My responsibility is to be a supervisor, not a superworker.
Fred Smith
Have you noticed that the simplest, most fundamental questions can be the most difficult to answer? Anyone who’s raised small children knows the challenge of defining the basics. Try answering “What’s gravity, Daddy?”
Leaders, too, may be tripped up by the fundamentals: What am I to do? Of the many things that need to be done in this church or organization, what few belong to me? In short, what is my role?
One person who communicates these fundamentals of leadership clearly is Fred Smith.
Fred cannot be easily described. He is a businessman, consultant, public speaker, active Christian. Even meetings become interesting when Fred is in them. He has an unusual ability to pinpoint the real issue, to cut through the undergrowth.
When Fred was forty, he turned down the presidency of a national corporation so he could divide his attention among business, education, religion, and lecturing. He has served on more than twenty boards and trusteeships, holds an honorary doctor of laws degree, and was awarded the Lawrence Appley award of the American Management Association.
While he truly enjoys business, he keeps reaching out for the broader life. For many years he was active in the leadership of Laymen’s Leadership Institute. Fred has served as chairman of the national board of Youth for Christ, and as a member of the executive committee of Christianity Today, Inc. He was chairman for Billy Graham’s earliest Cincinnati crusade. He has been consultant to such corporations as genesco, Mobil, and Caterpillar, and has lectured in over twenty universities and forty-six states and foreign countries.
Fred is also a contributing editor of Leadership Journal and the author of You and Your Network (Word) and Learning to Lead (Leadership/Word).
You have achieved a great deal in your life. How did you find the time?
Those of us who divide our efforts, particularly in the more visible activities, may appear to do more, but I doubt we really do. Frankly, I thought you might ask me why I have done so little, considering what Wesley, Napoleon, Churchill, et al., have done with the same twenty-four hours. I keep thinking how much Wesley did and how he was dead for several years before he was my age.
Fred, you always appear relaxed, even casual, yet there is below the surface a lurking intensity.
Intensity is the boiling point of effort, the concentration of energy, the tip of the welding flame. Most men of accomplishment have a special ability to develop intensity at the right time over the right issue.
Jackie Robinson could come out of his relaxed pose at second base and snap into action as the play came to him, then go back into a poised relaxation, saving himself for the next time. Most pros have this; only the amateur keeps jumping up and down like a college cheerleader. Many hardworking people fail to accomplish much because they lack intensity at the meaningful time.
Good leadership picks out the crucial elements and places something extra at these points.
Can you describe your approach to leadership?
Yes. It involves a few concepts plus techniques, most of which I’ve borrowed from those I admire. Of course, I’ve adapted these to my personal style.
I like to find the essence of each situation, like a logger clearing a logjam. The pro climbs a tall tree and locates the key log, blows it, and lets the stream do the rest. An amateur would start at the edge of the jam and move all the logs, eventually moving the key log. Both approaches work, but the “essence” concept saves time and effort. Almost all problems have a “key log” if we learn to find it.
I try to decide what I’m trying to do, what it takes to do it, and whom I can get to do it better than I can. I find summary thoughts helpful in keeping me conscious of my concepts, such as, “Results are the only reason for activity.”
What is your role in this leadership system?
I use this definition: “An executive is not a person who can do the work better than his people; he is a person who can get his people to do the work better than he can.” My responsibility is to be a supervisor, not a superworker. A little selective laziness is not all bad. It increases the thinking time.
It is very important that the people who work for me understand my job. If they don’t know what my job is, they often try to do it. That’s why it’s so important for them to know what I want to retain control of. I decide this very simply. I make a list of all the things that only I can do. It’s an embarrassingly short list. I have to add a few things that I prefer doing to make the list long enough to justify my salary. It’s amazing how few things there are that only the boss can do.
Most bosses don’t think this way. They say, “How much can I do? Whatever I can’t do I’ll hire someone else to do.” Well, that’s the way you work yourself to death.
I was talking to an Oklahoma bank president who said he was working himself to death. I said, “Whose work are you doing?”
He stopped, reflected for a moment, and answered, “Well, to be honest, the cashier’s.”
I asked, “Why are you doing it?”
He said, “I hadn’t really thought it through. I’m going to go back and straighten out that situation.”
Your system requires competent people who will get the job done.
Yes. If you don’t understand selection, development, and motivation, you will suffer by this system.
For example, recently I looked at an organization with problems. I asked the board, “Is our lead horse strong enough to pull the wagon?”
They said no.
“Okay,” I said, “where is the one we need?” So we went out and found a strong man and turned the organization around. I could have approached it differently. I could have said, “This man we have here is a sincere, fine Christian person, and with enough help he just might do it.” But that would have meant pulling with him for five years before we found out he couldn’t do the job. We would have used up a tremendous amount of time and effort and paralyzed the organization just to avoid a tough decision.
The earlier you make a decision about a failure and “cut your loss,” the less actual waste. People who wait around trying to find the pleasant, comfortable moment to make difficult decisions and difficult changes are simply kidding themselves. You can hide behind “We’re going to wait and pray about it,” but when you know the situation is going wrong, then do something to alleviate it. The answer to most problems is the right people in the right places.
How would you respond to a pastor who says, “That’s all right for bosses and presidents, but all I have is a secretary and some volunteers. Delegation is out of the question.”
As long as you have one other person in your organization, you can be learning delegation. Delegation is a philosophy before it is a practice. Some parents do everything for the children, while others teach the children to do for themselves. I don’t know many churches as small as a family.
Most leaders who don’t delegate want others to be dependent on them; they want to be needed more than they want to develop their associates. Be sure you don’t try to delegate the “dirty” part of the job and keep the good part. “Folks ain’t dumb.”
The pastor who is doing everything himself might ask, “Aren’t there pastors who lead small churches who don’t work themselves to death, who don’t handle all of the details?” Then the next question would be, “Are their members different from mine?” Well, most members are about the same wherever you go. This begins to make him believe there’s something about management that he doesn’t understand.
For the pastor who feels swamped with committee meetings and administrative work, what do we say to help him or her break out of this trap?
I would say, “Be honest about why you’re swamped.” If you’re protecting your job by being sure you’re in the center of everything, it’s your own fault. If you just have a natural curiosity about what’s going on, and you like to be with people, and you’re spending your time with people and details instead of studying and praying, it’s your fault. If you’re insecure and cannot let other people take responsibility, it’s your fault. I can’t accept the premise that there is a job big enough to keep me away from my primary responsibilities.
Andrew Carnegie once asked a consultant, “What can you do for me about time control?”
The consultant said, “I’ll make one suggestion, and you send me a check for what you think it’s worth. Write down what you have to do on a piece of paper in order of priority, and complete the first item before you go to the second.” It’s reported that Carnegie tried it for a few weeks and sent him a check for ten thousand dollars.
I constantly find people trying to accomplish their work as if they were eating dinner at a smorgasbord. They don’t prioritize anything and they don’t complete anything. They don’t practice good time discipline. I had an executive say to me, “How in the world do you turn down people who want to play golf with you?” That question has never entered my mind. My time is as much mine as my money. If I don’t let everybody else spend my money, I’m not going to let them spend my time. I have a right and a responsibility to say to people, “I have to have this much time for my priorities.”
For example, I was traveling with the president of a subsidiary company, and every time we’d sit down anywhere he’d grab a big stack of magazines and start reading them. I asked, “Do you like to read?”
He said, “I hate to.”
“But every time I’m with you, you spend your time reading. Why do you do that?”
He said, “The president of the parent company sends me these magazines.”
I said, “What would happen if you’d walk into the president’s office and say, ‘Hey, Boss, you want me to make money or read magazines? I’m willing to do either one, but I can’t read all these magazines you’re sending me and do my job too’? I will guarantee the boss would laugh and say, ‘Throw those magazines in the basket. I sent them to you because I thought they were too current to throw away.’ ” A lot of people will generate work for you on this same basis.
A man came in to see me who had written a book and brought a copy for me to read — a big, thick book. He said, “I’ll call you in a week and see what you think about my book.”
I said, “Make it six months. This book costs $10.90. Since I’m a slow reader, it would take me two days to read it. That means I’d be making about $5.45 a day reading your book, and I think I’m worth more than that.” Unless a book has something to do with what I’m trying to learn, and I consider it a priority, I’m not going to read it just so someone can call me and say, “What did you think about the book?” I’m going to be frank and say I don’t read books just because people give them to me.
But a pastor might say, “I’m a public person. My congregation expects to be able to telephone me day or night. They shove books under my nose and next Sunday ask me about them. My job is to minister to these people, to get to know them and build rapport with them. As irritating as these requests for ‘personal favors’ are, a response is necessary.”
This sounds like the politician who spends all his time running for office and never performs when he gets in. Building rapport can be a smoke screen. The pastor must set some time aside for it, but he must constantly remind people of his commitment to the most important things. I don’t think they would be offended the least bit if he said, “Folks, Tuesday is my day with God. I have to spend some time with my boss to keep this job, and he has called me into conference on Tuesday. He takes a dim view of me answering phones and appearing at social occasions on conference day. Your boss wouldn’t like it if you ran out of the room when he was trying to talk to you. Mine doesn’t either.”
I know a pastor who does this. He simply shuts himself off from his people on Tuesday so he can study. But they all know he’s studying. I know a life insurance man who refuses all social engagements on a certain evening because he wants to be a well-versed insurance man. No one invites him anywhere on that night because they know he’s studying life insurance. He has become a veritable authority, and being known for studying one night a week has helped his reputation.
A minister must explain what he is supposed to be doing for his people. He is supposed to be expounding the Word to them. He can’t expound without studying. If he’s going to let secondary matters take over, no matter how important they might be, he would be like the merchant who was so bent on trying to keep the store clean he would never unlock the front door. The real reason for running the store is to have customers come in, not to clean it up.
We find this in Parkinson’s Law — if you have only one letter to write, it will take all day to do it. If you have twenty letters to do, you’ll get them done in one day. The most efficient time of life is the week before vacation. Why can’t we run our lives as we do the week before vacation — make decisions, clean off the desk, return the calls? Take the use of a secretary. If I want people to deal with my secretary on important matters, I must build her up to where they feel she’s capable. Therefore, every once in a while, I’ll say, “You’ll find she is great on that; in fact, she’s better at that than I am.” And they will feel it is an honor to deal with her. But she has to be good. You can’t kid about it.
The pastor who wants somebody else to do visitation had better use sermon illustrations about the great things that have happened because someone else does the visiting. If illustrations are only about when the pastor visited, the congregation will expect that presence.
But doesn’t the average congregation expect the pastor to carry the ball on visitation as well as preaching?
One time I became interested in trying to find a job in the Bible like our preacher has. You can’t find one like the modern preacher to save your life. We don’t have a scriptural setup. We have one that’s grown up out of tradition. And I’m not too sure that ministers haven’t developed it themselves. Like everyone else, they reached for more and more authority, more and more prestige, more and more power, and created for themselves a job nobody can do. It takes an absolute genius to adequately do the pastor’s job.
One morning I thought, What if today I were a pastor instead of a corporation president? That idea scared me to death. I am totally inadequate to fulfill the job most pastors have.
In other conversations you’ve alluded to three different organizational systems. Could you talk about them?
I call them the poor human system, the good human system, and the spiritual system. I’ve had a great deal of experience with the poor human system and some with the good human system; not until rather recently did I see a different type of church management that intrigued me. I’ve been studying it — not fully understanding it — but seeing there is a difference, not in degree but in kind.
Describe these three systems.
I can give you some identifying marks. This is personal opinion that comes from observing and participating in many churches for over fifty years.
Most churches are run on the poor human system, a kind of system you’d run a marginal business with. In a marginal church you have a “Mom and Pop” operation that the pastor and his wife are running. The church will not pay Mom, although they expect her to work. She runs the missionary society, helps with the catering, makes calls with Pop, and usually plays the organ. If she’s really strong, she may teach a class and even quietly help him prepare the sermon. Though she is not paid, she comes under the same review as Pop. These Mom-and-Pop operations never grow very big because Mom and Pop have to see and do everything.
Some insidious things usually start to happen. Mom and Pop often learn to like this management style and they become attached to the location, or at least they don’t know another place to go. And, being human, security becomes important to them.
Now, what happens? Mom and Pop inadvertently form a small clique. They want a hand in who is on the board of deacons, who is doing everything — even the janitoring, so the janitor will tell them what he heard from the members who didn’t know he was listening. This control system is initiated out of desire for security. It is one of the most limiting factors that can exist in an organization. Directly or indirectly, many smaller churches are controlled by Mom and Pop, and you’ll find they come in varying degrees of attractiveness. Sometimes Mom and Pop are great. Sometimes they fight with each other. Sometimes they are a wonderful team.
The poor human system is a management style, a style that can be spotted the moment you walk in the front door. Pop leads the singing, makes the announcements, prays the prayer, preaches the sermon, pronounces the benediction, and runs down the aisle to shake hands with the people at the door. He does everything — just like a small businessman — because it is his little operation. It’s the only system he knows. And God bless Mom and Pop! A vast number of Christians would not be blessed if they didn’t exist.
I’ve often wanted to sit down and say to them, “Do you know there’s another system? Do you know there’s a way to do all this and not work yourself to death?”
Lay people help perpetrate this human system. They enjoy the familiarity with Mom and Pop. It helps them know where their place is in the congregational mix. They like the paternalistic, benevolent feel that comes from Mom and Pop, and they develop their own form of “clout” by being part of Mom and Pop’s family.
We have to be careful when we talk about the poor human system in a church. Poor human system doesn’t mean poor Christian experience. Some of the finest, most meaningful Christian experiences one can possibly have will be found in a church run by poor human administration.
But if the poor human system is so inefficient and security oriented, how can you say the most meaningful Christian experiences possible can come out of this kind of environment?
Remember, when I say system, I’m talking about the administrative system; I’m not talking about theology or Spirit. We must make the distinction. There is no system by which humans can accomplish what only God can do. One of the great failures of the church is that we often try to accomplish with a human system (good or bad) what only God can do.
For example, we cannot accomplish with a revival activity or renewal program the salvation of souls. Whenever we substitute people walking down an aisle or numerical growth for spiritual transformation, we’re trying to do through a human system what cannot be done.
Regardless of the system, one of the most important things to learn is to delegate to God. If I were a minister, one of the first things I would declare is that God is my boss. My boss could not be the chairman of the board. The day I genuinely quit believing God was my boss, I’d get out of the ministry.
Of course, this too has problems. God is often viewed as an absentee boss. Branch offices get into trouble when there’s an absentee manager. Some corporate officers get carried away and do very self-serving things that get the company into trouble because the stockholders are absentee owners. The closer the relationship between the owner and the manager, the better the place will be run. In the same way, the more God’s presence is felt in any church, the better it will be run. The quality of spiritual blessing comes not from the system, but from God.
Describe the good human system.
The key to a good human system is a dynamic leader. This is a person who could make it in business, ministry, or almost anything. He has that rare combination of abilities to preach, teach, and administer. When I say good human system, I’m talking about good human management, the kind that can be taught through an MBA program.
What are the characteristics of this system?
Good human managers understand organization. They understand human nature. For example, Napoleon’s strength was that he understood what men would do in war. A good human system preacher understands what people will do in a religious context. Thus he knows how to motivate them. A good human leader understands that any successful operation is run by a small oligarchy, and that the oligarchy is controlled by one man. Egotism plays a big part in the human system.
You’re saying he understands power?
He understands how things get done! He doesn’t argue with it or philosophize about it; he accepts it. He isn’t always apologizing, “Well, I hate to get things done this way, but …” He knows how to utilize people’s strengths and buttress their weaknesses. He knows that people don’t basically change: People enthusiastically do what they can do well, and drag their feet on what they can’t do well.
The good human system requires that you divide work into its logical parts. Then, you put somebody in charge who has the capability of doing it. When a good human leader starts using a new person, he always assigns rather than delegates to him. Assigning means telling him what you want, what time you want it, and how you want it done. And you expect him to do it himself while you watch the task get done. As you develop experience with this person, you find there are certain things you can delegate to him. Delegating is the second step; you simply tell him what problem you’d like to have solved and he develops and implements the solution. But you must have working experience with somebody in order to move from assignment to delegation. I’ve seen people who bypassed the assignment process, delegated prematurely, and then damned the delegation system. We have all seen new Christians, particularly wealthy or famous ones, hurt by overuse before they mature. God can wait for them to mature; it’s the rest of us who get overanxious to use them in our programs.
How do power and authority work in the good human system?
In the good human system your capacity to organize is often based upon the recognized authority you possess.
On one level you have people who feel God has endowed them in such a special way they can tell people what to do. People are to be subordinate to them whether they will admit it or not.
Another kind of authority is given authority. You give a man a title or an office. The title carries a certain authority. It’s probably the most vulnerable kind of authority because people will often subtly test it. If all he has is the title of authority, pretty soon the testing will produce a breakdown, and that person will be forced to compromise.
Then you have authority by means of dedication. In any organization those who are the most dedicated have a tendency to rise to levels of authority, even though it may be behind-the-scenes authority. They work harder and stay longer.
Superior knowledge is a form of authority. If you know more than anybody in the group, they will turn to you. But the moment somebody with superior knowledge enters the scene, you lose all of your authority to that person. That’s why the pastor has to be careful about building authority on a superior knowledge of a theme in the Bible; it can be lost if a better teacher or a more dramatic theme comes along.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had the image of providing benefits for people. This gave him unparalleled political power. The people wanted him to be their four-term boss because they could expect good things from him. Few preachers can give things, but they can overdo “good feelings” and develop authority over many.
I like to write on paper the basis of my authority. If I own a business, people recognize my ownership rights. But if I don’t watch it, if I’m not exercising my ownership function, somebody will try to take it over. Squatters are not all poor. There are squatters on unoccupied authority. I have seen choirs form a “squatters’ rights” clique.
The way Henry Ford lost control of the Ford Foundation.
Owning something doesn’t mean you’re going to remain in authority. In fact, one of the perils of the good human system is related to ownership. Ownership may mean you can throw others out, but then you’re faced with the terrible problem of how you’re going to run the system once they are gone.
One of the German philosophers told me that Hitler came to power in a power vacuum. There came that pause when nobody wanted to run the place. He was the only one who did, and everyone else said, “Let him.” As soon as he was in power, he set up the means to keep others from challenging him.
I don’t believe a Christian can have a conscience for that kind of power. But in the church I’ve seen key people get tired of serving in major capacities (and they all seem to get tired at the same time), and suddenly mediocre people are in power simply because the others defaulted. Power is not an inert thing. It’s like mercury; it flows. A capable leader, like a good coach, looks to the bench for continuity in winning.
How would you summarize the good human system?
Motivation in the good human system is identical to the motivation used in any other successful human process. Participation, recognition, rotation, the feeling of belonging, moving up through the ranks — all of these principles are the same anywhere.
Rotation?
Right. A person gets tired of teaching one grade level so you move him to another grade level so he won’t lose interest in teaching. If a person’s tired of being on one committee, you put him on another committee to keep him excited. Also, you protect the organization by rotation. You keep someone from sitting in a job until he thinks he owns it.
Privately, the men I know in the good human system are very candid with their close associates. However, they take a long time to move a person into the inside group. Former governor of Texas John Connally once said, “I have very few close friends and I take a long time to make one.” What he may be saying is, “There are parts to my life or organization I don’t want anyone to see until I trust them.”
Good human leaders are lonely, but they don’t necessarily try to avoid loneliness; they accept it as part of the price. I mentioned this one time to the president of an architectural firm, and he said, “You’ve just identified all my problems. Because I hate to be lonely and I’m always telling my associates about my half-baked plans, bad things begin to happen to me.” He didn’t realize that everyone who would be helped by his half-baked plan began to support it, and everyone who would be hurt by it started to work against it — before it was even formulated! Confusion and polarization were born out of his desire to talk.
In the good human system, people who share everything with everybody tend to be less than great leaders. Most great leaders appear open, but are often closed. In fact, in the good human system, hypocrisy is often a requirement. This is one of the reasons I do not feel it is a system that God would prefer to use. For example, if the leader wanted Deacon Smith removed, he would publicly shed great tears about the “trouble” in the body, and how the Lord had helped him to identify this problem, and how the Lord needed to help him help these “people.” Invoking the Lord is a smoke screen. It is the good human system working in its best and worst fashion. And this is the hypocrisy that bothers me. But keep in mind that I’m convinced that God is going to use whatever system is around. I think this is part of his sovereignty. I also think it is part of his humor. Remember the old saw, “God can use any kind of vessel except a dirty one”? Well, from my experience, that is the only kind he can use. We are all sinners.
The motivations in the good human system are absolutely human. The politics are human. You bring in the people that you can count on. You never let a person into the inner circle until you have his vote in your pocket. You never take a chance on a person who might vote on an issue as he sees it. The system admits a person who will question the issue but is sure to vote with the group. Questioning the issue is a safeguard, but you don’t take a chance of him voting against you. After he does that once or twice, he’s out.
Wait a minute! This is a description of how good and great leaders lead?
I’m not saying “great” leaders. There are those with solidness of character, strength of spirit, and dedication to a cause. They are the great exceptions we all long to follow but see so seldom. I know the danger of naming anyone, but it helps to personify types. Whenever I have been around Hudson Armerding, the former president of Wheaton College, he has impressed me as a man who truly wants to be a good man. Most of us want to be recognized as good, but few truly want to pay the price. In corporate life Howard Pew approached this type, as did Maxey Jarman. I feel safe in naming these men because each would have castigated me for putting him up as an example. Those who would enjoy being named are like the man who won an award for humility, and then when he wore it had it taken away from him.
I believe God wants to get us as close to maturity as he possibly can. Here in America we are basing a great deal of our Christian success on the good human system — a system taken right out of industry and entertainment. In many cases ministers could be replaced with non-Christian executives. This scares me.
What are your views on the spiritual system?
While the good human system is based upon a dynamic, highly motivated, competent leader, the spiritual system is built around — not upon — a shepherd, whose purpose is to develop mature Christians, not a facility, a memorial, or a human organization. He looks at a facility as helpful but not vital. Organization is a part of the process for himself as well as for the flock.
In human systems the individual leader doesn’t tend to mature spiritually because his purpose mitigates against spiritual maturity. In the maneuvering and the manipulations and the passing out of the accolades, the human system leader is forced to claim more spiritual maturity than he has.
That’s sobering. It could be a trap for any of us.
Spiritual system leaders push the dynamics of growth and leadership toward their people for the people’s benefit, rather than pull from the people the dynamics of “growth and leadership” that will ultimately benefit themselves.
You watch a human system leader, and he will often slowly start to satisfy his ego off the organization instead of sacrificing his ego to the organization. He eventually comes to that dangerous turning point where he goes from cause orientation to self orientation. When he begins his leadership he may be very cause oriented, but as he sees the cause prosper he starts to embezzle from the cause — either praise, credit, position, or money. The things that should have gone to God, he starts to take. Once he starts this process his commission begins to climb and soon he has gone from 1 percent to 15 percent to 50 percent. In extreme cases he finally says, “Well, God doesn’t really need it, and since I’m God’s man, I’ll just take it all.” Thank God these people are few in number.
Fred, you’ve been coming down hard on the leader. Isn’t it possible he gets caught in the momentum of the system?
Of course this is possible. However, he can’t effectively lead any system unless he has a natural tendency, understanding, and love for that system.
The human system is built on ego. For example, it almost always removes time for meditation and time for God. When you talk to many of these human system leaders, they sincerely decry their need for more time to pray and study the Bible. These leaders have a great tendency to never find this kind of time because of “the system.” They have committees to attend and meetings to run.
But the leader of the spiritual system is different. By definition, he is not an administrator. He’s a shepherd. The shepherd is involved in administration, but it’s one of the functions of the church, not his personal function. He knows how many sheep there are, and he is prepared to take drastic action if one is missing. But his function does not revolve around personal power. A function that is saturated with responsibility is very different from a function that is saturated with power.
A pastor told me he was going to Africa with his staff, and I asked him how many he was going to take. He said, “All of them. All the personnel — eleven ministers.”
I said, “Who’s going to run the church?”
He said, “The same lay people who are running it when we’re here.”
His job wasn’t to run the church. His job was to minister to people. I don’t know of many human systems that could stand the strain of every paid worker being gone for six weeks. The place would fold.
When I speak to American Management Association meetings, I can always tell the insecure corporate presidents whose offices have not called as often as they would like. They are scared to death the business is running without them. You find parents like this — scared to death the kids are going to get along without them.
The spiritual system utilizes people by their gifts. Its function is ministry and its object is maturation. The church’s vitality cannot be measured in the number of meetings, the number of people, or the things that can be accomplished by human means. The church cannot be evaluated by any human scale.
So the spiritual system is built upon the gifts of the people around a pastor rather than upon the pastor. What would that look like?
Do you mean a church that isn’t a pyramid with the senior pastor on top? I think some of the things Ray Stedman is doing, maybe unconsciously, have a tendency to accomplish this. For example, he leans away from building a sanctuary large enough to accommodate the entire membership, because he wants them to meet all over town. A church large enough to accommodate everyone at 11 a.m. would help to create a pyramid with a visible peak.
Another way to help prevent the development of a pyramid structure would be to develop ministers who do not have specialized functions. If four men share the preaching, you break some of the “pecking order.”
When I read Ray’s book, Body Life, I didn’t think it was a complete statement of what went on. While riding with Ray to an airport I said, “You left the heart out of Body Life. What you have written won’t work.”
Naturally Ray was surprised, and he said, “I tried to be honest.”
You can’t make Ray defensive, which to me is one of the saintly qualities. “What you have left out is what most of us can’t do,” I told him. “You have gained control of your ego. And without control of your ego, the Body Life system won’t work.”
I have a suspicion that at some time in Ray’s life he dedicated his ego to God. This is not saying Ray isn’t human. It’s simply saying I believe he has come to the place of saying, “This ministry is God’s.”
For a moment assume the perspective of a pastor. What kind of relationship would you try to establish with the lay leadership of the church?
It’s very difficult for me to project myself into the ministerial role. One of the things I’ve been grateful for is that I have never really felt called. I’m sure there are churches that are grateful for the same thing!
If I were pastor of a church, I would have to take as my first concern the spiritual vitality of the leadership, not the political vitality. I would try to see that the lay leadership took seriously what we together claim to profess.
As a pastor I would also ask the lay leaders to be monitors of my spiritual vitality. I would appreciate it if one of my leaders came to me and said, “Pastor, I sense that you’re a little low. I came to pray with you. May I read the Scripture with you?”
When you are close enough to your lay leadership for them to talk to you about your spiritual vitality, and you to talk to them about theirs — that would be the heart of a successful church operated on a spiritual basis.
Copyright ©1987 Christianity Today
