The debate over gay marriage, highlighted by President Obama’s endorsement this week, makes me sad. Extremists on both sides of the argument are either dancing for joy or arming for battle. Politicians, rather than  focusing on the economy, foreign relations or American security, are using gay marriage to invigorate their base and to raise campaign funds. Pastors, rather than encouraging people to love God with all their heart, mind and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves, are self-righteously pontificating on things they know very little about. It is amazing that an issue that impacts a small percentage of the population has become such an important dividing line in American culture. (According to an article in the Huffington Post, Gary Gates, demographer-in-residence at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at UCLA, estimates that 1.7% of US adults self-identify as gay or lesbian.)

I have been wrestling with the biblical principles surrounding gay marriage. Three major tenets guide my understanding:

1. The chief end of man is to glorify God
   The purpose of life is not individual happiness or fulfillment; life is about living in a way that reflects God’s glory. In dealing with contentious issues I have to ask, “How does my speech and attitude reflect the glory of God? Is my goal to find and spread individual happiness or to reflect Kingdom principles?” Wrestling with these questions seldom leads to good sound bites, increased fund-raising or pithy sermons; but these are the questions we have to grapple with on a daily basis.
2. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God
   Are gays and lesbians sinners? Of course they are. As are senators and presidents, Democrats and Republicans, as well as Cub fans and Cardinal fans.(Cubs fans are also not very smart, but that’s another post.) Sin is anything that misses the center of God’s will, and we all miss on a daily basis.It is easy to become self-righteous in an issue as emotional as gay marriage, but the Apostle Paul says there is no one righteous, not even one.
3. God’s description of marriage is between a man and a woman
   The center of God’s will, according to both the Old and New Testaments, is a committed, lifelong relationship between one man and one woman. We have to remember the Bible is an accurate record of real people, so there are polygamists, adulterers, rapists, people who sleep with their siblings, people who sleep with their step-mothers (yuck!) mentioned throughout the Bible. But the only relationship that always gets God’s gold seal of approval is a monogamous relationship between a man and a woman. That is the center of God’s will.

So how do we bring this all together? I think the most important thing we can do is to focus more on what we are for rather than on what we are against. I am for a healthy marriage between a man and a woman who are both committed to bringing glory to God by serving each other. As we move further and further from that target we move further and further from the center of God’s will. To me here are the top five enemies of God’s ideal marriage relationship:

1. Selfishness
2. Internet porn
3. Inappropriate relationship with another man or woman
4. Sex outside of marriage
5. Cohabiting before marriage

I’m sorry, but gay marriage (which impacts 1.7% of the population) doesn’t make the top 5, top 10 or even top 100 list.

So here is how I feel about gay marriage:

1. Do I think gay marriage is God’s perfect will?
   No
2. Is gay marriage a sin?
   Anything outside of God’s perfect will is sin, so yes
3. Do I think gay marriage should be legal in the US?
   I don’t really care. Pornography is legal. Adultery is legal. Pre-marital sex is legal. Focusing on my own needs rather than the needs of my spouse is legal. Legislation will not improve marriage and legislation will not destroy marriage
4. Would I marry a gay couple?
   No.
   I believe the role of a pastor in performing a marriage is to affirm God’s blessing on a relationship. That is why I normally won’t marry a couple who is living together, a couple who I believe is unequally yoked (a Christian marrying a non-Christian), or a couple who is not entering into the marriage with a sober commitment to a lifelong relationship. The government can legalize gay marriage (as it has so many other relationships), but it can’t force me to perform a ceremony.

The issue of gay marriage makes me sad because it has become the centerpiece topic of conversation, the litmus test of who we’ll associate with. There are so many other things that impact so many more lives, I hope we can move past this soon and refocus on becoming the men and women God created us to be, bringing glory to God.

Yesterday I posted that leadership training classes don’t work. The reaction was mixed from “You thought leadership training classes worked? Are you an idiot?” to “Of course leadership training classes work. Are you an idiot?” (My paraphrase) Today I want to look at how Jesus developed leaders. He never held a class, he never put out a sign-up sheet, there  wasn’t even a Starbucks in Galilee. But the eleven men he poured his life into changed the world. So here are my observations on the Jesus Leadership Pipeline:

• Jesus spent time observing potential leaders
  He spent time interacting with potential leaders in a variety of situations before tapping them for further development
• Jesus hand-picked his leaders
  No one self-selected into his group. Anyone could follow Jesus, but his inner circle was by invitation only
• Jesus taught leadership along the way
  Rather than classrooms, books and exercises Jesus used birds and lilies and farms to teach leadership. Leadership development was a natural outgrowth of hanging out together.
• Jesus put his students into difficult leadership situations
  He constantly challenged them to lead beyond their comfort zones. (“How are you going to feed the crowd?” “Walk on water” “Go do miracles”)
• Jesus did not give his students a leadership template to follow, he gave them a mission to complete
  His final leadership instruction was to “Go make disciples”. He left the how, where, when completely up to them
• Jesus taught in public, he debriefed in private
  He often debriefed his public sermons in private with his students. They learned as much from the Q&A as they did from the original content
• Jesus treated each leader as an individual
  He confronted Peter, he loved John, he challenged Thomas. In his final words on the beach in John 21 he told Peter that everyone has their own, individualized path to leadership
• Jesus never kicked a leader out
  He challenged and corrected his students, but he never excommunicated them. Even Judas left on his own
• Jesus spent three years developing 12 men
  He apparently couldn’t come up with a mass program of microwave leadership development. Not only did his program take three years with 12 students, but it was 24/7/365.

A few years ago Leadership Training became all the rage in churches. Suddenly if you weren’t training leaders you weren’t really accomplishing much. “Everyone is a leader, so everyone must be trained as a leader”, we were told. We read all the leadership books, went to all the leadership seminars and we worked every leadership mantra we came across into our sermons:

Everything rises and falls on leadership
Leaders are readers (Except for the illiterate ones)
Leaders never eat alone (Which means introverts aren’t leaders. Wait, everyone is a leader. Hmmm)

To make sure that all of the leaders that we had to train got a steady diet of these leadership nuggets, we began herding the sheep through a variety of leaderships classes. Small group leader training, ministry leader training, team leader training, cheerleader training. (Maybe not cheerleaders) Everyone needed to go through our leadership classes. Everyone’s a leader, so everyone mus be trained. Our job is to do the training.

A couple of challenges have popped up, however, on the road to 100% trained leaders. First we discovered that maybe not EVERYONE is a leader. When we started our parade of leadership classes the same, somewhat dysfunctional people kept showing up. And the funny thing is that they were often the only ones who completed all 36 weeks of the  Leadership Basic Training course we had so carefully crafted. At the end of the course we would give them a graduation certificate, but there was no way on earth we were going to trust them to lead anything. It turns out some people don’t make good leaders. Not everyone is a leader.

The second, and bigger, discovery is that leadership classes don’ develop leaders. At the end of six weeks (or nine weeks or two years) students become graduates, not necessarily leaders. I know that you will toss up examples, but I will counter with 30 years of watching, writing and leading leadership classes both here and in other countries. I can point to few if any leaders who were primarily (or even secondarily) developed through a class. Physical and virtual classes are equally ineffective. Classes and training programs look great on paper. We can create milestones and markers and spreadsheets and dashboards. We can have meetings to evaluate progress and reward according to quotas and goals.

The only challenge is that this approach doesn’t produce leaders.

At best classes convey concepts, but those same concepts are available in books around the world. Small group leaders don’t come from small group leader classes, campus pastors don’t come from campus pastor classes and worship leaders don’t come from worship leader classes. Classes don’t harm leaders, they just don’t produce leaders.

Last week I had this theory confirmed from two directions. On Thursday I participated in an online gathering around the topic of campus pastor development. I shared the fantastic campus pastor class we created at Seacoast that didn’t develop a single campus pastor. The other consultant in the meeting shared the exact same experience. Her church had, simultaneously to Seacoast, developed a brilliant educational program for potential campus pastors. Their success rate was also zero. Two programs developed separately by two successful multi-site churches with a net outcome of zero.

The second confirmation came from Marcus Buckingham at the Chick-fil-a Leadercast. I wasn’t able to attend, but my wife shared that Buckingham’s research shows that leaders aren’t developed through leadership training classes. Concepts are shared, but leaders aren’t created.

So here’s my plea to church leaders; let’s stop pouring time and resources into leadership training classes. Let’s pull the plug; stop the madness. The more time we waste herding people into class rooms and force feeding them leadership platitudes the less time we have to actually discover and develop and deploy leaders.

Tomorrow we’ll look at how Jesus developed leaders. (Spoiler alert: He never created a workbook or had a sign-up sheet)

Several weeks ago I started a series of posts called Your Church Will Die in which I outlined the natural life-cycle of a church. Since then I’ve shared the concept with several individuals and groups which has clarified and expanded my thinking on this idea of natural progression of growth in a local church congregation. What I’d like to do today is roll out what I’m thinking and get your feedback.

First let me define my terms. When I say YOUR CHURCH I’m not implying that the church belongs to anyone but God, or that the Church universal will die. I am referring to the local faith community you lead or belong to. My premise is that your church, the local body of believers you are attached to, has a natural life-cycle that ends in some form of death.

Stages

As I outlined in Your Church Will Die Part 3 there are seven (I’ve added one) identifiable stages in a church’s life-cycle:

Birth: This is where the church begins. Some are plants, some are splits and some are spontaneous uprisings.

Child: The early years of a church plant when the congregation and leaders are discovering who they are and who they will become.

Adult: The new has worn off and the church is becoming fully formed community.

Parent: The church reproduces by hiving off a new church, launching a campus or sending out a church planter.

Grandparent: The church begins investing significant resources into church plants beyond their own region.

Senior citizen: The congregation has aged and is no longer attracting or deploying young leaders. The focus turns to what will happen when the congregation can no longer support itself.

Death: The church either ceases to exist, becomes something entirely different, or is absorbed by another church.

Core activity

At each stage a church is engaged in a core activity to ensure health and growth.

Measurement

We have different measures of health at each stage of life. When we were babies the doctor measured our height and weight to see if we were growing in a healthy manner. The doctor, however, is no longer excited when I add 5 pounds a month; at some point the measurements of health change. So how do we measure at each stage of a church’s life-cycle?

If we begin with the end in mind, the ultimate goal of every church planter will be a healthy orchard.

So what do you think? Is this a helpful paradigm? What would you change? What would you throw out all together?