Reflections
CHALLENGES TO THE CHURCH: FOR A NEW MILLENIUM OF MINISTRY
By Harry Heintz
Four years into the new century— and a new millennium. Did we adequately identify the challenges a new millennium would bring to the Church? Did we prepare appropriate responses? Well I have been thinking about it and I suggest there are three challenges still before us: the leadership challenge, the culture challenge, and the vision challenge. For each challenge there is a Biblical posture of faithful response.
The Leadership Challenge
The century that just ended saw some shifts in leadership understanding. We added some interesting phrases to our leadership/management vocabulary: “win/win,” “transformational leadership,” “and management by objective” come to mind. You can add others. The twentieth century had its share of notable leaders—some were good and some evil; some were exemplary in their personal lives and others shameful in their personal lives; some made lots of money and some very little; some led great nations, great corporations, great churches, and great institutions while others led in great ways in places that were never known to most of us. The study of leadership became more important. We know more about it, but its essence can never be contained in a book or a library of books. The new century brings challenges to our understandings and practices of leadership:
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How should leadership change as technology grows?
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Can we expect great leaders to be good people?
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With the growing number of multi-millionaires and billionaires, will leadership belong only to the wealthy?
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How does the Church, founded 2000 years ago, stay relevant and effective?
Jesus brought a new way of leadership to this world. It wasn’t a theory; it was a way of living and serving. There were glimpses of it before Jesus demonstrated it. Moses, Esther, and David in the Old Testament caught on to some of it at least some of the time. The New Testament has Peter, Paul, and, yes, Mary. Even people who don’t believe in Jesus sometimes catch on to some of it some of the time. To this day I don’t know where the line is in the old discussion about whether leaders are born or made. I know that the world needs leaders and the Bible is the ultimate case study in leadership and Jesus is the ultimate model of great leadership.
In a magnificent little essay on Christmas called “The Truest Thing in the World,” former newscaster Harry Reasoner reflected on God coming as baby. “If God wanted to be loved as well as feared, He moved correctly here. If He wanted to know his people as well as rule them, He moved correctly here, for a baby growing up learns all about people. If God wanted to be intimately a part of [us], He moved correctly here, for the experience of birth and familyhood is our most intimate and precious experience. ” That coming in humility and poverty gives us a big clue as to the Jesus style of leadership.
God is concerned about the Church being rightly led and God provides for its leadership. In Romans 12 Paul gives a list of seven gifts that are essential to the healthy life of the church. Two of those gifts speak to the leadership challenge. The first is in verse 8: “the leader, in diligence.” The word used here is not bishop, elder, deacon, or pastor—it’s a more generic word for one in charge. In the church it might be a pastor, elder, or deacon, but it’s not limited to people in office. People are to do this according to their giftings and their situations. There was an unfortunate use of this word by then Secretary of State Alexander Haig after then President Reagan had been wounded and hospitalized for emergency surgery. Haig faced the press and tried to assure the nation with these words: “I am in charge here .” I expect that Haig’s intentions were good, but his articulation of them was troubling—his tone and his posture were altogether too authoritarian. In fact, he was wrong—he was not in charge.
Leadership is needed—often desperately needed—for the church to be healthy. But that leadership can never be overbearing or domineering. Peter writes to elders in the church: “Tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it—not for sordid gain but eagerly. Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock.” (1 Peter 5:2-3)
The second gift in the Romans list that speaks to the leadership challenge is in verse 7: “ministry, in ministering.” In the NIV it reads: “If it is serving, let him serve.” Literally it is “if deaconing, in deaconing.” The root meaning of deaconing is serving. This is how our deacons seek to serve and to lead us as a congregation in serving. This is the word Jesus used to define his leadership style: “I am among you as one who serves (‘deacons’) .” (Luke 22:27)
The Posture of Servanthood
When these two words, these two gifts, these two graces come together—leading and serving, serving and leading—we have the Jesus style of leadership. The response to the challenge of leadership in a new time is to go back to Jesus and reclaim the posture of servanthood. There will be no new understanding of leadership that has lasting value and honors people that isn’t a reflection of the leadership style of Jesus, the greatest leader who ever lived. I am willing to learn about leadership from anyone in almost any context—business, government, sports—but my model is my Lord. He was the best servant-leader the world has ever seen or will ever see.
In Matthew 10 Jesus sends out the twelve he had been preparing for servant leadership. Do you remember learning to ride a two-wheel bike? A parent, older sibling, or friend—in my case it was my dad—prepared you as best he could. He went over the dynamics of this, he showed you, he walked beside you holding the bike up, then he ran beside you holding the bike—then he let go. And what happened? You rode a short ways then you fell. And you got up and did it again. And again. On one of those efforts, it worked. You were riding the bike without your dad. You looked over your shoulder and saw him in the distance. Though it was only a hundred feet or so, it looked like he was a mile away.
Jesus prepared them. He let them watch him. He talked them through it. He walked beside them. He ran beside them. He let them go. And how did they do? They rode, they fell, they got up, and they rode again. Note how he prepared them. First, he called them to be with him. Second, he gave them authority for the task. Third, he gave them specific instructions. Fourth, he gave them fair warning—this leadership venture wouldn’t be easy. Listen to how The Message paraphrases the warning: “A student doesn’t get a better desk than her teacher. A laborer doesn’t make more money than his boss. Be content—pleased even—when you, my students, my harvest hands, get the same treatment I get.” Doing Jesus style ministry isn’t a picnic in the park.
There are needed changes to be made in how the church leads and is led in this new time. Some of the styles of the twentieth century are inadequate. In the last century, pastors were often expected to do four things: teach right doctrine, care for the hurting, represent God to the church and the public, and preside over the rites of passage. (Gregory J. Ogden develops these further in "Pastoring Between the Paradigms," Fuller Focus , Fall 1999.) The problem was that the pastors were often expected to do these important ministries alone; no one else but pastors could do them. That was never the biblical view. It was never the view of Jesus. He shared his ministry with plain and simple folk and they, for all their stumblings and fallings, succeeded gloriously. He shared his ministry, he shared his authority, he shared his wisdom, and he shared his life. And that is the model he gives us for leadership in this new millenium.
I saw a wonderful expression of leadership a few years ago when I was a preaching at a church in Lake City, Florida. The children’s choir was ready to sing—every child’s eyes on the director. At the end of row was a boy who wanted to do his best. As the song began he started tapping his foot to keep the time. His tapping got stronger as he was eager to please his choir director and do his best. Soon other children joined him, then the whole congregation began clapping to the beat. It was a wonderful anthem, with the congregation not just watching but participating. Afterwards I found out that the children had never practiced the stomping. With his eyes on the director and his heart in the music, Danny just exercised his leadership gift without thinking about it. Every one of us has opportunities to influence others in ways that honor God and point to Jesus. Let’s look to our leader, Jesus, and give our hearts to his music. Anyone who assumes the servanthood posture will meet the leadership challenge.
The Culture Challenge
Never has a society been so equipped in analyzing anything and everything as ours is. We have the technology, the media, the academic institutions, and the time and money to study everything. So we do. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear or read of a new study. Some cause us to take note. Others cause us to yawn. Still others (like so many government funded studies) cause us some outrage or laughter or both (did the government really need to spend that money to find out how many cubic feet of gas a cow belches on a normal day?). Culture has to do with that which identifies and distinguishes a society. It includes pursuits like the arts, entertainment, education, leisure time activities, and religion. “Cult” and “culture” come from the same word. Each nation has unique expressions of cultural identity. We live in the United States of America, so I will use the word culture to speak of this nation.
The word culture itself isn’t sufficient any more. We have high culture and pop culture. Figuring out what our culture is and means can be like working in the lab of a medical center during an outbreak of strep throat—we’re surrounded by all these little containers of “cultures” and we hope we read them right and don’t mix up the names. Are we talking about beat culture or street culture? High culture or low culture? Boomer culture or buster culture? Liberal culture or conservative culture? Black culture or white culture? Your culture or my culture? Now that I’ve totally muddied the waters, I’ll try to make sense of this. We are a culture of cultures. Trying to discern what marks our culture is no simple matter and I’ll not succeed in one sermon to everyone’s satisfaction.
We are under instructions to try. People of faith are always on call to read the world in which they live, believe, and serve. We need that tribe of Issachar, “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” I don’t know how the tribe of Issachar did that, but I expect that it had to do with watching their world while listening to their God. Someone said that Christians ought to read the Bible in one hand with the newspaper in the other. That’s getting to it. It’s not an either/or but a both/and—we are to be students of the Word and of the world. It’s more complicated today, however. We have not only the Bible, but an endless stream of books written from a faith perspective. We have not only the newspaper, but also the network TV news, CNN, general newsmagazines like Time and Newsweek as well as more specialized newsmagazines that represent every imaginable stripe of thinking. And now we have the Internet. Some look at all the news sources and give up. The better response is to pick some news sources and follow them carefully. Some of us need to read the local newspaper daily, some the New York Times, some the Wall Street Journal, some USA Today. Some of need to read Time, some Newsweek, some People, and some Rolling Stone . Some of need to follow news and culture on television and some on the Internet. None of them will give the whole picture, but each will give some understanding. With that, we need to be listening to God through prayer and the reading and study of his written word and letting God’s word interpret our world.
Jesus warned against asking for a sign from heaven, but encouraged the reading of the signs of the times. We have already received the sign from heaven—that sign is Jesus. All we need to know of God’s intentions is found in Jesus. In Colossians 2:8-9, Paul teaches that God has located his truth in Christ. In The Message these verses are rendered in the freshest way I’ve ever heard: “Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. . . . But that’s not the way of Christ. Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ and the emptiness of the universe without him.” In Jesus we have that essential truth we need for right believing and right living.
Ours is not a Christian culture or a Christian nation and it never was. There is no such thing. In the Old Testament there was a nation-faith connection in Israel. Even there, however, it had qualifications. That nation of faith was to be a blessing to all nations and all people. It didn’t work out as intended, though. Israel often became ingrown rather than outreaching. God had to chide them repeatedly. What was intended to be a culture of blessing often became a culture of self-pre-occupation. The light of God’s revelation was regularly hid under a bushel and, though God’s light never went out, Israel’s light often flickered.
The New Testament never envisions a Christian nation. Rather it foresees a scattered people sharing God’s light everywhere and with everyone. The history of so-called Christian nations is not very positive. When the state and the church try to govern together, it doesn’t work—the church loses. The church is at its best when it has no political power, but must rely on God for spiritual power. The state-churches of Europe stifled the free expression of faith and sapped the spiritual power of the church. They produced great cathedrals and weak churches. I don’t want to be a member of a Christian nation: I want to be a member of the Christian Church. I want the nation to be religiously neutral, not favoring one religion or interfering in the free expression of faith. Let the Church be the Church without government interference or aid. If the culture is getting more secular, then that’s the perfect opportunity for the Church to be what it is called to be—God’s light.
Ours is not a unified culture. That’s nothing new; it has never been unified. Consider the matter of slavery. Way back, when some would say we were a more religious or even more Christian nation, we sanctioned slavery—we permitted white people to own and use and abuse black people. When our sixteenth president named slavery for what it was and sought to emancipate the slaves, our nation nearly killed itself in a war against itself more tragic and costly than any before or since. A century later when Martin Luther King, Jr., eloquently called this nation to honor its highest ideals of liberty and justice for all, that call was not met with a unified response. King was prophetic not only in his vision for the end of sanctioned racism, but when he said, “The church . . . is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.”
No one can say with certainty what the culture of the 21st century will be. We do know that there is a shift occurring from modern to post-modern thinking. In post-modern understanding old truths do not necessarily hold. Everything is up for grabs. The search for the truth matters more than what people once called objective truth. Marriage is not held in the esteem it once was but relationships matter more than ever. People don’t care how much we know, but want to know how much we care. There is a fascination with mystery and an openness to the supernatural (witnessed in many movies of late). People want to hear good stories, not dry dogmas or cold proofs. Church pronouncements just aren’t very relevant anymore. We have to earn the right to be heard and if we are to be heard we cannot speak with arrogance and superiority, but with humility and servanthood. This is getting me downright excited—this is a wonderful time to be alive and in relationship to Jesus. We have the best and truest of all stories.
The Posture of Seekers among Seekers
The posture of Christians responding to seismic shifts in society is to be seekers. I don’t mean seekers after truth as if we hadn’t found it in Jesus—we have—but seekers in attitude and heart. Booming out answers that we know are true won’t guarantee a hearing. I love the way Paul said it, and I have no doubt that he was criticized by some back then. “I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life.” (1 Corinthians 9:19-22 in The Message.) We, the found, are not going to relate to seekers after truth if we can’t evidence seeking hearts ourselves. Earning the right to be heard will demand non-judgmental listening. While my faith in Jesus is stronger and more certain than it has ever been, I have so many questions that aren’t yet answered, so many areas in which I’m struggling to know God’s truth and be faithful, and a few areas where I once thought I had the answers but now am uncertain. I don’t have to fake it; I’m a believer who is seeking in many ways.
It’s getting to be like Bible times again. In the Scriptures, the people of God were never in the majority on the cultural scene. They were pilgrims and sojourners. Without the perks and privileges of political power, they faithfully witnessed to the Lord God Almighty. Ministry in the new millenium will demand so much of us. We cannot expect people to come to our buildings—we must build bridges to people where they are. When seeking people do come to our services we cannot assume they know our story. We must respect them where they are and not expect them to meet some artificial in-house standards. The arena for living our faith is not the church building but where we work, study, live, and play. We have the best and truest story and we must share it with seekers as seekers.
This is an exciting time to be the Church. A church that leads with a servanthood posture and listens with a seeker heart will get a hearing and will call people to new life in Jesus, the One who is God’s eternal and eternally relevant truth. God helping us, we will do so.
The Vision Challenge
A well-known observer of the human condition and sometime philosopher named Snoopy said, “A whole stack of memories will never equal one little hope.”
For years, the barrier seemed unbreakable. A few had come close, but not too close. The existing best effort had stood for nine years. Physiologists thought the human body could not do it. The world’s very best competitors held this barrier in reverential awe. Then one man, an unlikely candidate gripped with a little hope, broke the barrier, the four-minute mile. On a raw day in early May, 1954, at the little heralded Iffley Road track before a meager crowd of 1,000, a lanky medical student named Roger Bannister did it. He broke the tape in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds and then collapsed, not an ounce of energy left in him. “It was only then,” he said, “that the real pain overtook me. I felt like an exploded flashlight with no will to live.” When the barrier-breaking time was officially announced, two track officials had to hold Bannister up as people converged to congratulate him. Within 46 days, Bannister’s world record was shattered by another runner. A short while later, two runners broke the barrier in the same race. Within a few years a score of runners had done it. A decade later a high-schooler did it in Kansas. The world’s long-distance runners needed one person with both the vision and the commitment to it. On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister did not just break the 4-minute mile barrier for himself, he broke that barrier for all other runners.
The Posture of Stewards
Pursuing a vision isn’t all that romantic. The vision itself may be dramatic and glorious—the pursuit of the vision will be the hardest work we know. Visions call for a posture of stewardship. That word tends to be thought of in one context only: giving to the congregation’s budget. It certainly includes that, but it goes far beyond. The word stewardship in the New Testament literally means to manage the household. Ideally the work of a household is shared by all who dwell in the household, appropriate to age, skills, and gifts. Peter calls us to this kind of living: “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.” (1 Peter 4:10) Holding a lofty vision means that we will manage our resources (including financial), our energies, our strengths and weaknesses, our gifts and skills, to serve the vision in relationship to others. Grabbing hold of a great vision will grab hold of us and demand much of us. Paul uses an athletic image to drive this home in Philippians 3:12—“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
God usually gives the vision to one person, but not for private use. That person shares the vision with his or her closest circle of accountability, then with the wider community. God gave Moses the vision for the deliverance of Israel out of slavery and back to their homeland. Moses shared it with a circle of leaders, and then with the wider community. God gave Paul the vision for bringing the good news of Jesus to the European world. Paul shared it with church leaders, then the church in Antioch sent him out (but not him alone). Jesus shared his vision for the redemption of the world with a close circle of friends, then with a larger circle, and then with the whole Church. Not one of these was an easy vision to hold and pursue.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that first Christian Pentecost set the tone for shared vision: “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men dream dreams. Even upon my servants, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophecy.” There are no private visions in the Church. The stewarding of vision belongs to the whole Church. We are called to be a community of vision in which God’s gifts are honored in all people, regardless of gender, generation, or occupation. The reception of visions and dreams from God will be open to all of us, and we will participate in each other’s dreams and visions from God and for God.
Roger Bannister did not run that barrier-breaking race alone. Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher were running with him that day. Brasher set the pace for the first two laps, running himself out of contention so that Bannister could have a shot at the record. When Brasher faded, Chataway picked up the pace for the third lap, with Bannister on his heels. History may forget Chataway and Brasher; Bannister never will. They shared in his vision and contributed to its realization.
God uses vision to propel his people forward. Without vision from above, the people of God are not their best. The English Bible translations vary on the words used in Proverbs 29:18, but all contribute to the essential meaning. The King James translation is the best known: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The NIV translates it: “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint.” The NRSV has it: “Where there is no prophecy, the people cast off restraint.” The key is that a riveting vision serves to keep the people together and focused.
John Stott said that distinctly Christian leadership is marked by three characteristics, the first letters of which form the acronym VIP: vision, industry, and perseverance. The vision is first in that series and the vision must come from God. The industry and the perseverance follow the vision. How do we receive vision from God? It has to do with listening carefully. We open ourselves to God’s visions when we open ourselves to God. Next week we begin a five-part series on aspects of prayer that will touch on this. We listen carefully to our Lord and we share what we hear with those close to us and listen carefully to them.
VIP = vision, industry, and perseverance. In 1940 Hitler was marching through Europe intent on forcing his evil will on a whole continent. On May 13 of that year, in his first speech as Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill said to the House of Commons: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” That spoke of the industry and perseverance which were needed for Churchill’s vision: “Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” Churchill’s vision gave not only his nation, but eventually a continent and its neighbor across the Atlantic the will to defeat the Nazi death machine.
On the wall of my study is a beautiful rendering of a quote found on the wall of a church building in Sussex, England, from around 1730:
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A vision without a task is a dream.
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A task without a vision is drudgery.
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A vision with a task is the hope of the world.
When a vision and a task come together, it is something to behold. The Church has been given the greatest visions:
"Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. . . . "; "And you will be witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth."; "By this shall all people know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another." With the visions God has given the Church, come the task, the hard work, the “blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” the industry and perseverance.
One more item about Roger Bannister and the breaking of the barrier that he accomplished: he was running that day with a two-year old disappointment still working within him. He had been expected to compete for the gold medal in the 1,500 meters race (the metric mile) in the 1952 Olympics. Early in that race he was jostled by other runners and did not win any medal. The disappointment did not end his career, but motivated him to greater visions.
“A whole stack of memories will never equal one little hope.” In this new millenium of ministry we will be challenged from every side. By heavenly vision we will answer every challenge and thrive. We will find ways to open new doors to people who are now outside the church. We will be a community of vision for God. With God’s vision in our midst we will claim the industry and perseverance to press on to the mark. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Where there is a vision, the people of God flourish.
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