One of my favorite preachers is Matt Chandler, and one of my favorite sayings of his is that we are “educated above our level of obedience.”
Let me ask you a question. When it comes to your leadership students, how are you measuring forward progress? Are you looking at how much information they can regurgitate? Are you looking at how into their spiritual disciplines they are?
Many of us fall into the trap of believing that the more education our students get the better off they are spiritually. Nothing could be further from the truth. In today’s culture, our students are absolutely inundated with information. They can check out any book on any Christian topic that their brains could ever conceive of; and they can do it all with the click of a couple of buttons. This blog is a testament to how much education anyone can have access to in today’s world.
Education does not necessarily translate into life change though, as many of you are well aware. For our responsibilities to be filled, we need to provide students with the opportunity to put the lessons we teach into action, and encourage them to continue to behave in a manner that is in keeping with Christ’s Character and Leadership.
I think of Ephesians 5 as Paul is exhorting the Ephesian Church to behave in a manner worthy of God. It isn’t just a matter of hearing the truth, or learning the truth. It’s a matter of doing the truth. Be a “doer of the word, and not a hearer only,” as James says.
If you are measuring the success of your leadership development ministry in terms of ideas imparted, then please reconsider. If you aren’t giving your students the opportunity to put their knowledge and conviction to action, then please reconsider.
Our success in training young leaders is contingent not on how they turn out, but on what and how we taught them. In other words, while we may not be responsible for them, we are certainly responsible to them. Help them to be as obedient as they are educated.
Training Tomorrow’s Leaders Today,
Matt
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