Lutheran Leaderhship 8: Obstacle removers, not obstacle encouragers or enforcers

The core mission of Jesus is extremely clear....

Read John 3:16-17
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Reflect and share
As one of his disciples how does Jesus core mission affect how you lead?
Where can you see examples of Jesus core mission in your life and the organisations you are leading?
Where can you see Jesus core mission missing in your life and the organisations you are leading?

One of the issues every leader faces is that there will be obstacles to us living out and leading people in being in touch with Jesus core mission, at times we even put obstacles in the road.
We can assume there are more important things than Jesus core mission. This could be the hoops people need to jump through to receive God's love, that they must participate or like a certain style of music or worship, that they need be living perfectly up to our standards before God would even consider loving them, that everyone must worship at the same time or anything else that we say is crucial that the bible doesn't say is crucial (remember the Lutheran principle we do and not do what the bible clearly says, but where it is not covered there is freedom).

Even the disciples fell into the trap of putting up obstacles of others developing relationships with Jesus.

Read Matthew 19:13-14, Mark 10:13-16 and Matthew 18:15-17
Reflect on and share
What do these texts say to us as leaders about people being in contact with Jesus?
What do they mean for us?
Are there any practices or thoughts in our organisation that needs to be reviewed to remove the obstacles that exist for people to develop a relationship with Jesus?
Why do you think we want to develop and enforce obstacles?

One of the things in life we need to face is that people are different...there are different generations, different personalities, different backgrounds and experiences....
This situation of differences often results in what one person sees as good another sees as bad...but for many things, not all the reality is neither is good nor bad maybe just more appropriate for one type of person and less appropriate for another. And the bible does talk to us about this situation read 1 Corinthians 12 and 13....

and if you are interested in learning about the different types of people that maybe in your organisation and how they may connect with Jesus read the book Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas....it highlights 7 different types of people and the ways they relate to Jesus....