ERC Leadership: Humility or...something Else

The word hubris is one of those ancient Greek words that actually appears in the New Testament and is used in English today.

In English today, it's a $100 word, no doubt, but it is a New Testament Greek word that you can find in its Greek spelling in your English dictionary.

It appears three times in the New Testament and its verb form, hubrizo, appears five times.

Hubris is a nasty word.

Among the Greeks, it described pride so extreme that it offended the gods. In fact, a common theme in Greek drama saw extreme pride leading to a person's downfall.

(I've posted here that we are fans of the, now concluded, BBC series Lewis. A whole episode of that series centers on hubris.)

The biblical truth is that hubris was condemned in the Old Testament long before it was the focus of Greek tragedy.

Proverbs 16:18 declares that pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

In the Septuagint, the ancient translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, the word translated pride is hubris.

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It seems to me that the CGGC/ERC leadership community reeks of hubris.

I suspect that no one reading this and who knows one or more mountaintoppers personally is agreeing.

I don't know all the mountaintoppers well these days. But, I am a geezer and I entered the Eldership more than 40 years ago. I knew some of the mountaintoppers when they were students at seminary and I was acquainted with others before they started in their first pastorates.

For the most part, today's mountaintoppers are introverts who have reserved and temperate personalities.

They are quiet, some even shy. And, as individuals, they appear to be gentle even meek.

And, in their reserve and gentility, they may seem to be humble.

But, on the big-picture level, as a leadership culture, or community, what they do smacks of hubris--of pride, of arrogance and self-concern.

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Many times, I have accused the mountaintoppers of being church, not Kingdom, focused.

Based on recent ERC mountaintop action, I'm reaching the conclusion that I've been far too generous.

ERC mountaintoppers are showing themselves to be mountaintop-focused, not even church-focused. 

The mountaintop's response to the disaster that is the old, new 2015 Strategic Plan has been to try to save the mountaintop so that the chief mountaintopper, at least, can keep his salary and corner office.

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What would they do if they were driven by humility, not hubris?

They'd do something like stand as one before the Conference with slumped shoulders, bowed heads, struggling to achieve eye contact and mumble:

Two years ago we presented a new Strategic Plan to you with great pomp and fanfare and we believed in it. But, it has failed. WE HAVE FAILED.

In those two years, many of the churches you attend, or, if you are a pastor, you serve, have declined.

We now realize that that Strategic Plan is nothing more than words on a page. And, we acknowledge the Strategic Plan's failure is our failure.

We beg you, in the love of Christ, to forgive us for our sincere failure.

Because we love the Lord and His Kingdom and our church and because we love you, we submit to you, the delegates of the Eastern Regional Conference, our resignations.

Nevertheless, as we offer our resignations, we tell you that we believe that we still can lead our Conference to good things but we need to receive your forgiveness and we will only move forward in leadership with your permission.

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That would have been the humble way for the mountaintoppers to have approached the Conference this year.

It's precisely what they did not do.

What they did do is not fruit of humility or of love for the Lord or the Kingdom or even the Conference or its churches.

It is fruit of self-love, of love of the institutional mountaintop.

It's hubris.

Self-concern and pride.

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I often conclude a post saying that we must repent, not you must repent or that they must repent.

The essential truth about the mountaintoppers' performance at Conference this year is that the whole Conference bought into the mountaintoppers' desire to preserve the mountaintop.

The whole Conference is still letting the mountaintoppers have their way.

And, as I also often say, the Lord of all authority and power and grace and mercy and blessing is not blessing.

WE must repent.