A HANDBOOK FOR CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP EXCELLENCE

BOOK REVIEW: J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership.

This is a volume worth the time of every current and aspiring Christian leader. Sanders’ work – written in the ‘60's but updated and containing principles which are essentially timeless – sets a high bar for spiritual leadership while recognizing the humanness of every leader.

The first five chapters examine the general characteristics of leaders and then provides a reflective pause in the work for what is essentially a self-test on one’s own aptitude and/or readiness to assume leadership. Then follow two chapters examining leadership in the lives of two men, both apostles but very different in temperament and skills: Paul and Peter. After reviewing some essential qualities of a leader, specific applications follow (time, reading, cost, responsibilities). The final chapter on Nehemiah uses a Biblical model to illustrate key principles; before that, however, two chapters deal with the critical issues of succession and multiplication (replacing and reproducing).

I went through this book in connection with a men’s small group; however, I understand that it is required reading in some theological programs. Well it should be: it’s a good choice. Both for its strong expectations and setting out of the cost so one can count it in preparation for service, it is almost a must-read.

Excellent for pastors, professors, executives who are Christians, and all who have responsibility to be examples and develop people.

Highly recommended.


Sanders, J. Oswald. Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer. Chicago: Moody, 1967, 2007. 208 pp. with indexes and study guide.


Memphis Tennessee (MEM)

“In Accordance with the Prophecy”

THE GOD WHO KNOWS US INTIMATELY (1 Timothy 1:18)

This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare ....


My son John is in possession of a full set of whisical expressions you can add to your normal everyday conversations to get a rise out of someone ... a raised eyebrow at a minimum, and maybe the conviction in someone’s mind that you really are certifiable. One is, “... but not with your duck”, as in: “You know, you could go home and curl up with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate tonight – but not with your duck.” Another one, more effective at making you sound card-carrying kooky I think, is: “... in accordance with the prophecy”. As in: “I think I’m going to go grocery shopping this afternoon and pick up some bathroom tissue – in accordance with the prophecy.”

Likely response (while backing away slowly): “Sure. You do that.”

But – what if? What if it weren’t just whimsy? In fact, what if it were true?

That’s the message in this verse, which is much more than just Paul’s kindly, admonitory transition to get to the next topic.

Timothy, along with Titus, Sylvanus, and a few others known to us (and probably many others whose names are lost or barely known such as Thecla), was one of Paul’s most trusted lieutenants, a protégé entrusted with critical aspects of the larger ministry and in particular, exercising leadership. This didn’t come about by chance, or simply because the Apostle is a gifted talent scout. It was part of God’s larger plan for the work of spreading the Gospel message, planting church communities, the ministry of apostleship ... and also the plan for Timothy’s life.

Picture it: a meeting, perhaps in secret, maybe in a home or outside in a glade or the back of a shop. There is tension in the room, but also excitement. Songs are sung in worship; the great truths of the Scripture are remembered and recited. Prayers go up for the brethren, and for those who don’t know the Lord yet. There is confession, and earnestness. There is praise. And there is a young man moved to offer himself for whatever service the Lord has for him. Even knowing it will mean hardship, poverty, and very likely cost him his very life.

Arms reach to embrace him. He lifts up his hands toward Heaven, and other hands are laid on him. As prayers are said, and tears stream down his face, the sisters and brothers bring forth words of knowledge and prophecy from God. The Holy Spirit knows Timothy, and has chosen him. With his history and his devotion. With his gifts and his faults. With his mistakes and his successes. With his relationships and his yearnings. God knows him intimately. Has a plan for him. Picked him for this work. Timothy’s contribution to this is a motion of will: he says, “yes”.

It is a sacred moment. In one sense, the climax of a journey to this point. In another, deeper sense, the launching moment of what is to come.

God knows each of us. His Spirit has gifted us with a matrix of gifts, talents, personality, experiences, temperament, relationships, and more ... all for the purpose God has chosen for us.

How easy it must have been when the challenge came, the heartbreaks, the promising disciples who walked away and the false brethren who betrayed, to want to throw in the towel, to say it was all a mistake, to dismiss the work of Christ as a noble but ultimately impractical dream.

That’s where the intimacy of God comes in.

When what the world calls “reality” strikes, when we are sorely tempted to give it all up as a bad game, it is the work of God in our lives, the knowledge that the Father of lights knows me, even me, with a clarity and intimacy that I can never attain for myself, that calls me back again. Amid the little “realities” with which we struggle and against which we often find ourselves fighting, it is the deeper Reality of God in Christ that has known and claimed us, and can hold us.

There’s no frustration, no persecution, no shortage of funds or matériel, no lack of fellowship or loneliness, that can trump that.

“In accordance with the prophecy”. From before all worlds, God knows me. My life, and every life I have ever met, is in His hands. What greater consolation can there be?


Lord, all praise to you. Thank you for knowing me ... and in knowing me, loving me ... and in loving me, making me ... and in making me, calling me for that purpose that You have determined. Keep me steady and focused and above all, living for You. In the Name of Jesus Your Son, our Lord. Amen.


Memphis, Tennessee (Christ United Methodist Church)

“To the King of Ages”

A LOVING DOXOLOGY: 1 Timothy 1:17

To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Paul closes his reflections on sin, life, and grace with a spontaneous burst of praise. As a deeply observant Jew, such an expression of glorification would come as naturally as breathing. Yet for Paul, there is something extra; it is the joyful fireworks of a soul which has known at first hand the blessing of unmerited redemption.

In the Middle Ages, such expressions would become the basis of a way of doing theology called “apophatic”, i.e., theologizing-by-taking-away, or the “negative way” (via negativa). The name most frequently connected with this is that of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, an otherwise unknown monastic philosopher-theologian who was mistakenly identified with the Dionysius who was converted by Paul at Athens on Mars Hill (the Areopagus). The general idea is that, when we follow an apophatic method, we are more likely to avoid errors in what we say about God. For Ps.-Dionyius and others, it was more than just a method for pursuing rigorous spiritual thought, it was a form of spiritual discipline and prayer in itself, a contemplation of the mysteries of God.

Thus also the hymn based on this passage:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise
In light inaccessible hid from our eye
Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days
Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise!

Paul has brought us to the junction of understanding and mystery, of recollection and amazed wonder, of intellectual rigor and ecstatic praise.


Great and incomparable God, bring me again to the wonder-filled contemplation of Your Majesty, and to joys both deep and explosive in Your Presence. Let my life be as a fountain of glorification to You. Amen.


Lusby, Maryland

WORAUS DIE WIRKLICHE FREIHEIT? (Whence True Freedom?)

FILM REVIEW: Barbara (2012)

Last week, I had the happy occasion to visit the Avalon in uptown Washington to see Christian Petzold’s new film Barbara. The work is a visual and dramatic feast which raises trenchant questions about the purpose of life and work, our human responsibility for one another, the meaning of happiness, and above all the nature of freedom – really, liberty not so much as a possession but as a vector, one which can be not only won but bestowed.

The title character (played by Nina Hoss) is a young doctor in East Germany; we pick up her story in 1980 on her first day of work at a provincial hospital after having been exiled to a rural district for the “offense” of having put in for an exit permit or Ausreisentrag to leave the GDR. Embittered, defiant and trusting no one, her standoffish persona and prestigious work history at the Charité Hospital in East Berlin combine to create in her the impression of the stuckup urban snob from the capital. Seeking to befriend her – partly because he is an informant for the Stasi (secret police) – is a handsome young doctor, André Reiser (Ronald Zehrfeld).

Brilliant in her work as a doctor, the periphery of Barbara’s life is a hell of surveillance, a rotten apartment with a Teutonic shrew of a landlady, strip- and cavity-searches by the Stasi, strained relations with her fellow staff, and highly furtive efforts to lay the groundwork for an eventual escape to the West. The drama is heightened by the winds and storm clouds along the Baltic coast and the pervasive darkness which haunts her movements. The one bright spot in all of this – other than her work – is her relationship with her boyfriend Jörg, who lives in West Germany. We share in two of their assignations: one in a remote wood, and the other at an Inter-Hotel (special hotel for foreign guests) in an unnamed city.

The plot thickens the day that Stella, a young woman in a detention camp, shows up at the hospital. Manhandled by the Volkspolizei (the so-called “People’s Police” who were an arm of the repressive state) and regarded as a malingerer by Dr. Reiser, she finds compassion and care – and the correct diagnosis of meningitis – from Barbara only. Stella becomes, in fact, the recipient of Barbara’s focused humanity and care, as the doctor reads to her from Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (auf Deutsch, of course!). When Stella – who is pregnant and understands clearly that her child stands no chance for a real future in the GDR – is forcibly returned to the labor camp (which Stella refers to as an “extermination camp - a socialist one”), she looks for an opportunity to escape and makes her way to Barbara’s flat, just as the doctor is about to make her daring escape across to Denmark. This sets the stage for the conflict which will resolve in Barbara’s decision about what to do with the precious gift of freedom, itself the product of her long and defiant struggle for freedom.

Leaving aside the fact that Cold War movies are one of my very favorite genres, I find Barbara to be a masterpiece of psychological depth, cinematography, plot pacing and development, and the framing of philosophical questions (such as: “is it possible to have genuine relationship where it is tacitly acknowledged that trust is absent or at least attenuated?”). In a sense, the story unfolds almost as a kind of prison-literature, set as it is in the repressive East German state. As such, it challenges the trendy and often facile Western, especially American notions, which link freedom to prosperity, happy outcomes, and ethical certainty. Though not a religious work in any sense, it fits more in the tradition of classical Christian understandings of the meaning and purpose of true liberty.


Lusby, Maryland

Praising Christ’s Perfect Patience

THE PARADOX OF GRACE: 1 Timothy 1:16

But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.


Having touched on the paradox of conviction, Paul now turns to a second paradox: that of grace. He understands the clemency shown to him in Christ to be exemplifying, not the perfect righteous person, but that of the foremost sinner. In other words, if Christ can forgive and make a saint of God out of Saul of Tarsus (Paul), then a fortiori Christ can for you and me also.

But Paul is also touching on another issue here to which we current Christians should pay attention: that of my redemption as serving a larger purpose for others’ redemption. The apostle knows it’s not just about “me and Jesus”, his private deal with God. It’s about a larger purpose that involves the redemption of others.

Gloria Steinem is quoted as having made a comment to the effect that successful or wealthy people plan for generations to come; the poor, for Saturday night. As elitist and classist as that statement comes off, there’s a grain of truth in it. The spiritual “wealth” in our discipleship is tied, at least in part, to how we fit into a larger work of God that affects many lives beyond our own.


Lord Jesus Christ: forgive me for those times when I have wanted to see my spiritual welfare as a private affair. Help me to have a broader vision, in line with yours which claims all of humanity, and the breadth of creation. For truly, you are the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” Amen.


Lusby, Maryland