We’re all interim.
I’ve typically reminded myself of this reality lately. After I began seminary, I additionally utilized for a ministry assistant place at a neighborhood church. Their youth pastor had left earlier within the 12 months; they requested me to interview for the management function within the ministry because the “Interim.”
“It might be for 4 months . . . or 4 years.” With pleasure and apprehension, I dove into the work. There was a stress all alongside the way in which. How can I preserve from testing when my time may be up at any given second? How can I drive and encourage a gaggle of leaders towards a unified imaginative and prescient after I know all I’ve completed will probably be handed over to a different?
Put merely: How can I lead properly after I’m interim?
I’ve felt the strain. That’s not shocking. While you’re interim, ambiguity is baked into your job description. On the similar time, I’ve discovered that the struggles attendant to an interim chief are widespread to all types of individuals in all seasons of life. The query is much less of variety and extra of diploma. Regardless of our scenario, we don’t know the way lengthy our Lord intends us to be in any given place. We don’t know the way lengthy we are going to benefit from the items of explicit relationships and mentors.
So, what do we have to run with endurance this transitory race? Whether or not you’re beginning a season or ending one, or maybe grieving the lack of a ministry companion, I hope to encourage your coronary heart. A part of the important thing for me lately, my problem and luxury and constitution, has been accepting the truth that good leaders come and go, so good leaders go and are available.
Good Leaders Come and Go
The truth that good leaders come and go is illustrated by Israel’s transition of management in Numbers 27. God has simply referred to as Moses to glimpse the promised land and die with out coming into due to his disrespect within the wilderness (Numbers 27:13–14). Moses instantly thinks of Israel and begs God to ship a brand new chief. Who will it’s? And who will the individuals be with out Moses?
In case your church has ever misplaced a pacesetter, you could have most likely requested these questions. What is going to occur to us? Who will take his place? What comes subsequent? What’s God’s plan? I bear in mind a sure elder who stood up earlier than the individuals within the aftermath of a disaster and voiced the cry of each bewildered coronary heart: Are we gonna be okay? Even after we half methods on good phrases for good causes, the lack of a beloved chief raises a thousand variations of that very same query: Are we gonna be okay?
Perhaps you’ve requested that query your self. It’s not essentially an overreaction, and the sensation of instability doesn’t inherently imply we’ve got idolized a pacesetter. When Moses appeals to God to fill the open slot, he prays for God to place
a person over the congregation who shall exit earlier than them and are available in earlier than them, who shall lead them out and produce them in, that the congregation of the Lord will not be as sheep that don’t have any shepherd. (Numbers 27:17)
Moses knew the absence of a commanding chief would spell catastrophe for the individuals. They’d be scattered, susceptible, vulnerable. They’d fail to overcome the promised land.
So, what sort of a person did Moses search for? Not a person who might facilitate plagues or present new legal guidelines or stand forth as a prophet. These have been qualities distinctive to Moses’s calling. Relatively, understanding good leaders come and go, Moses regarded for a pacesetter who would go and are available.
They Additionally Go and Come
Discover that phrase in verse 17: Moses prays for a person “who shall exit earlier than them and are available in earlier than them.” What precisely does that imply? How does it relate to the calling of management?
The pairing of “going out” and “coming in” seems regularly all through the Previous Testomony. It typically merely describes the hustle and bustle of every day life (as in 2 Samuel 3:25 or Jeremiah 37:4). However right here in Numbers, the phrase is a hendiadys (two concepts glued collectively to type one distinctive thought). It describes a commander main troops out to battle after which coming again in to the camp (see additionally Joshua 14:11). Moses noticed the necessity for a person who might courageously lead the individuals out as a military to battle and compassionately lead the individuals in as a flock to pasture. They wanted a shepherd-warrior — a pacesetter who fights so his individuals can discover pasture.
“Good leaders come and go, so good leaders go and are available.”
Joshua was not Moses. However he was a pacesetter who might exit and are available in earlier than the individuals — and within the energy and firm of the Lord, that was sufficient. That was what the individuals wanted. They didn’t want Moses to dwell on in perpetuity; they simply wanted the subsequent chief to be trustworthy in his era.
Temporal Leaders
What about you? Are you beginning a brand new ministry? Good friend, you will not be Moses. You aren’t the final man. God by no means meant you to be. Honor your predecessor not by being a greater model of him however by constructing on no matter good basis he left behind.
Or are you the one who’s leaving, wrestling with hand the ministry off to the subsequent chief? He isn’t you. And God didn’t intend him to be. God doesn’t want him to be. The church doesn’t want him to be. When you’re near a management transition, don’t twist the hearts of your individuals to demand an encore of your self. Put together them for God’s provision of latest management in a brand new season by instructing them to obtain this variation with thanksgiving.
The church doesn’t want one other you or one other me. The church merely wants leaders who will boldly and gladly embrace sacrificial accountability for the nice of their group. Leaders who’re first to march into battle and who like to dwell in hard-won peace. Leaders who tear down strongholds and luxury the downtrodden. Leaders who will look diligently at their group and its context, figuring out sheep to guard, strengths to capitalize on, sins to rebuke, wants to satisfy, errors to refute, classes to show, and evil to face up towards. Leaders who will get up with a message of life and stand out with a life that backs it up.
In brief, God’s individuals want leaders who will “exit” earlier than the individuals, heralding the phrase of God, main them within the battle of tearing down ungodly strongholds of idolatrous arguments and narratives of the age. And God’s individuals want leaders who will “are available in” earlier than the individuals, heralding the battle already received by Christ, exhorting them to enter the peace he bought, and displaying them not simply the way in which to struggle but additionally the way in which to dwell.
On this age, there’ll all the time be leaders who come and go. And so there’ll all the time be a necessity for leaders who can go and are available.
Led Leaders
Are you a pacesetter coming into a brand new ministry? Leaving an outdated one? Do you painfully bear in mind a pacesetter you’ve misplaced? Or have been you the one who left? Both means, a warning: when leaders come and go, candy reminiscences can curdle if soured by unmet hopes and unkept guarantees.
In Christ, we reckon with the transience of life and ministry. God units up and takes down nations and their kings (Daniel 2:21) — how rather more so the lecturers and preachers and elders and mentors in our lives. We by no means know who will probably be the place for the way lengthy. However our name as leaders is to exit and are available in earlier than the individuals so long as we’re privileged to be there with them, whether or not for months or for years or, Lord prepared, for many years. So whether or not you’re holding the baton, handing it off, or receiving it — bear in mind we’re all interim.
That doesn’t imply our work isn’t actual, although. Joshua had a reputable, real-life function as shepherd-warrior. He additionally had the privilege of foreshadowing the true and larger Shepherd King to return. In the identical mildew, elders are to “shepherd the flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2) in the identical spirit because the chief Shepherd and till he seems. When our work factors to the True Chief, it turns into each lesser and larger.
A part of my purpose lately has been to show my college students that leaders are transient. My end line is coming, they usually should not put their belief in me. They have to, we should, belief in Christ. He alone is the widespread denominator between each session of management. He’s the one basis, the regular rule. Christ is the one who lived and lives and leads. He is our fearless, brave Shepherd-King. As a result of good leaders come and go, we’d like leaders who will go and are available. Reward the Lord, we’ve got a chief Shepherd who all the time does.
