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