Everyone knows that good leaders are wise leaders. But wisdom resides in the entire community, not just in its leaders. You have the wisdom of God, if you stand in Christ, and you are better off…and your whole congregation is better off… if you, too, grow in that wisdom, speak that wisdom, and share that wisdom, even if you are not in a leadership role.
I used not to see things like this, by the way… it was my habit as a young pastor to practice what I had been taught in seminary decades ago… that is was my responsibility to somehow figure out God’s perfect vision for his people…my congregation…and then find ways to motivate them, or manipulate them, if necessary to follow suit. This is how pastors are still taught most of the time.
I came eventually to believe that this understanding is both wrong and harmful…it’s more American than Christian. For wisdom comes from the most unlikely of places…and the most unlikely of people.
In fact, it’s one of the major biblical themes….when Balaam, a prophet of God who should have been able to hear the wisdom of God, failed to do so, his own donkey spoke to him! J Well, thanks to how God distributes wisdom among his people, we shouldn’t need to listen to donkeys, but we do need to hear each other.
And that means that sometimes wisdom comes from the most unlikely sources, which is what I’ll address in my next post…
By Tony Blair
