Leaders, Culture and Leadership

In the CGGC, we have many Spirit-empowered leaders.

I’ve known Ed Rosenberry for more than 30 years. I recognized his leadership ability from the beginning of our acquaintance. I’ve lived in Findlay. I know most of the people who are on our General Conference staff. They are gifted leaders. Kevin Richardson, the newly chosen Executive Director of the Eastern Region, has profound leadership gifts. I am at least acquainted with many of the people who lead the other regions and, for the most part, I consider them to be good leaders.

With all my heart, I believe that we are blessed by the number of people we have with leadership gifts.

Our problem in the CGGC is not that we lack leaders. Our problem is that we have a dearth of leader-ship.

Truly, we have oodles of good leaders.

A group our size couldn’t dream of praying for a larger number of gifted leaders. But, if you look at our big picture, you see that we have been poor stewards of our leadership resources. When you look at the CGGC, you see a ship that is listing, being tossed to and fro, not by waves but by ripples. You see a body aimlessly chasing trends a year or two too late. You see steady decline in the number of our congregations and an increase in the number of people in worship that is far below the increase in population.

Here’s what I think is going on: The Word is clear and we are not embracing its teaching.

According to Ephesians 4:11-13, the Lord will continue to give the church apostles, prophets, evangelists and shepherds and teachers “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” And, in the CGGC we have allowed ourselves to disregard the leadership of our apostles, prophets and evangelists. We have slouched into a shepherd-dominated leadership culture.

Ed Rosenberry articulated the core value of shepherd-dominated leadership as well as anyone in his eNews article on the Exponential Conference. After being moved by what he saw and heard, Ed said, “The key now will be to translate the concepts back into our ministry setting in the Churches of God.”

Translate?

I don’t believe that translating is what we need to do. And, I don’t think that Peter or Paul or Barnabas would have received a word from the Lord and gotten together and said, “Yeah, guys! The key will now be to translate this into the existing ministry setting in the church.”

Think about this from a biblical perspective.

Imagine Moses entering Egypt with the words Yahweh spoke from the burning bush burning in his ears. Picture Moses setting out on the task of translating Yahweh’s vision of freedom to a nation of slaves before he went to Pharaoh. If he’d done that, he would have died an old man, having never spoken to Pharaoh.

Imagine Moses coming down from the mountain carrying the tablets of the Law, spying the Israelites cavorting in worship of the golden calf and translating the notion of faithfulness to the Lord. (Do you remember what he actually did? Take a quick gander at Exodus 31:25-27. Now, that’s an odd approach to translating.)

Imagine the recently anointed David witnessing the mockery of Goliath against the Lord and Israel’s army then calmly and patiently translating, first to his brothers and then to King Saul, his conviction that the Lord would give him victory.

Imagine Isaiah receiving his call in chapter 6 or Jeremiah his in chapter 1 going to God’s people to translate to them God demand that they repent of the sin that dominated their lives.

Imagine John the Baptist translating. Yikes! Can’t even begin to conjure up that image.

Imagine Jesus informing the disciples that He is going to Jerusalem to be taken by the Jews and crucified, hearing the disciples’ objections then pausing until He could translate the concept to them. Could the Son of God have died in old age from natural causes? If so, He probably would have before He could have successfully translated that scandalous notion to the disciples. No. Jesus stared down Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan!” How’s that for translating!?

Imagine Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13 being called to mission then pausing to translate that call to other believers before they responded.

Here’s another one: Imagine Paul and Barnabas HAVING TO TRANSLATE their call to the on-fire missional believers in Antioch.

Now, let me be clear--again. I admire and respect Ed Rosenberry and I think we are amply blessed with leaders.

But, gang, c’mon.

This shepherd-based leadership culture which puts our highest ranking leader in the position that he needs to translate a missional vision stinks. And, more importantly, it is 180 degrees out of phase with Scripture and with CGGC history. Who can imagine for a moment John Winebrenner, with all his passion for truth and confidence in his calling, pausing even for a moment to translate a biblical concept he discovered. Winebrenner walked in the Spirit and others walking in the Spirit ran to catch up with him.

So, according to Ephesians 4, there are four ministry callings: apostle, prophet, evangelist and shepherd and teacher. From them can derive four leadership cultures: the apostolic, the prophetic, the evangelistic and the shepherd/teacher.

I believe we have slouched into a shepherd-based culture, one which values nurturing and consensus and patience and sharing and caring and caution and a lowest-common-denominator, human-oriented definition of unity.

Here’s the problem with shepherd-based leadership:

Shepherd-based leadership assumes the weakest link as the standard from which ministry takes place. It leads from the point of the most profound frailty. It will go only as far and as fast as the least visionary and least faithful in the body will go. It is timid. It is not bold. It walks in the comfort of consensus, not in the power of the Spirit.

That value system stands in stark contrast to the New Testament model of leadership.

A shepherd-dominated leadership culture has never been in place when the people of God have thrived.

I’m in favor of shepherding. It is one of four styles of leadership that the Word promises the Lord will continue to provide to the church. It is a legitimate way of leading in the Body of Christ.

What I’m opposed to is our culture of leadership that is dominated by the values of the shepherd. Such a leadership culture has no root in the best part of CGGC history. It is a culture of decline and lukewarmth and death.

From what I can tell, the New Testament leadership culture was fairly well balanced among the four subcultures, but, if it was dominated by any of the four, it was dominated by the apostolic. Jesus designed it that way. He devoted significant energy to the development of the first apostles. Almost the entirety of the Book of Acts is focused on the Apostles. Paul tweaks the notion of a purely apostolic dominated leadership culture ever so slightly when he says that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. (Ephesians 2:20)

If our declining church is to become a Spirit-empowered movement again, I believe it will be because we embrace a cultural change at the level of leadership: one that respects all four leadership subcultures and balances them, yet allows apostles and prophets to lead.

Is it still possible for us to empower our leaders to overturn moneychanger’s tables?

Can we empower our leaders to lead with the vision John the Baptist used to describe the leadership of Jesus? Here’s how John said it:

“He has his winnowing fork and in hand and He will clear His threshing floor, gathering His wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Can we say to our leaders, “Be apostolic and prophetic. Be bold. Take that winnowing fork in hand and separate the wheat from the chaff. Gather the wheat. Burn up the chaff. That’s what leaders who lead as Jesus led do.”

My friends, we have leaders, but a culture of leadership that is not biblical. I believe our leaders are captive to a shepherd-dominated culture that has always led to death. I believe it is leading us to death now.

For the most part, our leaders are called, gifted and humble people who are faithful to the Lord. The time has come for us to no longer handcuff them with the constraints of the unbiblical, shepherd-controlled, lowest-common-denominator, weakest link leadership culture that we’ve drifted into.

It’s time to empower our leaders to be Christlike and apostolic and prophetic.

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I’ve been sitting on this for a while.

Before I entered it, I showed it to a non-CGGC friend to see how he’d respond. His calling and giftedness is apostolic. And, he read my post as an apostle would. He bristled over my obsessive preoccupation with Ed’s use of the word ‘translate.’ He asked me, “What do you think Ed should have done if not to begin to “translate the concepts back into our ministry setting in the Churches of God.”

So that I can be clear, let me give you a summary of what I remember saying in response:

Ed should have done exactly what he did. He should have begun to translate those missional concepts into the CGGC setting.

Ed has a Job Description. As far as I can tell, he is executing it to near perfection. What I’ve written is not a critique of Ed. It’s a critique of the culture that produced Ed’s Job Description. What I’ve written isn’t even a critique of the people who wrote the Job Description. The Job Description fit’s the CGGC of the last 50 years . Ed has functioned as an amazing Uber-Shepherd and that’s exactly what we’ve asked him to be.

What I’m saying is that a culture that defines the role of it most authoritative leader as that of a shepherd above all shepherds is not defining leadership in a biblical way. It is not empowering its most authoritative leader to lead growth.

Such a culture will get exactly what it projects: leadership built not on Spirit-empowered imagination but on consensus, built not on what the most visionary of us can see but on what the least faithful of us can tolerate.

If we are to grow, it is that culture that will have to change.