The wrong ministry advice
Have you been listening to the right people? Rehoboam was a famous king of ancient Israel who was best known for listening to bad advice. Perhaps you have been turning to the same set of counselors.
Rehoboam had a hard act to follow. His father was Solomon – the epic, larger-than-life sage-king. Solomon had a thousand women and mountains of riches. He had expanded Israel’s territory and influence, and he had constructed palaces, gardens and the temple of God.
Of course, Solomon had accomplished all of this by overworking and overtaxing his people. You can imagine that the people were perhaps willing to sacrifice for such a unique and special leader.
However, as soon as Rehoboam ascended to the throne, the people came to him and asked for a well-deserved break (1 Kings 12:4). Rehoboam first consulted with the elder counselors left over from Solomon’s court. They said, “Today if you will be a servant to this people and serve them, and if you respond to them by speaking kind words to them, they will be your servants forever.”
Rehoboam didn’t particularly like the elders’ advice, so he turned to his younger friends. The friends advised the opposite tactic. They said Rehoboam should put even more pressure on the people – make them work harder and pay even higher taxes. Rehoboam took the younger friends’ advice, and the kingdom split as a result.
What was so wrong with the young men’s advice? Of course, the important issue is that their advice runs counter to principles of love, justice and God-honoring leadership. However, there are some additional problems with their advice which might provide some insight for evaluating ministry counsel.
Dangers of bad advice
First, there is the problem of the source. The advice came from the inexperienced rather than the mature and wise. This is a huge temptation even in ministry. We look for what is the next best thing, so we turn to the less experienced for their new and untested ideas.
Second, the advice was for Rehoboam to do what Solomon did, but to do it even more. If it worked for Solomon, it should work for Rehoboam too, right? However, Solomon was a unique figure in history, and his leadership style was also unique. It was unlikely that Solomon’s methods would work for Rehoboam. In ministry we are often tempted to borrow the methodology of visible, unique leaders, but usually we cannot make a unique leader’s methods work for us.
Third, the young men did not accurately understand how Solomon achieved his greatness. They thought it was all about being a tough taskmaster, but Solomon achieved greatness through God-given wisdom. I find this to be a common problem in ministry: people often misidentify the reasons for ministry success. They think it is the superficial nuts-and-bolts of ministry, but Scripture teaches ministry success is tied to deeper and more fundamental spiritual matters, like prayer, the filling of the Spirit, the preaching of the word, the exercise of spiritual gifts, etc.
A wiser way
Leaders in churches today rightly desire to multiply churches and disciples, and they desire to impact their communities and the world for Christ. In their quest to fulfill the mission, the temptation is to look for the methods and ideas that sound fresh and surefire effective. As a result, we can turn to the church’s equivalent of Rehoboam’s friends – the spiritually immature and the methodologically worldly.
Instead, we need to search out the church’s equivalent of Solomon’s mature elders. If you look again at the elders’ advice, I think you will see it sounds an awful lot like a piece of advice a retired ministry leader might give to an up-and-coming new leader. We go to them not for a surefire technique or method, but for nuggets of God-given wisdom proven in the fires of real-world, frontline ministry.
Randall Curtis serves as the Rhode Island regional coordinator for the Baptist Convention of New England.
