Do we lead or drive?

This is something Chris and I have been talking about for several weeks over a variety of contexts. This post is NOT intended as a present criticism of anyone in particular.

When I was a brand new Christian I wanted to be driven. I wanted leaders that would tell me what to do, lay it on the line, make me accept what they were saying despite all that would fight against it within me. Sometimes that happened, though usually in the areas that I didn't want them to focus.

My earliest experiences were coloured by growing up in a baptist church. With 'adulthood' and membership came access to the 'business meeting', which was the place that various factions warred with each other to try to wrest control over the direction the church was headed. I have nothing positive to say about these meetings, and it has left me with the conviction that democracy in church is fundamentally wrong, and a source of all kinds of wickedness of which I remain convinced to this day. In more recent times I've witnessed the aftermath of Godly men suffering bruising encounters with their business meetings and diaconate.

It was this that made me want to submit myself to a godly leadership who would guide and rule righteously.

And that's all very well for a slightly wild 17 year old who is socially inept and still discovering how to live with other people, but what about when they're married, and have acquired children and pastoral responsibility for others.

Our church in London was part of New Frontiers and had previously been a Baptist church, still occasionally having 'business meetings' at which we did not vote (because we were under righteous leadership, right?). They were also a legacy required by constitution to use the buildings. We'd also seen how some of the churches in other Charismatic streams had operated with 'heavy shepherding' where you'd seek permission and guidance from the leadership for things like job and house moves, car purchases and often smaller, more trivial stuff. The original motivation for this was good and I'm sure it came out of similar reasoning about democracy being wrong, where people wanted to live the best they could. But what started out as life in the Spirit became death in the law, and churches went through splits, pain and division in those streams (not New Frontiers).

With our move to Oxfordshire in 1990 we became involved with a group of churches that had a different emphasis from what we'd known before. The leaders we met in OCC had all been humble, ordinary, hardworking despite obviously having significant ministries.

They also recognised that they could only lead if people followed.

It took a while to understand what they meant, and I can remember being offered guidance by someone to help handle people: "try to woo them: they're God's people, not yours". There were also 'business meetings' but they were called 'Body Meetings' instead, and involved getting the church together to talk through, then pray through the direction the leadership felt they should take the church in. There was a recognition that together 'we have the mind of Christ', but instead of being used to justify democracy, instead everyone was invited to pray and listen to what God was saying, then bring what they thought they'd heard and submit it to the leadership. In turn the leaders would review it prayerfully and see what guidance and insight it brought, then feed it back to the church.

A process like this could only work where there is righteous leadership, not affected by partiality, envy, strife or ambition. I can say that there was very little evidence of any of those things. As I've mentioned before, OCC leadership is almost entirely derived from within and not by external appointment.

Why do I mention this?

Because in this way the people were always being lead by their leaders. There was no (well, very seldom) sudden imposition of one person's will on another, no nasty surprises, little opportunity for the devil to get in and cause division and disunity.

It also made life for the leadership better. No more did they have to be ready at a moment's notice to defend their actions or stance on a decision they had made. They didn't have to keep watching their backs for the dagger that they knew could descend at any time from those they disagreed with. Instead they were working with the church generally - not even just with an inner circle of supporters and close friends. And it meant that BECAUSE the whole church was involved listening to God, they could hear Him saying things that they would not necessarily hear by themselves, sharing responsibility for bringing direction.

There may be better models of church leadership, but I haven't met it yet.

There's related posts here and here and here and here.