WiseReader

Thom Rainer posted a short piece on leadership today that has me thinking about contemporary views of pastoral leadership and ministry.

Rainer opens:

Every organization has seasons where different leadership styles are more effective. There are times where the organizational culture resists change significantly. An aggressive change leader can become alienated or fired quickly. Indeed the entire organization may implode if change is pushed too quickly. These are times when leadership by incrementalism (what I have coined as “eating the elephant”) is in order.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is leadership by urgency. The leader recognizes that the organization may not survive the years ahead unless dramatic changes are made. There is really no option to move slowly. There is growing evidence of more leaders moving in this direction in these changing and disruptive times in which we live. Read the entire post here.

Thom Rainer is no stranger to the demands of leadership. Currently the president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, Rainer is also the founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism. From 1990-2005, he led the Rainer Group, a consulting firm focused on helping churches and denominations increase their effectiveness. A prolific writer, he has penned twenty-two books, his latest , I Am a Church Member, scheduled for release in 2013 by B&H Publishing.

In his post, Rainer highlights the key features of both styles of leadership: incrementalism and urgency. He says the lists depict the two extreme ends of the spectrum, noting that most often one will be somewhere in the middle, though it seems to me that Rainer prefers to tilt in the direction of urgency.

As I read the two descriptions, I was struck by the language employed. While Rainer does not direct his remarks particularly to the church, his lists, when applied to the church – and I think many of his readers will do just that – smacks of the business model view of leadership so typical in North American Christianity.

Of course churches are organizations as well as organisms and need strong leadership and good administration. But is the business model really the NT model for doing church? Are pastors (too often viewed by others, and themselves) really meant to be CEO’s? Is the NT shepherd synonymous with the 21st century understanding of the CEO pastor?

1 Peter 5:1–5 (ESV)
So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: ² shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; ³ not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. ⁴ And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. ⁵ Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Peter’s exhortation to pastors doesn’t sound like he views them as CEO’s. I believe the scales have tipped too far – we have embraced the business model for ministry. As such, far too many pastors view congregants as consumers of our products, not so much a people needing shepherds. Eugene Peterson said it best in Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Wm B. Eerdmans, 1987 & 1993):

American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.

Peterson doesn’t leave it there. He explicitly lays out what he sees as the problem:

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns – how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.

Some of the are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.

Stinging words for those of us who serve in pastoral roles, but I believe they are profoundly true in our time.

We tend toward promoting and celebrating pastors who are strong, dynamic and aggressive get-the-job-done leaders while growing frustrated with pastors wanting to invest their time praying for their flock and with their flock. We are too impatient to see the long-term value of one-on-one discipling, of getting to know our people by seeing them in their homes and workplaces.

We increasingly demand our pastors look and perform like Fortune 500 executives. We crave social-media savvy leaders with Klout. We want them to be performers, to look and sound professional. And as long as they can produce – keep growing the organization (church) – we assume God is blessing, leaders are leading, and Christians are growing.

Thom Rainer’s article is interesting and informative – helpful in identifying leadership style and substance. His observations invite careful reflection.

But when it comes to the church, Eugene Peterson’s model of pastoral leadership is the healthy choice.