Will you hire him?

I have lived in the glorious Bible Belt my entire life and now we have moved to what some call the buckle of this moral culture. I have struggled for many years with my culture's impulsive desire for titles and boundary lines. I studied my Bible that spoke of unity and the Messiah who destroyed worldly divisions. But all of the churches I knew continued dividing and the road that stood between the leading churches of each denomination, although it is all that separated them, acted as a vast ocean of which no one would dare to cross.

Ask yourself this question: when someone asks you about your church, how do you define it? For many church-members denominational affiliation is without a doubt their first thought. For most personnel committees their stack of resumes will include only graduates of their own seminaries. Why? Is a man or woman who has been given gifts to serve and a devotion to study God's word not adequate for the leadership of your church?

When Jesus ascended from our world he left the keys to his Church in the hands of twelve apostles (including the apostle Paul). Eleven of these men had spent years with Christ, continually making a fool of themselves, most often by the words of Simon Peter.

If one of the twelve apostles resume landed in your pile, would you hire him? This is a man who does not have a seminary education, is not a part of your financial class, culture, denomination or theological framework. But would you hire him?

What defined the disciples as quality leaders were the divine gifts they received, their devotion to the study of scriptures and most importantly their baptism in the Holy Spirit. Nothing of our world should ever be a higher qualification than that which comes from the one and only God, and He cannot only be a characteristic, but THE chief character of the Church.