On Christian Leadership

This posting is a mixture of a review/summary of the following book as well as some of my own thoughts on Christian leadership and the church.

S  H  R  I  N  K

by Tim Shuttle

Zondervan, 2015

Walter Bruggeman, Columbia Theol. Sem., writes in an endorsement: Tim Suttle calls us to:

faithfulness, not success

story, not strategy

virtue, not technique

cooperation, not competition

Scott McKnight, NT Prof, Northern Sem., writes in the forward:

“Tim Suttle wants us to focus on … the local church, the Kingdom of God at work in the here and now in our situation… tired of global visions that suck the energy out of the local church, of plans to change the world that ignore the local church, and of hopes to be significant at the expense of being faithful in the context of the local church.”

“Tim Suttle is not reading leadership literature - [he] is reading the Bible” and wants “cruciform love, justice, peace and authenticity emerging from the local church.”

For too long the church and its leaders have focussed on a certain type of leadership leading to a certain type of success. The problem is, those patterns and goals and how to reach them were based in business. Trust America to turn everything into a slave of the capitalistic free enterprise vision. It was the last gasp of Christendom. 

In its wake we have people like those above, Stanley Hauerwas and the authors of “Slow Church” and “Simple Church” turning our heads, hearts and souls in a different direction. They are turning us back to the Lord and the Bible and the way the church was before Christendom. They are turning us back to focus on Jesus as our leader and the Bible as our guidebook, not some leadership guru with books, DVDs and great conferences suggesting their ability.

This movement also brings back a healthy return to consider the world God put at our mercy when he commands us to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and have dominion over it (Genesis 1:26-29), which we have too long interpreted as meaning to use the earth for our supposed benefit in ways that have removed us from thinking we are a part of it, separated us from the land and creation, leaving it ruined instead. 

Anabaptist writer David Augsburger recently wrote about how we need a tripolar theology involving God, ourselves and others. I like how our church member and peacebuilder in the Philippines, Dann Pantoja, has encapsulated some of the thinking in the above paragraph using the cross to symbolize a four-armed theology. We need to be reconciled to God above by the vertical upper, the land and all of creation apart from humanity by the arm extending down below and ourselves on the one hand, internally, and our neighbours on the other hand, externally, by the lateral arms. 

This re-visiting of our theology has also brought with it a re-envisioned eschatology. The theology of the last millennium plus has been accused of often being too otherworldly. This went along with how we were ruining our world. We desperately needed the new world we understood the Bible to tell us was coming to replace what we were leaving in ashes. The beautiful liberating view of the new-old eschatology is that Christ is returning yes, but that he, God, is coming back to earth to be our leader and make his home with us here. Redemption will see this beautiful earth restored to the Eden God created through Christ  and meant us to enjoy. 

Suttle writes on in chapter 1, Success, pg. 14:

“The church, like a healthy farm, has limits… it is not our creation, it is God’s. The church was here before got here and will outlast every single one of us. Our job is stewardship (italics Suttle’s): to leave the church better than e found it, and to cause the church to serve the world around us, not the productivity demands of the leadership… meant to be holy thing - which sees the value of he parish, speaks the language of the neighbourhood, and understands what the community needs to flourish.” 

Pg. 15 - “If we are going to be wise stewards of the church, we need to recognize what nearly all of our most celebrated contemporary church leaders have failed to teach us: that the church does not belong to us; it is we who belong to the church. We are not making the church; the church is making us. We cannot determine its success, its mission, or its outcomes.”

Under a new subheading, A New Leadership Narrative, Suttle writes on page 23: “I’ve come to believe that the most important things about a Christian leader is not that they are leaders, but that they are Christian (italics his) leaders. Leading in the way of Jesus is a particular mode of leadership that must adhere to the pattern of life Jesus recommended.”

Now there is a sentence to ‘unpack.’ I would add not only that Jesus recommended but perhaps even more so, what he demonstrated. And with that I would go back to the beginning, when God planned that eventually the final way to fully and completely show who he was and how he gets things done, and therefore wants us to do things, is to come and be one of us, to live fully among us as a human. That itself says a lot about how we should function as Christians in the world, the place we have been placed,  including leaders. 

Too often our leaders are too distant from their supposed followers. The more ‘successful’ they are, the more elevated above their church members they become. That was not the way of the Early Church. If you read the Early Fathers, as the writers of that period have come too be called, leaders were very accountable. Their personal life had to be exemplary if they wished to aspire to leadership. They were not leaders to direct some strategy or implement some program. They were leaders by virtue of their changed behaviour as Christians. That was the measuring stick - character. Even the Apostle Paul already told those he had worked among to imitate him, by which he meant his lifestyle, how he expressed the nature of Christ in his everyday interactions.  

Going on Suttle writes, still on pg. 23, “The Christian leader is called not primarily to e effective, but to be faithful and to practice leadership in the way of Jesus no matter what the perceived results may be.”

I would add that from my understanding of the Jesus way of leadership it is a way of humility as a shepherd. It is a way of servanthood; shepherds were servants. They looked after others’ sheep. This becomes more significant when we remind ourselves that shepherd were, socially, at the bottom of the totem pole in Jesus’ time. Yet they were the ones the angels came to at his birth, which only adds to the weight of seeing this form of leadership as the Christian one. Was God already giving us hint of who Jesus was to be? Then, of course, Jesus referred to himself as a shepherd, the Good Shepherd, whose sheep know his voice [John 10:4-5]. How many of our leaders’ voices are really known by their sheep? Too many only hear the voices of the leadership gurus coming through versus really knowing their shepherds. Jesus said in vs. 11, “The Good Shepherd puts the sheep before himself, sacrificing himself if necessary.” Again, today’s leaders tend to put themselves first and expect the sheep to make sacrifices themselves to help the leaders fulfil their plans. 

From 24: “Most of the church leadership conversation today has its footing squarely in the culture (to which Suttle and I would both add business) narrative… getting things done and growing a ministry we can be proud of,” focussing on “best practices… results… effectiveness… We crave practical advice that will help us to be bigger, better and so on.”  

“Christian leadership operates with a completely different basic assumption. Our most basic conviction is that the kingdom of God has come and is coming in and through Jesus Christ. We cannot accomplish the kingdom of God; it is the work of God. Our job is to be faithful to the ways of Jesus, not the ways of our culture. The Christian leader does not pursue success or results the way the CEO of a Fortune 500 company does. The Christian leader pursues faithfulness…

Christian leaders are meant to model their lives and leadership practices on the life of Jesus. This means the they can never have the [pg. 25] assurance of predictable results. We lead in the way of Christ and leave the results up to God. Faithfulness, not success is our goal. The goal of Christian leadership is always and only ever faithfulness in the way of Jesus (italics Suttle’s).”

On pg. 26 Suttle echoes what I wrote about early church leaders above: “I have become convinced that the Christian leader’s first job is to become a good and virtuous human being and a good and virtuous leader, and then to leave the questions of growth and perceived success in the hands of God.”