Director, Theology Worship and Education
“Leadership” is a growth industry. Books about leadership are best sellers, leadership seminars draw big crowds and universities offer degrees in leadership. Some leadership books are good, some seminars offer useful tips, and some degree programs help to prepare creative and effective managers and executives. But most promise more than they deliver.
A feature common to most of the American “leadership” industry is reliance on technique. The industry promises that if the proper lessons are learned and the appropriate processes are followed, anyone can become an effective leader, thus benefitting an entire organization. This feature of the leadership industry is present even when it is applied to leadership in the church. There is no shortage of books and seminars for church leaders that promise “proven ways” to lead congregations forward to new levels of growth and maturity.
Missing from most church leadership materials is the insight of David Chai, Associate for Asian-American Leadership in the General Assembly Mission Council’s Evangelism and Church Growth Ministries: “Christian leadership is followership.” Christian leaders are, first of all, followers of Jesus Christ, disciples of the church’s Lord. Discipleship is not merely a platitude to be acknowledged briefly before moving on to the practical wisdom of leadership gurus. “Followership” is demanding and all consuming. “If any want to become my followers,” said Jesus, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24).
John Calvin was a purposeful, effective leader of church reformation, in Geneva and across Europe. He has been inaccurately caricatured as “the dictator of Geneva,” a despot who terrorized the populace into submission to his iron will. In reality, he was a pastor who knew that leadership belonged to Christ, and that pastors were among the sheep that belonged to the flock of the Good Shepherd. In a particularly lovely portion of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, he writes:
We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours.
Conversely, we are God’s: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God’s: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal. (Institutes 3.7.1.)
For Christians, self-denial is not a negative abdication of responsibility or the refusal to exercise initiative. Rather, it is a positive recognition that because we are God’s, our lives can strive toward service to God that overflows into service to people near and far. This leads to an exercise of leadership in the church that understands itself as grateful discipleship in service to the church’s Lord. Again, Calvin is insightful:
When Scripture bids us leave off self-concern, it not only erases from our minds the yearning to possess, the desire for power, and the favor of men, but it also uproots ambition and all craving for human glory and other more secret plagues. Accordingly, the Christian [leader] must surely be so disposed and minded that he feels within himself it is God he has to deal with throughout his life. (Institutes 3.7.2.)
Congregational Ministries Publishing is committed to providing church leaders — teachers, educators and pastors — with resources that will help Christians of all ages to know and live the gracious reality that “we are not our own ... conversely, we are God’s.” |
