"Training for Reigning - Is Your Leader/Pastor Willing to be Trained? Are Is Everything So Deep and Spiritual?

In visiting several churches, I've had the opportunity to meet/speak with some of the leadership members. And one young man said something that begin to make me think..He said, "We can have the best army in the world, but it can still be defeated without good leadership." "Likewise, even with competent leadership, it can still be defeated without a well-trained and disciplined army." I agreed and continued to say, we need both.

I then began to think about some of the churches that are popping up everywhere, and I wanted to focus on the leadership because any great organization or force will only perform according to its potential if it is led well. Which is why leadership should always be the highest priority when we begin an endeavor, and it was the highest priority with the Lord when He began to build His army on the earth, the Church.

Leadership is not just at the top, but throughout the ranks. We have the greatest leader there could ever be, because the Lord Jesus is Himself "the Captain of the hosts." We could never have a better top leader, but there must also be quality leadership at every level for any army to be a truly effective force. How can the leadership of the rest of the Church be improved?

First, we need to focus on this as a real issue that must be addressed. Throughout Church history, we can see the effective work of the Church to being the light of the world and salt of the earth, but the Church was dependent on the quality of its leaders at that time. When there were great leaders, the Church would arise and do great things. When there was no dynamic leadership, the Church would languish. It was the same in the Old Testament, which is why it was considered to be a curse on a nation to have poor or immature leaders.

Leadership and management abilities are gifts, but many believe that these are something you are born with. That is not the case. As a ministry, we have had a continual stream of people who promoted themselves as leaders or managers who felt "called to this" but turned out to be remarkably incompetent. Many of them could have been leaders or managers if they had devoted themselves to serious training and preparation, but they assumed it was just "a gift" or "a calling" that did not require much effort on their parts. They were tragically mistaken. II Peter 1:10 states the need very well:

"Because of this, brethren, be all the more solicitous and eager to make sure (to ratify, to strengthen, to make steadfast) your calling and election; for if you do this, you will never stumble or fall"(AMP).

Most of the incompetent leaders and managers we have had to release or demote gained their position in our organization because the department managers hired them because they had such a heart for what they were brought on to do. I appreciate this, and we do look at the heart first, but that is not all that we should look at. We must also consider if they had enough of a heart for what they wanted to do to get the knowledge and training in leadership and management so that they could lead or manage well what they had a heart for. Heart is first, but it is by no means all.

Again, in the Lord, heart is first. I evaluated a few Pastors/leaders of several ministries and found out that there was not a single leader on these team who had any official qualifications, such as a degree in the area that they were leading. I was not alarmed by this because it is how the Lord chose His leaders, the very ones who would lay a foundation for the Church. Our basic qualification for a position is to have a heart for it, because it is out of the "innermost being," or the heart, that the living waters flow (see John 7:38). However, Jesus did not leave His disciples untrained or unprepared, but gave them a different kind of training than the world would have. What are you doing as a Pastor/Leader to follow Jesus and make your fruit remarkably good?

Often times, there is a lot of delusion in the Body of Christ from unqualifed Pastors/Leaders. In completing my evaluation, I found that most of these church who are in a failing state are not affiliated with any of form spiritual covering/association. When I was a little girl, I remember The Baptist Association would require for all pastor's to go thru their training programs. Why would we as a people, decide to invest our time, money, and talents in a church where the Pastor is not willing to be held accountable to authority. And please don't fall for the I'm accountable to God script. This is not faith—it is deception.