I was talking with Tim Hoeksema on Shapevine recently about the experience of having to reprogram ones leadership paradigm. Examples of my own re-programing would include.
1) I was taught: “You can’t have friends within your church.” Now I note that six of Jesus twelve were friends before they were disciples/apostles. That encourages me to see discipleship as a kind of friendship.
2) I was taught “Don’t let your people get too close,” now I note that a NT elder should have a hospitable home (I Tim 3.2, Titus1.8), that others should know their leader well enough to “consider the outcome of their way of life” (Heb 13.7) and to be able to say “yes” when, like Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians (I think it was) we say “you know how we lived while we were among you”.
3) I was taught to “never set yourself up as an example”. I cetrainly agree that leadership whose central message is “be like me” is worrying. However I also think that if you’re not leading by example then you’re not leading, you’re merely pointing. Apostle Paul said “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” That’s the apostolic way.I think that’s important - that a Christian leader needs to be less a director and more a modeller. To be a leader you have to “do” and “be” according to the word and call of God in Christ, and then allow others to join in. In this vane, I was very struck by a seemingly incidental phrase I read one day about Francis of Assisi’s ministry. It said “While he was doing this, others came, joined him, and learned his way of life…”
4) I worry about a trend in the way we train and form young people especially where we teach them about “leading” ahead of “doing this”. It is as if we are conceding that leadership is more motivating than actually doing the stuff. (Hence the often very fast recycling of Youth Group members into Youth Leaders.) Surely there’s a middle step where we actually do the stuff. And isn’t that middle step really the main step?!
I like that phrase “While he was doing this others came, joined him and learned his way of life.” I think that leadership is about how you share the “being and the doing” that God has called you to. In my own experience my work is centred on household-based church. Our network was pioneered quasi-independently by half a dozen guys who at different times had lived with me, observed “how I lived” and “considered the outcome of my way of life.”
5) In our network we have written out any sense of automatic authority so that we input into each others livesa nd work on the basis of friendship. As the Apostle Paul said to Philemon, “Although in Christ I have the right just to tell you what you ought to do, instead I will appeal to you on the basis of love.” I have had to learn that my role as a leader is much more about helping others do their thing and much less about making others do my thing!! This makes me realise that my “authority” is much more to do with my personal credibility than my “power to compel obedience.”
Having said all that, I think it is important that people recognise who the “elders” are or who their “pastor-teachers” are. In what we see in Acts, Paul, Peter and John’s writings in the NT there is no need to be apologetic about being clear about who is taking these roles. It’s clear in James 3.1 and Hebrews 13.17 that God makes a distinction. I don’t find a warrant in the NT for anarchy. But the themes I’ve mentioned above have been those aspects I have had to learn from scratch, on the hoof. Do they ring true for you?
