The 21st Century Church, Part Three: Leadership

I am always comforted when I read about the disciples. They consistently misunderstand Jesus, who he is, and why he came, just as I often do.

Over and over again the disciples persist in their belief that Jesus came to be a conquering king who would throw out the Roman oppressors by force. For them, Jesus was not just a leader, but a ruler who would do everything for them and deliver Israel from her occupation.

In many ways, we have a similarly lopsided view of leadership. We look for decisive leaders who will lead the charge and tell us exactly what to do. This is especially apparent in our church experience today. In most churches, we look to the pastor, priest, or minister to lead us, almost to the point of having them serve as faith surrogates — having them believe for us, telling us what to think, and taking care of the difficult questions so we don't have to.

That's not to say we don't need leadership. We do, but we don't need clergy to do all of the heavy work for us. We need people who can guide discussions and we need mentors, but we don't need the kind of leader who becomes the focus of church instead of the message. Jesus did not come to be that kind of leader. Jesus came to exemplify servant leadership — a person who leads by walking the walk.

Peter Rollins believes that the church of the future requires a different type of leader: One who refuses to lead. What we need are facilitators, people with expertise in theology and worship who can nudge us in the right direction; conversation moderators instead of de facto heads of the church.

It isn't the fault of our current leadership that church has become a spectator sport. We don't want to take responsibility. We don't want to assume the risk that comes with servant leadership.

But if we are going to be serious about following the path of Jesus we need to get down in the trenches. Only by getting our hands dirty in the work of faith can we ever claim ownership of our identity as followers of Jesus — as Christians we need leaders who push us to think, to question, and to discover on our own. We cannot live vicariously through our leaders.

If we don't take on that mantle of leadership, we as a whole can never hope to truly know what it means to be a disciple. We have been given a task to be the light of the world and bring justice to the nations and it is only by carrying out that mission that we make our faith real and keep Christianity relevant to the world.