John is getting old. He sees the end of his life coming, and it’s close. He’s lived a long time, and all his old friends have passed away. There is actually no one left from the original group except him. Some of them, including his brother, passed away long before. Gradually, one by one, they all died. Now John is faced with being the last living founding member. John knows he must pass leadership to the next generation.
Have you ever had to hand the reins over? I had to do so a year ago. I was the volunteer director of my denomination’s non-accredited program to train pastors who are not going to seminary. If you are wondering why pastors would not go to seminary, let me explain.
Frankly, I wish pastors would go to seminary, and if you are a pastor or considering ministry, I encourage you to take a look at Kairos University. Their approach to education is accessible and affordable, and they are breaking down barriers. But there are numerous legitimate reasons why a person might not want to go the accredited route. Maybe they are older, and don’t want to invest thousands of dollars and many years getting a Master of Divinity. Maybe their life situation makes seminary difficult. For example, some of pastors must work full-time non-ministry jobs and at the same serve as part-time pastors because of the size of their churches. That kind of bi-vocational ministry makes it very difficult to add seminary studies, which can be intensive. It took me eight years to get my masters degree, when I was a full-time pastor and the church allowed me time to go to school. If I had a full-time job, and a part-time pastoral job, I would have really struggled to have the time and energy to get through seminary.
So my denomination has an option that is more feasible for some pastors. Our non-accredited training program is shorter (only twelve classes), inexpensive, and not as intensive academically. For three years I ran the program, and I was excited about where it was headed. A group of other leaders and I began laying groundwork to implement creative ideas to expand the program.
But here was a change in bishops, and in my denomination, the bishop has the prerogative to select new leaders for numerous leadership roles in the denomination. As a result, about a year ago I handed leadership of the program to someone else. I gave him all my files, and I invited him to meet and talk. He said thank you, and that was it. No meeting. No conversation.
The thought crossed my mind, “My colleagues and I just put a lot of work into revamping the program. Will it be lost? What if the new leadership throws my work in the trash and takes the program in a different direction?” They could choose to change things. That’s leadership transition for you. Happens all the time. New leadership takes an organization in a new direction, making changes they feel best.
Remember John, who I mentioned above? John is wondering about his organization. The founding members of his organization did what founding members do. They laid a foundation. As John passes leadership to the next generation, will the foundation he helped lay be discarded?
You know the John I’m referring to? John the Apostle. Jesus’ close friend. 60-65 years earlier, Jesus had started a new movement that we now call Christianity. After his death and resurrection, Jesus handed responsibility of the new mission to his apostles, and those apostles, empowered by the Holy Spirit, launched the movement we call the church.
John was the last guy alive who had walked with Jesus, who had learned directly from Jesus. Now John is staring into the soon-coming future wondering if the Christians who never knew Jesus will stay faithful to the foundation Jesus and the apostles laid. Given that John believes Jesus is the way, the truth and life, and that no one comes to the father except through Jesus (John 14:6), John is very passionate about making sure that the Christians who take over leadership from him will stay faithful to the truth.
So John gets to work writing down the truth. Many others had already written stories about Jesus’ life, and those others had written letters filled with good teaching to churches. People like Matthew, Mark, Luke, Paul, and Peter have written to help the next generation of church leaders stay faithful. But John wants to add his two cents. So he writes and he writes. He writes the Gospel of John. He writes three letters (1, 2, and 3 John). He writes the Revelation. All of these books are clearly intended to help people see that Jesus is who he said he was, and therefore the up-and-coming Christians can be faithful to him, even though times were tough.
That is what is going through John’s heart and mind, and thus what flows out of his pen. What John has to say is all about the most important Christmas word, which I asked you to guess in the previous post. In the next post, we begin learning how he makes his case to this new generation of the church to remain faithful, and his focus is on that Christmas word.
Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 