Many reports are circulating within the Church about failed leadership. Those reports can be discouraging. If we are not careful about how we process those bad reports, they can affect us negatively, taking our eye off the most essential ball.

Sadly, we are drawn to this kind of reporting because, like a news rag displayed at the supermarket checkout counter, it gets our attention with its gaudy declarations and images. We can become so captivated by such reporting that we forget the obvious and overwhelming goodness of God being displayed by faithful leaders. Our curiosity about such things if not closely monitored kills more than a cat. In the end, it will kill our faith.

When the spies were sent out to explore the Promised Land, they brought back this report, “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country – a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces. But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak!” (Numbers 13:27-28).

“But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!” (vs. 30). Caleb saw all that was in the land, the bountiful produce and the giants. His report was seasoned with his understanding of God’s faithfulness to provide what He promised.

“But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!” (vs. 31-33).

Caleb, the faithful servant of God, saw giants in the land, but their presence did not overcome his belief that God was more powerful than any giant. He rejected the assumption that “we felt like grasshoppers. The Goliath-like giants saw the people of God the same way.

Since Adam and Eve took the first bite of the forbidden fruit in Eden, humans have failed to follow God faithfully, even among those who began as faithful servants of the Lord, but allowed the giants of success and fame to diminish their impact in God’s Kingdom. 

While the exposure of failed leaders is necessary to keep the Church healthy and pure, it can become a gaudy, never-ending display of human failure that diverts our attention from God and His faithfulness to focus on the giants of human failure. That’s the kind of fruit believing a bad report will produce.