Throughout church history, from the New Testament onwards, there have always been churches in trouble.
From my observations, churches heading for trouble invariably suffer from poor leadership. This does not mean poor Christians, but we need to remember that doctrinal soundness is no guarantee against trouble. Nor is it a character fault in those leading troubled churches, for it is self-evident that many churches heading into difficulty are led by really nice folk who love the Lord Jesus.
If we are to take seriously Paul’s inclusion of leadership as a spiritual gift in Romans12.8, it is essential that church leaders are gifted for their task and can show evidence of such gifting. Too often churches are led by men who do not have the gift of leadership: They have no track record of the Lord blessing their ministry in the past, they remain in their position even though there is no evidence of blessing in the present and there are few prospects of blessing in the future. For all sorts of reasons, many honourable, they do no more than uphold the status quo and this leads to problems for the church.
