Together in Christ: 'Honoring and Supporting God’s Leaders' — 1 Thessalonians 5:12-15

After the first two hard years of COVID-19, church leaders resigned in droves from their roles as ministers, preachers, pastors, elders, and deacons. They were exhausted trying to serve, pastor, love, encourage, help through grief, and minister to a discouraged and sometimes grumpy group of Jesus’ disciples. Some of these resignations were based on exhaustion. Far more (in my experience of working with church leaders) resignations were because these leaders and their families were exhausted AND discouraged because of the criticism, sniping, nit-picking, and hyper-criticism from those they loved and served. Nothing they did was ever good enough. While they were all too aware of their own flaws, people pounced on those flaws and criticized them for their flaws while neglecting their many hours of selfless devotion to the work the of Lord.  ^[1]

The New Testament is full of reminders that we should follow, love, respect, honor, and support our leaders who work hard for us and are people of holy character. As God’s people, we must awaken to the reality that commercials and political rancor have trained us to be consumers who are constantly evaluating things by how they impact us. Unfortunately, we easily forget about our mission and character as God’s people when our first reaction to church leadership is based on how it impacts us personally.

Today’s verses on respecting and giving wholehearted love to our leaders are very clear and shouldn’t need explanation. Instead, we need to practice them. So, rather than explain more, I want to simply share another few verses on loving our leaders so we can hear this message in all of its urgency:

Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and they are accountable to God. Give them reason to do this with joy and not with sorrow. That would certainly not be for your benefit. ^[2]