Biblical Leadership
Understanding Accountability to Grow An Emotionally Healthy Church
Bishop Gregg L.Greer, Editor
Understanding Accountability to Grow a Emotionally Healthy Church
Yet, the person who has not had a change of heart will not be truly accountable no matter what program or set of rules he is trying to follow.
- No doubt, all believers struggle with the temptation to sin, but we must not forget what Scripture continues to point us to; The Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Christian must be daily yielding himself and depending upon the Holy Spirit’s power in order to live a life of love and obedience.
- If our first answer to the question ‘How someone can live a life pleasing to the Lord?’ is accountability to other people, then we have truly missed the freeing, good news of God’s Word and are dependent upon the weak, overbearing, and useless arm of the flesh.
Yet, confession to other believers is good for the “Soul” and Biblical as we see in the Book of John. This practice is often neglected or on the other hand overbearingly abused. How one goes about bearing his soul to another believer is a delicate matter.
Let’s look at 1 John 1:9. It says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This pertains to the acts of sins, whatever they might be; the sinner is to believe he has sinned as part of this confession. And a note about the word “all:” All means not some. All means all. Every sin. All sin was remitted, paid for, and put away on the cross when Jesus died for us. Let’s not forget, now, that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. We all need this great forgiveness.
- Confession must always be based upon a trusting, Godly relationships should not be not simply a set of rules in some church group. It must flow freely and naturally.This means that before a person can be expected to confess what is going on in their life to individuals (not big groups), they must have trusted, mature friends who have their best interest in mind always pointing them to Jesus and not themselves or their personal agendas and values.
- This kind of relationship takes time and effort. Before one can get to the nitty-gritty of their life they need to spend time with others just doing life together. As trust builds, so will the depth of the relationship from which confession can flow.
Lastly, our connection to each other means we must lay aside the island mentality. We do not stand independent of one another.
As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” . . . If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. (1 Cor. 12:20-21, 26)
Further Reference:
This is the Fifth Part of the Series Building God’s Kingdom Series on Organic Discipleship: Also coming is a book of the series will be released in September of 2018
Bishop Gregg L. Greer a Public Speaker, Pastor, Social Activist, and the Editor of the One World internet journal and Faith and Leadership Journal. Greer is the Founder of Freedom First International a human rights NGO. Pastor of Faith Journey International Ministries. He has written extensively about Faith, American politics, civil rights, and the intersection of economics and politics. His stories have also appeared in The Huffington Post,CNN, Apolitical America,and he is a frequent commentator on MSNBC online. His first book, Fighting for Human Rights is scheduled for release in Summer 2019. Listen to Greer’s radio podcast at OneWorld Talks -if you are interested in interviews from him, you can email oneworldtoday@gmail.com His website is www.gregglgreer.com
Building God’s Kingdom Series on Organic Discipleship Part 4: Three Essential Qualities Of Transformative Biblical Leadership
Bishop Gregg L.Greer, Editor
In today’s tough modern age-Biblical Leaders must not only concern themselves with how to lead, but they must also address and understand why they are leading or what purpose after acknowledging that their calling and vocation comes from God the Father.
Biblical Leaders must find their why before they know their what. Most gain a sense of the term vision to describe a leader’s purpose and the future state for which they will influence others.
If we were to ask any self described church leader, then he or she would most likely tell you that the idea of vision is at the heart of leading others, to comprehend biblical leadership-then we must realize that in a biblical paradigm- vision flows first from God’s call to the leader.
To better illustrate our purpose we have decided to use the life and Ministry of Moses; Here is a passage about the events that set Moses on his path to righteousness.
Walking along the dusty, desert road, a man named Moses was caught off-guard. He saw a bush that was inflamed but not burning. Ablaze and lit up, it flickered with flecks of fire, but the bush, leaves, and stems were not consumed. Slowly, cautiously, Moses approached the burning bush—and everything changed.
It seems to be extraordinary that Moses (illustration, above) had a clear conversation with God about what to do with his life. This amazing burning-bush moment was like God’s telephone directly to Moses, revealing a clear mission of what he was supposed to do. How could we not be jealous of that?
With this fact in mind we have decided to put together three major bullet points that “Good,” Biblical Leadership should be able to understand.
1. Understanding of the Calling
We know that the Body of Christ is structured to equip us for our function. We understand from the Apostle Paul’s teaching that Christ, “gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head — Christ — from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”
The real question here for most Christians is “How do we understand our place in the Body of Christ?” In other words, “What is my calling?”
2. Unquestioned Obedience to the Faith.
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV)
What do we hope for? We grow in the understanding that God is trustworthy and honors his promises.
We can be sure that his promises of salvation, eternal life, and a resurrected body will be ours someday based on who God is.
The second part of this definition acknowledges our problem: God is invisible. We can’t see heaven either.
We must know that-eternal life, begins with our individual salvation here on earth, is also something we do not see, but our faith in God makes us certain of these things, as a Biblical Leader-they key to leading is to keep the faith connected throughout the process.
3. God’s Wisdom must come First
A Biblical Leader must NOT get their intellect confused with God’s plan. We have a dream, an aspiration, or a goal, and it becomes what we believe is God’s vision. We then go to God to convince him to get on board with what we want to see happen in the world. In essence we say, “God, please bless and resource MY plans.” This leads to failure, frustration, and misguided achievements, since God did not author the vision in the first place. Here, leaders achieve only to realize the achievements were not of God. Great Biblical Leadership has to begin and end with humbleness. After we must accept that God’s vision has to be the driving force of our wisdom.
Ministry is hard! Leadership is even more challenging! There will be plenty of times when we will want to throw in the towel and do something else—anything else.
But if we are to become effective leaders we must always be willing to give the gospel it’s place in our lives and ask God to give interpretation. 
This is the Fourth Part of the Series Building God’s Kingdom Series on Organic Discipleship: Also coming is a book of the series will be released in September of 2018
Bishop Gregg L. Greer a Public Speaker, Pastor, Social Activist, and the Editor of the One World internet journal and Faith and Leadership Journal. Greer is the Founder of Freedom First International a human rights NGO. Pastor of Faith Journey International Ministries. He has written extensively about Faith, American politics, civil rights, and the intersection of economics and politics. His stories have also appeared in The Huffington Post,CNN, Apolitical America,and he is a frequent commentator on MSNBC online. His first book, Fighting for Human Rights is scheduled for release in Summer 2019. Listen to Greer’s radio podcast at OneWorld Talks -if you are interested in interviews from him, you can email oneworldtoday@gmail.com His website is www.gregglgreer.com
