The God Who Goes before You

Pastoral Leadership as Christ-Centered Followership

Timothy Paul Jones, Michael S. Wilder

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781433691690
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

In The God Who Goes before You, Michael S. Wilder and Timothy Paul Jones establish a foundation for Christian leadership that draws not from human assumptions, but from the wisdom of God. By considering the whole canon of scripture as their supreme and sufficient authority, Wilder and Jones present both pastors and laity with a Christ-centered, kingdom-focused vision of godly leadership. When it comes to leadership, there is much to be learned from empirical research and from marketplace leaders. However, without Scripture as our authority, flawed views of God's purposes and human nature will skew our understanding of the character and practices of God-called leaders. In this book, Wilder and Jones redefine leadership as Christ-centered followership and present a radically countercultural perspective on leadership practices in the church today.

PART ONE

Foundations for Leadership through Followership

CHAPTER ONE

What If Jesus Didn’t Lead like Jesus? Redefining Christian Leadership

“Jesus called them over and said to them, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. But it is not so among you.’”

Mark 10:42–43

Chapter One Key Point

The power that a leader exercises is not the leader’s but Christ’s; the truth that the leader is called to proclaim is not the leader’s vision but God’s revelation; and the position to which the leader is called is not sovereignty over the community but stewardship within the community, submitted to the leadership of Christ.

Jesus has been showing up in some unexpected locations lately.

Well, not Jesus himself, but images and objects that—at least in the eyes of some beholders—happen to look like Jesus.

Two separate families have spotted the face of Jesus in splotches of mold on their shower walls. “It gives me inspiration just to do better,” one individual said after his bathroom epiphany. Some saw these images as divine signs, while others looked into the face of Jesus and saw dollar signs. One man sawed out his image of Jesus and sold the moldy sheetrock to a casino for nearly two thousand dollars.

In another supposed sighting of Jesus, a bank teller fell asleep while frying some bacon. When he awoke, he was shocked to find his apartment filled with smoke, but his biggest surprise came when he scraped the scorched pork into the sink. There, imprinted in grease in the blackened pan, was an image that looked to him like the face of Jesus. “It’s going to take pride of place on a wall,” the teller replied when asked about his pan. “I might get a glass cabinet to put it in. . . . Someone’s looking over me.”¹

Jesus, CEO?

There is another unusual spot where Jesus has been showing up as well—one that, for many people, may seem almost as incongruous as his alleged appearances in bacon grease and bathroom mold. For a couple of decades now, Jesus has been showing up on bookstore shelves and in online searches not only in the usual categories like “Christian living” and “theology” but also under less expected headings such as “leadership” and “management.”

The book titles in this genre range from Jesus, CEO and The Management Methods of Jesus to Lead like Jesus and Jesus on Leadership. Nearly all of these texts follow a similar strategy in their quest to extract leadership tips from Scripture. Examples from the life of Jesus are selected from the biblical text; then these bits of sacred writ are distilled into universal principles guaranteed to boost leadership skills today.

The author of The Management Methods of Jesus claims, for example, to unveil the “principles of management practiced” by Jesus, “the greatest manager the world has ever known.” Principles practiced by Jesus, according to this text, encompass everything from maintaining “good logistical support” to displaying generosity whenever followers deserve to be rewarded.² A similar text entitled Lead like Jesus shot to the top berth on the New York Times bestseller list with the guarantee that following the leadership style of Jesus will result in “right and effective” decisions.³ According to this book, a heart that imitates the leadership style of Jesus will be inclined toward right preparation of successors, a right perspective on who should lead, and the recognition of feedback from followers as a gift. Another such text, Jesus, CEO, suggests that imitating Jesus’s methods of leadership can enable business leaders to harness “spiritual energy” so they will become more “empowered.”⁴

These leadership texts are undoubtedly well intended. After all, doesn’t every Christian leader long to lead in a way that honors Jesus? And shouldn’t we feel compelled to pay attention to the perspective of Scripture on every topic, including leadership? Of course! And yet it is our contention that most of these quests to extract timeless and universally transferable leadership principles from Scripture are as misguided as searching for Jesus in scorched frying pans and moldy shower walls.

People believe they’ve glimpsed Jesus in bacon grease and bathroom mold because they see splotches that fit their preconceived notions of what Jesus might look like, based on everything from classic paintings to cartoon sketches. Similarly, if we open the Scriptures seeking moralistic principles to sustain our practices of leadership, what we tend to notice are patterns that fit our preconceived assumptions about leadership. The result is that patterns observed in biblical texts are excised from their canonical contexts and elevated to the level of divinely inspired prescriptions. When that happens, the biblical text functions not as the revelation of the kingdom of God in Christ but as a collection of humanly achievable principles that fit preconceived notions of leadership.

What If Jesus Didn’t Lead like Jesus?

The problem is not that the resulting leadership principles do not work. In fact, many of these principles do represent effective techniques for aiming an organization toward a leader’s objectives. Some of them may even be usable in Christian organizations. The problem is that these principles are presented as if they derive from the biblical metanarrative—and, in particular, from the life and teachings of Jesus—when, in fact, they are the result of human observations of patterns in the created order. The Scriptures are used in ways that are selective, decontextualized, and—in many instances—not even distinctly Christian. According to Lead like Jesus, for example, imitating the leadership style of Jesus requires leaders to treat feedback from their followers as a gift. Yet the authors conveniently sidestep those moments when Jesus seems not to have followed this principle at all—such as the time when Peter provided Jesus with feedback on his claim that the Messiah must be crucified. “This will never happen to you!” was Peter’s feedback (Matt 16:22–23). Jesus replied, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance,” apparently unaware that leading like Jesus means always receiving followers’ feedback as a gift. If Lead like Jesus is right about how to lead like Jesus, sometimes Jesus didn’t lead very much like Jesus.

The author of The Management Methods of Jesus conveniently limits his examples to patterns that are humanly attainable and not uniquely or necessarily grounded in the supernatural works and character of Jesus. In the process, Jesus is presented as the supreme exemplar of a manager who maintains strong logistical support. But the book’s declaration that leaders today should imitate the logistical skills of Jesus never grapples with those moments when Jesus supernaturally created his own logistical support systems. Faced with a shortage of wine at a wedding, Jesus transformed six jars of water into the finest vintage the guests had ever tasted (John 2:1–10). Later, faced with a lack of lunch supplies, Jesus caused ordinary baskets to spawn sufficient sardines and dinner rolls to feed thousands of people (Matt 14:13–21; 15:32–39). And yet none of the books about Jesus’s style of leadership suggests that leaders should imitate Jesus by miraculously metamorphosing a picnic lunch or a few water bottles into a free-for-all food and drink buffet—and that is not what we are suggesting either.

Our point is that leading like Jesus can’t be reduced to the imitation of humanly attainable principles that are as true of Buddha as they are of the Son of God.⁵ If these universalized leadership principles do indeed work, it is not because of anything that God has accomplished through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of the second person of the Trinity.⁶ It is, instead, because they represent patterns that have been woven into creation itself. If a leadership principle could have originated as easily from a fortune cookie as from the Bible, that principle is probably not going to prepare you to lead like Jesus.⁷

To find biblical texts that call for “leadership” in any way approximating what that term implies in Western cultures, one is forced “to begin with such concepts of leadership and then try to tie Bible verses to them in a non-contextual or barely contextual way.”⁸ Some of the resulting observations about leadership may turn out to be accurate. And yet it is equally possible that these principles represent human observations of sin-distorted patterns in a cosmos that is groaning for a glory yet to come (Rom 8:20–22).⁹ In many cases, seeking universal leadership principles in Scripture results in radical distortions of the meaning of the biblical text.¹⁰ Such principles may manage to smear a veneer of religiosity over the surface of our existing patterns of leadership, but they cannot conform our leadership to the character of Jesus or fill our leadership with the power of his Spirit.

Christian Leadership and the Story Line of Scripture

Does this mean, then, that Jesus has nothing to teach us about how to lead? Are biblical writings “profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16) but irrelevant for administration? If so, where should a pastor glean wisdom to lead his flock? For that matter, how does a Christian CEO learn to manage her employees in ways that reflect her commitment to Christ? How can administrators in Christian nonprofit organizations make certain that their leadership practices express God’s ...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Part One: Foundations for Leadership through Followership
• Part Two: Old Covenant Precedents for Leadership through Followership
• Part Three: New Covenant Practices for Leadership through Followership
• Conclusion: Leadership as Followership that Leads to the Cross
• Endnotes
• Name Index
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index