"They have no idea what my prayer life is like. They have no idea what I've downloaded from the Internet in terms of pornography. They have no idea whether I treat my wife with dignity. They have no idea whether I'm in a good or bad relationship with my children. They have no idea, but I'm awarded this level of spirituality.
"The danger of this role is that we could begin to believe our press reports and take other peoples' perceived assessment of our spirituality as the truth of where we are, then begin to feast on it. That's how so many good men end up in ditches, and everybody says, ‘Shock!' Well, no, they've been going that way a long time. They were like a cut flower. It was just a matter of time. Nobody's going to own my spiritual life except me. So I have to own that. I've got to be diligent on that, and it's from that that I have the moral authority then to try to lead others."
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Our interview with Andy Stanley in the July-August 2004 issue was done after the recent publication of his book
The Next Generation Leader, and that topic took up much of the conversation. He specifically addressed the need for pastors to have courage in their roles as leaders and preachers:
"Speaking from my limited view, I feel like so much of the problem with pastors is they are just scared to death. They're scared of their people; they're scared of deacons; they're scared, they're scared, they're scared. You know, if you're scared of someone, you can't lead them; you hardly can influence them. Here's the pastor who's been hired—I tell our business guys all the time, ‘You'd never go to work for an organization where the customers can hire and fire the president of the company they bought products from.' But that's the church world. The people hire the leader and say, ‘We'll follow you unless we don't like the way you're leading us, then we'll get another leader.' In what other organization can the clients and the customers hire and fire the leader?
"So the church is set up upside-down. It's an environment that is not conducive to leadership in some ways. Consequently, to lead a church you just have to have a lot of courage because the group to which you're saying ‘follow me' can get together after you leave and fire you. Well, that's just the way it is. That's not going to change, but it requires a lot of courage; otherwise we start bending toward the people who hired us, and we're in trouble.
"The irony is we stand up and talk about Daniel in the lion's den, then we won't confront elders. All these Bible heroes— David vs. Goliath—and we love to preach those sermons and draw these parallels; yet we're scared to confront people. I think that dynamic alone is a big part of why the church is where it is. The leadership—or lack of leadership—is just so much fear of people. I don't know where that comes from."
Stanley observed, "When I see pastors who are scared, I want to tell them, ‘Just lead. If they fire you and you don't think God will take care of you, then you have no message for your people anyway, because we get up every Sunday and say God's grace is sufficient. He's going to take care of you. He'll meet your every need, and you'll never see the righteous go hungry.' It's what we preach; but if our lack of faith in those practical things causes us to not to be able to lead, then what's our message anyway?
"It's easy for me to say that sitting here; but when I started this church, it was not easy for me to say because I had to face that whole issue of leaving my dad's church to do something on my own. There were no guarantees; there were no promises. You walk through that wall of fire a couple of times, and you realize it's not so bad. God's grace is sufficient. He does show up."
