What is the role of leadership in the Church?
I read I Am a Follower last weekend. A couple days ago we looked at some of the ideas about leadership within the local church. So assuming that we should, in fact, have leaders in the body of Christ, what should they do?
Author Leonard Sweet bases a lot of his book on Jesus’ leadership model in the gospels, but stops before Acts. It may leave his readers with an incomplete picture of Church leadership. Let’s see.
In the chapter titled, “From Sages and Gurus to Scouts and Sherpas,” Sweet writes,
“Those in the Jesus Seminary of followership didn’t spend a lot of time hammering out the nuances of a doctrine and theological correctness. Instead, they were brought in up close and personal and encouraged to probe and prove a life lived for God, to mix their own lives into the mesh of the Master” (Loc 3666).
That was true for three years.
But Acts 6, for example, tells us about a difficulty in the first Church food pantry.
Acts tells us that “the twelve,” which sounds like a title, “summoned” the rest of the believers, which implies that they had some authority the others recognized. They told them, “It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.”
If a church staffer made that comment today he’d be sneered at. What do you mean the Children’s Pastor didn’t stay late to help clean up? Who do you think you are?
But “the twelve” asked for a few good men to handle it, so they could, “give [themselves] continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 4:6). And everyone realized that was a really good idea.
Later in Acts, when the Lord sent Ananias to a blind Paul, He called Paul, “a chosen vessel.” Galatians 1 tells us what happened to Paul after that encounter: how he secluded himself to receive the revelation of Jesus Christ, who is the Word made flesh.
He disappeared for three years, and later wrote the theological masterpiece that we know as Romans.
In I Am a Follower, Sweet writes,
“And first followers don’t dispense wisdom from on high. They simply follow Jesus in step with others … sharing traveling tips with those who have joined the pilgrimage more recently” (Loc 3679).
The passage seems to speak more to the attitude than the actual deed, and I get that.
Arrogance is not acceptable in Church leaders. Abuse of power is inexcusable. And neither is the norm, despite some of our personal experiences, or misunderstandings, or the media’s thirst for scandal.
And, hurt as some of us have been in the name of Church Leadership, our part is to forgive guilty individuals and resist the urge to scream that the sky is falling.