How to Be the Leader Your Church Really Needs

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Trevin Wax
Well, good afternoon. My name is Trevon wax. I’m the general editor for the gospel project at Lifeway Christian resources. And it’s an honor and a privilege this afternoon to be able to speak to you on the topic of the multi directional leader. It’s been nearly 20 years now, I was doing youth ministry in a small village church at the western edge of Romania. And it was dusk. One evening, I remember walking the narrow sidewalks with one of the teenagers from the village. And we started hearing strange sounds up ahead bleeds and squeals and these awful pitiful cries that were coming from, from somewhere up ahead. And it was clear that one of the neighbors sheep was in crisis. And so we thought maybe it was caught in a trap. We weren’t sure what the problem was. So we hurried along, it was hard to see. But we finally came across a little lamb that had been attacked by two wild dogs. And the dogs were just tearing into the lamb. And, you know, we scared the dogs off and quickly, one of the little boys from the village who happened to be a member of the baptist church that we were a part of, came running up and he was in tears because he was supposed to be watching the sheep. And somehow this had happened. So he ran home to get his older brother. And it was a it was a really gruesome scene. And I remember we were just disturbed for the rest of the evening, because, unfortunately, it was just too late for that little lamb. I thought about that story. And I’ve thought back to that event multiple times over the last couple of decades, but especially whenever I consider how the New Testament describes God’s people, as a flock, and describes pastors puts pastors in the role of shepherds. And so we know from the scriptures that we are called to be on guard for ourselves, right and but all for also for all the flock. The Holy Spirit has appointed us as overseers. A pastor is going to be ready to fend off savage wolves, we see an x 2028 and 29. So faithful shepherds are to remain alert, or to be ready for battle whenever wolves invade the field. But alertness requires the shepherd to remember that dangers creep up on the sheep from multiple directions. So in this workshop, I want to exhort pastors and church leaders toward a vision of leadership that I call multi directional. And along the way, we’re going to contrast that with a vision of leadership that I will call one directional, which I think is also something that exists, but it’s also less effective in the long term than multi directional leadership. So one directional leaders are skillful in spotting threats. They’re skillful in thwarting threats to the sheep that come from a single direction of the field. But because they focus on fighting route battles on one front, they leave the flock vulnerable to problems that can arise from other sides of the field. multi directional leaders, on the other hand, fend off threats from more than one direction. And so to be multi directional means that you lead with dexterity you lead with discipline, something that I call a faithful versatility that is willing to challenge erroneous positions, no matter where they come from, no matter what categories get crossed. But in the process, you are promoting a full orbed vision of ministry that defends the truth and protects the flock. So we’re going to look at the difference between these two I want to start off just by by looking at the difference between one directional leadership and multi directional leadership. So, again, multi directional leadership, I’m defining that as that’s the desire to show a faithful versatility in applying the truth of God’s Word. In today’s cultural context, this matters for pastoral ministry. We just consider a pastor who counsels church members, a one directional leader will tend to prescribe the same spiritual medicine no matter what the ailment is. So warnings, admonitions, exhortations over time they all begin to sound the same. The one directional pastor the one directional leader, diagnosis a narrow set of spiritual sickness. sicknesses, then mixes a narrow set of prescriptions, and then stays alert to a narrow set of potential Dangerous. But I want you to see the contrast with that and Paul’s approach. When he addresses the Thessalonians. For example, you may remember this. In the Thessalonians, Paul exhorts the family of God in one verse says, warn those who are idle, comfort, the discouraged, help the weak. Be patient with everyone for instructions, right for different prescriptions. I mean, what you’re saying there is that different problems require different remedies. And so those of you who have done counseling know that this is the case, this is one of the important aspects of listening to people that you are called to, to minister to. Sometimes pastoral care is expressed, not only through the right word, but also the right emphasis. You know, to the woman caught in adultery. Jesus said two things, said, Neither do I condemn you go and from now on, don’t send anymore right to two things. He says to the woman. There may be a tender hearted person sitting in front of you who is wracked with guilt, over lingering sin, that may need the pastor to emphasize Jesus’s first word of no condemnation. You may be in a situation where the the comfort of the gospel is the note to play. Or you could have someone sitting in front of you who is a believer who is steeped in sin who is appealing to cheap grace in order to excuse a heart of indifference to that sin. Well, that person may need the pastor to emphasize Jesus’s second word, the spirit filled command to no longer live in sin. The challenge of the gospel may be the right note. So caring for souls requires us to consider the right word, the right prescription, the right emphasis, and the right note at the right time. It’s part of the art of pastoring. But it’s also in the way that we preach I mean, consider a leaders responsibility in handling scripture with care a one directional leader is going to fall back on the same biblical texts and lean on verses and passages often that that that reinforce Rhian reaffirm the congregation’s assumptions and preconceptions, and you’ll notice that over time a one directional leader is going to to emphasize some biblical truths perhaps out of proportion, and may screen out other biblical truths out entirely. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul warned about the temptation to satisfy eaching, yours, right? Well, a multi directional leader recognizes there are many types of itching ears, your sermon, your preaching, it may be a fiery broadside against the threat, that threat may actually be legitimate. But if you only alert your flock to dangers that they’ve long learned to see clearly, you may consider yourself a prophet. When in reality, you’re just a one directional dispenser of selective warnings. Consider also the concern that church leaders should show for the cultural context in which we’re called to serve one directional leaders, too often let the culture set the agenda for the subjects that a pastor is going to address. I mean, it would be easy to settle for a narrow set of topics, a sliver of issues that are determined not by biblical emphasis, but by the enthusiasm of their congregation or their followers. Not long ago, I heard from a pastor on the West Coast, who was preparing a time of public prayer time that they have in every service. And he planned to mention abortion in this time of public prayer, and he got some pushback by members of his staff. just worried that, you know, visitors might be offended or and the pastor told me he said, You know, I found it interesting that I had never in previous prayer times. I mean, no one had questioned times when he had publicly prayed or yet when it didn’t clear what the Church’s stance was related to, you know, a Christians care for immigrants, or our country’s racial injustice. But what’s interesting is I’ve spoken with pastors in the deep south whose experience has been the exact opposite. Church members would expect the pastor to pray for the abolition of abortion, but get a little antsy a little nervous when prayers are focusing on the less fortunate on the immigrant on victims of racial discrimination and things like that.

Trevin Wax
multi directional leaders recognize If that if Christianity, the Christianity we believe is true is truly a global faith that transcends all cultures, then there will be points of affirmation and points of disassociation in every society, in every culture in every context. And you’ve got to know that in order to remain alert to the danger of cultural captivity. Now, to be clear, no congregation, no church leader, should labor under the pressure to stay equally attuned to every danger that’s out there. That’s not possible. And here’s why. Because every church brings together a unique blend of believers and those believers have various gifts, those believers have different passions, no shepherd, can be perfectly multi directional in every way, you know, always aware of every challenge from every direction. I wouldn’t want to put that burden on any of you here today. But this is why it’s important for shepherds to communicate. It’s important for shepherds to rely on each other in order to be faithful. Because even in the New Testament, you find different writers who display different emphases depending on the context all under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, of course, in God’s inerrant Word, just consider the various shades and strokes that are given to us by the gospel writers. They give us four different portraits of Jesus and aren’t you thankful for all four of them are watch how Paul sparred with the Judaizers, who threatened the precious doctrine of justification by faith alone. And James fought off those who claimed that saving faith doesn’t lead to good works. Were Paul and James opposed? No. They were early church leaders standing back to back swords drawn fighting off opposing enemies. The one directional leader, by contrast, doesn’t stand back to back with anyone. The one directional leader fights alone. That pastor seems unaware of dangers from other sides of the field and an unconcerned that his skill in fighting off one or two big threats could leave him vulnerable to others. Or worse, he might train his sword on church leaders with different emphases. multi directional leaders see the need for different people to help their ministry to provide appropriate cautions a multi directional leader already knows that there are blind spots out there. That’s why they rely on others to help them see to get a better lay of the land to be able to see the field more clearly. So what does multi directional leadership look like in practice? Let’s shift gears now and talk about what this is when it’s modeled. Maybe we could we can start with Jesus. multiple examples we could give Jesus, I’ll just give you this first one. Jesus, on one occasion excoriated the Pharisees for dishonouring. Their parents, do you remember this? What were the Pharisees doing? They were, they were using the temple offering, as an excuse for failing to care for their family. But remember, this is the same Jesus who disapproved of a man who said he wanted to go and bury his father before following him. And did he not later say that to follow him one must hate their father and mother and sister and brother. And yet this is the same Jesus who on the cross. One of his last words, was in honor of his mother, as he entrusted her to the beloved disciples care. So what’s going on here? Is Jesus in these different scenarios? Is he contradicting himself? No. He was responding to different idolatrous dangers. On one side, he opposed the attempts of the hypocrites to slither out of obeying God’s clear command to honor one’s parents. I mean, that’s a command that Jesus obeyed even as he died. But on the other side, he communicated the danger of allowing one’s family relationships, to vie with himself for first place in the heart. The danger, Jesus says, Look, I deserve greater allegiance than anyone else. This is an example of multi directional leadership that different emphases based on the different danger. No, we could reach back into church history for other examples of multi directional leadership. I mean, we could go to Augustine, Augustine making a profound case for free will in his battle against the mannequins right, but then leaning heavily on God’s sovereignty and divine An initiative in his debates with Palladius. But a more recent example, I think is seen in the ministry of John Stott, one of the most prominent evangelicals of the latter 20th century. I appreciate stopped because he was a leader that was alert to problems that could plague the church from multiple directions. I’ll give you a few examples of multi directional leadership in the life and legacy of John Stott for to take one for an example when John Stott would warn against worldliness. He called for his words a vigorous nonconformity a vigorous non conformity, but at the same time, he recognized that sometimes Christians could fall into obscurantism, basically a place of non conformity that wouldn’t bring us in contact with the world that were called to win. So he pleaded with Christians to maintain our saltiness to not hide our light. And at the same time, he warned us of the danger of staying staying pure by preserving ourselves only in the salt shaker, this mythical purity that he wanted us to preserve it but at the risk of losing touch with the people around us that we’re called to serve. So on the one hand, yes, nonconformity, on the other hand, don’t slip into an obscurantist position. Many of you are probably familiar with his book on preaching starts book between two worlds famous book for calling for sensitivity to both the ancient world and the modern world. Some preachers allow the current moment to determine what can and must be preached. Other preachers present only the truth of Scripture and don’t really carefully apply it to the contemporary setting that we find ourselves in. But John Stott believed that both fidelity and contextualization aren’t necessary. In fact, that is the way of faithfulness, he would say. And one example stands out to me the most it’s regarding the church’s mission, the mission of the church, Stott wanted to avoid dangers. from multiple directions. He, he saw there was a danger in ignoring social ministry, he believed that was a temptation in more conservative circles. But he also saw this danger of allowing social ministry to swallow the urgency for verbal proclamation of the gospel. That was a tendency that he saw in in more centrist and liberationist circles. And even if like me, you may find aspects of Scott’s vision or his understanding of the mission of the church that need critique that deserve revision. I just am using him as an example to say, you can see how he could anticipate the church veering off course in more than one direction. And this led to an interesting style of leadership. So I give a little more detail about this in the in the book that’s free in the bookstore, about what’s something that that Scott did, but when he was invited to address the World Council of Churches, he chastised the Council for a dangerous imbalance in stressing social ministry. To the point he believed that they were excluding or at least diminishing verbal evangelism. You read his words there and they are very strong. John Stott was not afraid to challenge those who watered down the mission into social work. But in the years that followed, Scott also faced head on those who thought the Great Commission is exclusively about evangelism without giving sufficient attention to the church’s social ministry. And the reason I bring up stata here is to say, look at how in one assembly, he pushes hard against a reductionist dangerous social gospel. In another assembly, he pushes hard against a reductionist isolationism that he believed would hurt the church’s witness. So he was neither a conservative warrior who was trained only to to spot the dangers of liberalism. And neither was he a progressive proponent who was trained to fight only the follies of fundamentalism. Now, his theological commitments and his multi directional leadership alerted him to problems coming up at church from multiple sides. Another leader who models multi directional leadership is Carl Ellis. Carl Ellis is professor of theology and culture at reformed Theological Seminary. Well known book called it Free at last the gospel in the African American experience.

Trevin Wax
I appreciate Dr. ls because over against a liberation theology that would deny essential Christian truths. Ellis appeals to the black churches high view of Scripture and commitment to the gospel. But over against the failure of many conservative white Christians to translate their theological commitments into social concern. Ellis lifts up the both and approach to justice that is found in the black church. So Ellis is example for me. He reminds me that this noble fight against racial discrimination is not going to be won by being intellectually indiscriminate. It won’t be won by adopting just any proposal or advocating any thinker out there who may share a common diagnosis or may have insights here and there but have radically different goals or worldviews. The gospel is the answer, multi directional leadership that requires discernment, discernment and carefully sifting what is biblical from what is not, and being willing to go against different views, as you see danger and imbalance? Now, I know some of you may be listening to this, and you may wonder, is multi directional leadership is this just another way of talking about being moderate in some way? You know, we’re like, it’s like it’s a virtue to to pursue moderation for its own sake, you know, moderates, they’re always the middle of the road people, you know, they’re always looking for the third way between opposite views, because they want to avoid ditches on one side, and they want to avoid ditches on the other side, so they’re just looking to stay in the middle of the road. The problem with the moderate mindset is that it can easily succumb to snobbery. You know, everyone to my right is crazy. And everyone to my left is awful. You know, that kind of a thing. I think we need to distinguish multi directional leadership from moderation. It is not about finding a perfect balance of competing interests or beliefs. It is something else, it is a manner of leadership, grounded in the unshakable conviction that all the truth revealed in Scripture must be deployed for the good of God’s people. That’s what this is about. And for truth, to have its greatest influence, a leader must constantly be aware of the cultural surroundings, the cultural context, it is not about finding the middle between extremes. It’s about holding fiercely to both extremes insofar as we see them in Scripture. Now, on the surface, that kind of approach, that kind of dexterity can baffle the observer. But if you look, if you look more closely, there’s a kind of versatility there that is actually the outworking of what I believe is a deeper rock ribbed consistency. It’s a consistency that is willing to cross artificial lines and is willing to ward off opposing dangers because the leader has a singular purpose. And I believe that is the need of this our leaders who leave their way now to one side than to the other emphasizing a particular theological truth during a particular season and a different truth in another in order to remain singularly focused on leading the sheep. So how do we develop this multi directional sensibility? Where does it come from? You know, how do we learn to spot dangers that approach the flock from multiple directions. I’d like to offer several suggestions that would help us develop this approach to life to ministry. And I’ll put several of them on the screen here. The first is to delight in Scripture, even when it challenges our systems and assumptions. I go back to John Stott. You know, one of his greatest influences was Charles Simeon is a well known pastor who devoted 54 years of ministry to Cambridge University and the Holy Trinity Church. He was the pastor who gave guidance to the influential group of Evangelicals known as the Clapham sect, Hannah Moore, William Wilberforce, you know, these leaders because they were largely responsible for bringing it into slavery in England, in Simeon, although he would have been more doctrinally more Calvinistic, he expressed his desire to make Bible Christians not system Christians. And I think that sensibility is key to understanding multi directional leadership. He, this is something he wrote, he said, The truth is not in the middle and not in one extreme, but in both extremes. So in other words, this is the sensibility where we find delight in whatever the Bible teaches not not merely the truths that one group prefers to emphasize, not merely the truths that one group wants to elevate. We want to be the kind of people who speak the truth in all of its glory and recognize that any attempt to overemphasize one truth or to a maybe to the exclusion of another truth, or or any attempt to water down a truth in order to make it more palatable, that is going to result in subtle distortions that subvert our witness. So we delight in the scriptures. Secondly, we should listen carefully to people who sound various alarms. And this is where one directional leaders can come in handy. One directional leaders are adept at sounding alarms. It’s just that their warnings are generally directed to one side of the field. The narrow scope of the books they read the voices they heed limits or ability to receive cautions and warnings, except for the ones they’ve already identified. so hear me out here. The problem with one directional leaders is not that they are alarmist, it’s actually that they’re not alarmist enough. They’re like a radio that is tuned only to one frequency. And they perceive a particular threat very clearly, but they remain deaf to other warning bells. So if we’re going to develop a multi directional sensibility, we need to recognize there is something valuable that you can get from one directional leaders. Sometimes their warnings are right. When someone from a different side of the field sounds a warning, you have a choice in that moment, you can ignore the council or you can give it careful consideration. Now, the natural response often is to reject counsel that comes, especially if it comes as a critique, right? I mean, when someone alerts you to a threat, they feel it’s coming to your blog, he could be you might feel slighted, you might be like, Well, I mean, does this person think I’m blind for not for not emphasizing this danger, and you may be inclined to just kind of brush off that concern. I say, though, that the better response is to listen carefully to discern if that concern is valid. And if it is, then assess the size of the threat. Because here’s the deal, one directional leaders often overstate the immediate danger of a narrow set of concerns. But just because it’s overstated, doesn’t mean there is not validity to the warning. This is another area where John Stott excelled because he found creative solutions. And in a number of paths in a number of areas, he steered a path for evangelicals, because he listened carefully when a certain position or a certain posture would provoke strong reactions from critics. If suddenly, someone was up in arms about something that he’d said, or a particular doctrine or practice, Scott would ask himself, you’d say, why did they feel this so strongly? What what is it that they want to safeguard? And then he said, The extraordinary thing was that in many cases, you find that you want to safeguard that too. And that’s when you reach the point of creative development or creative solutions. But I think pastors and church leaders who want to, to grow and their ability to recognize various dangers are going to deliberately seek out voices from other groups, and they’re going to listen carefully to critics, even critics that may be coming at you not and you’re going to read books from different perspectives. And none of that is so that you can be seen as cultured or you can be seen as balanced or no, it’s so that over time, you can develop the ability to recognize multiple threats. So that’s number two. Number three, know yourself and the dangers to which you were susceptible. multi directional leadership requires honest and accurate self assessment. If you’re a pastor, or if you’re a church leader, or if you have influence over Christians in any different in any area, you need to know yourself and your tendencies. Recognize your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities. Ask yourself if my ministry were to distort the gospel in some way, what kind of distortion would it likely be? If I were to drift theologically? In what direction would that happen? Or how might my temperament my personality affect my tendencies? Do I Do I naturally gravitate toward controversy? Maybe I’m prone to being Ignatius? Or do I naturally want to avoid conflict in my prone to being a coward? See, these questions matter because they help us recognize how easily our revulsion toward one error can leave us vulnerable to another error. It’s important to know yourself in which way you lean because that way you can be extra vigilant against dangers that might approach from a a different side up. As an example, let’s go back to the conversation about the mission of the church, the debate, long standing debate about that that’s developed since the days of John Stott now and other leaders that have parsed the nuances a little bit differently. But let me just give this as an example in some churches and denominations. When social action has been given a major role in the church’s mission. The urgency of evangelism has disappeared. And eventually the gospel has been swallowed up by social concern. I mean, that’s an historical fact.

Trevin Wax
Meanwhile, and other churches and denominations where the emphasis is focused narrowly on personal conversion. We’ve seen congregations who have often been quietly complicit in social inaction and injustice. That too, is an historical fact. Both cases present real dangers. But in order to know yourself and the dangers to which you are most susceptible, you must move beyond merely seeing the fact that there are different dangers. You may agree with me there, I want you to ask a more targeted question. Which of those dangers the You feel more acutely because when you recognize that you have a visceral reaction to one of those threats, then you’re able to see more clearly the opposing threat that may deserve more of your attention. I mean, for example, if you’re constantly on guard against anything that smacks of the social gospel, you may need to ensure that your congregation remains committed to obeying the second greatest commandment is your congregation firm on the priority of evangelism but wobbly and spreading God’s love through service to the world. On the other hand, if you’re on guard against any effort to privatize the gospel, to individualize the gospel, and you don’t want to set up a wedge between individual conversion, social transformation in addressing injustice in society, well, then you may need to ensure your congregation remains committed to keeping the cross not a cause. As the center of your focus, no matter how righteous that cause may be, is your congregation active and serving the community but passive in spreading the gospel, and urging people to repent of sin and trust in Jesus alone for salvation. And listen, you can give me your history, there may be good reasons that you lean the way that you do. There may be good reasons that you tend in this direction or that direction. Your leanings may be understandable in light of your history, but your past doesn’t give you a pass on being faithful to God’s word. So know yourself, take stock of your history, recognize the way that you why you lean the way you do. But in the end, we all have to submit to Scripture, and stay alert to the way our tendencies could lead us to downplay dangers from other sides. So know yourself. And then number four is similar. Know your people. If not just knowing your own susceptibility to error pastors and other church leaders must know the cultural context and the people they serve. And here’s the here’s the warning I want to give you today in an error in an era of, of constant communication. It is so easy to follow news, commentary, debates happening in other parts of the country all around the world. And let me let me just say greater cultural awareness is a good thing. But not if it comes at the expense of knowing the concerns and challenges facing the very people entrusted to you. So multi directional leaders not only know their own strengths and weaknesses, they also know the tendencies and leanings of the flock. How well do you know the sheep you lead? If the sheep were to wander? Would it be in this direction? Or that direction? How would the sheep respond to different dangers that arise? Less than the multi directional leader may be aware of various threats to churches across the country? But here’s the question that auto Lewmar just in your mind, okay, I get it. I see everything happen on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all of these debates going on I read this, I read that I see. But what is true of the church, I am called elite. What threats do we face? What are the dangers on our horizon? Again, the leaders primary focus must be local, not national. You don’t pastor the world? So this leads into the question of what the barriers are to both directional leadership. And there are a lot of them. There are factors that are conspiring against the formation of this kind of leadership. I mean, as tribalism, there’s institutional loyalties. There’s online habits, there’s the desire to be safe in a community that only guards against dangers that we already foresee. I want to give you just a few barriers that make this hard. Because it’s a this is a tough road ahead. Everything I’m talking about here, and let me give you some of the reasons why this can be difficult. The first is that we fear the bad trajectory. There may be a pastor who has seen other leaders who started down a road and eventually they adopted positions that are no longer in line with biblical teaching. We’ve seen this happen. It’s tragic when it does. And so you see this path that’s leading to dangerous on one side of the field. So what’s the natural response? When you stake out positions, you build fences, in order to protect the flock from any movement in that direction? One directional leaders, one directional leaders fear the bad trajectory, the slippery slope to theological disaster to moral disaster. And I just want to say for a moment, don’t dismiss that impulse. Noticing a trajectory is an aspect of growing in wisdom. Some slopes really are slippery. Ideas do have consequences. So it can be appropriate to warn others about a trajectory of thought, or a trajectory of action that’s going to lead away from the truth. So here’s my caution, though. The problem with one directional leaders isn’t the concern regarding the slippery slope or the bad trajectory. It’s that they forget that trajectories can go and want more than one direction. They’re worried about the slippery slope on one side that they miss. There’s a slippery slope on the other. So we should be alert not just to the bad trajectory from one side but two troubling trajectories plural, that can lead us astray in a number of ways. The first barrier a second barrier is that we risk losing status. One directional leaders worry if they point out a troubling trajectory and in the opposite direction, what if they what if someone were to charge them with knowledge no longer being sound in their teaching, or you know that they usually point out these dangers, but now that they’re pointing out these dangers, what affects rough on their reputation, you know that, and they don’t want to lose face with people in their congregation. So they can let dangers encroach upon the flock that they’re beginning to see. Because in the end, sometimes we are quicker to protect our reputation than our flocks. It would be easy, for example, for a pastor or a church leader, maybe who has experience in a more traditional church and is changing the church in a lot of ways wants to do away with certain cultural trappings that feel old school, you know, wants to create this vibe of, well, we’re not your grandmother’s church, you know, that kind of a thing. And the type of people that may be attracted to that church that have been disaffected from traditional churches in the past come in, and but they overtime may assume that the church has also done away with traditional Christian doctrines, and practices. And you can find that church leaders may just go a little quiet on contested matters of doctrine, because they don’t want to lose status. They don’t want to lose the support of the people that they’ve reached with this new church model. But do you see what’s happening here, once again, the temptation is to do whatever it takes to hold on to others approval, to not lose status, multi directional leadership, which means we have to reject that fear, to pursue faithful versatility no matter the risks, and to never sacrifice our convictions in order to satisfy our followers or our peers. A third barrier is that our warnings could be used to discredit us. As soon as you’re a leader who demonstrates the ability to fight off a threat from a different direction, some of the people who were once sympathetic to your perspective, they may start to feel betrayed. And if they turn on you, they might see statements, they could Marshal evidence to show that the leader well that they must be moving to another side, you know, the person who’s now warning against a threat to the right, they’re a closet liberal. Someone who’s warning about a threat to the left, they are a fundamentalist, you know, prefer preferring to follow leaders who only oppose threats coming from one direction some Christians will interpret multi directional warnings as evidence of doctrinal drift and then they’ll start to discredit whatever that leader says, you see this happen online all the time. The moment a leaders words, challenge them, they just right off the leader, even if they benefited from the Ministry of that leader in the past, they they’d rather destroy the leaders credibility than to receive further counsel. multi directional leaders realize we’re going to issue warnings that might upset people. We’re going to step on toes, not just the people outside of our church walls, but also the people inside our congregations at times. And we’ve got to do whatever we can to avoid unnecessary obstacles, we need to make sure that we’re not being misinterpreted in our communication. But we’ve got to be courageous and alerting people to multiple dangers, even if we know that our warnings can be used to discredit us. Want to lift up one more barrier to you our wounds could tempt us to switch sides. When you take arrows from those who are once friendly toward you, it hurts. It really hurts. And in response to the pain that you have felt for stepping out of line, you know, you could gravitate toward other pastors and leaders who have been in similar circumstances who’ve experienced similar hurts. But instead of receiving counsel from those who have faced the sting of rejection and betrayal and yet share your theological convictions, you can start to commiserate with people who belong to other theological or political tribes. And when this happens, seen it again and again, wounded shepherds often encourage the worst impulses in each other. Self Pity, which we all know is a subtle form of pride takes root. Your wounds get nursed, not healed in a context of friendship that is built on commiseration instead of commitment to the truth.

Trevin Wax
And so here’s the great peril for the multi directional leader. commiseration overcomes conviction. And the people that you want that you now feel a sense of camaraderie with and your hurt and your pain, they may be the ones to lead you ironically, back to one directional leadership, except this time, the direction of your leadership, the direction of your warnings is in the opposite of the warnings from before. So your once theological opponents now become your new emotional allies. So now the stalwart conservative who wants issued warnings about theological drift to the left now only sounds alarm about problems to the right. You’re alert to threats that you used to ignore, and you issue warnings in a new direction, but you stop addressing the dangers on the other side that you used to warn about. Overtime you develop a new set of followers, you might change your church’s makeup you may find attract people who are animated by that different brand of one directional leadership. And eventually, the fears that drive one directional leadership start to work in the opposite way, leading you to abandon your previous convictions. And what’s more, you become a mascot for the other side, because at that point, you’re just a one directional leaders has to switch teams. multi directional leaders have to be on guard against this path toward returning to one directional leadership have to be alert to the danger of falling for errors that they used to warn about. And just just remember this theological compromise, usual usually doesn’t start with a change of conviction. It often starts with a feeling of solidarity with a new group. Our convictions in other words are formed not just cerebrally, but communally. And the danger for multi directional leaders is that when our spirits are wounded, we will be tempted to abandon the community that would hold us accountable and join a new crowd who would cheer us on to compromise. So, in the end, I hope that this workshop has dispelled any notion that multi directional leadership is all about moderation, or passivity, a general squishiness when it comes to Christian belief in practice, I mean, this is hard. When you are multi directional, you will face criticism for failing to toe the party line for appearing inconsistent for being too radical in one direction for some and to passive in another direction for others but But what greater honor, do we have than to apply God’s Word in our times for the good of God’s people? What an adventure to remain alert to multifaceted dangers. You know what an adventure to to reject the middle way that would just slide into a mushy, moderation. What an adventure to delight in truths, marvelous paradoxes, what What an adventure, to take on the prophetic mantle of speaking the right word in the right moment to the right people. And through it all, aware of our lingering sins and struggles, resting in Christ’s mercy, relying on the Spirit’s power. We lead with increasing anticipation of the day when we will hear from our good shepherd. Well done. Faithful versatility in protecting and shepherding the flock. In a world of many dangers, toils and snares that’s our ambition. May God give us grace. Thank you all for being here today.