Month: February 2015

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

As you know, we’re in a time when the aging Boomer generation is leaving the workforce, making leadership succession a pressing reality in all sorts of places, our church included. In GCI, we have an increasing number of denominational and congregational leaders reaching the stage in life when they are retiring from active pastoral leadership. In noting this, I’m not implying that our older leaders need to step aside at a particular age. However, as we get older (and I include myself), we must give careful thought to the issue of leadership succession.

As we age, it’s natural that our energy level and overall health become limiting factors and those in leadership roles need to step aside to be replaced by those who are younger. With this in mind, we have increased our efforts to prepare younger members for church leadership. In the U.S., we have the GCI Intern Program, Generations Ministries leadership development programs, and other initiatives. I’m grateful that many of our congregations are actively addressing this issue by creating “open lanes” for younger adult members to participate in leadership. In all these ways and more, I see God answering a prayer I have prayed for a long time—that he would raise up in GCI a new generation to take up the mantle of church leadership.

Good planning helps minimize the times we might stumble in “passing the leadership baton.” Pastoral transitions are particularly delicate, yet they can be accomplished in a healthy way when we work together. Our U.S. Church Administration and Development (CAD) staff have established a process for pastor succession, and we have similar processes in place outside the U.S.

Please cooperate with those processes, including planning well in advance for leadership transitions. Why? Because the unexpected often occurs, as reflected in the well-known Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will (and Murphy was an optimist!). I’m also reminded of some corollary laws:

• Nothing is as easy as it looks.
• Everything takes longer than you think.
• If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
• If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.
• Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
• Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
• Every solution breeds new problems.
• It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
• Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

I firmly believe that God calls ministers to particular leadership roles. But I also believe that leaders have a responsibility to prepare for the future care of their congregations and ministries. Think of it this way: What God anoints, we appoint. We have an important calling to shepherd leadership succession processes within our areas of responsibility. In doing so, it’s vital to proactively seek God’s direction and take other steps to prepare well in advance for leadership transitions. When we do, great joy results—a joy that often “passes understanding,” because it can mean that we decrease in order that others might increase. “Passing the baton” is not always easy. When it appears to have been easy, it’s because God’s grace prevailed.

With all this in mind, I urge our established leaders to take positive steps toward preparing for leadership succession within their congregation or ministry. Let’s work with our teams to prepare for the transitions that are coming. Such transitions are inevitable—the only question is whether they will be done well.

Successful succession processes minimize the drama involved. One factor that heightens drama is when established leaders are unwilling to step aside so that others can step up (are they struggling to let go of the honor and esteem that go with their office?). Another factor is existing leadership teams failing to adapt to new leadership (including not letting incoming leaders re-fashion the team).

To avoid such drama, we have succession processes in place. I call on our established leaders to actively engage those processes, approaching them with a selfless, cooperative spirit, trusting God to lead us in identifying and appointing new leaders. In the U.S., our regional pastors are there to assist in lead pastor succession—please enlist their involvement early on. The GCI-USA policy is that when lead pastors reach age 62, they are to have a discussion with their regional pastor concerning plans for eventual leader succession. Outside the U.S., lead pastors should contact their regional director or mission developer. This advance planning helps avoid all sorts of problems. Remember Booker’s Law: “An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.”

Let’s be reminded that leader transitions are not just about the established leaders—they are also about the congregations and the ministries they have been called to serve. None of us has our “own” ministries—there is only one ministry and it belongs to Jesus, the Great Shepherd. We are his “under-shepherds,” called to protect and care for our Lord’s ministry and his people. We must not be possessive of what was never really “ours.” Leader transitions call for careful shepherding of God’s flock so it is “strengthened” instead of “scattered” (Ezekiel 34:1-6). Leader transitions need to be handled with great care and in a timely way so that a congregation has time to adjust, say their goodbyes, and process through the grief that inevitably occurs. Thank you, my brothers and sisters, for your cooperation in this important matter.

Yours in Christ,
Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I find it amusing when people exclaim, “If I can’t see it, I won’t believe it.” I often hear this said when people express doubt that God exists or that he includes all people in his grace and mercy. Seeking not to cause offense, I point out that we don’t see magnetism or electricity, yet we know they exist by their effects. The same is true with wind, gravity, sound and even thought. In all these ways we experience what is called “imageless knowing.” I like to refer to such knowing as invisible visibility.

For years we could only speculate about what was in the skies, relying on unaided eyesight. Today with the help of telescopes (like the Hubble Telescope), we know much more. What once was to us “invisible” is now visible. Yet not everything that exists is visible. Dark matter emits no light or heat—it’s invisible to our telescopes. Yet scientists know that dark matter exists because they have detected its gravitational effects. A quark is a tiny theoretical particle that makes up protons and neutrons in the nucleus of atoms. Along with gluons, quarks also make up more exotic hadrons such as mesons. Though none of these sub-atomic particles has been observed, scientists have detected their effects.

There is no microscope or telescope by which God can be seen, for as Scripture tells us, God is invisible: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (John 1:18). There is no way to “prove” the existence of God using physical instruments. Yet we believe God exists because we have experienced the effects of his unconditional, outgoing love. That love, of course, is most personally, intensively and concretely revealed in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, we see what his apostles concluded: God is love.

Love, which itself cannot be seen, is God’s nature, motivation and purpose. As T. F. Torrance puts it: “The constant and ceaseless out-flow of the Love of God which has no other reason for its movement than the Love that God is, is therefore [poured out] entirely without respect of persons and irrespective of their reactions” (Christian Theology and Scientific Culture, p. 84). God loves because of who he is, not because of who we are or what we do. And that love is manifested to us in God’s grace.

While we cannot fully explain the invisible—like love or grace—we know it exists because of what we partially see. Note I use the word partially. We don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming the visible explains the invisible. T. F. Torrance, who studied theology and science, postulates the opposite to be true; the invisible explains the visible. To make his point, he uses the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16), where the vineyard owner hires workers throughout the day to work in the fields. At the end of the day, each worker gets paid the same even though some worked hard the whole day and others only worked a couple of hours. For most common laborers, this seems unfair. How could someone who only works an hour get the same wage as someone working all day?

Torrance points out that fundamentalist and liberal exegetes miss the point of Jesus’ parable, which is not about wages and fairness but about God’s grace, which is unconditional, generous and powerfully transforming. This grace is not based on how long we’ve worked, how long we’ve believed, how much we’ve studied, or how obedient we’ve been. God’s grace is based entirely on who God is. By giving this parable, Jesus makes “visible” the “invisible” nature of the God of grace who sees and does things quite differently than we. God’s kingdom is not about how much we earn—it’s about God’s lavish generosity.

Jesus’ parable tells us that God offers his amazing grace to all. And while all are offered the gift in the same measure, some choose to live in the reality of that gift sooner and thus may have opportunity to enjoy it longer than those who have not made that choice. The gift of grace is the same for all; what each person does with it varies widely. It is when we live in grace that what had been invisible to us becomes visible.

The invisibility of God’s grace does not make it any less real. God gave himself to us, in person, so that we can know and love him—so that we can feel his forgiveness and enter into a relationship with him as Father, Son and Spirit. We live by faith and not by sight. We have experienced his will in our lives—in our thoughts and actions. We know God is love because we know who he is in Jesus Christ, who “has made him known” (John 1:18). We feel the power of God’s grace as we come to know that his purpose is to forgive and to love us—to give us the amazing gift of his grace. As Paul says, “For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13).

Living in his grace,
Joseph Tkach