BLOG 11/7/13. A CHURCH FOR THE OTHER SIX DAYS: LEADERSHIP
A church for the other six days must somehow equip and encourage every member to function in a context that is often frustrating, complex, alien, and replete with polluted ethics. There are those omnipresent “thorns [that] infest the ground,” as the hymn states the situation. To even stand at the threshold of conceiving a church that meets such a need is intimidating and multi-dimensional. But such a church community must be totally engaged in the lives of its participants, and this especially involves out conception of church leadership.
I am proposing that we need a whole different, or new, conception of church leadership—a whole more well defined function of those teaching-shepherds, or pastors. He, or she, cannot and must not be one who is detached from the existential lives of those for whom they are responsible. They must not be lost in their spiritual, in-house, clergy world. Such must come up through the ranks and prove themselves as those with the capacity to encourage and equip every member into maturity in Christ. Note that I am using one of the few definitions of how the church function as found in Ephesians 4.
It is a stretch, but we must realize that so much of how we conceive of the church today does not come from the New Testament. Jesus told his disciples that he would build his church, but never gave them a pattern or blueprint other than it was to be a new creation community and a missionary movement. The apostles (especially Paul) give us a sense of how the Holy Spirit equips the church for its communal and missional integrity. For myself, I find that Ephesians 4 is fascinating in its implications. It says that the Risen Lord gives four gifts to the church so that every member attain mature adulthood which is to grow into the stature of the fullness of Christ—no longer dependent children, or those blown about by every cultural zeitgeist—and so equipped to be functioning and reproductive participants in the mission.
There are four such gifts mentioned, but never defined. But they point us to the character of the Christian community: there is the gift of apostle, or the missionary (missionary church-planter?) gift; there is the gift of prophecy, which is the capacity to understand and exegete the cultural context (“the other six days” realities); then comes the gift of evangelist, or those who are equipped to communicate the thrilling reality of the gospel of God’s new creation in Christ; and then there is the gift of teaching-shepherd (or pastor-teacher) gift, which would be the one who forms believers in the Word of Christ. All four are critical in the equipping ministry.
All four of these gifts, then, are necessary for the equipping every member for the other six days. That would mean that a Christian community of integrity would be an apostolic community, a prophetic community, and evangelistic community, and a community deeply formed by the Word of Christ.
I simply want to insist that that teaching-shepherd gift must be a person who has come up through the ranks and is in profound conversation with those for whom he/she is responsible . . . plus, she/he must be one whom is well-versed and knowledgeable of that Word of Christ, and is a practitioner of the same, so as to be able to equip others with integrity and depth. Hence, he must be deeply immersed in the lives and realities of those he is equipping, and in their “other six days” lives, as well as deeply immersed in the message and mission of Christ. Such leaders are not automatically, or usually, a result of an academic degree from a theological school—it is a result of being deeply invested in, and immersed in the lives of those whom she is equipping.
Got it? I’ll come back to the other three equally necessary gifts next time.
