A View from the Steeple

As we researched what should go into LEADERSHIP, one concern we often heard was, "Don't forget the small church!" In the future we'll publish case studies and various articles for leaders in smaller congregations. But the person we turned to for this first issue was Ben Patterson. He pastors a small church and is also unusually gifted as a writer and thinker. We asked him to address himself to the issue of power and authority as viewed by the pastor of a small congregation. He hasn't come up with a lot of nuts-and-bolts advice-but with something perhaps much more vital to the person struggling with the problems of a small congregation. He talks about how to view ourselves, how to gain a perspective. We all need that. As a pastor, Ben writes with an eloquence and biblical insight which have practical applications indeed.

German historians have a word for a particular way of writing history. Roughly translated, it describes history written from the point of view you get by climbing your own church tower and looking around: a view from the steeple.

Its limitations are obvious. If, as you sit perched on your steeple, you see nothing but prosperity and plenty for miles around, you might be tempted to conclude that that is the way things are everywhere. If, on the other hand, all you see is famine and war, the opposite conclusion might easily be drawn. In either case you are illusioned by present circumstances.

Such is the way it is, perched on your own steeple. I am acutely aware of this as I write this article. For I am the pastor of a small church, just four years old, in the midst of a burgeoning southern California, Orange County-planned community called Irvine. We're just 12 miles south of Disneyland, if you know what I mean. As a matter of fact, I don't even have a steeple on which to perch. We worship in an elementary school and rent an office in a business/industrial complex.

I look west toward Newport Beach, east toward the El Toro Marine Base, south toward the University of California at Irvine, and north toward Sleeping Beauty's castle. And in between are freeways and houses, houses, everywhere. That pretty well sums up my day-to-day steeple-view.

It also sums up the anxiety I feel as I look at the editorial board of this august journal. Reverend Schuller has a tower in which to sit and Ted Engstrom does a lot of flying all over the world. They are not only high up, but beneath them are massive organizations. I feel a little bit like the pastor who said, "Wherever the apostle Paul went there was a riot. Wherever I go they serve tea."

I mean, what does a pastor like me, seeing what he sees and therefore saying what he says, have to say in the midst of people like the Schullers, Engstroms, Wagners and Halversons who see so much farther than I? And in an issue dealing with the use of power and authority in the church, of all things!

Perhaps that is the point. The problem with the view from any steeple is that the viewer can be held captive by immediate failures or dazzled by immediate successes. The limitations of great power and size can be just as severe as the limitations of, well- meeting in an elementary school with a congregation of 200 and working in a rented office in a business/industrial complex

The mandate and challenge for all of us is to somehow see things as God sees them, perched as he is above the heavens and earth. That is the pearl of great price. And, as Annie Dillard put it, "If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever, I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all." That is how valuable it is.

Just what is God's view of power and authority? I can think of no better place to bring that question than to the Book of Revelation. For it was written to a tiny, beleaguered and persecuted church which not only had no steeple, but often had to meet underground. The giant engines of history were pounding all around, seemingly unaffected by her presence. Power and authority? What power? What authority?

Astonishingly, it is here in this book that the closest thing in Scripture to a theology of power is developed. The theme is everywhere present in the book, but never more dramatically or definitively than in the fifth chapter.

God is seated on his throne holding in his right hand the scroll sealed with seven seals, which, when broken open will unleash his will and activity upon human history. All heaven is breathless in anticipation of what that will is to be. Only one thing remains to take place: the seals must be broken.

Who will break them? Who is able to break them? Such is the question proclaimed by an angel: "Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?" That question is a critique of nearly all contemporary, secular, and, I fear, many ecclesiastical notions of power and authority. For when we ask, "Who is worthy?" we usually mean who has the raw power, the brains, the money, the media, the charisma to unlock the shape of the future, the meaning and direction of human history.

The word translated "worthy," however, does not mean raw power, but goodness, and righteousness. The one who will unleash God's definitive action and purpose will be the one who is righteous enough. "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practice steadfast love, justice and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord" (Jer. 9:23, 24). Who is worthy indeed?

That, of course, makes the question very difficult, if not unanswerable. If raw power were the issue, all of us could quickly make a few nominations. But it is in anguish that the apostle John observes that "No one in heaven or earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was found worthy. … "

The evangelical church in the U.S. stands poised on the brink of the 1980s and it has never been more powerful, nor had more authority. We have the cultural initiative, we control religious broadcasting, we occupy the most coveted pulpits and, in many parts of the country, are becoming a potent economic and political force.

Unlike our forebears, I believe we are honestly trying to give answers to the questions the world is asking. It is no longer the old routine "Christ is the answer"-"what's the question?" There is another question that is posed to us, and is not being asked by the world. It's being asked by God. Maybe that is our problem. Answers are inevitably shaped and determined by questions. Ask the wrong question and you'll get the wrong answer- even if the answer legitimately answers the question. Could it be that we are failing precisely to the degree that we are succeeding in answering the world's questions? That we have become like our interrogator? I think so.

Do we hear the question? "Who is worthy?" More crucial, do we feel John's anguish over the fact that not even we, with our booming book sales and unprecedented church growth that not even we are able?

It is at this point that the passage reaches its dramatic high point. One of the elders sitting in the heavenly court speaks to John and says, "Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."

Ah! Power and authority at last! One has conquered, and it is the Lion, the symbol of regality, kingship, courage, strength and ferocity. He can do what no one else can do. All heaven stands trembling on its tiptoes to see him enter the scene.

Enter the Lion! But what's this? John then says, "I saw a lamb standing . . ." Enter the Lion, behold-the Lamb, "standing as though it had been slain, With seven horns. … " John had a number of words to choose from, living as he did in a culture in which sheep played an important economic role. Of all the words for lamb he could have chosen, he picks arnion, which means literally "lambkin" or little lamb.

Numbers are also prominent as vehicles of symbolism in John's apocalypse. Seven is a number of perfection. This little lamb has seven horns-which symbolize authority. It is the slain lambkin, dead yet now alive, who possesses perfect authority.

Stand back and ponder the scene. N Enter the Lion-symbol of kingship, courage, and strength; behold the Lamb-symbol of meekness, defenselessness, and vulnerability. It is he who has perfect authority, who is worthy, and can therefore break open the scroll and its seven seals. It is the Lamb who is the Lion; the Lion who is the Lamb.

For the remainder of the Book of Revelation the Lamb is the controling image for Jesus Christ. For it was Christ who conquered by dying. It was Christ whose modus operandi was meekness and vulnerability. It was Christ "who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of servant … and became obedient unto death" (Phil. 2:6, 8). It was Christ himself who said "the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).

The Son of God has perfect authority because he was, and is, the perfect servant. That, the apostle Paul tells us, is the reason God has so highly exalted him C . f 5 <8 4

Power and authority? Climb up on God's steeple and it will be the self-giving love of a servant. That's true in a glass cathedral or a rented elementary school. Climb the world's tower and it will be the arrogated power and authority of raw strength, money, brains, and image.

The story is told of Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms, the first interracial community in the South. From its inception, this experiment in Christian community met with violent and bitter opposition from the townspeople in nearby Americus, Georgia. Arson, beatings, and death threats were among some of their more favorite ways of responding to Jordan and his enterprise. Soon, everyone had been driven from the farm except Jordan and his family. Some of his buildings were in ashes and it appeared he would have to move

Someone asked him, grinning maliciously, "Well, Clarence, just how successful do you think this whole thing has been?" Jordan thought for a moment and answered quietly, "Oh, I guess it's been about as successful as the cross."

God had given him a vantage point-the steeple-view of God himself-to see over and beyond the ashes of his own experiment and the gaudy tower of the world's notions of power and authority. May it be so for us, as well.