After Jesus had selected the 12 disciples and gave them the title of being apostles, he went ahead with his teachings. At one point, He illustrated the importance of leadership in the church. That is in Luke 6:39-42, in which the scripture says, And He spoke a parable to them: "Can the blind lead the blind? Will they, not both fall into the ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First, remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother's eye. This scripture tells us that we must have leaders in our midst, but these leaders must be fully righteous and those with a more in-depth understanding of the kingdom of God for them to be able to distinguish themselves from the others.
Luke 6:39-42 tries to explain in a nutshell what the whole chapter covers. At the beginning of the chapter in verse 4, Jesus described the character of a leader as one who can lead his people out of danger. He told the story of David entering into the house of the lord and eating the bread, which is to be eaten only by the priest. Here David together with those who were with him were hungry, and the only food that they could access was the bread in the house of the lord, and he saw it wise to save lives by breaking the law as a leader. It can be justified at any level that lives of human beings come in first, and so David was right (Johnson, 2017) .
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Jesus himself, as a leader, showed the character of compassion as a leader when he healed a man who had a withered right hand on a Sabbath before the Pharisees. In this chapter, Jesus also stressed on the character of a leader as a person who can lead his people into the future by providing a strong foundation for the people to build their faith and beliefs (Luke 6:47-49). Jesus himself saw the importance of choosing the 12 disciples that will lead the church in his absence; this is found in verse 13 to 16 of the same chapter.
Explaining My Interpretation of the Verse In Comparison With the Original Meaning.
The original meaning of this scripture, Luke 6:39-42 was that through training students could be molded into excellent teachers. However, from this paper, we learn that leadership is acquired through personal sacrifice and sanctity. It is upon an individual to look at his/her inner soul and reflect into what kind of Christian he wants to be. It is not a must that a larger group of people must acknowledge us for us to be considered as Christian leaders. We can even lead our individual households or just one brother (Oosthuizen & Lategan, 2015 ). What is essential in leadership from this scripture is our inner soul; it must be pure enough to be considered as worthy of God's kingdom. Outward conformity to Christian teaching is not enough. To be a good leader, one must be able to show it through actions that reflect the inner soul. Numbers 32:23 say that Love and mercy are things we have to live as Christians, not just hear and talk about. We need to realize that if we do not want to live lives of Love and mercy, we don't want to follow Jesus and we don't want His agenda. It shows that leaders must have Love and mercy the way Jesus did.
The Link between Leadership Problems in the Church Today With the Passage
The leadership issue in churches today means only one literal thing, we, as the blind congregations have allowed ourselves to be led by blind leaders. Meaning we are all headed for the pit together with Satan. John 1:1 says that in the beginning, there was word and the word was with God, and the Word was God. From this scripture, we learn that we, as Christians, we should always give much respect to the word, which is the bible. The bible itself in Luke chapter 6 tells us the kind of leaders God expects us to choose, and for the leaders themselves, they learn what is expected of them. Meaning, even as Christians, we sin by selecting leaders just because they belong to a particular ideology, and our community is in support of that ideology. We forget to look at the individual in person and the true values they uphold in society.
The blindness and the hypocrisy in Christians can be considered as the root cause of the leadership problems in our churches today (Ackley, 2017) . The struggle for power among leaders in the churches illustrates how the leaders have forgotten about Jesus’ teachings on humility. Christians have a role to play in leading these leaders back to the teachings of Jesus Christ. It calls for members with wisdom and more in-depth understanding of the bible to open the eyes of these leaders for them to see the light of the living lamb the way it should be not the way they see it.
References
Ackley, S. R. (2017). Examining Current Practices of Leadership Development of Young Adults among a Select Group of Mega Churches (Doctoral dissertation, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary).
Johnson, C. E. (2017). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow . Sage Publications.
Oosthuizen, A. J., & Lategan, L. O. K. (2015). " Managing the household of God": The contribution from management sciences to the sustainability of the church as an organization. Stellenbosch Theological Journal , 1 (2), 551-568.
