What makes a spiritual leader?

Potluck dinner at Auntie Lily's house...Just look at her basement! Beautiful. Some of the CBCGH girls told me her house is like a museum, but I didn't believe them until I actually saw it for myself.

The guests of honor were Reverend Lin and his wife Esther from a Taiwan church in Chung-Li, where the DCAC and CBCGH churches had gone for a short-term mission trip. (Exciting sidenote: Auntie Lily is trying to organize a trip to go again for next summer!) Sadly, not everyone who had gone on the trip last summer could make it to the potluck, but from DCAC, Johnny and Lena joined my brother and me on our drive over.

Dinner was really good, and we got to meet CBCGH's pastor, as well as chat with Stephanie, Christina, and PT. Afterwards Reverend Lin gave a talk, which we had to leave in the middle of because we had to drive an hour to get home. On the ride back, we had an intense conversation that started on the topic of Reverend Lin's message.

The premise of his talk was concerning church expansion, saying that we shouldn't underestimate the potential of our youth in what they can do for God. That part I wholeheartedly agree with--because Asian parents, as well as collectivist cultures, tend to have a more hierarchical approach towards youth with a focus of respecting elders and relating age to wisdom. And from my very American perspective, youth may not have the wisdom of experience, but there's plenty of other insights for us to have. ("I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3) But then Reverend Lin took it a step farther by emphasizing his idea for youth leadership growth in his own church, such as having children lead other students in the same grade as them, and having pre-teens and teenagers be responsible for organizing and leading large groups (large like at least 1,000 people).

I commend him on the concept of giving youth their due respect, but I have to respectfully disagree with the next step he took. To me, effective leadership means that you have more knowledge than those you are leading but that you're able to maximize the skills of each person in your group to pursue a common goal. So the goal of a spiritual leader would be to guide the other group members to know and glorify God. I don't disagree with exposing children to some level of leadership when they're younger, but being a spiritual leader means having a degree of spiritual maturity that most children don't necessarily have. Children can inspire their peers to succeed, but the problem is their underdeveloped knowledge and maturity to know how and where to direct others. "With great power comes great responsibility," which is why I was initially hesitant as a spiritual leader because I didn't want to accidentally misguide anyone (still a fear of mine). Many youth in my church weren't even baptized until the ages of 12-15, so expecting first graders to spiritually lead other first graders, when they may not even know what they themselves believe, is a little extreme.

Our second topic of conversation was about the degree of authority that should be given a pastor. We've discussed this in Sunday school, with stories in 1 and 2 Samuel about Saul and David and how to treat God's anointed. But it seems like my views are diametrically opposed to those of the older generation (i.e. all the other adults). Their belief is rooted in a respect for authority, since many of them were born and raised in communist China. My view is more American--respectfully challenge authority whenever necessary. Any position must have some form of accountability; if you are working as a teacher and your students aren't learning, there is the threat of getting fired or laid off. This view doesn't change when applied to a leader of a church; if your congregation isn't growing spiritually from your guidance, either you need to change your approach or you need to step aside for someone who will provide the appropriate guidance. Granted, this is idealistic thinking because, referring back to my first example, there are plenty of terrible teachers who have tenure, but I don't think we should be any less critical of pastors just because God is supposed to be speaking through them. After all, humans are flawed. Now how we're supposed to respectfully let a pastor go for not doing an effective job is another story completely--and what "effective" even means--and would probably be quite an uncomfortable conversation. My view is not what a pastor should be doing specifically because that could vary based on the situation, but more that the pastor should be open to the needs of the church being served, constructive criticism should be allowed in good faith, and that accountability is a necessity. However, even when disagreeing, I still believe the key is being considerate and respectful and having a focus on God.

But my biggest problem with leaders in a position to educate is that they impose their views on what they are conveying, specifically personal beliefs. From an academic perspective, I don't care if a political science professor is liberal or conservative or whether he's Christian or atheist; I want to learn about government in as neutral a light as possible. (This is why I really admire my government professor from the high school summer program I did at Georgetown. He was an extreme liberal, but you couldn't tell because he played devil's advocate for everything and didn't even tell us his political views until after the class was over.) Discussion about differing views is fine, but teaching everything with a slant does nothing but brainwash the students. Likewise, leaders of the church should be teaching a perspective grounded by biblical principles to allow for congregation members to decide for themselves, not be teaching which political views are "right." The implication of doing so is that if anyone believes contrary to what the church is teaching that you're acting against God. And that's really dangerous because we don't necessarily know whether God's political views are that black and white that he could fall under a political classification, and teaching in that manner alienates anyone who thinks differently.

As to the third topic of conversation, it's on a different track entirely, so I think I'm going to save that for a different time because this entry is already a massive length.

I love deep car conversations.