Billy Graham, Reinhard Bonnke, Warren Wiersbe, R.C. Sproul, David Pawson, Joel Edwards, Pastor James McConnell; Bishop Tony Miller; Dick Iverson, Luis Palau, Larry Crabb, Greg Haslam , David Yonggi Cho, Colin Urquhart – the roll of honor goes on. The list of Christian leaders leaving us continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, causing us to conclude that The Generals are Going Home!
While for us their departure is tragic, heaven’s gain is triumphant. For any accolades we might afford these spiritual giants is merely a preamble to the heavenly applause that awaits them.
Here are men and women who were colossuses in Western Christianity, titans of truth who invested their lives in restoring the church to what it is today. Prayer warriors who built gargantuan churches the likes of which we had never seen before. Kingdom innovators who rather than fearing a crisis flourished and pushed “the limits set by previous generations, for they [knew] that inflexibility leads to irrelevance.” [i] Leaders whose “framework of vision reached beyond the general consciousness to see God’s larger purpose,” people who moved the church beyond the narrow confines of the day. [ii]
Individually these pace setters spurred us on to break through self-imposed limitations, they inspired and equipped us to take back the territory lost to our own small-mindedness. Corporately they stretched our belief system to see beyond the barriers set by others. Marching to a different drum beat these generals of the faith forged an army of faithful followers causing Christianity to breakthrough enemy lines and establish the kingdom of God. They cut a swath through religiosity and manmade traditions so that much of what we enjoy today in terms of Worship; Faith; Out-reach; Kingdom Thinking; Servant Leadership and Church, is due to their spiritual endeavours.
Building on their foundations Christianity owes a debt of
gratitude to these generals of the faith.
There is a legacy that lives on. While Christian terms like Praise and Worship; Apostles and Prophets; Covenant Relationship; Spiritual Authority; Kingdom and Community, may now be part of our everyday language, these are phrases for which others have paid a price. Some suffered separation from the denominational main-stream while others laid everything on the line to preach and teach God’s progressive truth.
Lovers of the church, these leaders were obsessed with the purpose of God. Architects of God’s House they built sure foundations and fitly framed the church to create a habitation for God’s Holy Spirit. Having zero interest in fame or fortune, these were the spiritual MacArthurs and Montgomerys of the modern Christian era, people to whom we owe an incredible debt of gratitude. Yet while standing on the shoulders of these spiritual giants and gaining new spiritual vistas from the heights they attained, the question has to be:
Who will rise up and become the next generation of spiritual generals?
Who will lead the Christian church is such a way as to preserve the past and possess the future?
While some might be satisfied to be carried along in the wake of these Godly Generals, others will look for leaders who will build on their legacy and push forward to take new territory.
However, like the prophet Samuel checking out the sons of Jesse for the next king we cannot afford to become pre-programmed with old-school-thinking? When age, aptitude and appearance take preference over anointing, we run the risk of looking in the wrong places for future leaders. What if the next generation of generals are presently serving the purpose of God in relative obscurity - teenagers with a sense of calling faithfully working in menial jobs caring for a ‘few sheep in the wilderness.’[iii] What if those ‘who will serve the purpose of God in [their] generation,’ [iv]don’t rise through the ranks of our well-established methodology, but come in from outside?
At the age of 13 Joan of Arc believed she was on a mission for God. Louise Braille developed a language for the blind when fifteen years old. Bobby Fischer became the youngest chess player to be named a grandmaster at the age of fifteen. Malala Yousafzai survived an attempt on her life at the age of fifteen for speaking out against the Taliban and became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The outspoken teenager Greta Thunberg, the Swedish activist, is challenging world leaders to change the way they think about climate change. So maybe it’s time for the church to look beyond the slick charismatic communicators and consider the possibility that the next generation of Christian generals might emerge from relative obscurity.
Just as John the Baptist, a leader of a different ilk, emerged from the wilderness to usher in the coming of Christ, maybe those pioneers who will set the scene for Christ’s return will be nothing like those who have gone before.
Standing on the hinge of history, those godly generals who brought us this far are going home. So maybe it’s time to acknowledge those young men and women of anointing, to bring on the next generation of generals who will by God’s grace rally the troops and take us places we have never been before.