Hanover Fellowship Church
Real People...Serving a Real God

Leadership is in vogue these days. Everywhere pastors and church staff members are flocking to leadership seminars. Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, holds a massive conference on leadership each year with all the biggest, brightest stars of Christian and secular thought on stage. I’ve been to conferences like these. I’ve heard the wisdom of Maxwell, Malphurs and Blanchard. For my Master of Divinity degree, Southern Seminary required me to take a semester-long seminary class devoted entirely to issues of leadership.

One currently popular maxim in the leadership field is, “If you want to know if you’re a good leader, look behind you to see if anyone is following.” To my observation, everyone seems to have bought into this logic hook, line, and sinker. We take it as fact that if a church is struggling and not behind its leader, then it must be because of poor leadership.

I wonder what folks would say about Moses. Out in the Sinai desert he looked behind him and saw his people questioning his every move. “You idiot! How could you have thought this was a good idea, bringing us out here in the desert with no food to eat nor water to drink?” Our modern day leadership consultants would have had a field day with Moses. They would have said he didn’t devise a clear enough strategy. He didn’t have a five-year plan. He didn’t communicate his vision with the people. He never obtained “buy-in” before moving forward. He was too authoritarian (the whole Law thing). He was not very relational. He didn’t handle criticism well (having God open the ground and swallow up the entire families of Korah, Dathan and Abiram). He practiced sloppy church discipline (executing those who worshiped Baal). He should have given all the Israelites spiritual gifts inventories, found out what they were really passionate about, then spent all of his energies seeking to “coach” them and “release” their gifts accordingly.

By even his own admission, Moses was not a skilled communicator. He dreaded standing in front of all those questioning, angry, doubting eyes. Our strategists and consultants would have given him years worth of mentoring and training in public speaking before they ever would have let him face such a large congregation (at least 600,000, not counting women and children). Such a church would only be fit for a seasoned veteran who knows how to “handle” people.

Moses was probably not right for the demographic he was working with either. He had been given a privileged upbringing as a palace brat while his kinsmen worked as slaves. He also had a felony record (he murdered an Egyptian). After having done a thorough assessment of his personality and experiences, our leadership gatekeepers surely would have denied Moses the job.

But why did the congregation of Israel struggle? The Bible does not pin the problem on Moses’ leadership but on the carnality of the people—they didn’t believe God enough, they didn’t respect the authority of his appointed leader and they sought earthly pleasures instead of heavenly treasures. No doubt today’s leadership consultants, exulting in their mega-church successes, would think that they could have done better than Moses. They would have devised a system whereby carnality would have been used to advantage rather than extinguished. I can hear them: “Provide the people a pleasant atmosphere. Make an interpersonal ‘connection.’ Show them lots of tender love and care. Let them have control. Acknowledge, encourage and reward them frequently. Above all, proceed slowly and gradually, don’t get them out of their comfort zones too abruptly—maybe stay in Egypt for a few years while you lay out your vision and build support for it.”

I think we pastors today have a lot to learn from Moses. For one, we need to stop paying attention to the mega-churches and the leadership consultants. The implicit logic can be faulty, even heretical—that we need to learn to imitate leaders of large congregations in order to replicate their results. We’ve come to idolize the Rick Warrens and Bill Hybels of the kingdom (I have a seminary buddy who quotes Rick Warren in every conversation we have). The only thing, however, these people can do is tell you what motivates people to follow them. Let me translate that: how to effectively stimulate people’s carnal longings for esteem, enjoyment, self-involvement and control. These leaders are masters of people. We don’t have to be in order to lead.

Secondly, carnality cannot drive our leadership. So what if it drives our flock? We are under obligation to God to be like Moses and to not stoop to their level. We must not dangle carnality (e.g., the sensory extravaganzas that have become popular as worship services and Bible studies) to lure people, thinking that we can perform the old bait and switch and move people’s hearts to spiritual things later. Let us stick with simplicity, discard the misleading packaging, and tell people right-up-front what we’re really about—a life of self-denial and sacrifice for Christ. Even more importantly, let’s trust the Holy Spirit to prepare the hearts of our people. If we are leading our people in a biblical way and they buck our leadership, then let’s stop blaming the leadership and start blaming the people (eek! such a prideful statement! shouldn’t we leaders be in touch with our weaknesses?). Let’s stop reacting to resistance by pandering, thinking we have to come down to people’s carnal level (what many strategists understand “contextualization” to be, based on a grossly distorted interpretation of Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 9). If we look behind us and there is no one following, then let us shake the dust off of our feet and move on.

The bottom line—Moses led because God told him to. God only told Moses “where” to go—the “how” was to be left up to God and his power (not Moses’). We pastors have God’s full and complete revelation in the Bible telling us where to lead our people. We need to leave the “how” up to God and not the leadership consultants.

If God so blesses us with a congregation of spiritually-minded people, a flock that stands up to willingly deny themselves for the sake of the cross of Jesus Christ their savior, then no leader on this planet will be able to stand in their way—these people already have the greatest leader there is. So we pastors need to stop second-guessing ourselves. We need to put away our own carnality and preach the Bible alone. Preach Christ crucified. Imitate him to our people. Move forward in faith. And leave the rest to God.

A ministry of Hanover Fellowship Church, Hanover, PA
www.hanoverfellowship.org
Copyright © 2005 Chuck Cruise