The morning sermon this week will deal with Christian leadership, so I want to spend a moment talking about it. There were two significant moments in broader Christian leadership this week. First, Pope Leo XIV gave a blessing to a block of ice at a summit on climate change. Second, the King of England appointed the first woman to serve as the Archbishop of Canterbury, which is the highest position in the Anglican Church. While these moves are not shocking departures for either church but rather a continuation of a lengthy slide away from Biblical practice, they have caused significant grief to those who seek to honor Christ in the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and even for Christians who are not members of either church but who care about their broader Christian influence and witness. Here are some ways we can think about this and the broader idea of Christian leadership:
1. Though no form of church government is perfect because they all deal with fallen individuals, one of the benefits of our system is it does not leave us beholden to a singular leader who exercises supreme authority over the church in matters of faith and practice. We can give thanks for a presbyterian form of government that shields the church from the errors of any one individual from having too much influence.
2. This ought to remind us that our confidence and guidance in the faith cannot be anchored on fallible leaders. Leaders in the church have failed both morally and theologically from the beginning. If our faith can be shaken because we see leaders we trust go off the rails, then we have misplaced our trust. While every departure from the truth by a leader in the church is tragic, it ought not to be something that causes us to question the truth of God or the validity of the church in general. Scripture tells us that there will always be false teachers (2 Pet. 2:1-3). They may not always be who we expect, but we ought to be firm in our faith because of Christ and His word, not because of any leader and his influence.
3. Let this humble us and cause us to pray for renewal in these churches. As I mentioned above, there are those who love and serve Christ in these churches and who desperately desire to see their churches brought back to faithfulness. It is good and right for us to pray that God would have mercy and bring reform and renewal according to the gospel that these churches might stand as witnesses for the truth rather than to compromise and worldly agendas. And let us remember that such unfaithfulness can manifest itself in our own church and denomination, and earnestly pray that God would keep us and enable us to stand, by His grace, against such compromise.