Godgrown

I think this metaphor misses it in many ways. We are not a flock of birds, alone in our journey, with only our instinct to guide us. Instinct, I think, has little to do with church leadership. We have almost 2k years of the Church, thousands (tens, hundreds of thousands?) of saints, the writings of the church, and of course the Scriptures to guide us. Instinct, if we indeed have anything like it, usually takes us away from God. When we do see “instinct” in someone that leads them towards God, it is a finely honed, disciplined, practiced walk with God, rather than something we all as Christians possess.

Another way this misses the mark is that not all of us want to be leaders, at least not in the perhaps worldly way that we tend to think of leadership. I have some experience with that: in our church in Seattle we attempted a very democratic way of organizing our Sunday liturgy -EVERYBODY was expected to take a turn at planning it. Unfortunately, not everyone was good at it and some that were were not interested in doing it. It just didn’t work out.

Where this metaphor is valid though is when we put leadership in its proper context: the “leader” as we tend to think of him/her should be perhaps the least important person in the church. In this way everyone “gets their turn”: the children lead, the humble lead, the weak lead, the skilled lead, the “leader” leads, but everyone serves. Everyone must submit to each other. The church is not just a spiritual body – it is also a physical body and even worldly, in a way of thinking. However, we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that this worldly face is worth anything, that “leadership” is worth anything, or that it is actually the whole of the church. If we ignore the leadership of the humble the church will be an empty shell, no matter if it looks like it is going somewhere or not.

Mark, I like this a lot. The idea that there is a rotation works really well if leadership is understood to be among peers. Leadership in the home is different because its symbiotic. I and my wife were part of the birthing process for God to bring our child into the world and are responsible thus to provide an environment that treats parenting as a stewardship of our relationship to our child, not a leadership position. Parenting requires leadership like a house requires walls. So parenting isn’t leadership, it just requires leadership to be done and there is no use comparing or separating them. What parenting doesn’t require but actually should be – is stewardship. Parents don’t have to think like or be stewards to be parent their children but they do have to be leaders, its inherent to the process. So stewardship is the challenge.

The connection for me is that new birth requires leadership. The kind of leadership that you are talking about is leadership shared among peers who, generally speaking, are at very similar levels of competence, maturity and communicated investment. I love the idea of a 12 year old leading a Bible study, as long as they understand that they are doing so with encouragement and “leadership” from a group of people who represent the flock of birds responsible for rotating the front lead. Over exposure to leadership responsibilities for those not ready or seasoned can lead to immense damage or debilitating pride.

So it seems that it is better to have a group of leaders sharing the front who represent different ilks of influence, gifting and personality. They all can provide an environment where those that are birthed and/or are maturing can grow in praxis and conviction. At the end of the day it does take a group of people to determine who is growing, how they can help them grow and at what stage of growth or need for birth they are at. Whoever ends up doing this will be by default – the leaders. They should represent a variety of influences and giftings and experiences as much as possible. Regardless, whomever ends up evaluating those that are growing and providing the environment for growth and maturity to take place – they are the leaders and the others aren’t.

The point though for leaders is to not be leaders from a desire for power but from a desire to ultimately empower others through their self designed disempowerment as they transfer power and decision making to increasingly competent and maturing individual and communities. (This is all very ideal – but that is the nature of theory)

I think what you’re getting at, is that at whatever point a community is at in that process different members of the leading community need to be the “point person” and take the helm. After they’ve taken the helm for whatever project or period of time that they were needed, they then give up the “point person” positioning as a reflection of how they need to be growing in health and encouraging the community to grow in health. this is done by leaders making space for other leaders to lead and by “making sheep into shepherds” as they mature. The leaders are ultimately supposed to work themselves out of a job continuously in order to reflect health, accountability,.proper pedagogy and continual community transformation. Leadership is then a paradox – Leaders are people who work themselves out of leadership continuously in order to empower others, thereby solidly establishing their identity as leaders and hence their leadership.

I like your idea as well, because the birds are from Canada.

Cool continuation Mark! Teaching a man how to fish starts when he’s a child. What would you say to the idea empowering leaders who are in the same age bracket and life experience as you but because of circumstances or historical hardships have been held back in their ability to mature in certain areas of life, practice or propriety?

I’m thinking of post-colonialism – the leadership (albeit that it sucked and was imperialistic) of the colonial era was static until it was removed. The removal was so swift and many times so pervasive that the leadership vacuum in many of these countries was more like a leadership black hole that swallowed them up. Only now are some of these countries pulling themselves out of the ruin, civil unrest and tragedy of post colonial vacancies and tragedies. Many were expected to operate within systems created by the Western imperialists immediately upon the exiting of the Western colonialists which left them in a state of shock. The same thing was true after slavery was outlawed here in the US. Those transitions were so upending that they essentially forced a global “revolution” upon each of the countries that they left behind. We bemoan other “revolutions” that took place but colonialism created violent “revolutions” all over the world in less than 20 years by just leaving countries behind to figure things out on their own without little to no transition time.

Just wondered what your thoughts were on that stuff. In your opinion, how should leaders be empowered who are in this frame of mind? The reason I ask, is that when an older individual finds Christ, though they are a new birth spiritually, their age allows them to perceive their faith from a somewhat “spiritual post-colonialism” especially if they are the same age as us or older. The organic process is much more straight forward when the spiritual growth can somewhat match the natural humanistic growth of the individual. I’ve often wondered how to work with those who are older when they come to faith and it seems that their process mirrors more of the post-colonial mind-scape. Thoughts?