Course: Spiritual Life of the Leader

Lecture 24: From – To Movement for Clergy and Laity

Movements which are necessary for the church today to fulfill what God is calling them to do. For the clergy: 1. Moving from pastor as the primary minister to each believer fulfilling their calling as full-time ministers in their spheres of influence; 2. Moving from preaching only to not only appropriate sermon preparation time but also discipline a core group; 3. Moving from a priority on numbers to staying with a process that results in mature disciples; 4. From solo leadership to team leadership. Discipleship should not be optional. Old Christendom model is breaking down but confusion on whom and what we are called to be. “Is my first aim to make disciples, or do I just run an operation?” For the laity: 1. From going to church to being Church; 2. From expecting benefits from Christianity requiring no sustained effort to being intent on being disciples; 3. From being passive observers to full-time ministers. Primary purpose of leader is to equip the people of God to do the work of God.

I. Clergy

The spiritual life is not static; we are moving from whatever we are called out of and into the Kingdom of God and to that point where Christ will return where the New Heavens and New Earth will be established. We will be given new glorious physical bodies and this is something to move toward. Let us look at a movement that is going to be essential as we are working out spiritual leadership and as we are truly in our spiritual lives and we are listening to what the Lord is saying to the church today. Any person whether ordained or not; whoever is the head pastor is. I think one of the first movements that is going to happen is in regards to a ministry world view that says that the pastor is the primary ministry. In other words, we have pastor equals being a minister and we have to go and equip our congregation to step into the fact that every Christian is called to be a fulltime minister of the Gospel. Nothing less is enough for a biblical understanding of the spiritual life. Then we have to move pastors and clergy from an upfront understanding that preaching and teaching is the summit of their ministry. Sometimes I get so frustrating with some of my students at seminary. I sometimes think that we need to change the name from seminary to ‘sermonary’. This is because their own world view says that the height of their ministry is going to be standing up in front of people and teaching them and that is their primary responsibility. We want people to be well-equipped and teach the Gospel and to lead the sheep. We want phenomenal outstanding messages for our Lord, but when you start looking at upfront as being primary; this represents only half of the truth of the Gospel and Jesus’ example to us. Yes, Jesus taught up front as in the Sermon on the Mound. He had upfront ministry but he invested the majority of his time behind the scenes discipling of the few. We want to have our leaders to invest appropriate time that is needed for up front work and this takes hours in order to speak well for our Lord. It cannot be Saturday microwave specials putting something together at the last moment. God’s people deserve better than this. We also have to understand our lives as being clergy; this is the whole pastor realm.

We also need to understand there are two sides to this; I need to also need to do discipleship. That is as much of my responsibility as is the upfront work. Then as the upfront leader to move my primary focus away from how many show up for the service or how many are doing specific things or how many decisions are being made. All of these are important, for sure, but my primary focus becomes staying with a process that result in mature disciples. What is biblical fidelity and what does it mean for God’s church. The moment that we go solo is the time that we are going to negate the possibility of others seeing themselves as full time ministers of the Gospel. This movement is going to need to touch our hearts in terms of driving us away from solo leadership which is going to deny people their rightful calling in the local body of Christ. No one is given all of the gifts and grace that is needed to do the work of ministry for the whole body. That is why you have the whole body. Everyone is given gifts for ministry and service. That is what we are after. So we move from solo leadership to team leadership and this is going to be characterized by giving ministry away to others by equipping them to go and do the work of ministry both here and to the ends of the earth. We are doing all of this. In 1991 a man by the name of Loran Mead wrote a text called the Once and Future Church. In this text he clearly tells about the confusion of both clergy and laity faces today. It is an outstanding critiques of the church saying that the paradigm of Christendom now (when the church was given official status in the state). It is where the church had a prominent and influential place in the culture. The church held this position for many centuries, but that is no longer the case now. We are long past that period of time into what we now consider the post-modern period. So, Mead contends that while we have experienced the disintegration and disruption of the old, we still have confusion within the body of Christ in terms of what model is emerging in what we are called to be. Who are we called to be? We need to understand this issue that everyone is called into ministry. The churches’ new understanding will emerge from a new sense of a churches’ mission.

Dallas Willard once again was frank in his assessment of the role of clergy. He said that whenever clergy comes to the practical conclusion that discipleship to Christ is optional to membership in the Christian church. That is a Christendom model; all you have to do is to be a member and you are in. Who cares whether you follow Christ or not; this model eventually led to a lot of heartache and heartbreak in the church. Whenever clergy comes to the practical conclusion that discipleship to Christ is optional to membership in the Christian church; we will eliminate the very types of lives that can bring transformation, not only into the local church but also into the culture. Dallas Willard challenges those of us who are pastors and spiritual leaders. He wrote, dare I tell people as believer without discipleship, that they are at peace with God and God with them. Where can I find justification for such a message? Perhaps, most important, do I as a minister have the faith to undertake the work of disciple making. Is my first aim to make disciples or do I just run an operation? This is the clarity of lack, thereof that a solid spiritual life is going to bring into your leadership. Are you just going to be an institutional chaplain? Now, there are places and locations where you really need and want a chaplain; for instance, in a hospital setting or a nursing home setting. God’s church, however, was never intended to run on a chaplaincy model. This cannot be primary. Willard says that we are not called just to run an organization. Such an organization is not set up to only meet the needs of those within it. Nothing less than life in the steps of Christ is adequate to the human soul or the needs of the world.

You leaders, pastors and heads of local congregations whether lay or clergy, you are facing one of the more critical decisions of your life. Are you merely going to be an institutional keeper who builds a ministry primarily for yourselves or are you going to step into the high calling facilitating the mature disciples of Jesus, fulfilling the mandate of the Gospel. This is going to require substantial movement for clergy to step away from these attitudes and actions that will bring you to not.

II. Laity

The laity is going to need to make these same kinds of movements. Laity is the people of God that all of us fit into. The people of God has to also make movements, especially with the idea of self-understanding of just going to church and even less and less regularity. We need to understand that our lives as being the church twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. We have reduced our mental image and our worldview and our understanding of church to buildings or groups of people. It is seriously hampering us. The church is a living reality of people connected to Christ, not a building. Moving from expecting benefits of Christianity with no sustained effort to actually following Jesus; here, is merely about benefits without discipleship. There is no longer any interest in discipleship. We need to truly seek to follow Jesus and implement his rule; we should be intent on being disciples. Instead, there is this who idea of being passive observers or rather really consumers. In being passive, it is just there for me, but in terms of my understanding of me have a very critical role within the living body of Christ. That is what is missing. I then understand ourselves as being full time ministers and thus we are part of the mission of salvation for the world. We are just as much a part as any ordained person, bull time ministers entering into God’s mission. Since the early centuries even as early as the three hundreds, there have been forces driving laity into lifeless roles. This has been a long time, nearly seventeen hundred years of pressing laity to diminished roles. Another Loran Mead text called Five Challenges for the Once and Further Church; he wrote in 1996. In terms of chronically over functioning clergy and the equivalent of that is chronically under-functioning laity. This dangerous dependence of laity on clergy is difficult to stop from a sociologically standpoint.

The relationship between clergy laity over the years have built chronic over-functioning in the role of the clergy and under-functioning into the role of the laity. The clergy have come to expect the laity to under-function and the prophecy is self-fulfilling and the laity expects the clergy to over-function and this too is self-fulfilling and neither of them who consider it easy to challenge the depressingly self-replicating pattern of dependence. Now let’s go back to Bonhoeffer where he traces it back to the early centuries of the church. ‘The church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard, a maximum and a minimum standard of Christian obedience.’ He is saying that the church let the laity off the hook; they have allowed them to be lazy. For the professionals, they have to have the standards. This is where the main body fails to pursue costly grace. The laity needs to hear the call of God; the call of the word on your lives is all as Peter tells us that we are chosen race, royal priesthood, a holy nation; We are God’s own people (1 Peter 2:9). If you are thus chosen and royal and holy, you are significant in the eyes of the Lord. We need to see laity take up their calling to follow Christ and serve as ministers to the Gospel and clergy is going to have to go to Scripture to understand how you are reading the word and how you are praying and allowing the Spirit to talk to you, if you are going to accept what Paul says about your job. Our primary purpose if I understand Ephesians 4 correctly, as a pastor and for me as a seminary professor, is to equip people to take up the role of ministry. My primary purpose was to equip the people of God to do the work of God. Laity, of course, is going to step out in let go of a consumer or passive mentality and move into an active role of worshipping the Lord with all that is in them. They need to commit the entirety of their lives to following Jesus and serving in God’s mission.

III. Questions and Answers

Student 1

We try to help our children to understand the difference between going and being. You cannot go to what you are.

Student 2

This is about the relationship between the preacher and discipleship. I am thinking about larger multi-staff churches and let’s assume that it is a church that has a very gifted biblical expository preacher. He or she is going to be spending a lot more time in sermon preparation than discipling a group of people. I heard from Gene Gaps the idea that the pastor leads the elders and his primary discipleship group is the elders. Should this gifted pastor of a large church who likes to study should feel guilty about not having a lot of time in discipleship but they should have something.

Lecturer

I have served large congregations where we had to divide out roles; my encouraging word would be that at whatever the size of your congregation with some being mega churches. As long as the pastoral team deeply values the whole discipleship process and making sure that it is going on. One of the best models that I know of along this line is my friend George Acesavito who is the pastor of a large church in Florida. George is the lead pastor and basically George is discipling the other pastors on staff and then they in turn disciple their staff. George is having to manage a very large organization.

Student 3

I just wanted to make one other similar comment. When I was an engineering professor, it was important for everybody who was a teacher to do research and everybody that was a researcher did teaching. You learn how to teach better in doing this. I think this is similar to a lead pastor. You have to keep the discipling going at the same time and those who are doing that need to keep themselves firmly grounded in the Word.

Student 4

I like the idea of the church being 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. In my job, I work closer with a group of people and we need to communicate well on a consistent basis and be able to trust each other. This leads you to have conversations in a natural way, not just work related but also personal things. In a way that a pastor, anyone who doesn’t know those people would never be able to have a personal relationship. So, I find myself trying to pray that I will do a good job and I try to do this purposely and I will be professional in what I do and good in what I do. I want to be present in the moment and aware of those opportunities to have conversations with people that are going to make a difference in their personal and spiritual lives. I have been really blessed to see that over the years the fruit of that has bent ongoing and I have been thankful to see those types of things that are really significant and have eternal value.

Lecturer

You are saying that you are being the church.

Student 4

I feel like the company I work for is paying me to be a pastor.

Lecturer

While we are fielding other questions; one way this works out in terms of pastors letting go. I have great memories of rejoicing over an event where one of our key people was going through a discipleship process ended up with a fairly serious emergency surgery for an aneurism and it wasn’t clear whether she was live through it or not. So the first people that the family called when the person went into the hospital weren’t any of the pastoral staff but they called the people in their covenant group to come and be with them during that time. Then several hours later into it, they were all there and the lady had made it through surgery and was going to be okay. By midday, someone ask whether anyone had called any of the pastors. So they called me and were apologizing, etc. I was rejoicing because the body of Christ was being the body of Christ ministering to one another and they didn’t have to have a professional pastor there. Of course I went to see her. So, they were being the body of Christ.