Character Above All

One of the most impressive things about Kevin Conner is his longevity in ministry. At 80, going on 81, Kevin still actively travels around the world to preach and teach. In the last 2 years alone, he has been to 31 countries, one of which was Siberia! In 2008, he has plans to teach in Africa, a continent that he has not yet been to. This is not a man looking forward to retirement!

Those of us in ministry would be wise to glean as much as we can from a man of faith who has gone before us, and appropriate some of the lessons he has learned whilst praying that God would keep us running the race strongly to the end.

At the ECCM pastors and leaders’ meeting on 13 November 2007, Dr. Kevin Conner shared on ‘Building Christian Men & Women’. Kevin first defined 4 aspects of a leader: Character, Charisma, Personality and Reputation. Then he went on to explain each of these aspects as summarized below.

In Hebrews 1:3, the writer says that Jesus is the “express image” of God. This phrase is a translation of the Greek word, “charaktēr”, from where we get the English word, “character”. This means that if we want to know the character of God, we look to Jesus. But it follows that if we want to know what Jesus is like, we should look at Christians. Christians should bear the image of Christ. God desires to reproduce His image and likeness on us (Rom 8:29) like a metal coin is imprinted with an image (Matt 22:15-22).

God’s made us in His image and likeness (Gen 1:26-27), because without His character, He knew that we would not be able handle the dominion that He wanted to give us. Sin marred Adam’s character and that marred character has reproduced to this day (Gen 5:3). Jesus however, is the image of God (Col 1:15, 2 Cor 4:4) and the purpose of redemption is to restore us to the image of God (Rom 8:29), to be holy as He is holy.

Character is NOT a gift! Character is what we really are as a person on the inside; just like the fruit, which is the outward manifestation of the inward nature of the character of a tree (Matt 7:15-20). ‘Being’ is more important than ‘doing’ because we will take our character into heaven with us.

The purpose of ministry therefore, is to build character into people. This takes time, and should not be hurried. We need to be shepherds, and not butchers!

“Charisma”, on the other hand, are the gifts given to us by the grace of God. Note the warning Jesus gives to those with much “charisma” (Matt 7:21-23)! These were professors (believers): they called Jesus “Lord” (1 Cor 12:3), they prophesied, cast out demons and did many miracles and they had the authority to use His name! The point is, gifts of the Spirit are not evidence of Holiness (Acts 3:12)!

Many charismatics have cheapened the grace of God by saying , “I’ve become all things to all men…” but they forget that Paul, who coined th at phrase did not mean that we should become lawless but under the Law of Christ, which is written on our hearts and minds! Ezekiel 18 talks about how those who were once righteous but have now turned to iniquity and are unrepentant: that all their righteous acts would not be remembered! This does not seem fair, but God is just!

The warning is, not to live two lives: one on the pulpit and another in private! Charisma and the ability to ‘do’ the work is not a reflection of personal holiness.

Personality is how one comes across to others, but personality can be deceptive! Absalom had great personality and won the hearts of Israel (2 Sam 15:5-13) in order to dethrone his own father, the anointed King over Israel. We must not mistake personality for anointing. It is the touch of the Holy Spirit that counts.

Reputation is what people think you are as a person, it is how you appear. The bible exhorts us to have a good reputation (Prov 22:1, Ecc 7:1) but not at the expense of character. People can ruin your reputation but only sin can ruin your character. Reputation lives on the outside of a person but character lives on the inside. Jesus humbled himself and laid aside his reputation (Phil 2:7) but did not lose his character as he was sinless! Joseph is another example of one who lost his reputation but not his character.

While we should have charisma, a winsome personality and a good reputation, at the end of the day, what pleases God is good character.