Church Leadership and Administration

Transcription

1 Church Leadership and Administration ML501 LESSON 05 of 24 Kenneth O. Gangel, PhD Experience: Scholar in Residence, Toccoa Falls College We are discussing in this lecture the question, How is church leadership different? How is it different from secular leadership, particularly, but not necessarily, how is it different from leadership in other Christian organizations? As a matter of fact, throughout the course I probably will be using the concept of Christian leadership in a broad sense referring to the church and to other Christian organizations pretty much synonymously. I don t know that we can say that leadership in the church is different from leadership in other Christian organizations. A church obviously is referred to in that context as the local church. Other Christian organizations are a part of the universal church. The general principles of biblical teaching would apply, other than when one looks at certain leadership offices such as elder and deacon. However, none of that is our concern in this lecture. We are concerned with these four specific differences identified here on the outline sheet. Organization or organism is the first one. Is the church organization or organism? And the answer is yes, the church is an organization, and the church is an organism. In terms of definitions, I don t want to get technical at all here, simply to say that as an organism the church qualifies definitionally because it is the body of Christ; and as the body of Christ there is this unique demonstration of the church like no other similar organization or institution in history or on the face of the earth at any given point in history including now. As an organization, however, the church also qualifies because it partakes of all of the characteristics, or at certainly enough of the characteristics to qualify, of any other organization. It has operating principles, a charter. It has a board, which is responsible and called whatever Board of Elders, Official Board, Board of Trustees the nomenclature is irrelevant. It has officers, it usually owns property, so to say that the church is organism not organization is simply to play with words. The church is organization. Any sociologist who had no understanding whatsoever of pro or con arguments on the question would have to conclude that the church is organization. The point is it is not just organization. 1 of 10

2 The danger comes when we have just one or the other, and our interpretation of the answer to this question must balance the church as organization with the church as organism. The application stage comes when we fall into the trap of applying organizational solutions to organismic problems or organismic solutions to organizational problems, and I have seen that so many times in local churches I could not begin to count. Let me try to illustrate. There is a Sunday school superintendent who is extremely efficient on the job. After all, he s been trained at Harvard Business School, holds an MBA degree, is a high-rise, fast-track executive in a major corporation in his city, pulling down about $65,000/$75,000 a year and well on the way up; and he runs the Sunday school the way he runs his office, delegation and clear-cut, long-range planning, all of the various aspects of leadership behavior intact. The problem is he doesn t love other people; and he comes off as cold and harsh, sometimes even appears to be unchristian to other people. He s not in the technical sense, because we re viewing him in an illustration as a born-again man. Now what does he need? Does he need more organizational training for the task? Hardly. What he needs is to understand what it is like to lead in an organismic setting, because church leadership is different from what he s doing at his company or what he learned at Harvard Business School. Now let s take the same illustration in terms of the Sunday school superintendent and say: Here s a superintendent who really loves the Lord, spends time every day in the Word, spends time in prayer, walks closely with the Lord, and yet is really a washout in leading the Sunday school. He does not delegate, he does not carry forth responsibilities when they are assigned to him by his superiors. He does not keep records. There is no long-range plan. Nothing is functioning correctly. What does the man need? More prayer time? More Bible study? No, he needs to learn how to lead. Leading is a learned experience. Leaders are not born, they are made; and here is a man who needs to learn how to do all of those things which go into the making of a Sunday school superintendent. The book which I have written on this subject is entitled You Can Be an Effective Sunday School Superintendent (published by Victor Books) and the whole thrust of the book is simply to say, Here is the way you go about administering within the framework of Sunday school superintendency. There is a leadership role that can be learned. 2 of 10

3 Now let s come off of that first item into the second, which is similar to it in terms of the distinction but is a totally different dimension. Church leadership is different from leadership in the world in that the difference between a nomothetic dimension and idiographic dimension come into focus. Now if you have read the text carefully on this subject, you re not unfamiliar with these technical terms. This is the jargon of management science: nomothetic meaning institution-centered; idiographic meaning individual-centered. So that the nomothetic organization or the nomothetic church is one which is constantly looking for its people to serve it. That is, for people to be at the church when the doors are open, to be there on time, to carry out responsibility for, after all, this is their duty. The idiographic church is one which seeks to serve its people. It is a church which is saying constantly by its programming, by its own words, by its own behavior: Look, this is what we want to do for you. This is the kind of response that we want. This is the kind of reaction that we want ourselves to be giving. I m talking now obviously about the church leaders in that kind of response. The whole interpretation of this should be clear in looking at the text of the New Testament in that the New Testament church is a church of balance; and the church, like the business organization in this case, which wishes to come out on the winning side in this particular difference, will be both nomothetic and idiographic. It should be immediately obvious that you can t be one or the other. You can t be so totally idiographic that nobody ever has any responsibility to the organization. Nobody carries through, nobody takes his accountability seriously. Nobody does the job. You can t do that. There obviously has to be a certain role definition, a certain expectation on the part of people who have assumed leadership roles, including yourself. By the same token, we can t let the church be entirely nomothetic. It must also have an idiographic dimension and perhaps even a much larger idiographic dimension than a secular organization, which has a profit and motive. Take a look at those diagrams in the book which take a rectangle and divide it with a parallel line actually a line which runs from the high side or to the low side going from right to left and the significance is that no organization is totally nomothetic or totally idiographic, nor is any organization probably 50/50 in balance. But the balance depends on what the organization is; and I am suggesting here that in application, the church is more idiographic than it is nomothetic. That is, it is more concerned about what it does for people and the response that it has for people. 3 of 10

4 And the leader who works within this framework is a leader who is able to function in church leadership in a different way, because it is not working in a profit-making organization, it is working in an organization which is also an organism, which must be nomothetic in order to achieve its organizational goals but must also be idiographic in order to achieve its organismic goals. Now let s go on to the third item. The difference between program or people; very very similar to number two. The focal point, the emphasis on program, that is, what we have structured and when we meet and the activities in which we engage or the specific needs of people. I listened on one occasion to Dr. Hudson Armerding, President of Wheaton College, discuss the qualities of Christian leadership. He did a takeoff from Acts 6:3 where the qualities of the early deacons are identified. He talked about the necessity on the part of the leader for a constant reaccreditation of integrity. Those are Armerding s words. He went back to the Old Testament books of Exodus and Numbers and Deuteronomy and identified them as a pattern of leadership in looking at the example of Moses and Aaron specifically; and he pointed out eight qualities of leadership. Now I bring this in at this point because our leadership stands or falls, moves ahead or stagnates according to how well we can make it work with people. Leadership is never ever a vacuous operation. You simply do not operate in that way. It becomes essential, absolutely essential, to make leadership work in a context of people. Armerding says, First of all, personal discipline is crucial. And this begins first in the mind. It s an attitudinal kind of thing. For example, a dramatic fall into sin doesn t happen all at once, it begins with loose-mindedness and perhaps the listening to or reading of improper nonedificational materials, and then eventually personal discipline breaks down and the leader loses control of himself. And when he loses control of himself, he loses control of his leadership role. The second item to be learned from the early Old Testament books is the role of courage in working with people. Anybody can put on a program. Anybody can say, We re meeting tomorrow night at 7:30. But staying with all of the foibles, problems, and heartaches, and headaches that come in working with people is a problem, and it really takes enormous courage. And sometimes that courage extends to a third item which is handling success gracefully. 4 of 10

5 Armerding says, Praise is like liniment. It s probably good for you if you don t take it internally. And success may often be more difficult than failure. Paul said, I know how to abound. I can be successful without allowing it to go to my head. I m able to be an achiever. I m able to win some battles without thinking I m the greatest general in the world, so handling success is important, which leads into step four, humility, taking seriously the responsibility of privilege. Jesus said in Luke 12:48, From him to whom which much has been given, much shall be required. And that certainly is a major leadership rubric. Number five is very closely related to the third distinction on our outline today: this distinction between program and people. It emphasizes the necessity to listen and learn even from subordinates. Presumably, any leader who has an ounce of understanding of how to relate to a boss will listen and learn from his superior. Only the very immature person who really hasn t grasped the essential base of followership to leadership would not do so. But it takes a very mature person, one who is wellgrounded and has a well-balanced view of himself and his role, to listen to and learn from subordinates: teacher from students, parents from children, pastor from people, and on down the line. The sixth ingredient here is wisdom. What more can we say about that? What more need we say? James 1 spells it out; and if that s insufficient, you go to the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Selflessness is item seven. The examples in the Scripture: Moses asking for forgiveness for those who condemned him; Paul in Romans 9, in his quest for redemption for Israel, willing as he said, if it were possible, to give up my own life if that would guarantee the salvation of Israel; Jesus on the cross, Father, forgive them, for they don t know what they re doing ; Stephen in Acts 7, Lay not this sin to their charge. Selflessness. It should be immediately obvious how that concept and how that quality plugs into the program or people distinction. We lead people. We do not lead programs per se. We use that nomenclature sometimes, but it s probably not accurate. We lead people. Leaders must have followers, or they re not leaders. It s very essential when you re leading to turn around and see if anyone is following you, or you re liable be out there by yourself. You dare not lie too far behind or people will pass you. You dare not get too far out in front; for if the followers lose sight of the leader, they may just give up the race and no longer be concerned with following. 5 of 10

6 The eighth item is spiritual fruitfulness. Galatians 5: love, joy, peace are emotional factors in the qualities of Christian leadership. Longsuffering, gentleness, goodness are conceptual factors in that fabric of leadership. Faithfulness, meekness, selfcontrol are volitional matters, matters of the will, matters of the heart, matters of the mind, matters of the will; and perhaps this latter dimension the volitional, the will is a quality above all others which sustains the Christian leader in times of crisis. One does not fall back on one s emotions. During times of crisis, one falls back on one s will to make it through by the power of the Spirit of God; and all of this, the central issue is the call of God. I know I can work with these people. I know I can hang in there and stay with this church and make it work over the long haul; because God has called me and He will be with me and He will sustain me, and I am able to function because of what He is and what He has done for me. We come to item four, expanded in this lecture a bit more than others, talking about Christian management techniques, an item on which I have disagreed at times with others who claim there are no Christian management techniques. I think it s again probably a matter of semantics. The question here or the distinction, the difference, is between centralization or decentralization. In definition, centralization means focusing\harboring the authority for decision-making and other leadership tasks in one person or a small group of people at the top, the old pyramid chart approach. Decentralization is the reverse, that is, moving decision-making authority down the line, down to the grassroots, as far to the grassroots as possible. There s a better way to say that, probably, it would be this: The decision-making authority is as close to the task as possible and the interpretation of that leadership style has to do with a willingness to give up one s so-called prerogatives of being in charge and say to subordinates, No, you know more about this than I do. You re in charge. This is inseparably linked with the role of delegation about which we will speak in a future lecture, but here it comes in as a basic principle of leadership, a commitment to decentralization. Now if you look down the outline chart, assuming you have it before you, one wants to move constantly to the right side of the question line, that is, an emphasis in Christian leadership on organism, on being idiographic in style, an emphasis on people, and an emphasis on decentralization. One could say that the Christian leader in the context of the church practices idiographic leadership with a focus on the organism, centering his attention on people and decentralizing authority whenever possible. 6 of 10

7 Let s get back to this matter of Christian Management Techniques for just a moment. That s the title (with a question mark) of a copy of The Christian Leadership Letter. You ought to be familiar with this publication. I ll give you the address right here, just in case you are not familiar with it. It s a ministry of Dr. Ted Engstrom and Ed Dayton, comes out of West Huntington Drive in Monrovia, California, and the zip code is That number on West Huntington Drive is 919. It s a ministry of World Vision International, which employs both of these gentleman, very very fine instrument monthly. This is the September 1980 issue entitled, as I said a moment ago, Christian Management Techniques? It begins this way: In a recent book, The Emerging Order, published by Putnam in 1979, Jeremy Rifkin and Ted Howard comment on page 117, There are organizations like World Vision International that among other things specialize in Christian management techniques and conduct training seminars for Christian businessmen across the country. We wondered about that phrase now I m out of the quote from Rifkin and Howard back to the quote from Dayton and Engstrom, who say, We wondered about that phrase Christian management techniques. It certainly was not something we have used at World Vision, nor have we been aiming our Managing Your Time seminars at Christian businessman as such. And then they suggest that the phrase probably originated with Richard Quebedeaux in his 1973 book The Worldly Evangelicals, in which he talks about that, in recent years, there has also emerged a widespread interest in Christian management techniques for laity and clergy, the most popular trainers in this area are Ed Dayton and Ted Engstrom etc. Now Engstrom and Dayton raise the question here: Are there such things are Christian management techniques? Is there a fundamental difference between the management of a Christian organization and the management of an organization that claims no Christian commitment? Now obviously you see why I m plugging that into our lecture entitled Is Church Leadership Different and How Is Church Leadership Different? And whereas they suggest there may not be Christian management techniques as such, but management techniques used by Christians, they will produce different results within a Christian organization. I m not in agreement with that line. I think the technique, the whole approach, the whole philosophy of leadership on the part of Christian leaders is different, so let s waive the premise for the moment and come to the question of the use and the results, as these fellows talk about it, in this particular issue. They try to define Christian first. I shouldn t say they try; they do it. A Christian is a person who is indwelt by the Spirit of God. 7 of 10

8 A Christian is a person who is not only marked by the Spirit but motivated and empowered. A Christian is a person who has become a citizen of a new kingdom. A Christian is a person who is brought into a special relationship with other citizens of this kingdom; and a Christian is a person who has been especially gifted to work in harmony with the other parts of this body for the ultimate glory of God. There s that people idiographic emphasis again. Now if all of these qualities, they say, do indeed define a Christian, think what that means in terms of the way a Christian organization works and the impact it can have. And now they begin to identify some of these differences and the areas in which that impact is felt. For example, recruiting, We re all subject to increasingly complex federal and state labor laws. (I m reading, of course.) Most Christian organizations can hire Christians for most positions, and recruiting, they say, needs to go beyond the testimony of experience with Christ and a review of work experience and education. If this person is, as we have stated, specially gifted gifts fit in with the gifts of others we need to ask about those spiritual gifts. Perhaps what we are saying is that there may not be Christian recruiting techniques, as such, but there are certainly some special questions that need to be asked. Organizing is another area which is impinged upon by the distinctiveness of the Christian organization. Most secular organizations organize top down. Now here they re getting into this decentralization issue I talked about a moment ago: a pyramidal hierarchy. There is an assumption that the leaders know more than those down the line. Direction flows top down. Now what happens in an organization which believes that each person within it is indwelt and empowered by the same Spirit? It s a totally different situation. It s as though every employee had access to the same data bank, one that contains not only the standards against which individual relationships are to be evaluated but also information on what we should do next. Now for the manager this is good news and bad news. Good news is if you follow this through to its logical conclusion, decentralization means you re going to give away some of your authority. The good news is, praise God, we re bringing other people into the flow of decision-making and developing other leaders in the process. Standards is another area which falls into this category. Write Engstrom and Dayton, In our experience, too often Christian organizations fail to establish standards of behavior. They tend to be much less concerned even then secular organizations. Christian organizations can easily assume that because all the staff are Christians, no standards are needed. 8 of 10

9 We would maintain, however, that though we have every right to assume that those who are living in the Spirit are going to be striving not to sin, it is useful to develop what the organization considers principles of Christian behavior that it expects of everyone. One needs to be careful, of course, what goes into that. I m commenting now on the article, but nevertheless I agree, standards need to be spelled out, they need to be ones with which the various employees and leaders are in agreement, ones which they can support publically, verbally, when it s necessary to do so. These are special relationships, and the relationships of people in a Christian organization and the whole concept of what it means to be a part of that kind of organization makes church leadership different. Engstrom and Dayton talk about building people. They talk about participation. They talk about sharing the mind of Christ. Let me just share that paragraph with you: If we share the mind of Christ, they write, then we should give opportunity to share what each of us believes God s will to be. The bottom-up, top-down planning process makes this a possibility. We need to design a planning program that does not require a staff member to stop the executive director in the hall each day and tell him or her the latest word from the Lord. This needs to be done for both short-term and long-term planning. Now they really lumped a lot into that paragraph. They re assuming an understanding on the part of the reader of the communications process, more technically organizational communications, and the planning process. Now we re going to get to both of those, but we are not there now, and we should not assume a total familiarity of all the students involved in this course with those concepts, but the idea is there. The marks of leadership are very, very significant in this idea of working with people and seeing one s self in this friendship role, this warmth of love, the demonstration of the apostle Paul as next to the Lord Himself, the classic model of the New Testament leader. Paul was known by the warmth of his love bound to his churches by deep affection. He could write to the Philippians, God is my witness how I yearn for you all with all the affection of Jesus Christ. That s not cold-blooded calculation management, certainly not aloof from the organization. This kind of warm love is revealed in Paul s ministry. He knows people s names. He writes to them by name. He prays for them by name. Many of the letters identify that. His prayers reveal his love. He could write to the Thessalonians, We give thanks to God for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers. 9 of 10

10 The spiritual welfare of his people is constantly before his mind, a marvelous demonstration of God s grace in the life of Paul. This is the kind of thing that carries through, not only through the biblical examples like Paul and Moses and Joshua, but through any legitimate examples we want to follow in our day for an understanding of what it means to be a Christian leader and how church leadership is different. It is different because it focuses on organism not just organization. It is different because it emphasizes the idiographic dimension and does not get trapped into the nomothetic dimension of the organization. It is different because it focuses upon and emphasizes people rather than program, and it is different because it lends itself toward a leadership philosophy of decentralization rather than grasping for and holding tenaciously onto the authority that comes with the principle of centralization. Yes, church leadership is different. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 10 of 10