Episode 9: On the Use and Abuse of Authority

Pastors Talk - A podcast by 9Marks

9Marks

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 698 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2017

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Authority is God’s good and dangerous gift. Therefore, it’s of the utmost importance for pastors and church leaders to exercise their authority well, and in doing so image God.

SHOW NOTES:

– Why is authority such an under-talked about topic? (:45)

– Has authority been especially villainized in our current culture? (2:10)

– Are evangelicals any different in their views of the authority? (6:10)

– What is authority? (9:05)

– Why do you think a passage like 2 Samuel 23:3–4 is so important as we think about authority? What can they teach pastors today? (11:00)

– How does a pastor wield his authority well? (14:30)

– What’s the difference between authority and authoritarianism? (15:00)

– How can a pastor be pro-authority while also being anti-authoritarian? (17:05)

– Why is the abuse of authority so heinous? What does it look like for someone to abuse their authority, or to use it too aggressively? (19:45)

– How do you pastor those Christians who have only know the abuse of authority? (23:30)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this episode of the Nine Marks Pastor Talk.
0:07.7	Nine Marks.
0:08.5	If you didn't know, it exists to equip church leaders with a biblical vision
0:11.8	and practical resources for building healthy churches.
0:15.2	You can learn more about us at nine marks.org.
0:18.7	And I'm Jonathan Lehman here with Mark Devere. Mark, we recently released an episode of
0:25.7	the Nine Marks Journal on authority, God's good and dangerous gift, and I thought it might be
0:33.5	worthwhile to spend a few minutes with you just thinking about this idea of authority.
0:39.0	Not a popular topic authority, is it? Why? Why not? Well, you said just to only that this is a
0:45.2	practical resource. Presumably you mean to include this interview, right? Well, partially
0:50.5	presenting a biblical vision, but I don't know. Would this be a practical resource?
0:56.0	That's kind of my point. I don't know that people think about something which may seem as abstract
1:01.4	as authority or conversation about authority is practical. But I think it is. I think often the way
1:07.3	you respond to things in your family, your're in place employment, and even in your
1:11.4	church can be because of larger assumptions that you've had that are merely assumptions.
1:16.6	They haven't been thought about. You haven't examined them yourself. They haven't been questioned.
1:20.5	You haven't subjected them, therefore, to the searching light of Scripture. And I think authority is one of those
1:25.8	things because of the fall,
1:35.2	people like you and me and everybody who's listening to us tend to have some mis-shapean ideas about.
1:40.8	Those can either be too trusting or not trusting enough, but I think few of us have our dials naturally set exactly correctly when it comes to the topic of authority.
1:45.9	We err in which directions?
1:48.0	I think either of the two I've just mentioned, either we tend to trust it too much or be too skeptical of it.
	...

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