Dear Pastor, Value Character over Performance

This article is part of the Dear Pastor series.

Priorities

Every leadership community needs to recognize that ministry is an intersection of many competing and conflicting motivations. It would be wonderful if every leader in every church and ministry leadership community could say, “My heart is pure and unable to be tempted by any motivations that compete with my allegiance to Christ and his gospel of grace.” The problem is that while every leader’s heart is being purified by sanctifying grace, it is not yet completely pure and beyond temptation. Vinod Ramashandra, in his book Gods That Fail, notes that for the believing community, the most powerful and seductive idols are the ones that are easily Christianized. His words are a pointed warning to everyone in ministry leadership. Here’s how we go astray: a ministry leader pursues agendas other than his ambassadorial calling by doing ministry. A leader whose heart has been captured by other things doesn’t forsake ministry to pursue those other things; he uses ministry position, power, authority, and trust to get those things. Every leadership community needs to understand that ministry can be the vehicle for pursuing a whole host of idolatries. In this way, ministry leadership is war, and we cannot approach it with the passivity of peacetime assumptions.

Sadly, noble ministry leaders become ignoble ministry leaders, and because their hearts have been kidnapped, they are the ambassadors of false gods (power, fame, material things, control, acclaim, money, or the world’s respect), while still doing ministry. In the lifetime of a ministry, leaders change. Sometimes that change is a deeper submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ and to ambassadorial calling, but sometimes it’s a drift toward the service of other masters. Everyone reading this has been witness to the sad drift that can take place in the heart, life, and ministry of a leader.

Pastors Need Community

Whenever there is a public fall of a well-known leader, my first question is, “Why didn’t the surrounding leadership community see it and address it before it got to this horrible place?” I ask because there are a couple of assumptions that seem safe to make. First, you know the leader has changed because if he had been in the early days who he now is, he would never have been called, hired, or appointed to this leadership position. Second, the changes did not occur overnight. They happened in bits and pieces over a period of years. This means that there are not only many evidences of a shift taking place in his life, but a growing body of evidence of a shift in heart sensitivities and heart allegiances. So it seems right to ask again the question I began this paragraph with.

How does a biblically based, gospel-committed, Christ-serving leadership community not move to lovingly confront a leader who has changed, seeking to rescue him from himself and to protect him from false ministry gods? I am going to answer my question in a way that will upset and maybe even anger some of you, but please give me the chance to explain. The reason we are often way too passive in the face of troubling evidence in the attitudes and actions of a leader is that way too often, performance trumps character. I have heard statements like the ones below repeatedly:

“But he was such a gifted preacher.”
“But look at the numbers of people who have come to Christ.”
“But look how our church has grown.”
“But think about the number of churches we have planted.”
“But we’d never have had this ministry campus apart from him.”
“But look at the gospel resources he has produced.”

Few leadership communities say that they have come to value performance over character, but performance becomes the logic behind not dealing with issues of character. Here is the inadequate logic: “Look what this great man has done for God; should we really tarnish his ministry?” So a leadership community accepts what it should not accept, is silent when it should speak, and is passive when it should act. There has been no confessional values change, but at the functional level the leadership community comes to value ministry success more than godly character and ambassadorial allegiance. It’s not just that one of their leaders has changed; the entire leadership community has changed, and in many cases, they don’t seem to know it.

Let’s look at how this shift often takes place. My purpose is not to argue that this is how it always happens but that these steps are typical of the way it tends to happen.

Every leader needs confronting and restorative grace.

A Slow Shift

In the beginning of a leader’s ministry there is a high level of concern for character and a whole lot of loving encouragement and accountability. In getting to know a leader, he is watched carefully for how he does his work and relates to others. He is surrounded by the kind of community every leader needs. But as the months and years go by and the leader’s gifts bear fruit in rich and exciting ways, the leaders around him begin to close their eyes and shut their ears. Maybe it’s anger in a meeting that is not addressed, or an attitude toward an employee that is not confronted, or something inappropriate said about a woman that is not addressed. This powerful and effective leader now has the power to silence needed gospel voices in his leadership community. Fellow leaders become comfortable with resisting the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Things are said and done that they know are wrong, and when they happen, there is a check in their spirit, but they fail to respond to the prompting, and they sit in silence

Before long, rather than confronting wrongs with grace, in their own hearts or in conversation with fellow leaders they are explaining them away. As a leadership community they convince themselves that maybe wrong isn’t really that wrong. They produce in their own hearts and with one another alternative perspectives and explanations that make wrong look less than wrong. If all this is allowed to happen, it won’t be long before this leadership community begins defending the leader when charges come from people he has wronged instead of dealing with those wrongs with a commitment to ethical and character purity that is tempered by grace. This once loving, watchful, rescuing, and protective gospel community has morphed into a community of defenders and advocates. The power and performance of this leader have left him unprotected and unpastored. The success of his ministry is loved by his fellow leaders more than he is. The castle he has built has become more precious than his soul. Fellow leaders have cowered in silence when he has resisted loving concern and confrontation, rather than loving him with the kind of sturdy, unrelenting love that comes when fear of God has defeated fear of man.

No leader can be left to himself. No leader should be permitted to drive away fellow leaders who have godly concerns. No leader should command loyalty in a way that compromises gospel integrity and morality. No leader’s ministry fruit should result in his heart not being protected. Every leader, no matter how powerful and successful, should be willing to look at himself in the reliable mirror of the word of God. No leadership community should compromise its integrity to accomplish its vision. No leader should be untouchable by the gospel community that God has lovingly placed around him. Every leader needs confronting and restorative grace.

Ministry is an everyday war of values. But we should not be afraid or discouraged, because we are not alone in this battle. Every ministry leader is the object of God’s sanctifying grace. When it comes to the true values of our hearts, sanctification progressively exposes, convicts, reclaims, and restores. Our hope is not that we will always get it right but that God will never forsake his sanctifying work. We may be willing to compromise, but he never will be. We may give way to fear, but he has no fear. We may be swindled into not seeing things clearly and accurately, but his view of us is always perfect. His presence and work in and through us is our hope, and because it is, we can commit ourselves to doing better. We can own our weakness and our failures and accept his invitation to fresh starts and new beginnings.

This article is adapted from Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church by Paul David Tripp.

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