There have been a lot of comments on previous posts regarding leadership, so I thought I would initiate a couple of new posts on the subject. I did a workshop at the Denver house church conference called "Re-Thinking Leadership: From Leading an Organization to Serving a Movement." I suppose, since I facilitated this workshop, that makes me "the expert." Haha. Just kidding. In fact, you might notice the title is "re-thinking" as in current-tense-still-in-the-process. I think we are all in this process of re-envisioning what leadership of an organic movement looks like and, therefore, there are no experts. This is what makes this such a dynamic conversation for today!
The workshop I did was set up to be participatory. However, I did set the stage with some pre-suppositions which I will share here as a starting point for this discussion on leadership.
Presupposition #1: Church is a living entity. Church is an explosion of God’s life through people. It is, by definition, an organic life-force process that God directs. It is the life and power of God flowing under his sovereignty through people who are submitted to his authority.
We have so over-used and mis-understood the term "church" that we often lose the divine nature of it. Church is people, yes, but it is all about God’s divinity–in all of his fullness and life–flowing in and through people. We might want to say that word "church "and envision fire around it and rivers flowing through it just to see clearly the divine-life nature of it. "Church" is inherently God’s own life being transmitted to and through people. In this sense it is organic, a living entity, in the most full-of-life sense imaginable.
Perhaps a good visualization, then, of this "divine explosion of life through people" that we call "church" would be a living river that has intelligence–God’s intelligence–behind it. The importance of this is that first of all, it is– like a river–filled with life and power. Secondly, it is a river that is fully under God’s direction (and God alone). Thirdly, it is neither sensible nor controllable. It sometimes flows calmly and gently, and then, in a moment, it rushes over a cliff and becomes a wild onslaught of rushing water that overflows banks and cannot be contained. Just because God is at work in and through people, we must not lose sight of the fact that "church" is people who are infused with an overflow of heavenly life that comes from the throne. We are alive to God because he has filled us with his organic, power-filled life. It is a life-force that is transmitted under his direction and command. It is truly alive and it is a beyond-this-world entity!
As a side note to this description of "church" I would say that, at the very least, it helps us to approach the topic of "leadership" (facilitating this divine flow of life) with great humility. After all, the most we can hope to do is to develop a deep intimacy with the one who commands this explosion of life, respond to HIS leading, and in that way take part in facilitating the furtherance of this life-force.
Presupposition #2: Organizational leadership, as a model for facilitating church (as a living life-force entity), is inadequate at best and detrimental at worst. Our business/organizational/leadership models are simply not up to the task for facilitating a living, God-directed process.
By definition, our organizational leadership models are about human control: set understandable goals, develop mechanized strategies to reach those goals, implement, evaluate. If you look at this clearly, you can see that we are in trouble right from the start. How can one set understandable goals for something as beyond-this-world as the living church? I am not suggesting that a believer must never set goals. We do live in a world that requires a certain amount of control and order. I am simply saying that using these tools as a primary way to bring leadership to God’s church is wholly unsatisfactory.
Presupposition #3: God’s way of leadership is foreign to us and therefore difficult to understand and implement. Most of us have been schooled and trained in the type of scientific thinking that makes it relatively easy to embrace organizational/business-type leadership. It simply makes sense to us. So much so, that it is difficult to get our minds around what leadership looks like without that basic paradigm.
The fact is, what we call "servant leadership" is not just a "biblical way" to go about doing organizational leadership. It is a completely different paradigm and basic definition of what leadership is. It simply does not fit into business/organizational leadership models nor does it fit comfortably into the way we think of leadership at all. It is a different way-to-think-about leadership altogether that is both discomforting and challenging because it does not allow us to "do leadership" within the context of the roles we are familiar with.
Henri Nouwen says this about biblical servant-leadership: "The servant-leader is the leader who is being led to unknown, undesirable, and painful places. The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross."
I would like to suggest that the reason we struggle with understanding the reality of this type of leadership is because we have not really walked out the discomfort of its calling!
Nouwen goes on to say, "the world in which we live–a world of efficiency and control–has no models to offer to those who want to be shepherds in the way Jesus was a shepherd…"
I think this shows the difficulty of this conversation on leadership. We cannot really put our finger on "the model" because it is so foreign to us and so little seen.
Presupposition #4: Leadership, in the way it is meant to be expressed in the church today, is in fact vital. All of this to say that re-envisioning, re-defining, and re-thinking leadership is not just an intellectual exercise. We need today, more than ever, to see the church led by those who "get it"– by those who model rather than preach, who impart it by lifestyle not by platitudes, whose laid-down life is the offering that influences others, and who do not require recognition because their reward is to see the divine-explosion of live, kingdom life, increased on the earth.
More to come… (I think)… This is meant to be just a starting point!
Comments
8 responses to “Re-Thinking Leadership”
Roger,
Nice summation of a complex subject!
I agree. I appreciate the thought you’ve put into this subject(s). I stopped going to church for about 6 months because the rules and man-made doctrine and control over people’s lives and ministry. My husband started a home meeting on Sunday nights, but I missed meeting new people and some of the elements of the institutional church. I was afraid to go to any church in town because my former church drilled into us that they were the only church that taught the Bible and all others were inadequate. I shamefully believed them, but the Lord led me to a church where I am finally growing. It has a smaller gathering for young adults. The pastor of the smaller group just took over because the previous pastor went to plant a church. After a few weeks the new pastor asked me to write a blog for the church and I was ecstatic! Not only does he notice and support the gifts God gives to people but he also encourages you further. At my former church all artists were made fun of because the head pastor didn’t appreciate creativity. He was a football jock with a successful background in sales, and art wasn’t his gift. So he didn’t think it should be anyone else’s either. Now I go to a church where they encourage me to write, and we are having an art display this weekend!
Aside from the excitement of getting to express myself and my relationship with God, the pastor here does not micromanage or control a person’s gifts or leadings. When I started the blog I expected him to interfere constantly, or at least dole out the rules. INstead he said, “I will pray that God gives you wisdom, but you will have full creative freedom in this.” I’ve never heard those words in church before. I am so used to having a “spiritual headship” that I wasn’t sure HOW to use full creative freedom at first. Also, the pastor emphasizes FAMILY at our gathering all the time. He truly has the heart of a shepherd. Even my husband, who may never step inside a church building again, agreed to meet him and he loved him! I know there are always going to be glitches in the institutional church system, but it seems like the pastor here is willing to face those problems as they come up and interact with us to discuss how to overcome them. We still have people over to our house on SUnday nights for discussion and Bible teaching and stuff. I’m extremely blessed to have both!
Great post. I was thinking about his topic today and there is another blog where they are talking about the issue of who is leading/mangaing/controlling the church. It is the men vs women thing and it made me think that leadership in the traditional sense is not the end all of Christian service. Is it about climbing up the corporate ladder? My analogy was like a rock being heated up by the fire. When I was a kid I touched one the next morning after a campfire and it was still hot to my amazement. God wants us to be hot, intimate with him and having the ability to influence. I dont think a position or a paycheck or a parking space……..the three P’s….. means anything to him. You can still have those things but having them in no way is indicative of being in a place of being blessed. Your quote from a Nouwen is right on the money and although I am not a Catholic he is my favorite author. I love the idea of him leaving Harvard Divinity and working with less abled adults in Canada. Amazing. Thanks for the insight. I love your blog.
Wow! It never ceases to amaze me at how universal all of this is becoming. I spent six years in Eastern Europe (Latvia), where the movement of God was very much at work. The church is that movement, growing, fresh, and organic. Then, I come home and for the last four years I see changes all around me in Oklahoma. People are not content with the way “church” is being done any longer, and they are desiring to see it become so much more than an institutionalized leadership structure with man-made rules and regulations (constitutions and by-laws), but rather driven and led by the Holy Spirit. Some were longing for change and that’s all they knew–they could provide no definition to what they were longing for, they just knew that God had to be moving the church towards something vastly different.
Then, I come to Alabmama and begin working with a student organization here, and discover too, that God is at work among younger generations to become change-agents, but not in the previous model that we Baby Boomers have always known, but in one that is moving and dynamic, reproduceable, relavant, relational, accountable, and adapting.
It boggles my mind when I see what God is doing in and through the church literally all over this world. It makes me ask–What is He up to? I am beyond excited. Thanks for the insight–but you’re not the only one saying it. Check out Glocalnet.com. There is a pdf article there that says some of what you’re saying.
Good deconstruction, but I’m not convinced that any reconstruction we do cannot be equally as deconstructed.
Of course, that thought can be torn apart, too. 🙂
Thank you Monte! I love to hear testimony about God moving in His people! I have known and experienced that God is in the process of radically transforming our vision of “church” and thereby giving us new vision of Him as we experience His desire, His intimacy in the close encounters of the simple church kind. I know that it is me God is wanting to transform – and every other christian “true believer”. Can we just allow it, recieve the Spirit and be part of His eternal Glory? It’s no good alone, God is into We not just me. House Church is the best way we have to experience God, each other and face my own life honestly and with His love.
This is an area of strong interest to me also. I have really appreciated Margaret Wheatley’s work, also Peter Senge, Dee Hock and Max DePree. “Leadership is influence” never really worked for me, and now I see it like saying “fatherhood is DNA.” If that is all a father contributes we might as well have test tube babies.
I start with the assumption that God is at work in the larger culture, and doesn’t restrict himself to working within the church. Or, if you like, we are part of the larger culture.. intended to be enfleshed within in. Sometimes we look like Jewish carpenters.. dirty, broken nails, know what I mean?
If that assumption is reasonable, then there are SOME things we can learn by observing what God is doing around us. Max DePree says that the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. In part what he is getting at is that leaders shape environments, carry ethos. I like to put it a bit differently, and maybe more strongly: leaders create culture. What does a conversation on a blog like this accomplish? You are shaping culture. We are called as an ekklesia to show forth, perform and proclaim a different kingdom with a unique Lord. We are intended to be an alternate culture among the cultures of this world. We have failed quite miserably in recent times. What kind of leadership will move us forward? Is that a fair question?
peace
len
I have many helps for discipling Christians on my web page Free tracts and sermons. Just finishing preaching on Luke and will begin on Romans.
The entire New Testament is translated from the Greek especially for translators. Three other books are in print. How to evangelize and deliver and heal are all in one teaching manual.
Most all the Bible teachings are in QUESTIONS FOR GROWING CHRISTIANS. Many true and false questions which you can prove your answers to from the Bible.