Transcript
We're called by God to be a restorative community. The gospel is a message of fresh starts and new beginnings. I would like to think that by the time anyone gets into leadership, they're spiritually mature, that graduation from seminary is a guarantee of personal righteousness; but it's not, that we don't want to make unbiblical assumptions about our ministry leaders.
Every Leader Is Still Being Sanctified
Every ministry leader is a person in the midst of his own sanctification or her own sanctification. Every ministry leader still has the potential to have a wandering heart. Every ministry leader has areas of susceptibility, so sadly, we're going to experience the spiritual failure and fall of leaders. And I'm very concerned that in the church and in Christian ministry, we seem more skilled at getting rid of our problems than restoring them.
One of the brightest gospel moments, I think, in all of Scripture, is in Jonah. After this recalcitrant, running prophet tried his best to get as far as he could from God, and God sends a fish to swallow him up and Jonah gets vomited up on the beach, know that when he's vomited up on the beach, that's grace. Sometimes Grace looks like vomit, but I love the words that begin chapter three of that little book.
It says, "The word of God came to Jonah a second time." Isn't that beautiful? I mean, if I'd been writing Jonah, it would have been a short book. It would have been three verses. "You run, you're done. I got plenty of prophets." But the gospel is a message of fresh starts and new beginnings. We should want to believe that by the power of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of God empowering good gospel ministry, we can see leaders restored.
Now, there are times where that won't happen because the leader is self-excusing and minimizes his sin and runs away from help, but we should believe that we're called by God to be a restorative community. The gospel is a message of fresh starts and new beginnings.
