead of that, you need someone to come
to you and teach you again the ABC
of the doctrine of Christ.
And this, these two possibilities face the Christian
leader as well as the followers.
And we do well to realize this danger
and guard against it.
Make sure that we are not moving backward,
but that we are moving forward, that we
are not stuck in our Christian experience.
Leaders can lose their spiritual insight if they
fail to maintain daily communion with God.
And the worst of it is that such
regression is usually unconscious and painless.
The leader sets the tone for any group.
He enunciates the standards.
He provides the example, or the model.
He imparts vision.
He communicates faith, or he should do.
And he must be ahead of his followers
in many areas, or he himself is a
follower and not a leader.
Now, I admit that these biblical standards of
leadership are tremendously high, and we might feel
discouraged.
But is there a dynamic that can keep
us on course in our pursuit of spiritual
maturity?
I believe there is.
In Romans 12 and verse 11, it says,
not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving
the Lord.
Archbishop Harrington Lees has a translation of that
middle statement that runs like this, not slothful
in business, kept at boiling point by the
Holy Spirit.
Kept at boiling point, it's the present continuous
tense, by the Holy Spirit.
We come to the boil, we get a
warm heart, we have our experiences like that,
but how easy it is for us to
go off the boil.
How can we be kept on the boil?
Many years ago, I took my boy to
one of the boiling lakes in the thermal
regions of our country at Rotorua.
We were standing with our guide, seeing the
steam rising from the lake, and the guide
said to my lad, take that shovel and
throw a shovel full of sand into the
lake.
Well, he did.
And in a minute, the lake started to
boil and seethe and bubble, and it kept
on doing it, and we watched it.
And I said to the guide, what's the
explanation of that?
Oh, he said, it's very simple.
The water in this lake is very acid.
And the sand your boy threw in was
iron sand, and all you're seeing is that
down at the bottom of the lake, there
is the chemical action going on, and you're
seeing its manifestation on the surface of the
lake.
And as he said that, my thought went
to this verse, kept at boiling point by
the Holy Spirit.
Deep in our spirits dwells the Holy Spirit
of God.
His great desire is to advance the cause
of Christ.
He is there what for?
To be to us what Christ could be.
And Paul says you can be kept at
boiling point by the Holy Spirit who is
given to you.
You remember in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, when Christian
reached Interpreter's house, he saw a fire blazing
on the hearth, and a man pouring water
on it.
But to his amazement, instead of putting the
fire out, he only seemed to make the
flames leap higher.
And Christian was mystified until he went round
the back.
And there, what did he see?
He saw a man pouring on oil, and
he understood why the flames leaped higher.
In our leadership positions, we'll get plenty of
cold water poured.
But you see, when there's somebody behind pouring
on the oil, the water will go off
in steam.
It will generate power.
And my brothers, my sisters in leadership, here
I believe is the dynamic that will keep
us moving, not slothful in business.
Kept at boiling point by the Holy Spirit,
doing bond service for the Master.
Please turn the cassette over at this point
for Mr. Sanders' next message on spiritual leadership.