Last week we covered a number of practical issues concerning the kingdom of God, especially how elders or anyone given authority in the church need to be given specific authority, not general authority. Those appointed need to know their sphere of authority and stay within it or there will be an open door for confusion and division.
Even so, the government of God is intended to be both free and flexible. To have specific authority and to be free and flexible may seem like contradictory concepts, but only when we build more on the form than on people. Elders who are put in a position of authority need to have the wisdom and maturity of knowing how to rule over their own sphere of authority, while having the grace and flexibility to interface with those whose realms touch theirs. They also need to be free to fill a vacuum of authority with the grace that has been given to them.
One of the great examples of this in the natural was the way that the U.S. troops performed on D-day when seeking to establish a beachhead in Normandy. Most of the senior officers had either been killed or wounded, and many had come ashore so far from their appointed landing zone that they even had trouble identifying their location. To make matters worse, the pre-invasion bombing and shelling of the German strongholds had mostly missed their targets, and the Germans had the U.S. forces pinned down with merciless fire. Seeing that there were no senior officers around, and that if they stayed where they were they would all eventually be killed, junior officers and sergeants took over, devised new plans because of their unexpected situation, and saved the day by taking initiative.
On the other side, if the Germans had brought up their reserves immediately they would have almost certainly won the battle on the beaches, but no one was willing to give the orders to do this without checking with Berlin, and Hitler's aids did not want to wake him to get his permission to do this. This one factor could have been the deciding point in the whole war.
The point is that obedience, knowing our sphere of authority, and sticking to it is important, but there must also be a freedom to take initiative when needed. True leadership is founded on initiative—the willingness to step out and take chances. Finding the balance between promoting obedience and good order and the freedom to take initiative is a crucial factor in building leadership, which is government. This is not something that can just be learned by conforming to a form of government; it is based on the wisdom and maturity of the individuals who make up the government.
Again, establishing the government of God is one part getting the form and many parts seeking grace, wisdom, and character. It is built far more on the people in the government than it is on the form of government. The form of government will always be first a kingdom, with the Head always being the King, but from this there is a great deal of flexibility in its application to relate to different people, circumstances, and times, as is needed.
Hurricane Katrina brought out many issues concerning the practical application of government on many different levels, which I am sure we will be studying and hearing about for years to come. Some of the most incompetent were the first to start blame-shifting, even trying to use the race card, which some have tragically learned to use as a smokescreen when trying to cover up personal mistakes or faults. There certainly was some incompetence. One of the worst problems was that many people, in trying to comply with regulations, became so entangled in bureaucracy that they were virtually immobile. Also, there were not many willing to take the initiative to just forget some of the regulations for a while and get the job done, with the exception of the military.
Good government is good leadership, and good leadership knows when to throw out the rules and make up new ones if they are needed. One way that I have tried to promote this in our own ministry is to say regularly that sometimes it is easier to get forgiveness than permission. We have tried to develop a culture of initiative, but also with responsibility. If someone takes initiative and breaks the rules, somehow they will have to answer for it, and they will get the chance. If it was for a good reason and was a wise thing to do, they will be commended for it. If it was not, they will have to take responsibility for it. However, I always try to convey to them even if they made a mistake that I appreciate their initiative.
Faith is fundamental to God's government. You don't need faith to follow rules. Many try to fix every problem with a new rule, and the result of this will always be a dead bureaucracy that can hardly move, much less rise up to do great exploits. God's government is a living government built on leaders who are full of both faith and wisdom. This is why the church government He established was so ambiguous. It was built more on people who compelled others to follow them because of the substance of who they were, not just a title.
The authority of this world is built more on positions and titles, but true kingdom authority is really built on how close we are to the King. Only those who are also in pursuit of the King will recognize this. In the world, if you are the president of a company or an officer in the military, you can order people to do what you want them to do, but the authority in the kingdom is very different. We can't order people to come to church, or to do what they should, but we have to lead them, and they have to want to follow. Of course, many try to start ordering their people by using a control spirit, but that will ultimately fail. If we want to help build the kingdom and establish the true government of the kingdom, we must simply get closer to the King. Nothing else will work without this, and truly we do not need anything else.
