Excerpts from Chapter 6
Marks of Love
Small Group Resources
Study Material
The church-in-the-house is a first -century church structure which can have meaning in the twenty-first century, but there is no house congregation unless there are persons infused by the Holy Spirit to go out under its guidance. We can discover the twenty-first century structures, learn modern techniques, and originate challenging programs, but these in themselves are not enough. They may win people to our organizations, but not to the living Christ. For this we need men and women abandoned to God, contagiously radiant because in their inner lives a conversation goes on with God. They are the people who fill one's soul with a free, spontaneous worship. Thoughts begin to hurdle the usual boundaries, and you wonder why you ever doubted. In their presence your spirit has wings; you sense the presence of God.
The incredible fact that Gordon stresses over and over again in his sermons is that each of us can be such a person, not because there is anything special about us, but because God is life and to be close to God is to have power and vitality and joy. These sermons are always believable because every once in a while we watch it happen to another member. A person becomes new in Christ and all about him is the atmosphere of the new creations.
When this happens to a person and God gives him a certain new power, then new structures become important because they are the wineskins, and one does not put new wine into old wineskins. But the new structures mean that the laity is entrusted in ways it has not been before. Each of the mission groups is in a very real way on its own. A moderator of one of our mission groups complained to Gordon that his group was in terrible shape.
“We're not praying any more,” he said, “or studying the way we should. We're just goofing-off all over the place and you have to come down and straighten us out or we're not going to have a mission.”
“I can't be a minister to every mission group,” was Gordon's answer. “Unless you can be their minister or unless God can raise up in the group another minister, they will be sheep without a shepherd.”
This was a turning point in that moderator's life because he knew that there was truth in the words, that one man cannot shepherd more than a few dozen people. Each of us answering the call of God is given a little congregation made up of friends and family and neighbors. With this congregation come the exhortation, “Tend the flock of God that is your charge.”
In sermons and in classes Gordon cites the qualities of leadership that will help us to be enablers of others.
“First,” he says, “a person must come to that place where he knows that the real issue is always an internal one.” This is a difficult lesson to learn. The temptation is to focus upon what is wrong “out there.” Often those who cling to the periphery of our life tell us what is wrong with the church. Usually we can add many things to their little lists because one must be of the family to know all that is wrong. Perhaps a prophetic voice is needed, but if that voice has the power to heal, it will come, as of old, from within the community. This is the loneliness of the prophet: his words separated him from those to whom his life was inextricably bound. But often the need is not for a prophet; the need is for the person who can ask of God what he must do to be the one through whom new life breaks. “What in me blocks the coming of the Holy Spirit?”
Gordon says that he has the distinction of having presided over the deaths of more small groups than any minister in the country. He is probably right, and many of the times it is because there were not those who could be responsible persons. Again and again you hear a leader complaining that he is not getting the proper support. He becomes tired and sometimes angry in his spirit because others are not responding as he feels they should. He does not guess that their changing may be bound up with his own changing. “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isa. 6:5).
If we are to follow visions, we cannot be overconcerned with what the church is not doing. The very word “vision” implies grace—that which is not seen by ordinary eyes. The following of a vision, therefore, means a willingness to be out alone in a strange land, confident that God keeps us company there and with the faith that one day another will join us and then another, and a vision can be clothed, which means for all to see.
The second quality of leadership is the capacity to take hostility. The mission group especially is hit by this not only from without but from within its life. In a Christian pilgrimage we can expect hostility. It need not take us by surprise. Sometimes it comes from our families, sometimes from our dearest friends, and sometimes from those for whom we have laid down our lives most sacrificially. But why does hostility exist within a mission group which presumably has the Good News and is committed to the task of sharing it?
The mission group does not produce hostility in its members. We bring it with us into the group and there, for many reasons, it is uncovered. The fact that it is a group on a mission means that it is subject to peculiar pressures as well as facing circumstances alien to its life. Also, the Good News must be proclaimed from a community which has a life in depth, but this in itself creates pressure points. If there is not this life in depth, we feel guilty because we know that this is what it means to love one another. But if there are deep relationships, it means that our emotions are involved in a way that they were not before. This brings to the surface hidden problems, hidden sometimes beneath a gracious social veneer that proclaimed peace where there was not peace.
Any situation where there is hostility has the potential of being a step in a person's spiritual trek if that person has the capacity to receive anger without lashing back. We come increasingly to know that redemption takes place at infinite cost to God and at infinite cost to the people of God. The problem is to differentiate between persecution for righteousness' sake and persecution for our own ego's sake.
A third closely related quality is the capacity to accept another person where he is. There is a bit of the manipulator in all of us and a bit of the perfectionist. We tend to set standards for ourselves and standards for others, and to become critical if they are not met. We feel safe if we are moving toward our idea of perfection, or can stay close to the person or community which we have put on a pedestal. We have superimposed on the community our image of what a community should be and when we are disappointed we tend to withdraw or to be critical.
We need to accept ourselves and we need to accept others. God is the creator. In His hands is the timetable, and we don't have to act as though we held it.
A fourth quality of leadership is the perspective which enables us to sort the little issues from the big ones. Sometimes we expand the little issues out of all proportion, thinking that in so doing we are maintaining our individuality and integrity as persons. One friend told us of a church meeting where the time of six people was used for one hour in a discussion of whether or not to have the piano tuned. This is a loss of perspective. We let the little issues act as smoke screens which keep us from seeing the big issues and becoming involved in them. The leader with the marks of the reconciler will know how to listen to opposing viewpoints and how to affirm each person so that there is an opportunity for perspective to be restored.
The fifth quality of leadership is a willingness to fail and to let others fail. This quality in Gordon is what has enabled so many things to happen in this fellowship. He is willing to take risks himself and eager for others to take them. Behind this is the conviction that if God does a new thing through us, we must necessarily be trying that which has not been tried before and there will be no way of knowing in advance the outcome. This freedom to fail means that from time to time some of us go off on tangents, but along the way there is a lot of growing.
The sixth quality which Gordon gives sounds deceptively simple, but it is the one which is most difficult to meet, and the one which contains all the others and gives to them their significance. It is a deep caring for people—not just those who are important to us, those who can give us something, but for all people. Because we are the church, those who touch us should know that the church cares. Gordon sums it up, “Our mission is to be able to say convincingly to another person, 'I love you, and I always will.' It is just that simple, but also that difficult. Witness how seldom we do it for others and how seldom others do it for us. We will come to full life when we can say in symbolic or spoken language, 'I care.'”
Unless there are two or three persons with the capacity to love at the heart of a mission group, it is doomed. This is the need for every phase of our work, for every venture that we undertake. Whenever we sit down to ask ourselves what is wrong, or why it is that a project with so much potential cannot get off the ground, the answer is always the lack of inspired people who can channel to others the life of God. And always where there is renewal in our church, whether it is a workshop or a house congregation or a prayer group, one finds a person with a fire burning in his bones who can say with Jesus, “I came not to be ministered unto but to minister.” These are the people who have come to the place where they have a greater need to love than to be loved.
Questions for discussion
- What phrases or sentences of this chapter stand out for you?
- What are the major themes of this chapter?
- What parts of this chapter to you find most compelling?
- With what parts of this chapter do you disagree?
- Are there ideas in this chapter that we already use in our own church?
- For those that we use, should we be more intentional in their use?
- Are there ideas in this chapter that we do not use in our own church but should?
- Are there ideas in this chapter that are not useful or beyond the capability of our church?
- Has this chapter brought any new insights to you?