Remember The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis?
Today, a journey into our imaginations. Let’s apply some of the devil’s strategies to today’s leaders. Your aim as a faithful demon? To destroy the spiritual health of a local church.
How would you go about this?
You mustn’t make the church suspicious, so the church building has to continue to look full and buzzing with life, while you are secretly at work behind the scenes. Second, you should probably use disguise and deceit to get past their defences. So, no prosperity teaching in a church that knows their Bibles well. You should deceive in line with what they already agree with, so nobody notices.
What should you prioritise? Here are some tips.
Overload godly leaders with so many good opportunities that they can only accomplish them at the expense of their walks with God. Ideally, this should also come at the expense of their family, if they are married, or other healthy friendships, if they aren't.
Isolate and overwhelm them. Add in a bit of guilt if they aren't working harder and longer than the hardest working person in the church.
Tempt them to compare themselves negatively with their favourite Christian missionary hero.
As you begin, take care not to overdo it. You don’t want them to become so despairing and discouraged that they actually leave. No, no. And be careful not to alert the church elders (or equivalent). The last thing you want is for the church to realise how unhealthy their leader’s patterns have become. That would give the game away. (Fortunately, most churches never do a proper evaluation of the spiritual life and health of their leader, so you should be able to get away with these techniques.)
Instead, keep the leader on the hamster wheel, delivering what everyone wants and being applauded for it, but with their spiritual vitality seeping away like a slow puncture. Also, if they make an effort to return to patterns that are sustainable and produce godly joy, ensure that they encounter those most likely to criticise them for this. That has always worked well in the past.
Let me assure you that if you follow this guidance, you’ll soon have a church with many popular activities and teaching, but without any spiritual depth. Perfect! The teachers may well expound Scripture in a way that’s technically correct, and they may even be congratulated for their depth of insight. However, their hearts won’t be in it and they will be the only ones who know this.
Great teaching but spiritual poverty. Excellent!
Sunday services are also a great resource for you. If possible, tempt the leaders to focus on impressing others so that they neglect their own spiritual lives of prayer and worship. It’s not hard to convince them that they’re virtuous because they’re thinking of others.
Ideally, all those who lead in church should believe that they’re working hard ‘for the gospel’, as long as they do so at the expense of their first love. If you can set up ‘gospel ministry’ as something that works counter to spiritual depth, all the better. It confuses them, because they often find they can’t abandon activity they’ve deemed central to their roles in order to prioritise time with God.
Confusion will often lead to guilt. An outstanding combination!
YOUR CHURCH
Looking at the above strategies devised by Satan, how vulnerable is your church? If you’re the leader, how vulnerable are you to these tactics?
The devil is quite capable of sending bad things our way, but he will also overwhelm us with a deluge of apparently good things. When that happens, our spiritual health is closely connected to our responses. Have we learned when to say no, and when to say yes? There is always more on our plates than can be done healthily and prayerfully. So, saying no and delegating must become learned behaviours. Furthermore, many of us hear a little nagging voice that tells us we’re pathetic if we don’t go the extra mile. It’s an insidious lie that appears to be founded on the truth.
SLOWLY, SLOWLY
One of the problems is that our patterns develop slowly. It goes wrong not immediately, but slowly. Allow that voice to dictate a thousand little decisions and you will eventually find yourself maxed out by church life. You’ll be spiritually exhausted at the same time as your church is seen to be a success.
But it is all surface activity and energy.
It’s activity and energy that overwhelms the spiritual life first of leaders, and then of everyone else. It’s worth taking note of this verse in the letter to the Hebrews.
Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
Heb 13.17
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The writer is warning against a church culture that so burdens a leader that they lose their joy.
Satan loves to destroy our joy.
It is surely better to be guided by the principle that vibrant spiritual health is our goal rather than manic activity. In addition, when considering which activities to prioritise, spiritual health should guide the choices we make.
THE JESUS WAY
When Jesus tells the disciples to come to him for rest, he tells them they are going to need to learn how to do it. He’s not referring to information, but to a whole-life paradigm. It’s important to remember that the disciples lived in a different culture to ours. The yoke of the Pharisees and the burden of religious duty was suffocating the life of the nation. For them, rest involved ‘unlearning’ a host of assumptions about what it meant to live well before God, as well as learning to rest in Jesus.
Evangelical churches have their own versions of that old paradigm.
Allow me to finish with some questions to ponder this coming week.
Are you building a spiritually healthy church culture of people delighting and resting in Jesus?
Are your church members growing in love and the fruit of the Holy Spirit?
To cover up your spiritual poverty, are you prioritising impressive, attractive, and popular activities that act as a substitute for spiritual health?
All we do in church life comes from a source.
It is anchored either in healthy spirituality, the kind that involves resting in Jesus, which produces good fruit and abundant joy, or it is based on some kind of substitute.
What kind of church do you lead?