To tackle problems in a masterly way, the leader must see things whole as well as in separate parts.
While I was speaking at a church in Cincinnati, a visitor from India walked by the auditorium and heard me. He took a seat in the back.
On Monday morning, he called to ask if we could meet for lunch. I discovered this man was a Ph.D. in chemistry and a devoted follower of Gandhi.
I asked, “What have you observed about Americans?”
“Well,” he said, “you Americans are segmented. A large segment of your life is devoted to making money. You have another segment for family, another for social interaction, and yet another segment for religion. But they’re not tied together with any philosophical thread. Each of them stands alone, almost as if you are a different person in each of these roles.”
“Tell me about Dr. Gandhi,” I asked.
“Dr. Gandhi had all the areas of interest I have just mentioned, but in his life, each was an expression of his religion.”
I realized this chemist had made a profound observation about American life. I also realized his comment about Gandhi was one of the greatest compliments I had ever heard paid to a person. The focused, unsegmented life is a rarity today.
Even the church, at least in our culture, sometimes has a tendency to segment persons. We take the segment of a person’s life called “spiritual” and dress it up differently from the rest. We bring the person into a different culture on Sunday, seat him with people he may not see during the week, and use a peculiar vocabulary. All this has little to do with his job at the canning factory or computer terminal. Few people think of their business as an expression of their religion. Few think about time spent with family as a religious act, or social occasions as religious experiences.
This segmentation is something even the best-intentioned leaders fall into.
After speaking at a seminary chapel service, I met with the faculty, and the first question someone asked was, “How long have you been bivocational?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The person said, “How long have you had a ministry as well as a business?”
“I’m not bivocational,” I said. “That term suggests one interest is above the other, or that I stop doing one temporarily while I’m doing the other. That’s not so; I carry them simultaneously. Hopefully I am a whole person—a Christian. Both my speaking and my business are expressions of that wholeness.”
I could tell even these sophisticated professors had a segmented concept of the Christian life.
I once saw William F. Buckley talking to Malcolm Muggeridge on television. Buckley said, “I would find it very difficult to talk to my compatriots about anything spiritual.”
Muggeridge replied, “I find it difficult not to.”
Obviously, Buckley accepts compartmentalization. He is brilliant, articulate, attends mass regularly, and is ready to write or get on national television and talk about spirituality—but not in normal conversation.
The ultimate goal of a church leader, as I see it, is to lead people to maturity in Christ. This, of course, starts with their salvation, which opens the possibility of maturing the saved.
And what is maturity if not living an integrated, consistent life? Maturing Christians are people who are becoming less and less compartmentalized. All of life is an expression of their faith.
The Consistent Christian Life
When I go to a religious retreat, I get the uneasy feeling some people are trying to fulfill their religious obligation all at one time. It’s almost like children forced to eat spinach—they stall around, then gulp it down in one huge bite to get it over. Or like paying an insurance premium annually—one large effort, and it’s taken care of for the year.
For two or three days, retreatants are willing to talk about their faith. But if you ask, “How would you like to do this next week?” they’d say, “Heavens, no. We’ve done enough.”
A mature faith is homogenized. I’m very impressed with the approach of one church that offers a program called “Growth” one Saturday a month, and laymen have a chance to consider their total lives. One time they talk about investments, for instance. Another morning, they’ll discuss ambition or office politics. They’re making an attempt to homogenize faith and life, and to me, that’s a step toward maturity.
Spiritual leaders lead toward that consistent Christian life. They deal with all areas, not just the spiritual. They address not just family devotions but family discipline and decision making. They emphasize not just the tithe but the whole concept of money making from a Christian perspective. Mature Christians understand the difference, for instance, between materialism and living in a material world. I find lots of Christians, even church staff people, who spend too much time thinking about the money their chosen profession does not provide. Thinking too much about money is materialism, whether you have money or not.
Another area for integration rather than segmentation is our relationship with non-Christians. These should be friendly, focusing on what we share in common, not continually pointing out how different we are.
The apostle Paul commands us not to be “conformed to this world” but “transformed by the renewing of your minds.” Sometimes we find it more comfortable simply to shun non-Christians than to say, “When you’re right, I’m going to join you. If you’re wrong, I am going to call it to your attention as inoffensively as I can, or at least not participate.” If we are conformed to the world’s values, we never have freedom. But if we are transformed, we have freedom to be redemptive, and all our relationships can be redemptive. That’s maturity.
Yesterday I was listening to a pastor preach on the Cross. Sometimes I think it’s unfortunate the Cross presents such possibilities for dramatics. We get emotional sermons describing the awful suffering. I wonder what these preachers would have done if Christ had been executed in modern times—with a hypodermic, or in an electric chair. It would destroy all those vivid two-point sermons about the vertical and horizontal aspects and how Christ’s arms are outstretched to enfold all those who kneel at the Cross.
Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not being sacrilegious. But the power of Christ’s death is not in the dramatics. In fact, Christ did not suffer there as many hours as the thieves did. The power of Christ’s death was in his becoming sin for us, and ultimately in his resurrection and victory over death.
So the redemptive approach is not to make Christ’s death a spectacle but to bring the significance of it to the unseeing. It is living in the victory of his resurrection.
This is what leadership is all about: raising people’s level of maturity. We raise it by bringing first knowledge, then understanding, and eventually wisdom.
A Balanced Church Life
Another area where maturity demands an integrated, seamless understanding is the extent of our involvement in church functions. This involves both time and use of gifts.
No one can mature spiritually without worship. There is no way to be mature without having fellowship with Christian brothers and sisters, without having a good relationship with the church itself. The church is ordained of God, and if I want to be in the middle of God’s activity, I must be involved in my local fellowship of believers.
Somebody asked me one summer when it was 102 degrees in Dallas, “Why do you go to church?” I sheepishly admitted that one August I had sat in church during a very predictable sermon and written an essay outline on that subject. The first reason was that Scripture commands it. The second was that I needed it at least once a week to position myself under the lordship of Christ.
He and I are not partners; we are not equals. I am subordinate. Sitting there in church each week, I recognize and renew the subordinate position.
But this truth needs to be balanced with another: It’s not always healthy to go to church every time the doors are open.
I appreciate what Terry Fullam, Episcopal priest in Connecticut, said to one woman who was there for almost every activity: “You are here at church too much. If it keeps on, I’m going to suspect you have a lousy family relationship.” As it turned out, he later discovered that was the case. Church had become an escape from the home.
Church should never become the equivalent of a country club, where some people go three nights a week just to get away.
Like anything else, church attendance, to be mature, must be homogenized with the rest of life. Some pastors try to increase church involvement by getting people to decrease their involvement in other things. They set up a war: The spiritual segment fights the other segments of life. If people would cut down on time spent in PTA, on golf courses, or coaching Little League, they could come to church more often and put their time into the spiritual segment—or so goes the reasoning.
Unfortunately, that battle does not always lead to maturity. It certainly doesn’t encourage godly people to take the gospel with them as they move throughout their world.
During Richard Halverson’s long pastoral ministry, before he became chaplain of the United States Senate, he was known for visiting his people where they were. He would go to oil rigs, kitchens, car dealerships, nurseries, and executive suites. He had no agenda other than to visit and remind these people they were Christ’s representatives in that place. This was his way to homogenize, to encourage maturity.
This approach requires a secure, unthreatened leader. Some church leaders are afraid to homogenize the spiritual because they fear losing their one area of control. Church functions are the one place where the pastor is in charge, and he wants to be able to identify how much of the people’s lives he controls or contributes to.
That approach would be fine if our goal were simply to increase attention to church. But increasing the level of activity is not the goal; increasing the level of maturity is the goal.
Mature leaders understand that controlling more hours per week may not be a worthwhile goal. It may even conflict with beneficial family interests.
The Leader’s Role
How do we lead people into maturity? The first step is to lead ourselves into maturity, partly through the personal disciplines, which we discussed in chapter 4. We may never reach complete maturity this side of heaven, but we certainly cannot lead others into maturity unless we are experiencing the maturing process and becoming more consistent, well balanced, and whole.
Beyond that, however, the leader’s role is to help people see their entire life as an expression of their faith, to apply their Christianity to all the diverse areas of their lives.
Some young pastors are sure to ask, “How do I personally help that process? I’m trained in theology, and you’re saying that to help people mature, I have to apply the faith to being a sheet metal worker, an auto mechanic, or a public school-teacher. I don’t have any expertise in those fields. What can I do?”
It’s a fair question, and my answer has two parts.
On one hand, the quickest way to appear a phony is to believe you can become a great varied resource for a large number of people at an early age. You can’t. Young pastors are like young teachers who study tomorrow’s lesson tonight, barely staying ahead of their students. Through skimming, they often collect superficial answers. Likewise, some young pastors try to counsel in areas where they have no experience. Only time, knowledge, and experience with people can provide the depth of necessary understanding.
On the other hand, even young pastors can point people to the appropriate resources. “You know, Joe is involved with that. It might be helpful for you to ask him what his experience has been.” We can help develop maturity in the congregation primarily by taking advantage of the body’s resources. Leaders don’t have to be the only resource for guidance.
Personally, I’m impressed with churches that make use of their older in-house advisers. Recently my wife has been asked by three or four young mothers for advice on child raising. “How do you live through this stage?” Mary Alice does a marvelous job of quietly talking it through with them. By the end of the conversation, the young mothers realize they’ll make it.
In business, we have staff advisers, consultants, and specialists we call upon for particular needs. If I were heading a church ministry, I would try to do the same. I’d publish a list of people with expertise they are willing to share—an experience bank. I wouldn’t make them turn in reports on their activity; I’d simply make it known they are available to minister to those with questions.
Often when I’m teaching a large group, I’ll say, “You can’t believe how many problems are in this group.… But you know something else? You don’t realize how many answers are in this group, either. You probably know the problems are here, but you don’t know how many people here have gone through exactly what you’re going through right now and have found a solution.”
Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could stop the class and just match up the people who have the problems and those who have found answers?
That’s one of the prime functions of leadership in developing a mature congregation. You make all the resources of Christianity and the body of Christ available to everybody. The leader becomes the chief networker, the facilitator, helping people turn to one another (and to himself in some cases), recognizing all the gifts and resources within the church. This also helps produce integrated, unsegmented Christians, because you’re involved in all the diverse areas of life—work, education, art, family life, recreation—and people begin to see these are all part of Christian living.
The Test of Mature Leadership
How can you tell when a church is well led? Often by what happens when the leader is not there.
I attended First Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton, California, a few weeks ago on a Sunday when Charles Swindoll did not speak. I was impressed by the friendliness, the way people talked to each other. I saw people whose ministry seemed to be that of encouragement. They went around greeting people, passing out little compliments. The place was better for them being there. In a good organization, the ministry continues whether the leader is there or not. That, to me, is a sign of a maturing body—and a sign of good leadership.
I appreciate the ministry of Frank Tillapaugh, who has done a marvelous job emphasizing lay leadership at Bear Valley Baptist Church in Denver. He was asked one time, “How do you know when to take on a project?”
“Any time a legitimate need surfaces, and we have enough people willing to accept responsibility for it, our automatic response as a church is yes,” he said. He is quick to recognize the ministries of lay leaders.
At a meeting with fifty church leaders, I was explaining the way Frank encourages people to develop their own ministries. Immediately one staff pastor said, “But how can you protect the church against that?” He missed the point entirely!
Another pastor wanted to know, “How can you keep control in a church that flexible?” It was obvious he felt the church should be run only by the professional staff.
Again, the purpose of the church is not to give pastors positions of responsibility. It is not to run well-organized programs for people. It is not to protect people from responsibility. The mission of the church, and therefore the purpose of church leadership, is to develop mature Christians.
Are people applying their faith to all areas of their lives? Are they creating opportunities to serve? To develop their own gifts? Would the ministry continue on without me?
If we can answer those questions in the affirmative, we are well on our way to successfully leading a congregation to maturity.
Copyright © 1986 by Christianity Today
