Our church leadership is meeting regularly to work through Paul Tripp’s book Dangerous Calling. Each week, I send an email reminding them of things we’re learning. Here’s this week’s installment:
Gents,
Want to keep building on the momentum from our May 21st meeting. In that meeting (have you gotten together with Bob Guthrie yet if you missed it?), we watched sessions 5 and 6. I’m going to summarize session 6 in this email and press for some application.
The high points:
· When you begin to believe that you have arrived, you will be unprepared for the violence of grace. God will bring the grace of refinement and rescue to reclaim your heart.
· God wants you.
· Ministry can lead to the temptation of isolation.
· Sin blinds, and therefore, we will have an inaccurate view of ourselves and will not be able to repent of sins.
We were encouraged to pursue these applications:
· Have you isolated yourself from or above the body of Christ?
· Have you been using your position as a leader to justify not revealing your struggles and temptations to others?
· Do you tell yourself that, as a leader, you must set a good example and, therefore, not confess sin?
· Have you told yourself that you must not show weaknesses in order to be an effective leader?
· Have you improperly judged others in ministry or placed unreachable expectations upon them? If so, perhaps you need to confess this to them.
· Are you prepared to show compassion, mercy and grace to others in ministry? Have you made yourself approachable should anyone want to share or confess their struggles to you?
· Are you prepared to speak the truth in love to those in the body who need to hear difficult truths spoken in love?
I hope some of these resonate with you and result in lots of ministry application out of our lives. Have a great week.