Friday, October 12, 2007
What DO We Need?
Justin Taylor quotes David Wells:
Consider, Christ exercised no institutional leadership at all. The apostles did to varying degrees, but they all exercised it to martyrdom. It seems to me that the first radically different leadership concept here is a devotion to the mission of the church and not the church itself.
Most people do not realize it, but the best toolmakers in the world are not in the tool-making business. No, the best toolmakers in the world work in factories that make other things. A hammer, for example, is quite prozaic and unimaginative in the world of tools. But they guy that built the tool to drive a given rivet at a given angle on the forward frame of a 1932 coupe at a rate of 18/minute - now that guy is a creative and imaginative toolmaker.
Let's try a different example. Years ago I build a device called a diaelectric spectrometer. I will not bother you with the details of what that is - it tests the electrical properties of material. I cobbled it together out of spare parts I found around where I worked at the time and controlled it all with a state-of-the-art Apple II computer (yes, I am that old). The computer also did the data acquisition and analysis. I did this thing to solve a problem I had in my lab at the time - I loved it, it was great fun.
Well, it was innovative enough that I got hired by a firm the develop software for the chemical laboratory. You know, the generic, one-size-fits-all kind of software that causes the user to learn how to use it instead of actually solves the user's problem. I lasted less than a year.
Real leadership, specifically leadership that takes people in directions not already heavily traveled, generally arises outside of the box and in response to a specific problem. There is a business cliche if I ever heard one - but that does not take away from it's essential truth.
My point? The church does not need leaders that are interested in developing things to make the church grow, or to plant new churches. The church needs leaders that are interested making deeply committed, transformed souls that are in turn interested in making other deeply committed, transformed souls. The church, the tool for organizing those souls, will arise in the wake of that interested and commitment, but it is NOT that cause, or the driver of it.
We have to remember, we are not building for this world....
To be the church in this way, it is also going to have to find in the coming generation, leaders who exemplify this hope for its future and who will devote themselves to seeing it realized. To lead the church in the way that it needs to be led, they will have to rise above the internal politics of the evangelical world and refuse to accept the status quo where that no longer serves the vital interest of the kingdom of God. They will have to decline to spend themselves in the building of their own private kingdoms and refuse to be intimidated into giving the church less and other than what it needs. Instead, they will have to begin to build afresh, in cogently biblical ways, among the decaying structures that now clutter the evangelical landscape. To succeed, they will have to be people of large vision, people of courage, people who have learned again what it means to live by the Word of God, and, most importantly, what it means to live before the Holy God of that Word.This seems to ask, "What does the church need?" and then answers it by saying "leaders." I think both the question and the answer are vital, but I wonder if there is not a missing component, and that is that God has a radically different vision for leadership than the world, and that is where I think the rub really develops.
Consider, Christ exercised no institutional leadership at all. The apostles did to varying degrees, but they all exercised it to martyrdom. It seems to me that the first radically different leadership concept here is a devotion to the mission of the church and not the church itself.
Most people do not realize it, but the best toolmakers in the world are not in the tool-making business. No, the best toolmakers in the world work in factories that make other things. A hammer, for example, is quite prozaic and unimaginative in the world of tools. But they guy that built the tool to drive a given rivet at a given angle on the forward frame of a 1932 coupe at a rate of 18/minute - now that guy is a creative and imaginative toolmaker.
Let's try a different example. Years ago I build a device called a diaelectric spectrometer. I will not bother you with the details of what that is - it tests the electrical properties of material. I cobbled it together out of spare parts I found around where I worked at the time and controlled it all with a state-of-the-art Apple II computer (yes, I am that old). The computer also did the data acquisition and analysis. I did this thing to solve a problem I had in my lab at the time - I loved it, it was great fun.
Well, it was innovative enough that I got hired by a firm the develop software for the chemical laboratory. You know, the generic, one-size-fits-all kind of software that causes the user to learn how to use it instead of actually solves the user's problem. I lasted less than a year.
Real leadership, specifically leadership that takes people in directions not already heavily traveled, generally arises outside of the box and in response to a specific problem. There is a business cliche if I ever heard one - but that does not take away from it's essential truth.
My point? The church does not need leaders that are interested in developing things to make the church grow, or to plant new churches. The church needs leaders that are interested making deeply committed, transformed souls that are in turn interested in making other deeply committed, transformed souls. The church, the tool for organizing those souls, will arise in the wake of that interested and commitment, but it is NOT that cause, or the driver of it.
We have to remember, we are not building for this world....
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