During the French Revolution, a general looked over his balcony at a river of people rushing through the streets toward the Bastille. Spinning on his heel he shouted to his aide, “Quick. My tunic and my sword. I am their leader and I must follow them.”
A pastor is often in a similar situation as he confronts the question, “When do I lead and when do I follow?” If the church were organized as a disciplined army marching in lockstep toward a single objective, there would be no conflict. Decisions about mission, goals, strategies, and tactics would be made in the pastor-general’s staff room. Every recruit would learn the two rules of military decision-making: The pastor-general is always right. And, if in doubt, obey the first rule.
Despite the vigor with which we sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” a congregation is not an army. It can better be compared to a university faculty or a hospital staff. They are “organized anarchies.” Some semblance of corporate structure is necessary to help them do their job, but professors and physicians retain a stubborn independence that sometimes borders on anarchy. Because they are experts in their fields, and colleagues with their leaders, professors and physicians refuse to be put into the square boxes or obey the black lines of authority on organizational charts.
Parishioners are also equally independent, but not for the same reasons. They do not claim to be theological experts or professional colleagues with their pastor. Rather, they are independent because they are volunteers who can leave at any time?and they often do. More than that, parishioners are peers in Christ with their pastor. Before God, all persons are equal, and in the Body of Christ, all persons are brothers and sisters. That means, in management terms, the organization of the church has to be either flat or round. Any attempt to superimpose an organizational and hierarchical pyramid upon the church is to invite rebellion. For this reason, churches join universities and hospitals as the most difficult organizations to lead. No wonder a pastor looks at the movement of his people, calls for the symbols of his ministerial authority, and exclaims with the French general, “I am their leader, and I must follow them.”
The Leader-Follower Paradox
A pastor who is troubled by the contradictions of his leader-follower role needs to know that conflict and paradox are inherent in the nature of the Church, specifically its purpose, its use of power, and its standards of performance.
At first thought, the purpose of a church seems clear. Obedient to the Great Commission, a church is to preach the Gospel and disciple believers. But wait. Compare the answers a church member and a General Motors employee would give to the question, “What is the primary purpose of your organization?” Without hesitation, the General Motors employee would answer, “To produce cars at a profit.” Immediately, an organizational pyramid designed to produce cars at a profit comes to mind. Authority flows downward to the assembly line through a division of labor; responsibility moves upward to the chairman of the board through the supervisory ranks. Everyone knows where the buck stops. The chairman of the board either produces cars at a profit or is replaced.
Such a simple answer cannot be expected from a church member. If every Christian answered “To save souls,” the church could be organized like General Motors and the pastor would have no leader-follower conflict. But, alas, the Great Commission permits infinite variation on its interpretations. In contrast with the hard-nosed, impersonal, and singular purpose of General Motors, the Great Commission for the church is an ideal, involving people who cannot be stamped out on a spiritual assembly line. Although the pastor can lead with the inspiration of the Great Commission and with the resources of the Holy Spirit, neither one fits an organizational chart. Consequently, the purpose of the church is not a closed issue, and the practice of the church will not be photocopied in heaven. To translate the Great Commission into a working principle, the pastor must live with the contradic-
David L. McKenna is president of Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, Washington. He is author of The Jesus Model (Word Books).
tion of being a leader-follower.
Power is another source of conflict for the pastor. By one definition, power is the ability to influence people and decisions in an organization. Two facts about it affect the pastor’s leadership role: First, power may be formal or informal. Formal power is positional influence, usually represented by such symbols of authority as the general’s tunic or the minister’s gown. Informal power is personal influence, usually residing in an individual who may hold no position but who has the power of persuasion. Every pastor has experienced working with a person who is the informal leader of the congregation. Without his or her approval, even the best of the pastor’s recommendations will be contested, revised, or defeated.
Second, power is inelastic. The supply does not increase upon demand. It is like a pie. No matter how many pieces you cut, there is only so much to go around. So, with each piece that is cut, someone’s share is reduced.
In a highly structured organization, formal power rules. A military general or a corporate president will retain his dominance of formal power in order to counter any insurgence of informal leadership. Churches are different. A pastor shares his power, not only with his staff, but with lay leadership. In most churches, commissions and boards of laypersons function like legislative bodies in a check-‘ and-balance system. The result is that the church is not an efficient organization. Just last week, a frustrated contractor told me that he had to pull his crew off a church remodeling job for three weeks because the building committee could not decide on the kind of windows they wanted in the foyer. Participatory democracy is priceless, but costly.
A pastor’s leadership is impacted by the shared power structure in a church organization. Authority can be delegated to laypersons, but the pastor cannot delegate his responsibility. To add to the problem, the pastor must learn to lead by persuasion as well as by position. More and more he will have to climb down from his ministerial pedestal and contend for his position nose-to-nose with an equally persuasive lay leader. In each case, the traditional idea of pastoral dominance gives way to a leader-follower role.
Standards of performance also create tension for pastors in the organization of the church. A popular cliche is, “It’s what’s on the bottom line that counts.” The term “bottom line” comes from the profit and loss statement of a corporation where presumably nothing but performance counts.
Churches are organized for process, not performance. Like universities and hospitals, their concern is quality, not quantity. Hospitals, for instance, are dedicated to health, but no one expects them to publish a “bottom line” report on wins and losses with life and death. Universities are now resisting attempts to measure student outcomes on a quantitative performance scale. Basic competency in reading, writing, and speaking may be one thing, but who can measure the critical thought, the creative impulse, or the moral insight?
Performance in a church is equally hard to measure. John Stott has called into question the numbers game of conversions that has been promoted by some evangelistic methods and church growth movements. Citing the Great Commission, Stott contends that we are to preach the Gospel to all nations, but leave the results to God. In other words, the bottom line belongs to God because spiritual results cannot be measured by human instruments. If they could be, man would take the glory.
Still, a leader is expected to be performance-minded and results-oriented, and a pastor is no exception. This summer, I heard two laymen talking about their pastor. One complimented his preaching and his pastoral care. The other answered, “Yes, but how many conversions have we had this year?”
The unrealistic expectations of a congregation can dull the leadership image of the pastor. Like the general moving with the flow of the crowd, a pastor who ministers to his people without worrying about numbers or other visible results may appear to follow as well as to lead.
The Either-Or Fallacy
How can the contradictory roles of leader and follower be resolved? Our tendency is to react like a drunken man trying to ride a horse?he gets up on one side only to fall off the other. So it is with simplistic theories of leadership. We assume that a pastor must either be a dominant leader or a passive follower.
Early in my administrative career, I became acquainted with the studies of leadership styles in education. Presidents of colleges and principals of schools were divided into two types of leaders? authoritarian and democratic. Authoritarian leaders were characterized as dictatorial, impersonal, non-communicative, and untouchable. Democratic leaders were the opposite. They shared their power, cared about people, opened two-way communications, and welcomed critical feedback. Every president and principal felt guilty since the studies gave the impression that a democratic administration was the only option for enlightened leaders and the only hope for an educational Utopia. But something was wrong. Later research showed that some authoritarian leaders were as effective as their demo cratic counterparts, and some democrative leaders failed as miserably as the authoritarians. Slowly the lesson was being learned. Leadership style can never be cast in the concrete of “either-or” categories, especially for presidents of universities, administrators of hospitals, and pastors of churches.
Still, the “either-or” tendency persists. Today we are told that the leadership of the future will be transactional rather than transforming. In his formidable volume Leadership, James McGregor Burns identifies transactional leaders as those who practice the art of participatory democracy, and trade value for value in order to achieve their goals. Like David Reisman’s other-directed man in The Lonely Crowd, transactional leaders have an ever-active radar that picks up cues about group goals, needs, and feelings before he makes recommendations or decisions. In contrast, the transforming leader is an inner-directed man, operating according to a built-in gyroscope from which he gets his goals and directions. Rather than leading by following political consensus and compromise, as in the case of the transactional leader, he relies upon some combination of authoritative position, charismatic personality, superior knowledge, and far-sighted vision to rally support for his program.
A cartoon depicting the difference between transactional and transforming leaders appeared in the book Good Work by the late E. F. Schumacher. Without using technical terms, Schumacher portrayed the transactional leader as a man holding the strings of many balloons floating over his head. Appropriately, he intimated that the balloons were held up by hot air! Equally humorous was the image of the transforming leader as a shining star at the top of a Christmas tree that was decorated with nuts in the branches!
Humor has a way of exposing the ludicrous. How many effective pastoral “balloon-holders” do you know? How many “shining stars” at the top of Christmas trees? Neither image is adequate to describe efficient and effective pastoral leadership.
Leader-Follower Principles
If a pastor cannot be stereotyped by an “either-or” style of leadership, what alternative do we have? He must be both. There are some proven principles that should guide any leader-follower.
First, follow in your strength, lead in your weakness. No pastor is perfect; each of us brings strengths and weaknesses to our leadership task. Our natural tendency is to hold strengths and delegate our weaknesses. That’s not good leadership, according to management consultants. Ken Hansen, retired chairman of Servicemaster, told me, “If you are to grow as an effective leader, you will delegate youi strengths and develop your weaknesses.” A pastor know was strong in church administration bu weak in pastoral calling. Contrary to the rule to effective leadership, he assumed the executive rol for the church and hired a minister of visitation His administration was strong and no one wh needed a pastoral call was missed. But his sermor began to sound pedantic?he had lost touch wit the needs of his people. If he had delegated tl ,church’s administration to an executive and a cepted the challenge of his weakness, he wou have been a more effective pastor. Second, follow among leaders, lead among followers. Churches too have personalities with strengths and weaknesses. Stationing committees of episcopal denominations or selection committees of congregational churches do not pay enough attention to the personality of the church in appointing pastors. For instance, I became acquainted with a church where the pastor had been forced to resign after a period of mental exhaustion. At the root of the problem was an incompatibility of personalities. Congregational leadership and informal power were in the hands of prominent, professional lay leaders who expected to be intimately involved in church policy and decision-making. The pastor was also a transforming leader with strong ideas that were backed up by a powerful pulpit and a charismatic personality. When he tried to proclaim the mission of the church in his preaching, ego faced off against ego. Neither side would give. Tension mounted until the pastor broke under the strain and resigned. The congregation wanted a balloon-holder, but got a shining star.
Opposite stories of tragedy could be told. A mismatch between a pastor who is a transactional leader and a congregation that expects transformational leadership will produce dissatisfaction for both parties and paralysis for the church. Such disasters could be avoided if pastors and congregations considered the leader-follower compatibility of the partners before the marriage took place.
Third, follow in calm, lead in crisis. Churches go through the ebb and flow of calm and crisis, and a pastor’s leadership style must change with the tide. Times of calm are like a pause that refreshes when the pastor and his people can catch their breaths and build strength into their personal relationships. At that time, congregations need transactional pastoral leadership, and a wise pastor will lead by following.
Last week, a friend told me about a lesson in leadership he learned in the army. He was a member of a rifle team practicing behind the lines. Flat on his stomach, he fired round after round, stopping only long enough to reach back over his shoulder for more ammunition from an aide. Not until he finished did he look back to see that his aide was a colonel in dungarees, face down in the dirt with his troops. Later on, when the same colonel ordered his men into battle, my friend said that every man was ready to die for him.
In crisis, a transforming leader is needed. There is no time for protracted discussions. Right or wrong, the pastor has to make a decision. More often than not, the people will honor his decision, particularly if the pastor has become one of them during times of calm.
Crisis leadership requires a skilled and experienced leader. A management consultant compared leadership in calm and leadership in crisis with flying an airplane. If, during a smooth flight on automatic pilot, the captain receives word that a thunderstorm is three hundred miles ahead, he has the time to go through the complicated procedures for adjusting his course and avoiding the storm. But if an engine fails upon takeoff, there is no time for long-range planning. Instantly and intuitively, the captain must act to avoid a crash.
A crisis in a church requires a similar kind of response. People expect their pastor to have the skills and the intuition of experience to respond decisively for them in crisis. They want an authoritative leader who has been a compassionate follower.
Fourth, follow in planning, lead in all other areas of administration. Administration involves planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. The “either-or” fallacy assumes that the same leadership style applies to each function. Disaster is the result. If parishioners are like the members of other organizations, they expect to participate in the planning or goal-setting function of the church, but assume that an administrator will do the organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, and budgeting. Frustration rises in any organization when the administrator seeks a consensus for an executive decision that is already consistent with the plans and the goals of the group. Nothing ever gets done. Having followed in planning, a pastor must either lead or delegate with full authority the leadership for administration.
Fifth, follow in procedure, lead in principle. Whether we like it or not, pastoral leadership is political. We live in a day when leaders cannot bulldoze people or ramrod their programs through. With other leaders, the pastor must learn to practice the art of the possible, including negotiation and compromise. Hackles often rise at the sound of the word “compromise” because pastors have the authority of “Thussaith the Lord.” No one disagrees, but pastors cannot preach on every issue on the church agenda or use a pulpit voice in every board meeting. A pastor misuses the authority of the Gospel if he uses it to win when he ought to compromise. Senator Mark Hatfield’s statement about political compromise gives some guidelines for Christian leadership. He said that he frequently compromised on timing, wording and procedure?but never on principle.
Pastoral leaders can do the same. In the give-and-take over timing, wording, and procedures for the work of the church, a pastor can afford to compromise. His task, whether in the pulpit or in a board meeting, is to lead his people truthfully, tenderly and consistently in light of biblical principles. In the heat of campus revolt at Harvard in 1970, students demanded release from final examinations. The professors buckled under the pressure and gave pass/fail grades. After graduation, however, the students returned to complain about the lack of letter grades to help them compete for jobs. Befuddled, one professor asked a former student, “Why complain? We gave you what you wanted.” “Yes, you did,” the graduate answered, “but just because we panicked, we didn’t expect that you would too.”
A pastor can afford to compromise with timing, wording, and procedure in the political process of church business. But when biblical principles are at stake, his people will expect him not to panic.
Sixth, follow with people, lead with things. A pastor is a steward of the resources of people, money, time, space, and knowledge. There is a difference among these resources. A leader must use money, time, space, and knowledge?but he develops people. The cardinal sin of leadership is to pervert stewardship by using people and developing things.
Every congregation is rich in hidden, and often wasted, human resources. Howard Snyder, in The Community of the King, likens a congregation to a prism through which the light of the Holy Spirit shines in order to reveal the full spectrum of individual colors. An effective pastor will see the colorful beauty in the individual gifts of his people; he will honor his people’s strengths and encourage their development as unique contributors to the Body of Christ and to the mission of the church. To do this, however, a pastor must first be efficient in the use of the resources of money, space, time, and knowledge. Efficiency in the use of things frees a leader to be effective in the mission of Christian nurture and evangelism. In the early church, the Apostles elected deacons to distribute food and wait on tables so that they could give their undivided attention to prayer and preaching.
Principles of Body Leadership
The deeper one probes into the leader-follower paradox, the more one understands the Body as the biblical model for the church. Usually, we interpret the “body language” of Ephesians, Corinthians, and Colossians in relational and functional terms. We must not miss the meaning of the model for pastoral leadership.
Compare the body with the “either-or” models, which Peter Drucker has used to illustrate the extremes in organization. One is the amoeba?an organism like the body, but without an internal structure to make it efficient or purposeful. Every cell is in direct contact with the external environment and responsive to every change of stimuli in its surroundings. An amoeba is participatory democracy at its best, and at its worse.
At the other extreme is the computer?not a living organism, but a machine that is totally dependent upon the facts that are fed into its electronic brain. A computer is a genius in efficiency, but an imbecile in effectiveness. Unlike the amoeba, it is exclusively internal in its structure. It cannot respond to changes in the external environment unless a response is already programmed into it’ memory system. Organizationally, a computer ii the ideal model for the dictatorship in Orwell’s 1984.
The church is neither an amoeba nor a computer It is a body, controlled by the head and tuned to < delicate balance between internal efficiency and ex ternal effectiveness. What part of the body is thi pastor? Is he not like the cerebellum, the center fo communicating messages, coordinating functions and conducting responses between the head an< the body? If so, certain principles of body leader ship follow.
Christ is the Head who controls the mind, will, and spirit of the Body. Authority for the pastor is God’s special call and gift to communicate the truth from the Head to the Body. As Paul wrote, “Such is the Gospel of which I was made a minister, by God’s gift, bestowed unmerited on me in the working of his power” (Eph. 3:7, NEB). All communication, however, is two-way. The pastor is not only the authoritative communicator of the truth from the Head to the Body, but he is also the accurate communicator of the needs from the Body to the Head. Intercessory prayer for his people is the other side of the pastor’s role as communicator. Thus the pastor is an authoritative leader in communication, but not an authoritarian leader of a system. The difference is that an authoritarian leader seeks to usurp the control of the Head rather than be a communicator for its messages.
In relationship to the members of the Body of Christ, the pastor is the coordinator of their functions. By God’s design, human organisms seek wholeness and balance as a natural response. Like a body, the church needs the skeleton, the sinew, the respiratory and arterial systems of organization in order to achieve internal balance for growth. Paul had this in mind when he wrote to the Colossians, “. . . yet it is from the Head that the whole body, with all its joints and ligaments, receives its supplies, and thus knit together grows according to God’s design” (Col. 2:19, NEB). Functioning as a coordinator for the Head, the pastor has the responsibility to nourish and balance the Body for growth and unity.
Now for the bottom line. According to Ephesians 4:12, the gift of the pastor is given for the “. . . perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, and the edifying of the body of Christ.” As communicator, he equips the Body; as coordinator, he edifies the Body. What about the “work of the ministry”? Like the cerebellum, the pastor directs the Body as it responds to the external world. Of all social institut-tions, only the church has the primary purpose of serving people who are not its members. Once again, we are brought up short against the Great Commission. When all is said and done, the pastor’s responsibility for equipping the saints and edifying the Body is for one, high-intensity purpose?to evangelize the world. Every pastor’s performance will be judged on that bottom line.
Body leadership saves the pastor from being either a “balloon-holder” or a “shining star.” Even the idea of leader-follower is too bland to describe the strength and the beauty of the relationship between a pastor and his people in the Body of Christ. We need to rewrite the leadership role of the pastor to be:
?Authoritative communicator of truth for equipping the Body
?Efficient coordinator of functions for edifying the Body
?Effective director of members
for evangelizing the world.
The biblical role of the pastor is the resolution of the leader-follower paradox. Â
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