How can we mix vulnerability and leadership?

The comments from last week's topic have challenged me to consider:

1) I am a bad listener. I think if I was more willing to listen to God rather that just talk at Him (or ignore Him altogether), I might realize that His call is much clearer than I want to admit. For example, I am currently wrestling with the decision of whether to look for/take a new job but if I would stop and listen, if I would be honest with myself, I think I would realize that God wants me to work on some heart issues (e.g., every day obedience, discipline, trusting Him, etc.) before changing circumstances. I wonder how true that is for the rest of us -- the clarity of God's call is not the question as much as "Are you willing to obey?"

2) The call to obey is very convicting. I talk all the time about how business should be done differently when God is more important than money, but I fail to act on that conviction right now, in my current situation. I look to a future job, a different situation in which obedience will be easier and rationalize today's decisions. What if I refused to make recommendations to clients when I believe they contradict the character of God? There are probably countless examples of ways I am ignoring His call to obey today, right where I am. We may talk more about this next week...

But the thing I want to talk about this week is related to The Dude's final comment about "the role of the church community in discerning God's call."

Unfortunately, I imagine most of you have seen the headlines from last week talking about how Ted Haggard, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals (30 million members) and former pastor of New Life Church (14,000 member mega-church in Colorado Springs) has been asked to step down from both positions as at least some of the allegations relating to a homosexual affair and drug use proved true. In a letter read during services at New Life Church yesterday, Pastor Haggard said, "There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."

While the effects of this scandal on individual lives and on the public perception of our God and our faith frustrate me, I am more concerned with the fact that we are all vulnerable to perpetrating this kind of deception. I imagine Pastor Haggard avoided discussing his sin primarily because of his position -- friends and family may have noticed signs, but how could they question the president of the National Association of Evangelicals? Surely he wasn't sinning.

Let's face it, we all have dark, repulsive sides to us we want no one to see. We are sinners and so are our pastors. And that is exactly why we need others in our lives to shine a light on the stuff we don't want to admit is there. Pastor Haggard said later in his letter, "When I stopped communicating about my problems, the darkness increased and finally dominated me."

A couple of verses/passages that come to mind with all of this:

• James 5:16 -- "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
• 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-11 -- characteristics of overseers/elders/deacons of the Church.

As individual men seeking to be Jesus' disciples, I think each of us has to examine whether we truly confess our sins to others. Are you in a small group where you can get so real that those guys know when you're hiding something? If you're not, you are opening yourself up to justifying one sin, and then another, and another until you find yourself in a place you never imagined possible.

As leaders in our churches, we have a responsibility to be the kind of men outlined in 1 Timothy and Titus. Leading the Church is not entirely the pastor's or church staff's job. We must support them in a number of different ways, one of which being the willingness to speak truth when truth needs to be spoken. We need to stop treating pastors like celebrities and recognize that they are sinners just like us. We need to fight for Church governance that recognizes weakness in every man and enables truth to be spoken freely. We need to make sure Jesus, not a pastor, is the always in His rightful place as head of the Church.

I want to be sure we are clear -- I do not want to discuss Ted Haggard this week. I want to discuss us. Most of us are young guys -- maybe you're not an elder, but what can you do right now as an individual or as a current/potential leader in the Church to fight sin as a community? What can we do to prepare to be a 1 Timothy/Titus kind of elder? What has been your experience with this kind of vulnerable community? How can we be effective leaders in our jobs and in our churches while struggling with our own hypocrisy? Business, much like today's Church, is built on perception -- we strive to maintain the best (or even a "perfect") public image...but at what cost? Can honesty and vulnerability exist in business? Shouldn't it exist in the Church?