Most of the books I’ve been reading recently on leadership,
have used as epic adventure to illustrate the qualities and aspects of
leadership they are talking about.
Leonard Sweet in his book Summoned to Lead used ‘Earnest Shackleton’ whose true leadership
came when his 1914 expedition to the south pole met with disaster and his ship
aptly named ‘the endurance’ was caught and crushed by ice. Over a two year
period Shackleton was able to lead all his ships company safety home, at great
personal risk and heroic endeavour. He stepped up to the challenge of the
moment.
Tod Bolsinger in his book ‘canoeing the mountains’ uses the Lewis and Clark expedition. Lewis
and Clark had set out with a company on a river adventure up the Missouri
River, with the false expectation that they would find a water way that would
connect the east with the pacific west, only to be confronted by the vast
hostile Rocky Mountains, to achieve their mission of exploration they had to
adapt to life in the mountains. Their men had to trust them as they went off
the map into a new and for white Americans unknown environment.
They are great tales,
they capture the imagination, and are a great metaphor for the challenge
of leading a church in a world that has gone through so much rapid change, that
it no longer feels familiar, that is new and different. One of sweets other
books calls it being the church in the perfect storm.
Sometimes however it is hard to equate the leadership roles
in our congregation with those epic adventures. The everyday, week to week
month to month stuff. In the passage we are looking at today Paul asserts that
it is a trustworthy saying That whoever aspires to be an overseer or a leader
desires a noble task. That looking at providing leadership in the church is
looking at doing a good and great thing, it is a call to an epic journey
When people look for jobs and tasks they will talk of
looking for work that is “fulfilling, satisfying, financially rewarding,
enjoyable, and perhaps needed in society” but they don’t often say they are
looking for a task that is noble or good in and of itself. So what does this
passage have to say to us about leadership, remember we are looking at Paul’s
letters to his fellow workers, known as the pastoral epistles to give us
insight into Christian leadership, God’s call to maturity and ministry within
the church.
Paul had written to Timothy to encourage him in the task of
countering false teachers. Who were misleading the church away from its
mission, away from faith worked out in love to contentious arguments about
myths and genealogies, misleading them away from a life that reflects the
gospel to one that reflects the society around them. Paul had started with
prayer and public worship and how people were to act and the demeanour they
were to have that reflected the gospel. Now Paul turns to talk about leadership
for the community to continue it on the right path it needs to have the right
kind of leadership.
After his assertion that leadership is good and noble, he
gives a rundown of the qualities that are to needed when selecting Christian
leaders. The list is very similar to the one we saw in the book of Titus when
Paul told Titus to appoint elders in the church on Cyprus. There are some
things in the list that speak of what we’d call competences like being apt at
teaching and shown to be able to effectively and peaceable run the household of
God by how their home life was like.
Unlike in his letter to Titus he differentiates two
different kinds of leadership episkopos,
which means ‘overseers’ and diakonos
which we translate as deacons but means those who wait tables or serve. In the
middle of that in v14 he talks about the qualities of women in leadership,
which we shouldn’t be surprised about, before going back to some more teaching
on deacons and finally a wonderful section where he uses a hymn about Jesus
ministry and mission as a way of summing up how the church should seek to live
in pure holiness.
For the last couple of weeks, we’ve worked through the text
from 1 Timothy, word by word and line by line, and that’s been important. But
when we looked at the book of Titus earlier this year we did the same thingwith Paul’s duty code, his list of desirable traits for Christian leaders, in
that case it was elders. Today I want to explore understanding this passage in
the context of different models or understandings of Church. Because what this
passage has to say is determined by our understanding of the Church.
The first model of church is what is known as the settled
church, or the hierarchical church, which basically sees Church as an
institution, to be preserved and maintained. It is basically the model of Church
that served during Christendom, that time when the church was at the centre of European
society. I’ve illustrated that as a triangle sitting on a long side.
Theologically it says Christ is the head of the church and other positions of
leadership work their way up or down from that to lead the body of chirst.
The focus on leadership becomes about positions within that
structure and who is fit to have those positions. Historically, there have been
debates over the structure of church leadership as elsewhere Paul talks about
eldership being the model for church leadership, to which my Presbyterian heart
goes, Amen. By the second century overseer had become associated with the
office of the bishop. The oversight of a city or region being in the hands of
the bishop. Likewise deacons were seen as a position in the Church, set up to
take on the more practical jobs and roles to keep the church functioning. In our system in the old days we would have
referred to them as managers.
Character and attributes are like a check list for people to
attain those leadership offices. Arguments and decisions over who can do what
becomes almost legalistic. The husband of one wife, can a widow, or a single
man be in those positions. Can women be in leadership. It’s interesting that
the churches that are the most fervent against women in leadership are also the
ones who seem to have forgotten the idea of a married leadership and have
enshrined celibacy for their leaders.
The ministry gifts of the Holy Spirit are then identified with those
offices rather than as being given to
the whole people of God for them to minister to one another and share the
gospel.
Some see Paul’s teaching here as the beginning of the church
transitioning from a pioneering movement where leadership was from gifted
itinerants to an established institutional church. The positives of the
institutional church is that its stable, institutions are designed to maintain
the advances made in the past. However it is also open to the pitfalls that
Paul mentions for overseers to fall into the snare of pride, it can become
about status and power. You only have to
look at church history, ancient and modern to see those abuses. Institution and
all its trappings, both good and bad,
can be the thing that is worshipped not Christ. Institutions find it
hard to adapt and to be reenergised. While institutions have that idea of
permanence, they have a life cycle. A
great example is video rental stores, every block used to have one, now they
are as rare as hens teeth.
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| Greenleaf's famous model of servant leadership is a of a leader being first amongst equals. |
Another model is the servant leadership model. That
leadership is all about serving others. If it is healthy then it is a more
biblical understanding of leadership. You could say it is tips the hierarchal
model on its head, where leadership holds the church up to Christ. Overseers
elders and deacons then become about roles and functions not position and
office. They are there to serve the church. Paul’s list of qualities equally
applies, we want those who serve to be worthy of doing it, we need people with
a Christlikeness to serve as Christ served and love as Christ loved, as well as
being capable. Overseers and deacons can be seen as equals and part of a team
with different and complimentary roles, not as a hierarchy. Spiritual gifts can
be seen as given to some to help others.
The theology is good but in practise it can result in the
leaders being left to do all the work, all the heavy lifting of keeping things
going and we can forget that the purpose of the church is that we might all
grow into full holiness and godliness, our faith has its outworking in love. We
can become a served church rather than a serving church. Things are left to a
small group of people who have the curse of Atlas, to carry the world on their
shoulders and they get tired and worn out, either to be replaced or the
structure gets wobblier and wobblier and unstable. I couldn’t help but think of
a spinning top, a child’s toy, that is able to keep up on its point because it
is spinning at a certain speed, its hard to keep it at that speed, but you’ve
got to, or else it wobbles and falls flat.
We’ve seen churches that have simply dissolved and collapsed
because of the failing of one of its key components. It also lends itself to a
consumer ideal of church, we shop around till we find the place where we get
the services and service we want, and when it changes so do we.
Leadership in this model, both overseeing and serving is
seen as working so that the church is able to keep going in its mission, to
keep following to achieve what God has called us to do, corporately as
witnessing communities and to discern and clarify and direct the church in that
way. Others serve to enable us in our mission. It’s not about a position or
office, or a role that need to be fulfilled, but rather it is the how we are to
do what God calls us to do. The rugby vernacular is that we have leaders all
over the field working for a common vision. The qualities of leadership that Paul lists of
both groups are indicators that the person we select for leadership has their
lives attuned and resonating with Christ and his mission. There marital life,
family life, their relationship with wealth, their appetite focused on
following Christ. Men and women. By the way biblical scholars think that Paul’s
mention of women means he was open to women deacons, but I wonder if here Paul
didn’t leave the door open for women overseers as well, he has to mention
women’s exemplary behaviour because in roman society none of them would have
been the heads of households, so their ability in that area couldn’t be
tested. The overseers are apt to teach
as they have their lives attuned to Christ and are passionate about Christ’s
mission. How they are seen by those outside is significant because they are
witnessing to Christ (the same as the other models but in this one its an
important part of who they are and their leadership role). Serving deacons
becomes the things that need to be done practical and spiritual to fulfil God’s
mission. We can all exercise leadership as we see where we are and we nudge
ourselves and our community forward in following Christ. Change is still hard and difficult, and I
recently read a definition of missional leadership as being the art of disappointing
people at a pace they can endure. But we change because we are on the mission
God has called us for an epic journey unique to each faith community.
Appeared in flesh
Was vindicated by the Spirit
Was seen by angels
Was preached among the nations
Was believed on in the world
Was taken up in glory.
…Are you ready for
the noble task.
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