Saturday, November 12, 2016

Leading People or Managing Projects?

Published under a different title in the January 2014 issue of the Evangelical Missions Quarterly

Alan was a difficult person. We lived in the same house in Kathmandu for several months, and he could never get to dinner on time; the rest of the team usually waited a half hour or more every evening, and he’d explain that he couldn't stop work, that there was too much to do. When we suggested that he should just stop at the end of the day, he’d respond “I’m messed up; it’s because of my father.” He could be argumentative and had become a strict vegetarian because an outing to a Muslim restaurant for meat curry ended in a heated disagreement; when he reflected on what had happened, Alan said to me “I think God is telling me to stay away from meat.” And he did, for a number of years.

He was difficult to live with and work with, but he had a warm heart and he truly desired to follow Jesus Christ. So, despite his antisocial tendencies, he repeatedly signed up to work with Operation Mobilization, a very team-oriented mission agency. He was a trained mechanic and had a lot to offer an organization with a large fleet of old vehicles. But he had frequent conflict with his co-workers, so over the years he’d spend a year or two with OM, followed by a return to secular work, only to join OM again because he wasn’t satisfied with where his life was going.

During one of the years when he was at home in England, he went out regularly to distribute literature and talk to people about Jesus. He told me that one day George Verwer, the founder and (at the time) International Director of OM, had knocked on his door, asking if they could go out evangelizing together. George knew of his struggles and wanted to support and encourage him. Alan spoke of this often, that a man in major leadership, with so many burdens on his time and resources, would take a day off to spend time with an emotionally troubled ex-OMer. George had nothing personally to gain from this, but he believed it was a worthwhile use of his time.

My first perception of George Verwer's leadership was in the Summer of 1977, during an OM conference. As George was preaching I came to a sudden realization: “he really cares about us; he’s not just interested in getting some work out of us this summer, he wants us to survive and grow to spiritual maturity.” And that was the kind of leadership I experienced during the four years I spent with Operation Mobilization. For the most part, the leaders were concerned to see us grow spiritually and develop our gifts; they were more concerned about our long-term survival and growth than they were about accomplishing their goals through us.

Many years after leaving OM, a pastor in my denomination was approached by the bishop and told it was time for a change in leadership, that it was time for him to leave. He had been pastoring for over 20 years and had taken on some difficult jobs for the denomination. He had served on a number of general conference boards and was a good, solid pastor, who preached the Word and provided pastoral care for those in his church. But he didn’t fit into the bishop’s plans, so he had to move on.

I spoke to him three years later, and he told me that after he submitted his resignation not one leader contacted him to find out how he was doing. There had not been a single attempt during those three years to make sure he was OK, even though it was generally known that he had left the denomination and was no longer pastoring. His impression, he told me, was that they simply didn’t care. He wasn’t useful, in their opinion, so they were glad to have him out of the way.

The bishop who pushed for his resignation was known as a sort-of “leadership guru,” but his approach to leadership is pretty-much the opposite of George Verwer’s. I suspect he would attribute this to a difference in personality, but George’s approach is not the one that came to him naturally. (I heard once that an early team member compared his leadership style to that of Adoph Hitler!) Caring for people in trouble is not, for George, a matter of personality. But he knows that God has shown him mercy and grace beyond anything he could ever imagine, and this motivates him to show mercy and grace to others. His approach to leadership is a matter of Christian discipleship, not personality. It’s a result of the work of God over many years of following Jesus Christ. It's an issue of obedience: "As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive" (Colossians 3:12-13).

These are two very different approaches to leadership. The first type of leader is concerned about leading all those under his care to grow and develop their gifts as followers of Jesus Christ. The second type is focused on accomplishing his goals and sees those on his team as useful but expendable instruments for accomplishing them. The first approach seeks to build up and disciple all members of the church, including those in leadership roles, while the second is focused almost exclusively on bringing new members into the church. The first approach, in other words, has a larger, fuller vision for making disciples.

Jesus warned against the danger of adopting the world's assumptions about leadership when he said "You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you" (Mark 10:42-43). In addition to the specific thing He was addressing, Jesus was saying that leadership among His people is fundamentally different from leadership in the world. Oswald Sanders expands on this: "Bishop Leslie Newbigen even goes so far as to question how far the conception of leadership is one that we really ought to encourage. It is so difficult to use it without being misled by its non-Christian counterpart. The need is not so much for leaders as for saints and servants, and unless that fact is held steadily in the foreground, the whole idea of leadership training becomes dangerous. The pattern of training in Christian leadership must still be that given by our Lord in His training of the twelve" (1980. Spiritual Leadership. Chicago: Moody Press, p. 219).

The second type of leadership follows the North American corporate world in its treatment of people as a means to an end, as a way of fulfilling one's goals (often described as a God-given vision). This kind of leadership doesn't have time for people like Alan or the pastor I mentioned earlier, because they are seen as obstacles to achieving the vision. And those who are important are important primarily for their instrumental value, their usefulness. The real priority is measurable growth focused on bringing new people into the church. Those who've already been counted, or who have moved into leadership roles, are expendable.

Because it doesn't seek to care for and lead those already inside the church or in positions of pastoral leadership, this approach is inconsistent with Christian discipleship. It reflects the ambition of success-driven leaders, who, in pursuit of their goals, have lost sight of the centrality of grace and mercy in the Church and forgotten the long-suffering patience of Jesus in training His apostles. It forgets that making disciples doesn't mean completing a long list of projects in His name; it means seeking to lead all those under one's care to know and follow Him for a lifetime.

Saturday, November 5, 2016

What's So Spiritual About Spontaneity?

The pastor stepped into the pulpit and announced, "I don't have a sermon today. I have a word from the Lord." We were supposed to be impressed; not a mere sermon, a message directly from God. He then proceeded to ramble for about half an hour or so. I remember thinking afterward that he hadn't said anything that qualified as a "word from the Lord." It didn't even rise to the level of a mediocre sermon.

It's a common assumption in many churches that when God speaks He always does so right at the moment without any preparation on our part, that the work of the Holy Spirit takes place spontaneously when we're speaking, not when we're studying and preparing in advance. C.T. Studd expressed this when he advised a co-worker on the mission field, "Don't go into the study to prepare a sermon -- that's nonsense. Go into your study to God and get so fiery that your tongue is like a burning coal and you have got to speak." Preparing sermons is foolishness; what we need to do is get ourselves into a state where we are able to speak out spontaneously under the inspiration of the Spirit.

Of course, there's no reason, in principle, why God can't lead one through the process of preparation and study; there's no reason to assume that God won't speak through a preacher who has diligently prepared a sermon. The pastor with a "word from the Lord" led his congregation to expect something special that morning, when in reality what he said was predictable and mundane, pretty much what one would expect from this particular preacher speaking off the top of his head. His claim to be speaking a word from the Lord struck me as presumptuous in the extreme.

The same assumption is applied to worship and prayer: the most spiritual worship is free and spontaneous, while liturgy is what happens when the life of the Church is in decline. It's an indication of spiritual deadness. I visited an elderly man in the hospital who'd suffered one setback after another; he said to me, "I don't even know what to pray anymore," so I suggested that the Psalms could give voice to the things he was feeling. He responded with disgust, "I thought we were supposed to pray from the heart." In his mind, prayer had to be the spontaneous utterance of the moment or something was wrong with it; it was unthinkable to take words written by someone else, even the words of Scripture, and offer them to God in prayer.

Thomas Howard tells of growing up with a deeply ingrained prejudice against liturgical prayer, then finding himself enriched by worshiping in an Anglican church while he was studying in England. As he was struggling to come to terms with this, he realized that even the extempore prayers he'd learned growing up were not as spontaneous as he'd assumed and were, in fact, "made up of stock phrases strung together" (Evangelical is Not Enough, p.48).

"Spontaneity is impossible sooner or later; there only remains for us to choose which set of phrases we will make our own. The prayers of the Church lead us into regions that, left to our own resources, we might never have imagined. Also in this connection, it is worthwhile remembering that prayer is as much a matter of our learning to pray what we ought to pray as it is expressing what we feel at given moments."

When Jesus instructs his disciples, in Mark 13:11, "when they bring you to trial and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit," He's speaking about a very specific sort of situation. He's not saying "don't ever prepare in advance for anything." He's saying, "when you find yourselves in this situation, don't worry; the Spirit will give you wisdom." He's not promising the immediate, direct assistance of the Spirit every time they speak; He's promising that He will help His people when they're in over their heads and are called to speak in His name.

The idea that spontaneity in prayer, preaching and worship is the norm is based on the expectation of a direct and immediate influence of the Holy Spirit apart from any preparation and the assumption that the Spirit is quenched by the use of set forms, things prepared in advance (either by ourselves or someone in the past). Thomas Howard identifies this mindset with a second-century sectarian movement:

"No century since the first has been free from Montanism, the claim, that is, to be acting on the spur of the moment in direct response to direct and unmediated messages from the Holy Ghost. Today Montanism, more popularly known as spontaneity, is sovereign in immense reaches of both Protestantism and Catholicism" ("Contra Spontaneity," in Touchstone Journal, online).

Those who buy into this mistakenly believe they are following the example of the early Church. While there were indeed things that took place under the immediate influence of the Spirit, worship in the ancient Church had a very definite form and structure.

The Didache, parts of which were written during the apostolic period, quotes the Lord's Prayer and says, "Pray like this three times a day." It then goes on to give very explicit instructions on celebrating the Eucharist, including the prescribed prayers to use in the service. Justin, who was martyred in the mid second century, describes worship in which, after the offering of prayers

"There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands.... And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion" ("First Apology," chapter 65).

Worship in the early Church had a definite order and form; it made use of prayers and responses prepared ahead of time, which were handed on to the next generations of believers.

So, in answer to the question, what is so spiritual about spontaneity? Nothing. Spontaneity, in itself, is of no importance. Overemphasizing it is actually harmful, leading to the presumption that we are speaking in God's name and worshiping in the Spirit, when in truth we are simply rattling off our own ideas and experiencing a purely natural exhilaration that doesn't rise above the level of what one experiences at a good concert. Worship and prayer are a response to God, which implies patient listening to His Word then being trained in the responses handed to us by His Church. Rather than the pressure to have a "worship experience," we enter and find the words there waiting for us. Whether we feel exhilarated or not, we offer worship to God in faith that He hears and is pleased. And as we continue doing this over a lifetime, we internalize this responsive language and are increasingly transformed into people who are ready to worship before God's throne.