A re: Leadership / Guest Post

This post is taken verbatim from an email my husband A has written to a mutual friend regarding the theme of leadership. It is too good, and too full of what we have discussed in recent months, not to share here, as it reflects a lot of where we have got to in our current spiritual process.
Take it away, Mr A!

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Here a just a few thoughts from which you could go in any direction you like! The main thing is to find where your heart is at. If none of this registers with you, don't use any of it! It's just me spewing out thoughts.

1) What are you leading?

It depends on what you believe church in general, and XX in particular, is supposed to be about.

If you see XX through the lens of "business" and "organisation" (the models that I think have most shaped how we do church in the Western world) then you will tend to assume leaders of churches should have the same qualities as leaders of companies: charisma, dominance, gregariousness and superstardom... the ability to lead (or at least give the appearance of doing so!) in every situation. Happily, even business nowadays is waking up to the fact that this "extrovert" ideal doesn't necessarily make a good CEO, e.g. the richest man on the planet is Bill Gates who is an introvert. But don't let me get distracted on the extrovert/introvert thing!
The point is that leadership in the last century or so has been very much about "the culture of personality" e.g. "how to make friends and influence people" instead of what it was for centuries before that: "the culture of character", e.g. "character, the grandest thing in the world". It has redefined success to be the result of "performance" rather than "virtue", or perhaps, in Christian language, "gifts" rather than "character". Even business nowadays is tending towards defining successful leadership as much in terms of character as ability, e.g. openness to experience, emotional stability, conscientiousness and agreeability.
When business or Christian leaders fail, it isn't usually due to their lack of ability but their lack of character. It's not that we don't need gifts. Indeed, as Christians, it's not legal to choose between gifts and character. We need both. But that's the point. We need both. For too long the emphasis has been too much on gifting and too little on character. Indeed, again, Bill Johnson would say that leadership is 95% character and 5% gifting. The gift can be trained. But the character has to be grown in real life in order to withstand the pressures greater responsibility places on us.

If you see XX through the lens of "family", then the leaders you are looking for are more like mums and dads and big brothers and big sisters. I'll make a crude and unfair comparison between a business-type leader and a father to show you what I mean.
A leader has a vision that is to be achieved through tasks. A father has a family that is to be grown through relationships. A leader is more task oriented. A father is more relationship oriented. A leader will form relationships in order to get the task done. A father will look for good things to do with the family he actually has. A leader will sacrifice relationships for the sake of a task. A father will sacrifice tasks for the sake of a relationship. A leader will try to reproduce themselves in others so that they can do his tasks in his way to achieve his vision. A father will raise and release his children to be whatever they are made to be. A leader is happy if he remains in control. A father is happy if his children surpass him.
Like I said, the comparison is unfair, but it does show that the values of business and family are very different. A business has a task to do if it is to remain in business. Therefore everything has to be focused on, and sacrificed for, the sake of the task. It's completely understandable. But a family doesn't exist under that kind of pressure, so need not be managed on those kind of principles. So, the question you could ask is: what does a successful family look like? An environment where kids are raised to heathy adults? An environment where we treat adults like adults? An environment that is open to adopting new family members without seeing that as a disruption? That will then determine the kind of leaders you want, or want to become, and how you will behave towards your followers.

Personally, I believe that if the King is Love and the Kingdom runs on loving him and loving people, then love, i.e. relationship, not task, is the most fertile thing in the universe. Yes, love leads us to doing things, of course. But someone needs to be loved, i.e. love doesn't exist without relationship. As an introvert, I dread a commune, or "one big happy family"! But I am also aware that, even as an introvert, I am still nourished, and able to nourish, in communion with (in my case, a few) others. And if we must talk about tasks like "discipleship" and "evangelism" (and we must!) then I believe they can only be done effectively through relationship anyway. The trouble is that our church life often takes so much energy out of us that we don't have time for relationships with each other or those around us. Our focus on the task has taken away our time and energy from the only thing that can actually fulfil that task: relationship. My opinion.

2) What does the Bible say about leadership?

I would say, "Start with Jesus" but I also recognise that all of us look at Jesus through the lenses of our culture, which is worlds apart from his! Nevertheless, rightly interpreted, he is obviously our model. It's often called "servant leadership" or as Bill Johnson likes to say, "He ruled with the heart of a servant and served with the heart of a king." The authority we are given positions us for more effective service: to do more good to more people. That's the only reason authority is given. Jesus washing the disciples' feet in John 13 comes to mind: "This is what 'Teachers' and 'Lords' do". Jesus' response to James and John in Matthew 20 and Mark 10 comes to mind: "The way the Gentiles do leadership is by exercising authority over people. But that's not how I do it and nor should you. I came to serve. If you want authority then become a servant, because only servants are given authority."

Three key passages in the letters are: Titus 1:5-9 and 1 Timothy 3:1-13, where Paul lists what a leader looks like as far as he is concerned, and 1 Peter 5:1-4, where Peter appeals to his fellow elders to be examples to, and carers of, the people entrusted to them. As you can imagine, the two words that leap out of these passages to me are "family" and "character". Paul doesn't see how anyone can manage a church family if they can't manage their own family. And Paul sees proven character and spirituality, grown in real family life, as necessary to sustain someone in greater responsibility and therefore greater exposure. The only "gift" he seems to mention is the ability to teach the truth, but I don't see that necessarily as being "the spiritual gift of teaching" identified in Romans 12. In order to have lived the lives they have so that they have the character that qualifies them for leadership, they must have had some ability to recognise, put into practice and speak about what is true in the context of their family life. Truth always brings freedom (John 8:32).

3) What about the spiritual gift of leadership in Romans 12?

I think this is very important, so long as we understand what we mean by it. A lot of Christian books I have read define this gift like our extrovert CEO above. But that presupposes that church should look like a business... and so on! Here's what I think it is more about.
As the saying goes, "If someone thinks they are leading but no one is following them, that person is just going for a walk!" If people are following us, no matter how surprising that is, then we carry some kind of leadership gift. If they aren't, we don't. Having the job title does not give us the gift. We all know the teachers at school we respected and those we didn't. It wasn't so much about their knowledge of the subject or the techniques with which they delivered it. It was the authority they carried.
A gift can be trained, but its absence cannot be replaced by training. It's a gift, not an achievement. It's not the loudest voice, the most eloquent voice, nor the most frequently heard voice; it's the voice that carries spiritual authority. Look at some of the other 7 gifts in Romans 12. When the true gift of prophecy speaks, the Body recognises God's voice. When the true gift of encouragement speaks, the Body goes on its way rejoicing. When the true gift of mercy speaks, the Body is comforted. Likewise, when the true gift of leadership speaks, the Body follows. It's not about personality. It is about spiritual authority. Some English versions of the Bible actually translate the word as "rule" not "lead", which perhaps captures the sense of it better. We can only rule to the extent we have authority to do so.

Don't think I have any concerns about you as a team when I say this. It's just to make the point clear. I don't think we can lead a spiritual environment without the spiritual gift of leadership somewhere in the mix. We can only occupy the position of leadership, while our people actually follow those among us who do have the gift!

Because of our Western interpretation of "church as organisation" I think we have been too quick to turn the "gifts" into "offices" with names on the door, like "leader" or "pastor". While St Paul was obviously applying what he understood of Jesus' message to the situation of his time, not ours, I think it is important to notice that he did not make the association between "spiritual gift", i.e. an ability of Holy Spirit needed by the Body to function, and "elder", i.e. the office caring for a part of the Body. He deals with each matter separately.
He seems to me to identify 3 kinds of spiritual gift: wiring, tools and jobs. The Romans 12:6-8 gifts seem to be about the way we are wired to function with Holy Spirit in the Body. The 1 Corinthians 12:4-10 gifts seem to be the tools Holy Spirit makes available to the Body to use for the good of all. The Ephesians 4:11 gifts seem to be jobs that Holy Spirit gives people to raise the Body up to the full maturity of Christ. The Body needs all of these gifts, and none of us have all of them. But St Paul treats them all as functions and gifts, not positions and achievements. He deals with positions, i.e elders and helpers, separately, without listing the spiritual gifts they must have.

Why did I say all that? Just to say that I think, biblically, an elder needs to be a mum or a dad, not an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher. If they happen to be one of those as well, that's no problem. Just don't confuse, say, the function of pastoring with the office of elder. They are different things. One can be a good pastor and a lousy elder and vice-versa! The job of an elder is primarily to rule, not to pastor...
and in case you hadn't already guessed, I have mischievously singled out "pastor" here precisely because it is the term we commonly use for "church leader", just to get you thinking about what leadership is actually about. While I don't object to the term being used in that way, or have a problem with pastors being leaders, I'm just suggesting they mean separate things in the Bible, which frees us to focus on what we actually mean by leadership.

4) "A house divided against itself cannot stand" (Matthew 12:25)

One final point that may no longer be relevant depending where your team is at in their process. Unity does not mean uniformity. Indeed, unity embraces diversity. That's what it means to be the Body. Every tribe and nation throughout all of history is represented. So, if we make agreement the basis of unity then we are doomed to failure. That's why we have so many different protestant denominations today. Most of them actually do agree on the basics of the creeds, but have divided over relatively minor issues.

However, I really do think there are limits to how far we can disagree with one another and maintain unity. True relationship can only exist to the extent there is a shared view of reality. Indeed, the correct way to understand "repentance" is as a change of mind, a buying into God's version of reality as opposed to our own. Repentance and forgiveness are made available precisely so that relationship can be restored and deepened.
It's not so much about offence. It's just that there are places that God and I cannot go together until I am on the same page as he is. It's exactly the same dynamic between human beings. Our ability to grow, and work, with people depends on how similar our beliefs and values are. Differences in beliefs and values need not be cause for hostility. But they do limit what is possible between us.

Imagine a building with four walls and a window in each wall. Four people, one looking through each window, will see the same reality but from a different perspective. That is healthy. That is why we need each other. As we listen to one another our understanding of the whole increases. But what I'm talking about is when people are not even looking into the same building!

"Agreeing to disagree" is an honest and helpful moment of clarity in a process, but not a position from which we can lead. It's the point at which we recognise we are divided and are therefore incapable of leading until we deal with the division, as I'm sure you now know only too well! Either the two sides need to bless one another and separate, or the two sides need to work together until they can see the same reality. But all the time they are divided, the house is crumbling around them. Unity builds. Division demolishes. By definition. No exceptions. No matter what name you give to it to make it sound better.

To put a positive spin on this, how does growth happen? Cells form and divide. Sometimes two perfectly good visions cannot coexist without competing with one another. Sometimes two valid, but different, cultures cannot coexist without sucking the life out of each other. In the context of all of space and time, no one group of Christians can represent all expressions of the kingdom. It is not an act of disloyalty to part company with blessing in order to free both sides to pursue what is truly in their respective hearts. Loyalty is a virtue, but when its fruit is a crumbling house, then it is misplaced loyalty. It is then loyalty to loyalty rather than loyalty to the Kingdom.

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Well, I hope some of those thoughts were helpful. If not, you've just read my journal for today! It was useful to me to see where I'm at on my journey, even if it wasn't useful for you!