Darryl's Blog
Counterpoint
Dr. John Kaiser, the president of the Fellowship, takes issue with my post last week on pastors and losers. Dr. Kaiser's response is worth checking out. As is the response from my friend Bryan, who leaves a comment we can all agree on.
The bigger issue, from what I can tell, is what Christian leadership looks like and how it functions. Alan Roxburgh writes:
Leadership models are borrowed from psychology (strategist, therapist), medicine (health and healer), the business world (strategist, coach, manager), and the educational world (teacher). A lot of congregations and leaders have been socialized to view those models as the only viable ones...
A congregation called us to ask how it could remove the current pastor because she wasn't an effective change agent. The job description they developed called for an entrepreneurial leader who could make things happen - clearly a business model...the leadership models currently shaping the church are inadequate to forming a missional church. In their own context and setting - medicine, the business world, counseling - these images of leadership are appropriate, but when the church borrows and applies such models to the community of God's people it misses an opportunity to shape leadership around the biblical sense, in which leadership is about cultivating an environment that innovates and releases the missional imagination present among a community of God's people.
This is certainly a live discussion in many quarters. What is unique about Christian leadership? What role does business thinking play? How important is leadership to the success of the church? Is leadership (as we normally define it) the key factor in the times and places where the church is thriving? How does the whole idea of God using weakness, not strength, factor in?
I hope to return to some of these questions. They're certainly worth wrestling with.
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Aside from the unbiblical example of a female pastor in your illustration, the word picture of pastor or shepherd and the full weight the NT gives it ought to colour the identity and function of church leadership.
Ken Davis : I wrote this in the original post but thought I would include it in today's too.
Ah Darryl,
Did the clarification of the context really satisfy you? The quote provided concluded by saying:
"Or you can sign up for our 'growth track' program, and we will help prepare your church to attract a proven leader who is able to lead you back to health and growth."
A few responses:
- Define "proven leader"
- If this comment to a church should prove to us that your earlier comments were unwarranted then my fears grow. Self confidence, independence dominate it and that is a very frightening thing because when it comes to faith, self confidence is the enemy.
- Where is God in the formula? To say "this will put things right" and not refer to God at all, is really scary.
- To be able to guarantee a conversion is not our prerogative.
- Contrast "a proven leader who is able to lead you back to health and growth" with "neither he who plants nor he who waters are anything, but only God who makes things grow."
- Where is the need to pray Psalm 85:6, Psalm 127:1, John 15:5 or Phil.4:13?
- A proven leader can be a bad pastor.
I do not question that pastors and others need to lead properly. I do not question that bad leaders have ruined churches. But I have great fears that the Fellowship, of which I am a part, is starting to believe that all that is wrong with us is mechanics. We seem to be saying that we have all our spirituality right and all that is missing is the right recipe, that we invent, in order to make things better. "Here, take our program and all will be better." "If you build it they will come". Why should God honour such thinking? And the even more frightening thing is that we can use our growth programs, get growth, and assume that God did it, when in fact, He may not have. Unless the Lord builds it, whatever we build, is not built. But will we be able to tell?
I am not pretending to be a proven leader. My failures haunt me constantly. But the solutions that I often hear concern me even more.
Not trying to cause a stink. Just expressing a small portion of my soul