Christianity's Leadership Crisis

Why we aren't getting sound doctrine

In last week’s article we looked at how we use the term “sound doctrine” much differently than the Bible does. We spend a great deal of time rehearsing the basics of the plan of salvation and Biblical worship, often at the expense of the hands-on, difficult teachings regarding how we are to live.

That leaves us with an important question - why is this the case?

If we are going to get back to true, whole counsel sound doctrine, we need to know why we’re not getting it and what can be done about it. The why is fairly simple:

We have a broken leadership model.

I’m not arguing that Jesus got leadership wrong when He appointed elders and preachers to lead His church. Rather, it’s my contention that our understanding of the roles of elders and preachers roles is one we got from the culture around us rather than the Word.

Like fish who don’t know they’re wet, we’re saturated in cultural assumptions of what leadership is, and we bring those assumptions with us into the church. And the assumptions we're operating under are a blend of ideas taken from the political and economic climate we grew up in. We like voting and “having a voice” in the process, and we like the producer/consumer setup of businesses where the customer is always right.

So, the time comes to preach the whole counsel of what constitutes sound doctrine. But if you do, people are going to get mad. Some might leave. Contribution might decline.

What’s an elder to do?

Those who view themselves as elected representatives will give in to the constituents. Those who view themselves as tasked with keeping the customers happy and in regular attendance will make sure nothing is done to upset them. When this happens it’s because they forget that they don’t answer to the members, but to God.

What about a preacher? What’s he to do?

He’s to preach the word in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2), whether people like it or not. But he also has a family to feed, and he’s accountable to leaders who might evaluate his job performance on how many people leave if the preaching gets a little too Biblical. Being as unthreatening, unintrusive as possible in his teaching makes a lot of sense, from a certain perspective.

I am not saying every elder or preacher thinks in these ways. There are many faithful elders and preachers doing difficult work and enduring the hardship that comes with it. But you can see by the results that some (maybe even many) do operate as though it’s a democracy or a business, and that leads to a lack of true sound doctrine.

When coming up against the specific, hands-on teaching people need, one of three routes is often chosen.

Avoidance

Let’s face it, it’s just way easier to talk to a room of baptized, a capella worshiping Christians about the importance of baptism and a capella worship than it is to call those people to holier living.

Last week a friend sent me a flyer for a lectureship that included sessions on pressing topics such as “Raffles” and “Singing during the Lord’s Supper” and the ever-relevant “mechanical instruments of worship.” A year or two ago one group dedicated an entire weekend lectureship to tearing down the New Heavens New Earth doctrine. Some of you probably don’t even know what it is—mainly because it almost doesn’t affect your life at all.

I am not saying these kinds of doctrines do not matter. There’s even a time and place for such debates and discussions. But with the church backsliding and the culture marking back into Satan’s grasp, is that really where we need to be concentrating our biggest efforts?

Avoiding the day-in, day-out, practical teachings of the Bible in favor of teaching church practices teaches people to compartmentalize their faith. The Bible is cast as primarily concerned with what happens within the church building, so we start acting as if that’s true. But that’s not the entirety of sound doctrine.

Dismissal

Any time you have a discussion on how best to practically follow Christ that does not have a specific commandment, somebody’s going to jump up and shout, “You can’t bind that!” And, when pressed, they often mean by that that we shouldn’t even discuss such topics.

This is just a different manifestation of legalism. Legalism sees Christianity as a checklist of “Thou shalts” and “Thou shalt nots” to follow. The “you can’t bind that crowd” says that discussing matters that aren’t explicitly commanded is off the list, so it shouldn’t be done.

This kind of thinking removes from the Christian life the need for any wisdom and discernment. And, this creates shallow Christians. It teaches them that holiness is a checklist to complete and a destination at which we arrive rather than a lifelong journey of “trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:10).

It’s a refusal to teach exactly the kinds of things Paul called sound doctrine, leading to a shallow, thin unity of people who have been allowed to choose their own level of spiritual maturity. It teaches people that Jesus doesn’t care about the details. You don’t need to wrestle with how best to serve Him. He’s left all of that up to us to do what we want.

And we wonder why worldliness keeps creeping in to the church.

Selective engagement

Many of those who do wade into the more difficult subjects often go only so far as to promote the socially acceptable side of the Bible’s teaching on a matter.

We’ll preach on marriage and even maintain headship, but all of the emphasis will be on why it’s wrong for men to be domineering. We’ll preach on racial unity and the importance of loving one another equally, but all of the emphasis will be on what white Christians have done wrong. We’ll talk about the epidemic of “lovers of self” in the world today, but put the large burden of it on young people.

All of those teachings are Biblically correct and should be taught. But they also aren’t really in dispute, either. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone trying to dismiss such teachings. If you’re only giving the uncontroversial side then what good are you?

Boldness means saying the truths people don’t agree with and not just the ones they do.

If you waded into those same discussions mentioned above and taught the full picture of God’s teaching, the pushback would be severe. Preach on what male headship does mean rather than only what it does not and you will have feminist-influenced church members ready to run you out of town. Preach on how racial minorities regularly commit the sin of racist partiality (look up black evangelical voting statistics) and see how that goes over. Preach on how older generations need to repent for the way they raised the selfish younger people you see today and then duck for cover.

This is the biggest test for whether we have sound doctrine or not.

It’s our ability to hold the line where the battle is most fiercely raging that determines if we’re really leading or if we’re capitulating and compromising.

It’s exactly why 1&2 Timothy and Titus are so important. Paul was teaching those young ministers how to set up the fences that would create the church’s unity, and he included far more than just ecclesiology and soteriology.

He demanded teaching on the day to day details of real life - how men are to lead the church and the home, how to be a Godly wife, how to view work and money, how to function as citizens in a political system, etc.

He knew people were going to have itching ears, not putting up with this kind of teaching and seeking out people who would tell them what they want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Yet he told Timothy and Titus to preach the hard truths and push people out of their comfort zones anyway.

Avoiding, dismissing, or selectively engaging such teachings sets the church up for shallow, compartmentalized discipleship.

Until we realize God has given certain men this authority as a safeguard for the church’s integrity and as the catalyst for the church’s growth, we will continue to falter. Keeping the customers happy encourages broad, shallow unity rather than narrow, deep unity. We prefer the loose association of a large number of people who claim Jesus to the tight unity of a smaller number who are actually striving to follow Him.

But it is not a democracy. Members are not customers. So long as we make decisions based on the “votes” of the people, we won’t have sound doctrine, and without sound doctrine, we will starve to death.

This is only half of the equation, though. If God has given them such authority, they should act like it. But the rest of us have a part to play in this authority structure, too.

Make sure you’ve subscribed to get next week’s article, “Sheep Make for Awful Leaders.”