This is the final part of the transcript of a conversation on Preventing Disqualifying Sins in Ministry between Kevin Halloran and John Eichholz.
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It’s important for us as individuals to think about, how we can we best prevent sin in our ministries, sin that could derail our ministry. How might we encourage a leadership team in a church or an organization to seek to protect one another?
JH: I want to bring out our organization, WordPartners, as a good model. I find this mission organization a better environment than some churches I’ve served in just because there is a real openness that encourages guys to challenge one another. There is a culture of openness, of caring. There’s a freedom to be yourself but also to go to other people, whether there’s a need for confession of sin or confronting sin. Initially, I was a little off guard, because in other church situations I didn’t experience that same thing.
In any church or other Christian organization, two dynamics ought to be fostered. The first is that the higher leadership, say the pastoral team, ought to foster openness with one another. That is a challenge for anyone who might read this. If you don’t have openness or you serve with someone else who is not being accountable, you need to develop it. This is crucial to good leadership, because if leadership doesn’t do it, neither will anyone else in the body. The second thing is, strong godly leaders need to develop a desired culture and determine what that culture will look like. Again, this is something that WordPartners has done over the years. Our founder, Bill Mills, has been such a godly influence on the organization, and we have other leaders who have been raised up and are doing an equally good job at developing that culture.
Let me read four things that we work on regularly. We have a culture of love, a culture of humility, a culture of hope, and a culture of faith, and then under each one of those categories we describe what that culture looks like. We talk about those things. When we cultivate cultures where people are encouraged to be open in expressing their struggles or their sins, and then a culture of love where we embrace those people, we encourage them.
Most pastors are very aware of the “one another” Scriptures. There are many of them. Sometimes we don’t practice these in our church situations, whether in Bible Study or in larger groups. James 5:16 says, “Confess your sins to one another.” Closely following that is Colossians 3:1 which talks about “bearing with one another” and “forgiving each other.” Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another”; and then, of course, the most plentiful of the one-another Scriptures are the “love one anothers.” As we show true sacrificial love, that fosters a wonderful relationship and a wonderful spirit in the organization, knowing that other people have your best interest at heart and, in fact, they will sacrifice for you. There are several Scripture texts that talk about being subject to one another: Clothe yourself with humility, 1 Peter 5:5 tells us. Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear one another’s burdens,” and so on. Several of the one-anothers talk about honesty. You put those together and as a leadership team work hard to foster that. You have an environment where people feel conspicuous if they are fostering patterns of sin in their hearts. There is one thing that you can do as an individual believer, but praise God when you have a church or an organization that encourages you not to have those private things going on in your heart and encourages you to share your weaknesses when you stumble.
KH: Thank you so much for your time, John. I’m wondering if you’d close our time in prayer.
JE: It’d be my privilege.
Father, we thank you for calling us to be your children. What a high and holy privilege that is. Thank you for your gift of salvation. We realize that it was purchased through the blood of your precious Son. Father, help us, whether we’re in a church-leadership situation, a mission organization, or we are just a co-laborer with other people who want to exalt Christ in our community. Father, may we be free from sins that overwhelm and disqualify us from giving glory to You. I pray for our own organization. Thank you for what you’re doing and for the way it’s expanding. I pray that you would keep each leader and coworker growing in godliness and encouraging one another in that. Father, I pray today for pastors and leaders who are reading this. I pray that they would check their own hearts and lives. May this conversation be an encouragement to double-check with what’s going on in their lives or in their homes or in their churches. We pray for partners around the world. Lord, these are such days of opportunity. We simply pray that you would cause us to be so joyful in our relationship with Christ and so thankful for the gift of salvation that we would be disciplined. That we would be putting sin to death in our lives so that we can live fully for the glory of Your Son. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
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