Joshua Keith Craft

0:52 I have to ask myself this question. How much does God make me responsible for holding leadership that he puts in place accountable? Right. So like the great benefit that we have in the western world today is we can choose our leaders. Right. Right. That wasn't true in history. But some of the best way or really the best way to hold a leader accountable now is to leave. Like if you don't like your boss at your job, you can leave your job. You can go work somewhere else. And that's that's that is on a level an accountability measure because if you're a good employee or you're a really good team member and you leave, then that that says something. You know, there's a statement people don't quit jobs, they quit they quit leaders, right? If you don't like the church you're going to, you can leave. If you don't like the pastor, you don't like the youth pastor, you don't like the kids person, whatever, you can leave.

1:47 But I don't know if God gives you the uh position or the authority to remove that person. Right? And this is like what's really challenging about authority, right? About just generally navigating uh authority because what's the biblical expectation? So there's two things, right? What's the biblical expectation for a leader and what's the biblical expectation for the person who's not the leader? Right? That's a great I mean those are great those are the right questions. I don't know that those are the questions that are always asked but those are the right questions. So so if I'm not the leader in a structure that I'm in, what's the biblical expectation for me as it relates to the leader? And and again I would go back to John John Bevere's Under Cover book because he talks about his own journey as it relates to that and he has a lot of great powerful perspective. I I do too. There's certain stories that I can't tell and that I shouldn't tell uh because of how unique they are to my journey and how dishonoring they can be to other people.

2:51 But one of the things that I've learned in my life is I get the ability to pick my leaders. Okay? And then I pick the leader. And the leader is not doing something immoral. The leader is not doing something unethical. The leader is just doing something that I don't really like and I I don't think is going to work. Right? And then I have a decision to make. Am I going to submit to that leadership or am I going to not submit to the leadership? Right? So what's the biblical expectation out of me? Hebrews 13:17 says uh obey your leaders and submit to them for they keep watch over your souls and allow them to do this with joy and not with suffering for that would not be of to your benefit. Right? That's what Hebrews 13:17 says. And so the, you know, to go back to what we talked about on the last podcast, it's like, well, how do we navigate this stuff effectively? How do we really set ourselves up to win? You have to have an understanding of spiritual authority.

3:44 I'm not I'm not advocating that my answer become other people's answers answer that listens to this podcast. But what I am saying is God to God. And this is something I think a lot of people miss in their walk with God. Authority is a huge deal. Like in in scripture, in God's world, who has the authority is a massive thing that Christians often miss. And if we and if we lean too far into western thinking, what we begin to think is that we're always we we have the power and ability not just to question authority, but we have the power and ability to um dishonor, disrespect, and uh reject authority that God's put in place. And scripture says, and again, I'll go back to Romans nine. Scripture says not not even to reject evil authority like that.

4:41 So, so Pastor Keith, you know, my dad says it this way, like we don't honor because they're honorable. We honor because we're honorable. Right. So, like I said, there's two questions. One is what's the biblical expectation for me? And the second is what's the biblical expectation for a leader? Yeah. Right. I think that's so well put, Josh, that you've made it that simple as well because it it really is. uh you you highlighted a couple things and sorry I'm just going to pause and be the highlighter here for a second. Yeah. You said it's not it's not immoral and it's not unethical, but I don't like it and I don't think it's going to work. And that's that's where a lot of you know I I think you're even probably given a little bit more credit and I don't mean this to sound disrespectful to people, but like I' I've had people like tithing is the obvious one, right? People get bent out of shape when you tell them that they should tithe. And to me it's so obvious. It's so clear in the Old Testament and the New Testament since people love to throw that like oh that's an Old Testament thing out which I anyways we won't get into that but but I think it's so sometimes you just have to go look you're not even like you don't even know what scripture says so it's really hard to have that but like let's assume that you do know what scripture says and it's not a matter of like this person is scripturally you know off base it's just I don't like what they're doing you know I think that that's a lot of people don't even get to that point if is what I'm saying I think a lot of people they they don't likes something and they don't know scripture well enough to even know if it's scriptural and so they're already kind of like ready to to walk out because they've got a hunch or they don't like the way this person, you know, does a certain thing because, you know, that that's not what the Bible says. Well, okay. Where does it say where where does it say that in the Bible what you're saying and they can't even get that far.

6:17 So, I think you're kind of you're almost giving a lot of credit here in some of your analysis, but I I I still want to continue down the but I just want to kind of give a little bit of a reality check as well. Well, here's the thing, right? So um you know again we we I won't focus on all these other dynamics. I just focus on the parenting dynamic because all of us have that all of us had parents. So I don't pick my parents. But then the question is does the Bible still say to obey them. Right? So Ephesians 6:1 Ephesians 6:1 and2 it says children obey obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. And then it says to honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and you may live long in the land. It doesn't give a disclaimer for if they're good parents. Right. Right. So that's that's what people miss. So the the the the thing that we miss or the thing that we like to do as human beings. I think this is true about everything. I I don't think this is just true about theory. We go, "Okay, where's my out?"

7:20 Yeah. Right. Yeah. Of course. So when do I not have to submit? When do I not have to obey? When do I not have to honor? When can I tell the whole story about what happened to me? When can I reject this person? Uh when when can I when do I not have to do this? So to go back to tithing, it's like people go, "Well, they're they're looking for an out on what what the Bible tells them to do because of all the different million reasons why they don't why they don't feel like they should do it or they don't want to do it, right? people that uh are good and again like I I'm what I'm saying on this podcast and I want this to be like clear if you're listening is you as an individual just have to decide where you land on this stuff. I I I know where I land. This is not me making blanket statements and saying this is right and this is wrong. I'm just saying you've got to be able to have this conversation with yourself and that's how well do I honor authority that's been put in place because like people that people that are married that get married and they're Christians and they go okay we're going to you know when you get married you make a you make a marriage covenant and you say you know what we're going to be together no matter what happens till death do his part what you do is you invite God into that relationship right you invite God basically what you're saying when you get married is it's it's not just up to us now we invite God into any dynamic that would exist between us that we could not figure out on our own. We believe that God's capable of doing that. Okay.

8:52 And then and then I've known so many of those people just like you have that go and get divorced and they have really great reasons for getting divorced. Now, am I am I saying that those people shouldn't have gotten divorced? No, I'm not saying that. But I'm not going to be a person that gets divorced. Well, yeah, but but Josh scripturally Jesus said unless it's for immorality, you know, like sexual immorality, you should not be getting divorced. It's pretty crazy. I mean, but if you sit down with your friends who've been divorced and just like I do and they give you all the reasons, you're like, "Well, I can see why that you felt like you needed to do that." But that's still having justifications. Like this is the this is the dynamic between us and God about everything. Having justifications doesn't mean that God approves of it. Of course not. Yeah. I mean, that that's Yeah. E Eve had a great justification for taking for for eating the fruit.

9:43 Man, it looked good. Yeah. Right. So So to me having there's a million like people are going people always tell me like when especially when I talk about authority stuff like you don't understand. You don't understand. I have all these reasons. There's a million reasons not to submit to authority. Okay. There's a million there's way more reasons not to than than to submit to authority. But in my mind, what I can't reconcile that with is God's way. God's way is not not is not a lack of submission, right? God always throughout history, God always holds authority accountable because he's the one that places them there. Now, it might take longer than you think it should. It might not go the way you think it should go, but there's name after name, story after story, person. How did it end for the Christians? Well, what ended up happening was God put these Roman emperors in place. I believe that was true. And then God said, "You know what?

10:41 We're going to we're going to shift this thing in a different direction because you guys aren't going to listen to me." Because every person, so this is what I believe, right? That's what we should believe. I feel like every person who's on the planet is created in God's image. And so the Bible says as deep calls in the deep, so God talks to us. Like God, we have a spirit within us that God is always trying to convict. He's always being merciful towards us. He's always giving us his grace. Okay? And how much grace God gives a person is not up to us, right? Especially in leadership where I can say, "Well, this person's in leadership or this person's a pastor. They shouldn't be a pastor. This person's a parent. They shouldn't be a parent." Blah, blah, blah. Like, the person who's a pastor of the church ultimately is not the pastor of the church because they just decided to go pastor a church. They're the pastor of the church because God established them as an authority. Now, how well they handle that authority is really between them and God. It's not between them and everybody else.

11:38 Hold on, though. Is that always true? Because like last week, you talked about a couple church a couple churches that have sprung out of out of our current church and you said two left. One left with the with the blessing and with like under authority and two left not the right way, shall we say, just to to oversimplify it. So, do you I mean, do you I'm just I'm just Do you think that every single person in there because I mean that that's a little bit of a a nuance to that? I think I think personally with those people I think they were supposed to pastor churches. All right. I think it I think it was a dream that God put in their heart for a reason. And I think because they didn't handle it right and they didn't submit to to to their spiritual authority at the time, God didn't bless it. Okay. So like David, like what would what would have happened?

12:31 So David was anointed and this is and this is like the the the problem for a lot of us that sit under leaders, right? David was anointed. He had words. He had all this stuff. He had massive victories that he'd won. He was more he was more well-respected than Saul in the whole nation. Everyone loved David more than they loved Saul. Right. It's all through the story, right? I don't know what it would have looked like if David said, "I'm going to take this kingdom from him." Yeah. I I don't know if God would have blessed it. Yeah. But God God blessed David because of how David approached Saul. even though David knew what was in David's heart that David was supposed to do. So yeah, that's the that's the challenge is like God can put a dream in you and he can say uh and I told that story about Chris Hodes or whoever last time, right? He can put a dream in you, but the test usually if you feel like um if you're sitting under a leader and you feel like that there's something that's the next level um for you that if you went and pursued it that that leader would have a problem with it.

13:52 Yeah. It's almost like what you should do is submit that to that leader and allow them to say when and if you should do it because that's how you know God's going to bless it. That's some of like my own personal kind of perspective and learning just watching that happen in my life, right? is um watching guys like that who probably could and should have a lot more success than they have. But it's almost like because they didn't honor the authority. And they if you listen to their story, they probably got a hundred,000 reasons that are good reasons why they didn't honor authority. But because they didn't, God, it almost seems like, and I've seen this happen a hundred times, man. I, you know, it's like God almost limits what they're able to do because of their inability to honor authority. Because if you can't, if I feel like on a level, if you if you can't be a person who's uh honoring of of authority, then what you do in your own life is it means you can't handle the authority that God gives you very well. Yeah, I could not agree more. And I think that it's so interesting, isn't it? Like with Jesus, the temptations in the desert were were so like so much about him like, "Hey, if you're the son of God, do this." Aka, just go ahead and take it in your own time. And David, it's always the thing. Are you on the throne or is God on the throne? Because if you're truly submitted, which is what God cares about, he looks he he cares about the heart. He a broken uh a broke a broken spirit and a contrite heart, he will not reject. So, like if this is what God really cares about, how much how much of a test is it going to be to be like, you have every word from God. You have multiple opportunity to take Saul's life. And it's like he didn't do it just one time. He gave him multiple opportunities where Saul was delivered into his hands. All his friends are saying, "This is it. This is how God's going to bring you in." And David explains, he says, "If whether he dies of old age, whether he gets killed in battle or God does it some other way, I know he'll bring it." Aka, where is your trust? That that's really what spiritual authority comes down to is where is your trust? Because if you think like because this people wouldn't say this, but this is what's underlying all of it is it's a lack it's a it's a real uh lack of honor and it's a lack of trust in God because if you're going like let's say we're at our I'm just going to use our church because we both go to the same church. It's easy.

16:14 I'm at Elevate Life Church. Blah blah blah. Something came forward or or the pastors or whoever did the leaders, you know, because I've had people not like me. I'm sure you've had people not like you. It's going to happen, right? this leader did something I don't like and I'm just I can't be here because of it. No one thinks this but it's like okay so basically what you're saying like because I don't think it's biblical. Okay, let's say you're right. So what you're saying if I understand your logic is that we need to have leaders in place that get everything biblically accurate in order for things to go right. Is that that's what you're saying? Cuz where does that sounds like that's all based on man and not based on God to be actually be able to work through in grace which is where we're all living under. And and nobody would say that. Nobody would say, "Well, they have to get everything right." But when you're leaving because you don't like something or because you think something is wrong, you're essentially going along with that line of thinking. Because the other side of it goes, "Well, if you're supposed to be here and even if that person's wrong and everything you're saying is right, if you're supposed to be here and God's put you as this church as part of this representation, which reminds you it's not the bricks, it's the people, you're essentially walking out on the the the family of God because you basically are not trusting God that he's going to bring it right." And so when you switch back to, you know what, Lord, it's messy, but you've worked with messier. I trust you. I find that that makes it submission a lot easier because you remember who you're submitting to.

17:31 Yeah. And so I I just I I don't think that I'm I'm not like for church hopping. I'm not for, you know, I'm like, look, if you're going to be planted and you know you're supposed to be in a place, be in a place and be all in that place and love the people you're with and and you know, be the part of the of the body that you are. Well, you know, you don't know how hard it is. You're right. I don't. But every single Bible hero that we love had a terrible leader. Joseph had Potiphar. He did. They did. Look at all the people we love. Joseph had Potiphar. Moses had, you know, Moses was was basically on the run for his life. We could keep going down the line. David had Saul. Samuel had Eli, right? Do I mean, should we keep going? We can do this. Jesus had, you know, I mean, Jesus had the high priests. The disciples then had the had the same high priest. Like it nobody in it's not there's like almost no examples where it's like and their leader was wonderful. It's almost always that they're with somebody and that's how they learn and grow. Well, it's uh Yeah, man. What's so interesting, so like I think a lot of people read the story of David and they won't they won't uh they'll be like, "Oh, that's so amazing that David was that way, but then they don't they don't take on those implications for their own life, right?

18:38 Because like even David so David so Saul dies in the story. David basically ends up at war with his with Saul's son for the kingdom, right? And uh we don't know who's going to win because David just has basically the tribe of Judah and and um uh I think it was Ishbos was his name, but he had all the other tribes. Yeah. Right. And so in that story, this guy comes and he kills he kills Saul's son and he comes to David. And he says, "Hey, I killed your enemy." And David kills him because he's like, "That guy could have been God's anointed." Yeah. You touched the son of God's anointed. Then, you know, and if you read the Tale of Three Kings , it goes into this story where David's son Absalom says, and this is like all of us have a potential to be Abselums. God establishes an authority in our life. David's son Absalom says, you know, I could do this a lot better than him. And it's not a good time in the kingdom. So Absalom takes a lot of David's men as his son and goes and basically becomes the king. He gets anointed as king by himself. David doesn't fight him.

19:49 Yeah. Wild, right? And the convers we don't know what the conversation was in the actual scripture, but the conversation in Tale of Three Kings that David has with his men is what if God set up Absalom instead of me, right? Like what if God's establishing Absalom as the king and I'm and I he's his hand's not on me anymore? And I think that's the response of a great of a person who really understands authority is okay well God could put me in authority and he could also remove me. But what I've seen so much in in again it's back to like these I there's rooms where I am the authority and there's rooms where I'm not the authority. In the rooms where I'm not the authority, I have to decide how much honor that I should give that authority, right? And how much I should walk in being submitted to that. And that's just as an adult, man. As an adult human being in the Western world, that's really hard.

20:47 You know, it's like imagine going to your boss and saying, "Hey, I have a I have a I'm not saying to do this, but imagine going to your boss and saying,"I have a dream for to start my own company, and I would love for you guys to bless me out to do that, right? That doesn't usually happen. Like, for good reasons, right? And I won't go do it if you guys don't want me to. Like, I won't go start my own thing if you guys That's super challenging, right? But then imagine how we would all feel if we had a leader in place who was so submitted to God that they were just open to whatever God wanted to do and didn't like dig their heels in on stuff, right? But it's like what you're saying. I think God's given us such a great gift at this at this like point in history. Okay. Of I get to choose the leaders who I submit to, right? There was a time in history that wasn't the case, right? David and Saul, Roman Empire, all that. There's certain times in our life where we don't get to pick that. Like you don't get to pick who your parents are. But as an adult, you get to decide the leaders that you have in your life.

21:55 So you you you and I decide them. And then the the second decision we have to make is whether or not we're going to honor them. Yeah. Right. Big time. And whether or not we're going to be submitted. Because what a lot of people do and this is back to even how we started this conversation is they'll they'll they'll be in a place for a certain period of time. They'll start to interact with the humanity of leaders. So the pastor is not God. The pastor is not more godly than the person who comes to the church. They're just not. They're a person who God's put in place as an authority, but they're just as human as everybody else in the church, right? and they just happened to have been given a leadership position. I mean that's really how authority is. It's like I mean yeah like me and Courtney like practiced having kids and stuff you know but if we would have never had kids we would have never had kids. God never would have set me up as an authority. So my kids now have to deal with the fact that I as Josh Craft with all my imperfections and all my flaws and all my issues are their parent.

23:04 Right. Right. and he could have decided not to allow that to happen. So, it's the same with kind of really any leadership dynamic, right? So, the closer you get, like the longer time you spend somewhere, the you know, to me, the longer time you spend somewhere, the higher the higher likelihood or the more contempt you can have for that place or those people, right? Because you come in, you come into somewhere for the first time. It's like, it's like meeting, you know, it's like meeting your wife for the first time. Yeah. Like, oh my gosh, there's nothing wrong with this person. Yeah. I found the perfect girl. Found her. It's amazing. We're never going to fight. This is unbelievable. And you marry the person and you live with them and there's there's realities to the human being that they are. So a part of uh relationship like a part of having deep relationship and meaningful relationship with people is accepting someone fully for who they are as a person and that includes like leadership. Like for me there's so much man that I disagree with my dad about like all the time, right? I that's that's as far as I'm going to go in saying it though because uh my dad's a human being. He's on his journey. And you know what I know confidently about my dad as a leader because I've walked with him so closely throughout his life and throughout my life is that he really wants to be a man after God's own heart.

24:35 So even like for me as a person who serves underneath him, even if he's wrong, then I'll let God worry about that because he's striving to be the man God's created him to be. What what more am I going to ask out of somebody? Yeah, for sure. Right. Like like cuz cuz I want people in my life to like people in my life. The closer you get to me, the more you're going to see all the just stupid stuff that's in my life and the dumb and the dumb ways that I process and how it's a miracle that God's even using me anyway, right? And what I need is people around me who are going to be understanding of that, who are going to love me in spite of that, whether that's my spouse or my kids or my friends or whoever. So I'm not I'm not advocating for just this blanket submission to leadership, but I am advocating for this understanding that if you want to have deep relationships with people, then what what comes with if you want to have deep relationships with leadership, like I was talking to a a a mutual friend of ours, part of another church um a few weeks ago, and they're having some tension points with like their lead pastor, and they don't really know what to do and And I'm like, man, you know, uh does this does this pastor I I learned this conversation. I had this there was this uh that that call we did with that call I did a few weeks ago with Erwin McManus. He said something really interesting on there that if you might not fit the value the vision of a particular place that you're at, but if you fit the values, you can be a great person there.

26:16 Yeah, it's good. Right. And so this is the conversation I was having with this person was like, "This guy who's your lead pastor, he's he's striving to be a man after God's own heart. He's striving to do everything he can. He's just not maybe making the decisions that you would make, right?" He's like, "Yeah." So like, "Well, you can win with that guy." The thing I have to admit to myself as a person in a leadership dynamic is not everything I think we should do is the thing we should actually do. Yeah. Right. and God establishes authority, but also like you're saying, so much of our relationship to authority really does um it really does show our faith in God because the question is, do I believe that God is leading this leader? And God might be leading them to a place that I don't think we should go, but who cares what I think? Like why did why why does and that's some of the western delusion to me of like the the western world is who uh well not who but like why does what we think matters so much like why why does it have to be this has to fit my flavor this has to be the way I think it should be like otherw we've talked so much about principles and preferences on this podcast but why does this have to be my way or it's wrong entitlement is what it is.

27:33 Yeah. It's one thing to say, "Hey, like I think I have a better way or I like this better." It's another thing to say, "Well, you're either going to do it my way or it's wrong." Right. And I've had like so many so many conversations with people. So, like for instance, you know, just we don't release financial information from our church to anybody. We just don't do it. Right. Yeah. It's not that's a preference issue. There's a lot of churches that do that. So if someone doesn't like our church, they can go find a church who'll give them all their finan financials. We we don't do that, right? So I had a conversation with a friend of mine a few years ago and he's like, "Well, that's just not effective leadership and that's just not how a church should be run." And I'm like, "Man, I understand that you feel that way, but that's so if you feel that way, go start your own church and run it that way." Like we're running it this way. Like what we're doing is not wrong. It's just not what you like, right? And so that's that's to me like the immaturity and I think that's probably what trips people up the most honestly is it's not a principle issue like this guy this this guy that yeah this guy that I was talking about me and Garrett both had separate conversations with him and asked him like hey is this so this person was really involved in our church and they were part of what we're doing and then they were like all of a sudden they just didn't like anything we were doing and so they sat down with me and Garrett and had separate conversations and me and Garrett both asked them the same question and that's is this a principles issue or a preference issue, right? He's like, "Well, it's preferences." It's like, "Okay, well, you can get over preferences, man.

29:02 Preferences are just like what flavor ice cream do you like?" Right. Right. But but that's where most people get hung up with leadership. Like when we're talking about like when we're talking about leadership stuff, it's like people go um people will leave our church. My dad talks a lot about politics. People leave our church because they're like, "A pastor shouldn't talk about politics." Which is fine, but then they add on this thing to it that it's not biblical to talk about that stuff. Like, right? Not only does this not, and this is what we have to be, I think, really careful about is not only it's like one thing to say, hey, this doesn't really match the kind of environment I want to be in. Totally understandable. It's another thing to become prideful about that and think that because it's not the environment you want to be in that it's a bad environment. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's pride and entitlement, man. Is I mean Yeah. is what it boils down to.

29:58 I mean that's that's to me like when people start uh throwing around the word narcissist and they start like calling their parents narcissists or they start call they they start going, "Oh, this isn't uh you know this." And we we've talked about that on previous episodes, too. Like this room doesn't serve me and this room this is traumatic for me. It's like too much. It's extreme. It's this extreme approach to preferences where it's just like, "Hey man, just be cool. I'm cool." Like I was talking to a friend of mine this week just about how, you know, what's so hard for me is I'm if if one of my friends who was like in our church with us was like, "Hey man, I don't really like what we're doing as a church anymore and I'm going to leave." that that'd be a fine conversation for me to have, right? It's like, okay, well, you don't like it. I understand. You know, go hopefully you go find somewhere that you like to go and God bless you and hopefully you figure that out. But what what's most often happened for me in my relationships is people go, I don't like this and this is bad and this is evil and I hate everything about you and you're my enemy now. It's like, well, hang on just a second. Right. Yeah. And to me, that's like a misunderstanding of um that's that's not understanding the importance of honor, right? Because there's two dynamics like in Hebrews 13:17 that I quoted a second ago. One is the responsibility of the follower, so to speak, and one is the responsibility of the leader. So the responsibility of the follower is to obey a leader and submit to them, right? Y so find my encouragement to everybody is find leaders who you're willing to obey and submit to. Find people that can uh that can that can disciple you that you're going to submit to. But then the second thing is true for leaders is uh they keep watch over your souls. Mhm.

31:51 So the accountability, you know, the thing that keeps me uh in the space where I strive to be a good parent is I'm responsible for the health of these people. Yeah. Right. I'm responsible for their mental health. I'm responsible for their physical health. I'm responsible all this. So, do I need them to hold me accountable if I if I understand and carry that weight every day? And I think most leaders, like the vast majority of leaders, Christian leaders, business leaders, whatever, they really do understand the weight of that. Right. Right. I don't think it's rare for a leader to understand the weight of that. I think it's rare for us to see that a leader understands the weight of that. But when you're putting a leader, and this is the scary thing, right, from a leadership perspective is God God establishes authority. He ordains authority, but then also he he holds authority accountable because nothing's more valuable to God than a human soul, right? So God knows when he puts you in leadership, he makes you responsible for people's souls.

32:57 And the the punishment of people pales in comparison to God holding me accountable, right? So, how much does God care about people being taken care of and people being loved well and people being led well that he would make a leader responsible for that person? And so what I should do is take the leadership roles that I have seriously. But also the second thing which which to me is like the role that we all play is understand that God's put this person in a position of leadership. He's going to hold them accountable. And my prayer is that God will lead them and guide them and they'll be submitted to that because if they're not submitted to that, it's going to be really bad for them. Thank you for listening to The Dialog. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe. And also, if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak, and write, you can go to joshuacraft.com.

33:58 Or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.