Control VS Releasing Ministries and Gifts

Dear Pastoral and Ministerial Friend
I am sending this email out to a limited audience, mainly to pastors and friends who are involved in ministry. I pulled this message from a file I wrote a couple years ago. The article is not comprehensive, but rather is just the "tip of an iceberg" of material that could and may follow. It deals with the issues of control versus allowing ministries and spiritual gifts in individuals and the church body to mature and grow.
Billy Long

Control vs Releasing Ministries
Excessive control by leaders can be rooted in wrong motives, not trusting people, and not trusting God with people. It can stem from a leader’s inflated opinion of himself, from a desire for power, or even from insecurity. Often it is used to hide flaws and lack of integrity within the organization or in the leadership itself.

The need to control is often manifested in the fear of delegating responsibility. When a leader is reluctant to release people to their various areas of gifting and ministry, he suffocates the unique creativity of the people God has placed around him. He gathers around him people who do not threaten him, people who will serve him and his vision, while failing to develop their own. He will be unable to tolerate people of substantial gifting and charisma, the very people he could train to replace himself. As a result the organization has to import or hire new leaders from the outside because of the inability to raise them up from within. He also will fail to use those whom he considers less than himself because they will not perform at the level he requires. He restricts those who are really gifted and limits those who are not. The great are not allowed to shine and the weak are not given opportunity to grow and expand.

The organizational system itself seems to force even good leaders of integrity to push people to follow paths and methods dictated and demanded by the system rather than finding the real flow of gifting and calling that lies within each person. People end up functioning within the pre-fab organizational slots that force them into areas that meet the organizational needs rather than actually allowing their individual and unique gifts and callings to emerge, grow, and flourish. This tends to eventually produce frustration and burn-out in sincere people who can’t quite put into words what they really feel.

The organization ends up with two classes of people: The few who do most of the work and serve in the organizational ministry slots, and the many who become spectators and recipients of the church’s programs. Only a few find their own unique calling and place. Finding their real gift and call requires a creative anointing and a sanctified flexibility that is usually suppressed by the typical church organization.

Many people approach church hoping to find their place of service. Leadership, usually assumes that the individual’s call and talents must fit within the ministry needs of the organization; and so, rather than looking for the unique stirrings within the person himself, they try to find areas of service in the organization that are most compatible with the person’s abilities. Filling “slots” in the needs of the organization becomes more important than helping the individual find his own unique calling, which may not relate at all to any of the “ministry needs” of the organization.

These stirrings in the members will often be seen by leadership as potentially rogue activity and a threat to the organization. An individual who seeks to explore them risks being ostracized because his “ministry” brings up control issues. As a result, the gifts that lie in seed form in people are suffocated because individual creativity is not encouraged, except to follow the tracks laid down by the organization. A true spiritual father will be secure enough in his relationships to release his spiritual sons into ministries that do not necessary carry the brand name of the organization and over which he does not have direct control. It takes an understanding of the nature of organic relationships, which seem so often to be lacking in our contemporary churches which are more like corporations than community.

I would love to see New Testament Apostolic Communities like Jerusalem, Antioch, and Ephesus spring up today. These city churches saw the emergence of many great and varied ministry gifts within their communities. They became centers of individual and church body growth. They did not follow the western (American) model of one pastor who was the boss with everything serving him, with him speaking every Sunday to a passive audience of “followers.” The Apostolic community was dynamic in the fruit and manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and in the development of many and varied ministries. If we would take off our blinders, we would see how different and below standard we are in our contemporary churches, compared to New Testament Christianity.

What will it take for us to see and change? Often it is the grassroots who spring up and grow past the leaders. But It should start with leaders. We often are like the Pharisees who stand in the door and will not enter, while preventing those would. Moving forward in real Biblical growth and maturity will require that sanctified flexibility and creative obedience that is usually missing in religious circles. It will also require a hunger to get past the religious routines. It will especially require leaders to lay themselves on the altar and be delivered from themselves. May the Lord help us.

Billy Long