Minding the Maturity Gap: The Way of Hope for Ministry Leaders

By Robyn Florian

“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Ephesians 4:14–16) 

“Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.” (1 Corinthians 14:20)

I know. Ouch. Few of us truly want to acknowledge, nonetheless appraise, areas of immaturity (or worse yet, infancy) in our life and leadership. Clergy or lay leaders, most of us would prefer to expeditiously hide it, endlessly walk around it, or exhaustively compensate for it. The Apostle Paul, though, urges us to “admonish and teach everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ” (Colossians 1:28).

Engaging the Path of Repair

Instead of getting stuck under the heavy weight of shame, criticism or self-condemnation often accompanying brokenness in our lives, consider this an invitation to put off the pieces of rubble holding us captive to immaturity and to put on the priestly robe of a wholehearted, mature believer. As Christian leaders, God calls us to engage the path of repair from rupture to resilience unto maturity.

Over the last decade of work and study, God positioned me to observe a variety of leadership challenges and opportunities in various settings; in particular, when leadership effectiveness languished where I expected it to flourish. I kept asking God, “What do You want me to see here?”

Regardless of the perceived outcome, I valued the concert of people in play (for good reason) but found some of the processes and outcomes at play disconcerting. And when it comes to the “Big C” Church, comprising both “little c” churches and Christian organizations, there is simply too much at risk to minimize the impact of leadership failings in our current cultural context. Instead of settling for immature leadership dynamics — including notable systemic contagions of arrogance, control and self-protection — Jesus models the way of surrender, vulnerability and submission; followership that leads to spiritual willingness, personal and relational soul wellness, and vocational wholeness (the sure marks of a mature leader).

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“…can we trade languishing shame for flourishing shalom.”

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From Shame to Shalom

Let’s normalize immaturity, naming and reclaiming the broken pieces of life that weigh us down and, thus, slow us down on the journey of faith; reframing these life experiences such that our lives exclaim wholeness. In this way — and only this way — can we trade languishing shame for flourishing shalom. Let’s unpack those pieces of strength and struggle that have defined our lives and fix our eyes (Proverbs 4:25, 2 Corinthians 4:18), incline our ears (Proverbs 4:20–22, 22:17), turn our face (2 Chronicles 7:14; 2 Corinthians 3:18) and offer our bodies (Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 12) in the sacrificial, cruciform work of idol-crushing, altar-building holiness. (Sounds like fun, right? Gear up.)

Curt Thompson addresses a pressing and prevalent concern impacting culture, the Church, and, most critical to both, the character of its leaders. He presents a wicked problem, “evil wields shame to destroy us” (“The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves”).

Shame destories — dismembers and disorders — God’s story of beauty and goodness in our lives.

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“The health, strength and resilience of this Church reflects the health, strength and resilience of its leaders.”

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Restoring and Restorying

James K.A. Smith proposes a novel solution, “God restores us by restorying us,” re-membering and reordering our loves with “counter-liturgies” through processes, principles and practices “that are loaded with the gospel and indexed to God and His kingdom” (“You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit”).

We need a new way of hope; a new pattern to restory destoried stories.

God intends for His leaders to provide a strong framework for the “Big C” Church — holding up a secure, safe, accessible, available and affectionate sense of “home” and attachment to God, for those He positions in our midst. The health, strength and resilience of this Church reflects the health, strength and resilience of its leaders.

The foundation of faith based on God’s words for us is secure, but the framework of leadership that forms the foundry of hope — a safe space to experience the infilling, equipping work of Christ in our individual lives and among His Church — threatens to crumble all around us … unless we fortify us. In this way, God’s Church will become a fountain of love, empowered by an accessible, available, affectionate Holy Spirit to overflow with hope for a flourishing world (Romans 15:13). This is how, in the words of Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel, “words create worlds.”

I am not afraid of naming areas of deconstruction in our lives, but I am very concerned about those who get stuck in the rubble of shame and pain without a way to reconstruct new meaning and purpose.

In response to my question above (“What do you want me to see here?”), I interpreted God’s answer as “immature leadership.” But I sense His clarity was constructive vs. critical … along the lines of, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:18–19).

I’ll offer a paraphrase, “Name the former things, so you do not keep dwelling in the past. I want to do a new thing in your life if you’re willing to engage a reparative process. I want to fix and fortify areas of weakness and brokenness in your life and leadership. Everyone has them so don’t just bemoan these areas but own them and believe Him to reconcile, regenerate, redeem and restory them on the way to beauty and wholeness for the whole body of Christ.

Shifting metaphors from building to blooming, our soil story is a redemptive one in which God uses everything in the life of a believer — identity roots and personality shoots — to bring about His fruitful purposes in the kingdom (Romans 8:28).

I want to encourage us to embark on the wilderness way from immaturity to maturity, from brokenness to wholeness, from surviving to thriving, from languishing to flourishing. It is a way I call hope, light-seeking hope, birthed from life-saving faith and raised up for love-sustaining joy.

Editor’s note: In the coming months, Light + Life will share more of this author’s insights on minding the maturity gap and finding the way of hope for ministry leaders.

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