Jesus and Leadership Structure
When Jesus said the provocative words, “Come follow me,” there must have been a chill that ran up the spine of the disciple’s backs. Imagine the moment. Ordinary people being called by an extraordinary man. This was the man who healed people, restoring their dignity and inviting them out of oppression. He touched lepers without harm, turned water into wine and caused the fish to flood the nets. To follow Him was an epic call, a moment to be part of something good. What did He see that they didn’t? His very invitation invited them into a larger mission of restoration.
But imagine for a second, after calling his disciples to follow him, he proceeded to invite them to come to the local synagogue on Sunday morning for a couple of hours and Wednesday night for another couple of hours. Forget following him around and watching Him do things. And when they got to there, he sat them down and led them through a couple of songs. Everyone sat in the same direction facing Jesus as they listened to him speak from behind a small upright box. The message was on average an hour long, tightly scripted with an introductory joke to arouse the crowd and was primarily about how to “not sin”. It usually included three points, a story from His personal life, and a summary to wrap it all up. He always finished with a challenge to his disciples to do better and closed with another song. At some point in the process he passed a large basket around expecting them to put a little something in to pay the rent and help build a larger meeting place. The reality was that those in setup were tired of unpacking and packing up each time they met in this rented building. A new, obviously larger building just made sense. As long as those in the crowd showed up, the disciples were good. Invite their friend and they were better. Serve on a committee and they were golden. Under this scenario you have to imagine the original call to “Come follow me” seems to lose its impact, doesn’t it?
The problem is that this isn’t in the Bible. It’s not the story.
I laugh even as I write that paragraph, and know it’s a caricature, yet this is exactly what the church and Christendom has practiced over the last 1,700 years. And yet Jesus never did it this way, nor did the church in the first three centuries. He went out to the people and restored them. He sought out reconciliation and healing. He engaged His Father’s mission, and did it well. Can you imagine watching Jesus heal someone. I doubt the disciples ever got used to this. But in doing so He showed them the way. He modeled a leadership that empowered them to do it themselves. It was an apprentice model of leadership that taught them how to engage the mission themselves.
Emerging Grace has been writing on Organization and Organism in the church and it sparked some great dialog in the comment section. But the conversation brought out a really great question for me. What are the structures we create and do they bring out or stifle real life? I would ask a second question. Do they help empower people to mission? The obvious temptation is to create something that is fixed so we have a sense of ease and comfort with the process. It’s regular and safe. But the problem is that no two people are alike and there are no one cookie cutter solutions. So we search for the next big thing, hoping that someone else has figured out what worked.
A second problem is that when we create something that is fixed and set it in stone, and a generation passes by, it tends to become tradition. And who wants to question tradition? The structure becomes the structure because that’s what we’ve always done. It’s comfortable. And when something works, for a long period of time, we can tend to idolize it. It’s not the next big thing but it does make us look good, or decent, or at least keep the dogs at bay.
I’m reading a book by a doctor who shared her experience in residency and she encountered a surprising model for becoming a doctor. She began with an intensive training in school but once in residency she was totally immersed in practice. Hospitals used a see one, do one, teach one approach. Doctors would see a procedure, then do the same procedure the next time, and on the third they would teach it to the next person. Sounds shocking for a profession where life often hangs in the balance. But what if the medical world understood that we remember what we do better than what we hear. And we remember what we teach better than what we do.
I find it interesting that Jesus’ model of leadership, which was followership, was in direct opposition to ego. Everything worked toward creating leaders who could complete His mission on their own without Him. He knew we had the Holy Spirit to lead our hearts. It’s like He completely understood the ego’s pull to create something in our image. And He was not going to create a structure that would play into our desire to be the center of attention and create followers simply for the sake of following. Some people call it distributed leadership. It empowered leaders to do what He did. He was constantly inviting us into what He was doing, and then trusted us to do it. We even had grace for the times we messed up. I can imagine the moment Jesus left the disciples, they must have looked at each other and said, “What is he doing?”
So his call to follow begs the question, “Are churches structured in a distributed model of leadership development? Are we giving away trust and power or are we creating systems of reliance on pastors?”
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