Collaboration: A New Kind of Leadership

We talk often about pastors needing gifting and skill with teaching, mentoring, counseling, managing, etc… the list goes on.  Today’s pastor has heavy demands upon her or his leadership to be essentially a super Christian, caused in part by the distorted expectations followers of Christ put upon our church leaders.  We insist they be transcendent in their lives so as to emulate an ideal model of Christian character.

In these times of tremendous shifts in thought and forms of Christian spirituality, we have heard much about the reimagining of a new kind of Christianity, a more inclusive, culturally relevant brand of Christ followership.

But what about a new kind of Christian leadership?  A new kind of pastoral model?  What would that look like?

I can think of one leader who managed to become absolutely deconstructed in his faith, ritual and leadership. From the rubble pile of his spiritual crisis emerged a brand new way of doing things as a God follower.

Meet the Apostle Paul, one of the most controversial and fascinating characters of the New Testament.

In his time, Paul was a pioneering leader in the early church during a tumultuous period.  Everything was changing.  The way to define God was changing, the way to organize believers was being reset, the very way of including outsiders, like pagans and Gentiles and (gasp!) even women was upsetting many of the old established order.

Paul was a new kind of  leader in the early church as they stumbled together  on how to be the people of God without a priest.  His plumbline, or standard of conduct, was defined in the document he wrote to the Corinthian church, specifically  1 Corinthians chapter 13. This is where Paul lays it down.  In the heat of debate and fierce theological arguments, amidst the tension of a crosscurrent of worldviews, Paul waved a banner of love showing that at the end of all our beliefisms and dogmas, Love must lead the way and be the way.

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

I Corinthians 13:1-3, The Message

As forms and rituals of Hebraic followership were challenged, the early Christians were discovering  through  bloody trial and error how to organize themselves in radical, new de-systemized  means.  Much of it came from Paul’s fierceness that there is to be no us or them in the body of Christ.  We are both the temple and the priesthood, taught Paul.

“It’s called pastoral distance,” said a theologian friend of mine who used to pastor.  “Seminarians are taught to keep ahealthy distance from those in their congregations.  It’s supposed to be a way for the pastors to keep boundaries with their people, but they often end up out of touch with the very ones they are supposed to be serving.”

A pastor I know disclosed that after ten years in the pulpit it finally dawned on him that he could not relate to the people in his congregation.  He had gone to seminary.  Most of his congregants were working class with a smattering of college educated people.  He pastored full-time and took two full days off each week to rest and recreate.  But he recognized that there was a core of dedicated volunteers he relied on to keep church life humming and that this  core of volunteers  did it with their free time and on their days off.

In his seventh year as a senior leader he experienced some health problems related to burnout.  His elders and board approved a three month paid sabbatical so he could rejuvenate.  Guilt washed over him, though, after he returned.  One of his first appointments was with a distraught  middle-aged man who was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. “Take some time off,” counseled the newly refreshed pastor. “Go fishing or  do whatever that helps you relax. Take a break from the pressures of your job.”

The man, recounted my pastor friend, looked at him with stunned face.  “How can I support my family if I just take off from work?  I’m not like you. I don’t have a church to pay for my bills so I can have a sabbatical. This is real life. This is my life.”

Real life.  My pastor friend and I talked at length about this idea.  Was he out of touch with real life?   Yes, he said.   In a way, being a pastor is to be disconnected from real life.  Some are called to live separate, he surmised.  That’s how he coped with it as he continued on his pastoral path….and took another sabbatical, a six-week break, in his tenth year of pastoring.  Also paid for by his church.  Guilt for not being like his congregants just came with the job. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked.

A new kind of leadership, like Paul’s, is not separatist.  The very story of the gospel is that God came down into the culture of humanity and became infused with who we are.

In some of the circles I run in there is much discussion about concepts of missional.  This is a word that means to be incarnational as a church  – or as a leader.  In other words, to be present with and alike with.

Paul was an immersion and collaborative  kind of leader. He wrote a radical theme of collaboration  found in 1 Corinthians.

So here’s what I want you to do.  When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight.  If prayers are offered in tongues, two or three’s the limit, and then only if someone is present who can interpret what you’re saying.  Otherwise, keep it between God and yourself.  And no more than two or three speakers at a meeting, with the rest of you listening and taking it to heart. Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other.   1 Corinthians 14:26-33, The Message

The distance between the pulpit and the congregant is collapsing.  It has to.  This new generation of Millennials insists upon it.

If there was only one word I could use to describe Millennials it would be this: collaborate.  This generation of Christ followers is not content with Sunday morning spectator Christianity nor the Us and Them separatism of leaders and followers.  They want a round table with no one person at the head for all are equal in voice and power (including women!).  This means today’s leaders need to pursue humility and servant leadership like they mean it.  Millennials have razor sharp bullshit detectors.  This is the generation that insists on raw honesty and community participation as a way of life and not a strategy.

Watch them emerge from all corners of Christendom, for their leadership will present itself in new ways, most likely under the radar of pulpit watchers.  This new kind of leadership will be found in the pews and especially outside the doors of the building.  They’ll be baristas, teachers and community gardeners.  They’ll be quietly leading in the way of Christ as college students, nannies, and bus drivers.  They will be doing church in small clusters seated around kitchen tables and in drum circles.  Collaborating and including those within arm’s reach.  Just like Paul did.