House of God
Today’s Topic: Culture of the Orphan: Orphan Leaders of the Church
Scripture: Matthew 6:31-33
Greetings Kingdom Citizens:
Now I am not broad stroking all leaders of the church in this message but allow Holy Spirit to show you those who are in this culture and be lead by the Spirit of God to react and or respond. Orphan leaders in the church are simply leaders, who display the actions and lifestyle of an orphan but sit in leadership positions in the church. This type of leader is detrimental to the Body of Christ in those local areas or churches. Remember the orphan is concerned about self provision and protection. Their viewpoint of life is through the soul. Now what makes this more detrimental is that they sit and leadership positions and preach and try to teach about a subject that they themselves truly do not understand. Let me give you an example.
Many of the sermons and teachings we typically hear to the people of God is how to love God, the Father. Now where this teaching boomerangs to is who is in control because if the leader of the church is an orphan then it always comes back to provision to protection. In addition the teaching and discipling makes your purpose on earth to be about loving God. Now here is the ironic thing, how can an orphan teach you how to love a father if they themselves mentally do not understand how to love a father? The main point to being an orphan is the fact that they lack a father. Their only concern is their provision and protection and anything that threatens that they avoid that thing or attack it until the threat is neutralized and I want to discuss this right now about orphans attacking threats.
Jesus when he was in the heart of His ministry ran up against the culture of the orphan consistently. But there was a particular group of orphans that stood out the most and Jesus dealt with them consistently throughout His ministry. These orphans were the Pharisees, Sadducees and the chief priests, the religious leaders. Now what is sad is that even today this happens. Some people come into our local churches or they even may be a member of that particular local church and God gives them revelation to something and naturally this person is filled with joy because what God tells them can and will impact the Body of Christ. Now naturally this person, filled with joy brings this revelation to the pastor. Now if this pastor is in the culture of the Kingdom and sonship then He will receive this with joy himself. However if this pastor is of the culture of the orphan then the pastor sees this person as a threat because they did not receive the same revelation. In addition they are seen as a threat because they know what the revelation will do and it threatens their provision and protection and so they are dismissed and ultimately at some point fellowship is breached between that person and the local church. There are many pastors and bishops who see themselves as the be all and end all of their churches so they hoard the power and resources because they believe that the people are either to ignorant to handle the respective ministries or at some point they will see a weakness in the pastor and evict, fire or vote him out of the church. This is what orphans do, they only care about self. I heard a pastor say this “Bible study is my time and I do not share this time or let anyone else teach my bible study”. How selfish! I love my pastor on this issue, and by the way every pastor should have a pastor, but my pastor does not find it robbery to allow myself and the other associate ministers and deacons to teach Bible study to promote spiritual growth in our gifting. An orphan will not share because they fear that someone will be better than them in their eyes and take their position where in some cases they view their position as their provision and protection.
In the next message we will look at the interaction between Jesus and the religious leaders and show the correlation between the orphan and the son.
At the Father’s Service,
Elder Calvin Calhoun Jr.
