SAINTLINESS AND CHURCH LEADERSHIP
By A. W. Tozer
After more than thirty years of observing the religious scene, I have been forced to conclude
that saintliness and church leadership are not often synonymous. I have on many occasions
preached to grateful Christians who had gone so much farther than I had into the sweet mysteries
of God that I actually felt unworthy to tie their shoe laces. Yet they sat meekly listening while one
inferior to them stood in the place of prominence and declared imperfectly truths with which they
had long been familiar by intimate and beautiful experience. They must have known and felt how
much of theory and how little of real heart knowledge there was in the sermon, but they said nothing,
and no doubt appreciated what little of good there was in the message.
Were the church a pure and Spirit-filled body, wholly led and directed by spiritual considerations,
certainly the purest and the saintliest men and women would be the ones most appreciated and most
honored; but the opposite is true. Godliness is no longer valued, except for the very old or the very
dead. The saintly souls are forgotten in the whirl of religious activity. The noisy, the self-assertive,
the entertaining are sought after and rewarded in every way, with gifts, crowds, offerings and
publicity.
The Christlike, the self forgetting, the other worldly are jostled aside to make room for the latest
converted playboy who is usually not too well converted and still very much of a playboy.
The whole shortsighted philosophy that ignores eternal qualities, and majors on trivialities is a
form of unbelief. These Christians who embody such a philosophy are clamoring after present reward;
they are too impatient to wait the Lord's time. They will not abide the day when Christ shall make known
the secret of every man's heart and reward each one according to his deeds. The true saint
sees farther than this, he cares little for passing values; he looks forward eagerly to the day when
eternal things shall come into their own and godliness will be found to be all that matters.
Strange as it may be, the holiest souls who have ever lived have earned the reputation for being
pessimistic. Their smiling indifference to the world's attractions and their steady resistance to its
temptations have been misunderstood by shallow thinkers and attributed to an unsocial spirit and a
lack of love for mankind. What the world failed to see was that these peculiar men and women were
beholding a city invisible; they were walking day by day in the light of another and eternal kingdom.
They were already tasting the powers of the world to come and enjoying afar the triumph of Christ
and the glories of the new creation.
No, the unknown saints are not pessimists, nor are they misanthropes or joy-killers. They are
by virtue of their godly faith the world's only true optimists. Their creed was stated simply by
'Julian of Norwich' when she said, "But all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing
shall be well." Though sin is in the world, she argued, a frightful visitation to be reckoned with, yet so
perfect is the atonement that the time will come when all evil shall be eradicated and everything
restored again to its pristine beauty in Christ. Then "all shall be well, and all manner of thing
shall be well."
The wise Christian will be content to wait for that day. In the meantime, he will serve his
generation in the will of God. If he should be overlooked in the religious popularity contests he will
give it but small attention. He knows whom he is trying to please and he is willing to let the world
think what it will of him.He will not be around much longer anyway, and where he is going men will be known not by their
Hooper rating but by the holiness of their character.
Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.