Social or Spiritual?

Dear Pastors

Social or Spiritual?

Every local church is a mix of the social and the spiritual. Today I want to propose that one of a Pastors tasks is to accurately discern the difference.

Social dynamics refers to the behaviour of groups that results from the interactions of individual group members as well as to the study of the relationship between individual interactions and group level behaviours. Simply put it is about the relationships and conduct of the people who make up the church community.

Spiritual dynamics is both the activity of God in a church community AND the activity of the devil in that same church community.

I have seen over the years Pastors and Elders mis-discerning these two quite distinct dynamics with frustrating results at best and disastrous results at worst. In other words leaders who ‘over spiritualise’ what is in essence is an everyday human or social problem OR who ‘over normalise’ what is in essence a spiritual problem. Getting this right is so important.

Why?

Because the way you approach a social problem is quite different to the way you solve a spiritual problem. Though it is true that all problems in church life should be prayerfully addressed social type problems require a basic understanding of group dynamics and/or skills in conflict resolution for example. In fact I would go so far as to suggest that all pastors would be served really well to do some serious reading in the fields social psychology and human development. In my opinion insights from these fields of study are absolutely invaluable when it comes to leading well.

Conversely, tackling a spiritual problem has a much higher dependence on prayer (including spiritual warfare) and the word. We know the devil is at work as a thief, a robber and a destroyer. On fire churches are a target of the devil’s work and activity and a discerning pastor ‘sees’ that and goes after that with prayer and the word because he/she knows that The Word is active and sharp and powerful.

So, whether we like it or not every church has two types of issues and/or challenges that require two distinct sets of skills to fix. The more finely tuned those skills are the happier and healthier the church will be.

Blessings

Alan

I would like to recommend to you today Family First’s Forum coming up on Friday 5th July in Auckland. Every year this one day forum convened by Bob McCoskrie is filled with top class speakers tackling subjects that are so important for us as pastors to understand as we navigate contemporary society and seek to offer guidance to our people.

Alan Vink is currently the Executive Director for LeadershipWorx. Prior to this role he has been the Executive Director of Willow Creek Association NZ (WillowNZ), a Baptist pastor (23 years), Bible College teacher, and church consultant.