Generational Lapses

Young people are very useful in the church of Christ.

They represent the energy the church possesses. They represent potential.

They represent the initiative, the drive, the push the church needs for growth and expansion.

But they are incomplete on their own since they can only do so much.

The church also needs elders for the direction, the wisdom, the stability, the stamina, the fall-back receptors to come back to after their exertions.

You see, the church is not all energy.

There must be strategy. There must be resources. There must be heat sinks to deal with burnout.

In short, those youths must have Antiochs and Jerusalems to refocus and reset after their exertions.

Sadly, young people do not think they ever need any such breaks or brakes.

They will therefore run and run and fight and fight until they faint, if not fall dead altogether. Simply because they do not think they need any rest.

And I write this as someone who responded to the call to ministry in my teenage.

Now, suppose with me that these young people get into the leadership of spiritual structures, especially without those overbearing ancients around?

There will be an unending adrenaline rush in ministry because limitations are absent.

Again, suppose with me that the led in those spiritual structures are also young as it will normally be?

The amount of energy in those structures will be astronomical, and unrestrained. Probably unhinged is the word I should use here.

However, youth energy is not unlimited. Youth zeal does not come from a bottomless source.

And youth itself is not forever.

It gets to middle age. Then to old age.

Allow me to get to the topic of today; youth leadership gone haywire.

At the core of many revivals is a core group that has several young people. Some consist only of young people.

This means that these young people will take the leadership of the spiritual structures thus formed.

Incidentally, many of those young men may have little or no education. Worse still, they may lack even the basics of theological instruction.

When they start questioning the existing ecclesiastical order due to their new ‘revelation’ and experience, many times not respectfully, they will be kicked out of them while others may run out because they decide their differences are irreconcilable.

The new congregations will thus consist only of young people full of fire.

They will thus pick their leadership from themselves using very vague yardsticks.

The gifts, the eloquence, the zeal, the dress.

Because that is all they know.

Theological education will come when it can’t be avoided. Meaning that only the essential leadership will seek it; and then only to tick a box of requirements.

The elders will be the same young men. Because a church must have elders.

And those pastors and elders will have all the powers vested in those positions.

Meaning that they hold unswaying power over others when they barely understand themselves.

Their leadership will therefore be akin to handing a machinegun to someone whose only exposure to guns is in action movies.

He will be a danger, not only to others, but also to himself.

This because he now possesses the power of life and death and that nobody else can resist or restrain him.

A friend once told me of such an incident.

Some carjackers took charge of a matatu (Public Service Vehicle).

In the rush to demonstrate that they had guns, one shot his finger off.

We are still on youth spiritual leadership.

And that is exactly how much of that leadership behaves.

And I have seen a lot of that over the years.

From nonsensical excommunications to comedic titles to insane rules.

And that because they fear that they do not deserve those titles. And they are right.

They therefore must push their weight around for people to respect them.

Calling someone an elder in his twenties does not make them one.

And it is the same thing with calling someone a father who is not one.

But it makes them feel so good.

And consistently doing so makes them believe that they really are what they are not.

These leaders will therefore ride waves they are not prepared for because they have nobody to tell them otherwise. And that because they started something without spiritual oversight when they declared themselves the oversight.

And it becomes worse because they then believe they deserve the perks that accompany those offices.

But I want us to look at one dangerous aspect of that reality.

They start serving very early in their lives without much oversight because they are the elders, pastors, bishops and everything in between.

They therefore enjoy unfettered and unquestioned power and authority because they appear to be the best their generation or revival movement could produce.

They will own those offices and positions; positions they were scripturally unqualified to hold even when they got them.

My name is pastor X, my name is bishop Y, mean that nobody is allowed to tamper with those positions and the offices they occupy.

What happens when they grow old and a few other characters see the need or receive the call to occupy those positions?

They will encounter a brick wall.

The other scenario is where the constitutions they made had a retirement age and they had attained it.

They have been in that office for so long that they have no idea what else they could do.

Imagine occupying an office and exercising spiritual authority for thirty or forty years!

Probably two thirds of your life have been spent in that office with that power enjoying all those goodies.

That office defines you.

But it gets even worse because you actually own that office even as your mouth shouts the loudest that it is Christ’s.

And the same happens when such a person is caught in sin.

They will not allow anyone to come between them and that office and position.

They will simply ring fence it.

They will arbitrarily excommunicate any challenge to their leadership, change the constitution to remove that age requirement for retirement and ensure that they are in charge of filling any positions in their structure to ensure that only loyalists get close to that power.

And since it is a generational thing, they have enough of their agemates and contemporaries running similar spiritual structures who will stand with them because they also see the same thing happening in their structures. They will therefore scratch his back because they know that in a short or long while they will need their backs being scratched as well.

By the way I am talking about the church of Christ.

You will therefore allow me to give the context.

There was a revival of sorts in East Africa between the sixties and eighties.

Out of that came out hot rods of young men completely sold out to Christ.

They founded several denominations, mainly because the existing ones did not have any space for them.

Due to that (and I have written this elsewhere), some, who were sold out for missions to the unreached places in the region, allowed that fire to die to be able to run the churches they had started.

And as their various denominations grew, their positions and influence grew.

Now they are in their sixties and seventies and eighties and beyond.

They have no other experience apart from leading churches.

They are therefore faced with a dilemma; what do they do after retirement?

What exactly is retirement?

How does one retire from ministry?

I remember a recent case in a mainstream denomination when an ancient flatly refused to retire though he was almost ten years past his retirement according to the church’s constitution. He had to be forcefully retired yet he was not even a good or effective pastor.

The dilemma that accompanies many career civil servants is on steroids when it gets to these ministers.

The civil servant knows no other life during the day when he is taken from a workplace he has occupied for thirty to forty years though he knew he would eventually leave it. And many who had no life outside their work rarely live long after their retirement.

But this minister’s position is way more precarious because it involved all his wakeful moments, many times even going to bed with it as burdens.

So what are they doing? What have they been doing?

They have removed retirement from their constitutions.

They have ringfenced their positions by kicking out any threat and challenge.

They have incorporated wife and children in top positions of those structures.

To appease long term associates who were part of the founding of those ministries, they have elevated them to positions (and themself to a higher position) and where possible sent them far from the centre to get rid of coherent history.

In short, they have made that church or denomination personal property.

Simply because they do not know how to retire.

Simply because they have become drunk with the power their positions command for far too long.

And I could have been like them since I am not much younger than them.

I have ministered with them. I have been friends with them.

I was also part of that revival movement.

But for God’s grace.

You see, over the years, any time talk started about one or the other ordination started (and I am talking about several denominations I have ministered with over the years), God would take me to another location.

Another thing that has helped me is the realisation from reading scripture that ministerial retirement is fifty years.

I therefore knew that my active ministry would have to start winding up after I turned fifty.

I started preparing to become an elder long ago and was not therefore not shocked when fifty knocked, a thing most of these look at as an abomination.

Allow me to leave it here

Death

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)

I want us to look at one aspect of death we have for the most part neglected; preparedness.

When we read the Bible, there is one thing you will realise with people who were close to God. You will see them very ready for it, as if they were keeping an appointment.

And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people. (Genesis 49:33)

That is exceptional when looked at using the lens of our times.

Yet it is not exceptional when looked at from a purely Biblical context.

The common thing you read is that someone set his house in order and then died.

As I have severally said, Hezekiah messed because he refused to agree with God that he had completed his assignment and sought an extension of the same, bitterly.

No wonder that extension brought about Manasseh!

Another thing that I will say paints our times in very bad light is the kind of revelation we enjoy.

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. (John 16:13)

How can it be called all truth if it does not include death?

What am I driving at?

God seeks to closely walk with us ALL THE TIME, not only when we are doing spiritual things.

But I think it is important to say one thing.

There must be a reason why we are unable to accurately know when our time has come.

It is because we do not know when our assignment is complete.

And do you know why that is so?

We actually do not know our assignment.

You see, I can only complete an assignment that I have been given.

And it is important to get our facts right.

Paul knew that his time had come because his assignment was complete.

And that was not because of threats of death or even being in prison because that was his constant diet over his ministry years. And a few verses of that reality are in order.

And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith; (Philippians 1:25)

But withal prepare me also a lodging: for I trust that through your prayers I shall be given unto you. (Philemon 1:22)

You may remember that in Acts 16 he refused to get out of prison because his rights had been breached. Yet he had not protested for his rights when he was beaten and sent to that prison.

This means that his assignment was more important than his rights. But they became important after the assignment was completed because it opened doors to a different kind of assignment.

You remember that even when he was stoned to death that he went on without a care after being prayed back to life?

Is it therefore possible to guess the point at which his assignment ended?

And we see the same with Peter.

He is asleep when awaiting death from Herod because his assignment was way from over.

Simply because he knew that nothing could block God from His purposes.

Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me. (2Peter 1:14)

That assignment is what gave him sleep when everybody knew he was on his way to the gallows.

Its completion was the reason he knew that it was a matter of time before he rejoined Christ.

The assignment was the reason Stephen could stare his stoners and boldly and clearly share the Gospel.

It was the reason he was triumphant when he was being stoned.

And it was the reason he prayed for forgiveness for his killers; because he knew that his assignment required that stoning.

Even death from illness does not diminish that as we see with Elisha.

He closes his books before dying by delivering instructions to concerned people.

I know I am scaring people.

But my intent is different.

I want to challenge you to realise that God has an assignment for you and that connecting to that assignment should be the prime object of your existence.

And it is only when you are in your assignment that you can know when it is completed.

Ministers employ bodyguards, carry guns and live in the most secure environments because they are completely in the dark about their assignments.

Even the kinds of cars we drive will many times loudly speak about our preparedness for death.

Many will not even take a cup of water from an uncertified source because they must keep their health free from any sort of infection.

I am not saying that we become careless with our lives since they are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

But you see, it is impossible to serve God right if we are more concerned about our security than we are about our ministry.

A minister is required to eat whatever is offered without asking questions, not because he is careless, but because he is serving God, the same God who created all those microbes and viruses and therefore can direct them however He wants.

We do not trample on serpents and scorpions because we are looking for them.

We do it as we are busy on the assignment God has for us.

Poison does not become harmless to us because we are immune to it.

It is made powerless because we are on assignment.

It is essential therefore to ascertain whether we are on our assignment or not.

And that is the point of this message.

Do you know your assignment?

Is it not therefore of utmost importance that you seek to know it so that you can start walking in it?

Then death will be welcome because you will know when that assignment is completed.

Wrong Prophets

There are false prophets.

And there are wrong prophets.

False prophets give you prophecy that has not come from God; meaning that they will misguide you for the most part.

They may give you joy when God intends you to be sad as you will see in Jeremiah’s interactions with them.

Or they might send you to death as happened with Ahab.

And it is because they are giving you directions they do not have.

A wrong prophet is worse by far because he is many times a destiny shaper, but from the wrong direction.

And I will have us look at one such, Balaam.

When Israel was leaving Egypt, it was very clear the nations they were to dispossess, nations that even Abraham had been told about centuries earlier.

Then there were nations they were not to touch. And they were told under no uncertain terms who they were.

God’s word was that they should not molest them or challenge them in any way as He would not give them even an inch of their territory.

Edom, Moab, Ammon, Midian.

And it was because they were family.

But those nations did not know that.

When Israel therefore came close to their nations, they felt threatened because of what Israel was doing to the Canaanites who were their neighbours.

They therefore looked for a prophet for spiritual intervention, offering a handsome reward for his services.

Offer for reward messed the prophet.

When he was given the reason to refuse the assignment, he openly refused to give God’s word, thus communicating the message that he was looking for a better reward.

What would you have done if you were Balaam?

The right thing was to give the correct message.

Then seek for a word for the seekers from God.

Had he done that, he could have known that Moab and Ammon were safe from Israel’s expansion; and that from the One who was leading them on and giving them the lands.

But he didn’t do that.

His greed led him on a downward spiral to the point that he became a soothsayer when he discovered that He could not manipulate God to get that elusive coin.

But the saddest part in that is that he led to brothers being converted to enemies.

Contrast this.

And the LORD said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle: for I will not give thee of their land for a possession; because I have given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession. (Deuteronomy 2:9)

And this

An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the LORD for ever: (Deuteronomy 23:3)

The prophet was the catalyst for that.

What am I saying?

A greedy prophet is more dangerous that a false prophet.

You see, Balaam was not a false prophet.

He knew God, listened to God and spoke as God told him.

But greed made listening difficult. Because it is impossible to hear God in a hurry or under pressure.

Remember Elijah?

And the giver of that gift is also not very patient because he wants his money to do the pushing and shoving on his behalf.

That is why ministry and money are on opposite sides of spirituality.

I am saying this as a minister. And I will leave you to fill the gaps.

And that because our generation are more like Barak than they are like David.

Barak sought results.

David sought God’s will and orders.

And that desire for results is the reason he dangled rewards that completely obliterated Balaam’s sensitivity and pursuit of God’s will.

This also brings up another reality I have written about; prophets who revolve around power as we saw with Ahab.

And you remember one of them slapping Michaiah and asking him when the spirit left him to get to Micaiah.

We can assume that Zedekiah fell into Balaam’s error when he became a royal prophet.

He was twisted by royal dainties to the point that he was unable to know when the spirit had completely left him.

Ministry rewards are dangerous, infinitely more dangerous that we may imagine.

This means that this post is not only about prophets.

It also concerns me who is a teacher of God’s word.

It concerns every single person God has called into ministry, even hidden ones like intercession.

Rewards will blunt the edge that is clarity about God’s orders.

However, rewards are not the culprit.

I think the expectation and reception of the same are the issues of concern, especially expectation.

This is the driver of the motivation craze running the bulk of the churches nowadays.

It is the driver of toothless sermons from our pulpits.

It is the reason heaven and hell, sin and sanctification, obedience and judgment, have been exiled from most pulpits for the longest time.

Nobody wants to scare givers with hard Biblical truths.

No wonder harlots occupy front row seats in churches baring their wares for all to see because confronting their sin would chase their tithes and offerings, to someone not as ‘radical’.

No wonder sex toys and drugs are traded in the church compounds because the peddlers are big givers.

No wonder politicians who are known for all the wrong things and celebrities who openly display their sin can sit next to pastors in forums.

Should I slow down?

But I hope you get the point.

But the point is that the gift you represent will kill the greedy minister’s spiritual sensitivity.

This means that any word he gives you could actually mess your destiny completely as Balaam did with Moab, Ammon and Midian.

That is what we see with Jeremiah’s confrontations with those prophets.

By listening to those paid prophets, the completely lost the plot that was God’s restoration because repent cannot be a paid prophet’s word.

And it is very difficult for restore to come before repent.

What is my conclusion then?

If your closeness to your minister is dependent on what you have or represent, it is time to run away because he is a Balaam that represents great harm to your destiny.

And I am talking about your pastor, bishop, prophet, encourager, even me.

Your money does not define you.

Do not be demeaned to the point that your value is tied to what you have or represent.

In any case, why look for prophets when God has released His word for all of us to consume?

And He also released His Holy Spirit to guide us to understanding it?

You can know and obey God without those imposters.

Uniquely You

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. (Jeremiah 1:5)

Have you ever considered that Jeremiah’s pronouncement is similar to yours?

That the only difference with it is that your assignment is not like his?

What do I mean?

God creates each person on earth with their own personal mission, a mission completely different from anyone else’s in the whole wide world.

The reality of God is that He is the creator.

Unlike us, however, He does not need existing materials to do the creating.

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. (1Corinthians 1: 27 – 29)

He created everything that exists out of nothing.

Due to that, God does not repeat Himself. He does not clone or duplicate anything He does.

And that because He does not need existing materials or procedures to create anything.

This means that you are one of a kind, the only one from God’s factory line. Which means that He does not have any assembly line anywhere.

You are therefore the one and only.

On the same vein, it means that the reason and purpose for His creating you is also singular.

He created you with ONLY ONE assignment in mind, an assignment ONLY YOU can accomplish.

It means that you do not have any other assignment.

The purpose of your creation is therefore that assignment and nothing else you do will complete you or it.

Sadly, many of us do not think of God’s relationship to us on those terms, many times thinking of ourselves as the products of an assembly line, albeit a divine one.

We therefore follow protocols and blueprints assembly lines use, meaning we do everything just like the next person.

But that severely limits God and His purposes because we leave the bulk of our assignment to pursue wholesale engagements.

Worse is that it puts us on a trajectory way off what we were created for.

We will encounter frustration and dysfunction due to that.

Imagine a tractor ferrying passengers or a van trying to plough!

That is how we look when we follow assembly line protocols when looked at from the divine angle.

We will perform optimally only when we align with the assignment God created for us and created us for.

The problem is that we rarely seek to know God enough to know why and what He created us for.

And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth. (Exodus 9:16)

You see, if God could create a rebellious king for His purpose, what reason do I have to suppose that I was created out of a divine whim?

The truth of the matter is that each person God creates has a single assignment exclusive to him, an assignment that completes the ‘jigsaw’ that is God’s complete creation.

However, in order to do my part, I must allow the Owner of that jigsaw to place me since it will be foolhardy, if not completely futile, to seek to find that position on my own.

And it will be even worse for me to allow another person do that placement.

There is one very popular trend (allow me to call it doctrine) that has been doing the rounds in church for a long time called the purpose driven movement.

I have attended enough seminars. If I remember well, I was at one time a qualified trainer in those seminars though I suspect God blocked me from actually training.

It appears very Biblical, wholesome.

But looking at it more critically you will find that it is a very me-centric movement.

Though there is so much mention of God and His word, there is very little surrender to God either in the pursuit or expectation.

It is close to two decades since I was there and so I do not remember much of the material.

But allow me to point out to something Christ said to get my point across, fruit.

Any God-centred movement will reproduce God’s character in its adherents.

It will produce holiness, contentment, peace.

It will produce a rest consistent with God’s presence.

But looking at the higher echelons of that movement there is very little of that you see.

Their pursuit (for those of us who seek to look beyond the rhetoric) ends up being materialistic.

A new car, a bigger car, a house, a house on the suburbs.

Then a church, a bigger church, a cathedral.

However, there is very little, if any, change on their environment.

There is very little spiritual transformation.

The sermons offer no challenge for spiritual pursuits but everything about material pursuits.

There is very little about spiritual hunger but everything about professional excellence.

It therefore produces great worldly success stories without any spiritual muscle.

Incidentally, there are a number of other similar thrusts I have been part of, trained to the point of becoming a trainer, yet when I stepped back to examine discovered them as shallow shortcuts that accomplish very little in the spiritual.

You see, spiritual movements do not have or need any marketing gimmicks.

They require a person and team committed to personal holiness and possessing spiritual hunger that is all-compassing.

Spiritual movements are never on the lookout for followers or supporters.

They are consistent in pursuing God’s will at the personal level so that they can then impact their surroundings.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6)

It is their personal pursuit of holiness that is the driver for their community’s transformation.

That is what we see when we go through God’s word

From Samuel to David to Josiah, we see the personal pursuit of holiness as the driver for national transformation.

That is why connecting to what God created you for should be the driver for any impact you are seeking, wherever.

That is what God expects of each and every one of us.

Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness. (Psalm 143:10)

And He has opened the door for us to be successful in it.

Will you start on that pursuit?