Dear Friends,

And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches (2 Cor 11:28).

Paul is the apostle who famously wrote, “Do not worry about anything” (Phil 4:5). Yet, here he is confessing to anxiety, something that Scripture is adamant against. The most frequent command uttered by Jesus Christ on this earth was “Don’t be afraid.” David wrote, “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears” (Ps 34:4).

There are obviously a lot of things on Paul’s mind. The “other things” he references in our text are his experiences of imprisonment, flogging, stoning, shipwrecks, floods, bandits, persecution by Jews, persecution by Gentiles, urban crime, wilderness survival, betrayal by associates, sleep-deprivation, hunger, thirst, and destitution (2 Cor 11:23-27). Paul would score over the top on any stress test, but that’s not what has him worried.

He’s concerned about the churches that he’s established in cities around the Mediterranean. That doesn’t mean buildings. Architecture can express praise and evoke reverence, but it never led a soul to the Lord despite the fortunes spent on it.

Paul is concerned about the Body of Christ composed of the men, women, boys, and girls in homes and store fronts who have listened to Paul and his companions in ministry and have been persuaded to commit their lives and fortunes to Christ. Their congregations are assemblages of Jews and Gentiles, males and females, slave and free, barbarian, Scythian, circumcised and uncircumcised, for whom devotion to Christ has become the focus of their lives united them despite their differences (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11).

These Christ-followers are learning and growing in the encouragement and nurture of little communities of faith in very hostile environments. They are misunderstood and persecuted and vulnerable to internal dissension as they learn what it means to live and worship Christ together.

Paul knows that the stresses of economic hardship and persecution can distract the churches from Jesus and cause the believers to turn on each other in desperation. Paul prays for them continually, takes up collections for their support, and encourages them with letters. He visits them whenever he can, given the challenges of 1st Century A.D. travel and the demands on his time.

He loves the believers and their congregational outposts of “the Way.” Their burdens become his burdens. “Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant?” (2 Cor 11:29).

Thank God for leaders who are concerned about their people, more than their personal interests or professional accomplishment. Leadership is first and only about people. It isn’t about facilities, endowments, manuals, equipment, hardware, or software. The priorities of leadership are nurture and teaching for transformed lives, not arrogant displays of cleverness, arbitrary assertions of authority or ethically blind insistence on ideological purity. If a leader isn’t anxious for the welfare of his or her people, the title of “leader” is undeserved.

More than that, the leader has to be concerned about keeping his people together which, in best practice, involves the leader’s example, credibility and persuasion and the follower’s responsive choice, freely made.

Somewhere along the line of Paul’s transformation from the fire-breathing, murderous Saul of Tarsus to being an apostle of the Gospel,  Jesus convicted Paul that one was the best number as in “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph 4:4). Paul came to realize that for the body to be one and stay one required “making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3).

True unity and the peace that is inherent to it are gifts of the Spirit, but the effort necessary to maintain it requires a focus on Christ. The minute the believers took their eyes off of Christ and started watching each other arguments and divisions started occurring in the churches.

Paul is, above all, attentive to this problem of focus on Christ and urges the believers to stay the course. “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Col 2:6-7). For Paul, thanksgiving is an essential spiritual discipline because it keeps the heart focused on the Gift-giver with humility and gratitude.

The anxiousness of Paul for the welfare of the churches and his loving attention to their needs is a demonstration of Jesus’ teaching, “No one has greater love than this, to lay one’s life down for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Devotion in the relationship of leader and follower is most often discussed in terms of the devotion of the follower to the leader and the mission, but a great leader is devoted to the well-being of the people in the leader’s care and responsibility.

Jesus told a famous story about a shepherd who left ninety-nine, well-behaved and secure sheep, to find one that had wondered off and was lost and perhaps injured. The shepherd found it and was thrilled to do so. Instead of scolding the sheep for its waywardness, the shepherd lifted it up to his shoulders and carried it to a “welcome home” party with his friends and neighbors. Jesus said that’s how heaven reacts whenever a sinner repents (Luke 15:3-7). It also describes the kind of leadership that God expects.

Is there anything more heartbreaking than a leader who says, “Let’s keep the people who aren’t giving us any trouble and write off the rest of them?” In Jesus’ style of leadership, “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame,” and those wandering around aimlessly on the roads and the lanes are worthy of inclusion in fellowship (Luke 14:21-24). Jesus writes off no one. That means hard, prayerful, thoughtful work for the leader who follows Jesus’ call, but is anyone really being led if leadership is easy?

Paul was right to be anxious for all the churches. A good leader wants to see all his people make it home.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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