GYC 2018: To The End

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Kingly Power

Ron Kelly

1. Kingly Power, Alliance, and the Way Forward

This message was presented at the GYC To The End in Houston, Texas.

For other resources like this, visit us online at GYCweb.org.

Thank you for joining me for this segment.

This message is entitled, Kingly Power, Alliance, and the Way Forward.

It's a part of a series on Christian leadership.

And before we begin, Let's ask the Lord to bless us.

We'll stop at about 5 or 10 minutes for questions, but we'll stick pretty close to our schedule aside from starting a few minutes late.

Thank you, Lord, for GYC and the opportunity to explore and develop.

I pray that you'll guide us in our understanding of some of the dialogues that are going on inside of our church and what proper church governance and the demeanor of a leader needs to be.

So guide us in that, I pray now in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, I want to recommend a book right at the very beginning of my 3 seminar sessions entitled, A Failure of Nerve.

He was a Jewish rabbi who was an expert psychologist in family therapy.

The book is really built around the emotional fabric required to be a leader.

Now he will identify and distinguish between leadership technique and the essence of the makeup of the leader.

The substance and the value of this book is in establishing the emotional, the ballast, you know what's in the bottom of the boat to keep your leadership from tipping over or swamping.

He establishes the elements of the strength needed in the person of the leader to actually fulfill the leadership role.

He says, the great thing to remember is that the mind of man cannot be enlightened permanently by merely teaching him to reject some particular set of superstitions.

He's quoting from the author of the 5 stages of Greek religion.

And what he's saying is not enough to point out what's wrong.

There's an infinite supply of other superstitions always at hand.

And the mind that desires such things, that is the mind that has not trained itself to the hard discipline of reasonableness and honesty, will as soon as its devils are cast out proceed to fill itself with their relations." Sounds like Jesus' parable.

You kick the demon out, if you don't fill the house with something better, It's filled with 7 of the friends of the 1 that was excised from the house.

Now, Friedman is going to build primarily on the idea of a well-differentiated leader.

A well-differentiated leader is someone that understands themselves and is not stuck in the emotional crossfire of trying to figure out who they are based on the people they're serving or leading.

Now the leader needs encouragement, edification.

But a leader needs to know who he is or she is, what he or she is called to do, and then the confidence to do it.

And a person who doesn't really know who they are will be misshapen by the powerful winds that come to bear in leadership arenas.

A leader must separate his or her own emotional being from that of his or her own followers while still remaining connected.

In effect, what it's really a task that as a parent is absolutely a must.

You love your kids, but you have to love them enough to not always be in their favor.

You have to love them enough to sometimes wound them.

Vision, he says, is basically an emotional rather than a cerebral phenomena.

So it's more about your ability to keep going when the feelings aren't right than to know exactly what it is you're supposed to do.

Although knowing obviously is not at war with feeling and having the strength to move forward.

Depending more on a leader's capacity to deal with anxiety than his or her professional training or degree.

Now if there's anything you want to take off this slide, it's the next to the bottom line.

The leader's capacity to deal with anxiety.

If you're going to lead, you're going to move people from where they are to where they need to be.

In the process of doing that, some will come along willingly.

Some will want to move from their comfort zone, and some will absolutely resist you.

They will attack you for disturbing moving their cheese, to go back to an old leadership book of days gone by.

It is your ability to deal with anxiety that will be the key component he contends to your leadership.

I mean someone who can be separate while still remaining connected and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence.

I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity to the automatic reactivity of others and therefore be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing.

Now everybody reading that slide should immediately think education page 57.

The greatest 1 of the world is the 1 of men, people who can stand for the right though the heavens fall, unafraid to call sin by its right name, true to duty is the needle to the pole.

That kind of leadership is no longer the primary model for the postmodern world and everybody just needs to understand that and there's a reason and I'll probably repeat myself a time or 2 on this as a reason.

Because in the new leadership may loo, the real wisdom comes from the crowd.

The best decisions are group ones, and by the way, there's a lot of value in group decision making, I'm not against that.

But in the end, there is a role for the leader that sometimes challenges the status quo, be it moral or mental or relational of the group.

And if you don't have the ability to displease anybody, you better not sign up to be a leader.

Because the truth of the matter is if you do your job right, they're going to be people who don't have the leadership role, who don't want somebody else who's not the leader to become the leader.

And that means the leader is going to have to know how to nicely, as a servant, but serving as a leader, actually keep the structure that they were dispatched to do.

He says, describing his own activity as a family therapist, I stopped creating encyclopedias of data about all their issues And I began to search instead for the member of the family with the greatest capacity to be a leader as I defined it So he looked for the healthiest person and what he do Soon I found as he mentored that person that the rest of the family was in therapy puts that in quote whether or not they came into my office.

So for Friedman, finding that individual who was emotionally up to growing and changing and actually putting their face into the wind a little bit, was his new instrumentality for actually helping to change families.

And instead of focusing on what was wrong, he started focusing on what was right, and in the process, things started changing even when he wasn't around.

In business, he says, I stopped pulling the workers or going around to the different divisions.

Instead, I concentrated on working only with 1 or 2 leaders at the top.

And soon I found that for organizations, too, by focusing on and supporting the strengths in the system, rather than letting the pathology or the pathogens read troublemakers, determine my focus, The rest of the network was in therapy, whether or not they came into my office and whether or not I joined them on a retreat.

Now, I believe in the beginning of this work, our most well-differentiated leader was this man, James White.

And you know, James was at the center of a number of controversies.

Some of them were probably not necessary, but many of them were.

James White had a sense of calling that I want to read to you about, this is part of Uriah Smith's commentary on the life of James.

Uriah Smith wrote, some have thought that he was deficient in social qualities and sometimes rigid, harsh, and unjust, even towards his best friends.

But these feelings we are persuaded come from a failure to comprehend 1 of the strongest traits, sorry for the typo, in his character which was his preeminent love for the cause in which he was engaged, to that he subordinated all else for that he was willing to renounce home and friends.

Now I'm not done reading, but I do want to pause.

What we need to read almost in place of it is church, the apple of God's eyes, the body, the family of Christ.

James White had a sense of obligation to Christ that the beginning of this work was the primary focus of his life.

No man would have been more glad than he to enjoy continuously the pleasures of domestic and social life and the company of friends.

Had he not thought that integrity to the cause called him to take a different course.

But when this was the case, the voice of duty was first and all else was secondary.

Some, and whose natures this principle is lacking, cannot comprehend the actions of a man who governed by such motives.

But how would any man be fitted without such an element as this in his character to be the conservator of the interest of any cause whatsoever?" In effect what Smith is saying is that you're that James White was so devoted to duty that if you were his best friend and you were on the wrong side of an issue there was going to be a strain and a stress in the relationship.

Now what I want to ask you is this, are you this committed to objective truth?

Now everything you deal with is not black and white, so I don't want you to get the wrong idea.

But James White was committed to the truth to where even his best friends at times wondered about him and didn't like him, but I want you to keep this in mind friends if you're a leader, remember what the Bible says, when a man's ways pleases the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

Now I pastored for almost 20 years in 1 district.

That means I watched almost a generation of people.

Some of the ones I displeased the most ended up as some of my better friends.

When you are a parent or a pastor or a leader on this spectrum somewhere, you need to understand that the way the relationship is now does not determine the way the relationship's gonna be somewhere down the road.

What is gonna be more critical to where the relationship goes is your emotional ability to keep doing what's right and loving the person you're trying to help and in the end we are so wired to be loved that most people in the end after they get over being mad at you will actually appreciate you and this is what the Bible says it says rebuke a man and in the end you'll find favor from him it's a big deal but if we practice the esteem ism and move on the motive of feeling, we're gonna find that things that look good now won't be good later.

As a matter of fact, James White said it, I mean James Dobson said it this way, I'd rather tell the truth that heals, that hurts than heals, than a falsehood that comforts than kills.

And of course there's some things you don't get a chance to fix.

Some things are generational and it takes you a generation to see that they're broken and by the time you see that they're broken it's too late.

So I want to emphasize as we start this morning that the early leaders of our church were very dedicated to the discovery of truth.

2. Kingly Power and the Scarlet Letter

This message was presented at the GYC to the end in Houston, Texas.

Okay, folks, I think we're going to do this smaller group and all.

We're going to do 2 more sessions, then all the seminars are done, including this 1.

They will post my slides to their website within the week, it sounds like.

So if you don't get a slide, you don't have to worry too much about it.

They'll all be up and you can go back, save you doing a little bit of digging yourself.

So why don't we ask the Lord's blessing on our segment.

We'll go for about 75% of it in dialogue or in presentation, then we'll break for some time to ask some questions and make some observations.

We'll see how many of us ate too much for lunch and how well I can help keep you attentive.

Thank you, Lord, very much for the blessings of Christian organization, The time, the money, the energy that's gone into this weekend event, please bless us now as we do a little more thinking about how to structure our homes, our churches, and our larger Christian organizations.

We want to serve you with wisdom and grace, so help us now to have that balance.

All right, so on the way out of the last seminar, we got talking about rightly dividing the word of truth.

And if you're not balanced, then eventually you'll lose some of the respectability that you could have if people understood that you were fair-minded and not an ideologue.

What's happened is that we find ourselves dividing into camps where we have a priori value systems.

You know a priori, Latin phrase that means determined beforehand.

Now there's nothing wrong with having a predetermined set of values, but when you hold them so dearly that you immediately discount anyone else, especially when you're talking with other fellow Adventist brothers and sisters, you might be in a dangerous position.

So I want to encourage you to come to the table with a measure of objectivity as we look there at Edward Freeman, responsible and honest.

Now, the objective truth versus the post-modernism, we've talked about that a little bit already.

It's very important that we understand though where a lot of people are coming from And what's happening is the spirit of the world is finding its way into the spirit of the church.

So I'm in this segment I'm gonna address a little bit the dynamics of authority.

Again I know if you were at my presentation on Sabbath morning, I did dress it, but it was truncated, and I'm going to tackle it from a slightly different perspective here.

I had a little bit of feedback from 1 of you that someone felt like the presentation might lend itself to those that were abusers of authority to feel empowered to abuse authority.

If you have come out of a setting where authority has been abused, then that lens is going to skew the way you look at a lot of things.

But when you lose structure in a society, you lose civility, when you lose it in a home, you lose the componentry for character building, and When you lose it in a home, you lose the componentry for character building.

And when you lose it in a church, it's especially dangerous because the church is to be a lighthouse that balances out truth and grace.

So Ellen White says, it's hardly possible for men to offer a greater insult to God than to despise and reject the instrumentalities that He's appointed to lead them.

Now I want you to focus in on the word despise.

Despise has to do with the emotive side of your life, how you feel.

These are 2 things that you'll be tempted to feel based on how people are exercising their authority, but it's important for you to understand that God sends people into your life partially for the refinement process of your own being.

Now as a Christian leader, I want to give you another idea.

I once had a person come to 1 of the schools that I was overseeing as a pastor, a church school is a ministry of a church, and I'm convinced after that person's tenure that God sent that person to us for us to help them almost as much as they helped us.

I'd like for us to have that view, that Christian compassion towards the people that you find yourself interacting with.

He's the architect of all the people that are coming into your life.

And some of them are there for you to help, and some of them are there to help you.

We need a lot of patience with each other.

But when it comes to structures of authority, whether it's a dad or a mom or a pastor or a teacher.

This will be somewhat dependent on your age.

But 1 of the things I didn't tell you about my mother on Sabbath morning is that not only did she come out of a home where there was abuse, physical abuse, intimidation, verbal abuse.

The story I told then was about my grandpa getting drunk and chasing him around the house with a butcher knife and them hiding in the in the bathroom.

3 little girls and their mommy, my grandma.

My mother managed to come out of that and actually make some really healthy choices.

And in spite of her father's abusive authority, my mother understood that there was still a great need for structure in my life.

And 1 of the things my mom said to me, which was said to a lot of kids a generation ago was, if you get in trouble at school, you're going to be in trouble at home.

In effect, what she was saying is their authority is in partnership with me.

Now there were times when my mom had to go talk to the teachers, and with my own kids, as a senior pastor, while they were young in their developmental stages, I made it a point not to go deliver them from their their problems.

I needed to teach them how to work with authority and when they got into trouble typically I encouraged them that they had to work it out, if not them, then my wife.

And the reason I did that was that I didn't want any teacher that I was dealing with to feel that somehow I was blurring the line between my pastoral role and my parental role.

But I taught my kids in a similar manner that those teachers are my partners.

Now if you're in a church or a church school setting and you're a board member, you need to understand that 1 of the most vulnerable positions in the Seventh-day Adventist faith community when it comes to hiring and firing are teachers.

Teachers are on the chopping block a little bit easier than pastors are.

And sometimes the pastors they're dealing with they're not particularly balanced and not particularly wise.

So 1 of the things our society is doing right now is it's tearing down everything that's institutional.

And when you tear down the institutions you may feel a momentary sense of freedom, but what we have forgotten is that those institutions were erected at great price and sacrifice with a great sense of community, and when they're gone, we're going to find ourselves bearing, sowing to the wind, and reaping the whirlwind.

So in today's society, especially when we start talking about things education, we hold everybody responsible except the, well them and their parents.

And in society we're down on policemen, we're down on teachers, we're down on preachers, we're down on anybody that used to hold any measure of positional authority.

Now, in the Adventist Church right now, you're gonna have a very negative dynamic whenever the word positional authority is used.

Positional authority is almost a dirty word when it comes to the dialogues of leadership.

But the truth is, is that there is a measure of positional authority that's very important for the safeguarding of the institution and the people in it.

So when I started on Sabbath morning I asked this question, how well do you relate to accountability?

And if nobody can hold you accountable you're in a very dangerous position.

Positional authority, accountability, they're all a safeguard.

Now since I'm talking about authority and accountability, I'm gonna talk in the marriage venue for just a moment.

When we were young newlyweds some 30 years ago, my wife and I had an agreement.

And the agreement was we wouldn't spend more than $50 without checking with each other.

And as time went by we got just a little bit more.

I tell people my wife came from a very structured home, faithful tithe payers, very disciplined.

When we got married my wife had never been so poor, but I had never been so rich.

I was in a situation where my financial path was growing, even though we had, we were like church mice with not very much.

No spending of sizable amounts without checking and $50 was what our initial sizable amount was.

Well the problem was was that I like to shop and purchase things for security.

I tell people if I find something on a clearance rack at 75% off that's a consumable, I may buy every 1 of them.

So I tease that, you know, if I found a thousand rolls of toilet paper at a great price, I'd buy them and bring them home and find a place to keep them.

The problem was, was that when the Internet came of age and I could get on the Internet and look for stuff, she figured out that I started, the more I started looking, the more likely I was to start hitting the buttons and start buying.

And with 3 boys, you know, they had an interest in motorcycles and four-wheelers and Jeeps and this kind of stuff.

So I started looking and every once in a while she would do something that just really irritated me.

Now I told you in the last seminar that I have a Lamborghini.

My family is, my wife especially, is my best friend.

We're very connected emotionally and relationally because we've solved a lot of heavy-duty problems.

But in the beginning it wasn't as much so.

So when I was on the Internet looking, because then I'd move on to trucks, I wanted a truck, and my wife would walk up behind me and look over my shoulder, oh, that infuriated me.

She was coming into an arena, a place, where I really didn't want her noticing what I was doing.

I wish every story I could tell was as light and trivial as something like that.

But unfortunately in 30 years of ministry, I have stories where men have secret places on their iPad where their wives aren't allowed to look.

3. Kingly Power: Bright Lights, And the Morning Star

All right, folks, I think I'm about ready to go.

And we will take up the last seminar segment of this GYC.

Thank you, Lord, for the provision you make.

I'm asking now, Lord, that you'll help us all to have understanding and know how to relate to the information that's being shared.

May it be edifying and helpful for all the roles we fulfill, whether we're following or leading.

I ask now, Lord, that you'll set a watch before my lips and a guard before the door of my mouth, that you will make my heart sensitive and the heart of the listeners.

And now thank you that you have given us insight as to how to maximize effective influence and change, or maybe stay evil.

Now bless us to that end, I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, I want to start this segment, which is going to be a segment that I've entitled, Kingly Power Bright Lights, Dark Nights, and the Morning Star.

This is a, this will be a little bit, there will be components of this that are a little bit discouraging in 1 sense.

It's just some of the sentiments are kind of heavy from Ellen White in this segment.

Along the lines of ministry, There was a period of time when I remember pulling an anonymous letter out of my mailbox.

Now, anonymous letters are not really worth the paper that the ink is written on.

And if you're not going to sign your name to what's being said, you shouldn't bother saying it because the person has no way to put a perspective on what's being said.

If I have a very respectable person come to me that has lived the Christian life, shows courtesy in what they communicate, and has balance in their private world.

I listen differently than somebody who's a chronic complainer and doesn't manage their own household well, and you should listen differently too.

You don't give everybody the equal weight of credibility in sharing sentiments with you, but when you get an anonymous letter, you have no way of knowing how to wait what was said.

Is this an unbalanced person who sent you something that really shouldn't be waited like they're waiting it?

Or it usually is that way, that's why it's anonymous.

So I had a woman that was the wife of an elder and she had been so supportive to me for probably about the first 12 years of my ministry, and I was in this church a long time, but eventually we came to a place where what she thought the church wanted and what I thought the church needed was different.

And at that point in time something went terribly wrong.

Her attitude towards me soured and whereas before she thought I was God and could get whatever I wanted, Now she saw me as the devil.

And I thought I'm gonna have to talk to this person.

I don't often do that, But I wanted to visit with them and they were willing so they came in they sat down on the love seat together And I visited with him for a while.

It was a very courteous dialogue Even though she was behaving antagonistically and by the way Kenneth Hawk in his book Antagonists in the church makes a very interesting statement.

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Kingly Power

2. Kingly Power and the Scarlet Letter

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1. Kingly Power, Alliance, and the Way Forward

1h 3m

2. Kingly Power and the Scarlet Letter

1h 2m

3. Kingly Power: Bright Lights, And the Morning Star

57m

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