Editorial Updated 4 Feb 2007,   Deserted Island Thinking

     In my ML534 Value Based Leadership Course, I frequently use the
following attention getter to make a point.

    “Turn to the book of Obadiah in your Bibles.”   (Frequently, I have
to give a hint where to find it, but eventually people find it.)

    Now hold the pages (usually Obadiah is two pages in most Bibles;
sometimes only one). Then I say to them, “If you don’t know why
Obadiah is in the Bible, then rip it out of your Bible”—and
sometimes I will do that, just tear out the two pages—from an old
unusable Bible, of course. This certainly gets their attention.

    And then I say, “If you don’t know why it is in your Bible that
means you don’t know the book and probably have never used it.
Hence you don’t need  it. Just rip it out. And if you will do that with all
the books of the Bible that  you have no real idea of why they are there,
then you will get a resulting smaller  Bible that maybe you can use.”

    They get the point. They need to understand the basic MACRO
HERMENEUTICAL PRINCIPLES for every book in the Bible. I give
these macro hermeneutical analyses for each book of the Bible in my
manual, The  Bible and Leadership Values—A Book By Book
Analysis.   

This leads me to share with you one of my major meditations this
week— “Deserted Island Thinking.” I am on an ordination committee
at my local church and we just ordained a person for ministry. I gave
a 3 minute charge—which included some “Deserted Island Thinking.”
I charged the ordinand among other things to master at minimum core
level ten books (over the next ten years).   

                                Deserted Island Thinking   

   Back in Columbia Bible College in 1968 I was a teaching assistant
for  Robertson McQuilkin in one of his Bible classes. Here was a
question he asked  us in that class.Robertson said, “If you were
stranded on a deserted island (like Tom Hanks—my insert for you
modern movie goers)  and could only have two Bible books, which
two would you think were the  most important ones you should have?”
And his answer was John and Romans (naturally since the Bible course
was  John and Romans). And then he said why. 

            John tells you who the person of Christ is.
            Romans tells you the work of Christ.

Those two essentials are powerful. You cannot do without them.

What that question did for me was to force me ask other questions.
Why is  a given book in the Bible? What difference would it make if
we dropped out  that given book? And that led me to study Morgan,
Baxter, and Scrogge. For  their books were answering just those
sort of questions.

Now taking this “Deserted Island thinking” further. If you can only
teach so many books in a given course (like my value based
leadership courses) which  books should you concentrate on. That
is, from the O.T. which few books are  more important to teach
for leadership and why. Or from the N.T. which  few are important
to teach and why.

Here is my answer for the N.T.

If I could only teach 10 books and hope to cover the essentials
of leadership  for a leader living today, what would they be?
Well, here is what I would  pick from the N.T. (maybe O.T. next week):

Essential Doctrinal Books for Leaders
John         So they would know who Jesus is, what faith is, what life
               is—The Person of Christ.
Romans    So they would know what Jesus has done on the cross:
               to settle the sins question and the sin problem—The Work
               of Christ.

Essential Historical Bridge To Today’s Leadership Era
Acts    So they could see how Jesus’ movement expanded into our
          present church leadership age and its institutionalized form of
          the church, that God could work through to reach the World.

Essentials For all Church Leadership Era  Leaders To Know

Ephesians    So leaders can see the theoretical construct of the church,
                 ideally.
1,2 Corinthians    So leaders living today can see the messy problems
                        churches really have and get a handle on how to
                        approach church problems.
Titus           So leaders can see the importance of becoming Bible
                 Centered Leaders who can use the Word to transform
                  churches.
1,2 Timothy    So leaders can see how to deal with heresy (both
                    orthodoxy and orthopraxy) and how to select &
                    transition in new leadership; pass the baton. And a
                    most important contemporary  modeling result—see
                    Paul’s finishing well testimony and hence motivate l
                    eaders to stay the course and finish well.
Philemon        See the power of the Gospel to transform 3 lives;
                    see 3  important leadership styles and see how God
                    deals with  major social ills in a society. Missional
                    churches today  are concerned with the power of the
                    Gospel to deal with  radical issues in society. This is a
                    good book for missional  leaders.

I wonder what books you would pick.

 
Blessings,
Bobby Clinton