REFLECTIONS I

n REFLECTIONS n REFLECTIONS REFLECTIONS n REFLECTIONS n REFLECTIONS n REFLE SUPER PASTOR

Do you have to be a superhero to be an effective Christian leader? By Chris Hall

ron man, Captain America and Spiderman. In recent years,

there has been a glut of Hollywood blockbusters involving superheroes. More than 80 superhero films have been released since 2000, with more on the way in 2015. You could argue that the current appeal of these films is the

uncertain times in which we live. We are not only looking for escapist entertainment but we are attracted to the lone hero who is there to guide us and overcome great challenges and foes with supernatural force. He or she is the answer we long for in our hour of need.

The lone hero is attractive in our churches too. When things go wrong, if there is division or decline or we end up in a time of pastoral vacancy, we long for a new pastor of superhero proportions to come in and show us the way and make the church full and lively again.

Is the lone hero style of leadership good for the church? Is there another leadership style that could be more effective? Being a servant leader is widely perceived as the Christ-like approach to leadership, but is it a helpful model in the 21st

century?

Not wanting to give up control can limit how much a ministry can grow.

The western church, as it grapples with declining attendance,

is looking to leadership for answers. That’s according to Rob Hay, principal of Redcliffe College, a mission training and theological college in Gloucester, United Kingdom. “We are at a point where the church has, in many areas, a

loss of confidence over how it speaks, what its role is and how it relates to other faiths,” says Hay. “Therefore people say, ‘we need somebody who will solve this for us, who will make sense of the situation and tell us what to do.’” The danger of expecting one person to solve our problems, Hay

argues, is that we isolate the leader. “We leave them vulnerable,” he says. This vulnerability can lead to a variety of temptations for

leaders. Pastors in some societies can misuse their power and influence. One of Nigeria’s most prominent megachurch pastors, Chris Oyakhilome, has been accused of adultery and is going through a divorce. When the story broke, Pastor Oyakhilome told his church members not to judge the situation as he was “a man of God” and “to speak against the man of God is to bring a curse on yourself and your children.” This is “a glaring example of immoral behavior, practice and thinking and shows how an African worldview on leadership has infiltrated the church,” according to Ray Motsi, president of the Theological College of Zimbabwe. “In Africa we have not differentiated a Christian worldview from a general African worldview,” Motsi says. “Christian leadership

20 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE

is by calling and grace. This is very different from the traditional African leadership which is based on entitlement.” A sense of entitlement among church leaders is an issue in

the UK and across the world. So is a reluctance to change. In Bangladesh, there is a resistance to change that can be reflected in the church, according to BMS World Mission worker Andrew Millns, who is a mentor at the Bengali Baptist Sangha. Promising young church leaders are being trained at the College of Christian Theology Bangladesh. They face a struggle if they want to move into prominent leadership roles, as it is up to older leaders to allow this and they can be resistant to it. “You see areas of growth where leaders are open to new ideas.

They are prepared to go down roads they haven’t been down before,” says Millns. “But there are still voices who would find it difficult to accept change.” Not wanting to give up control can limit how much a ministry

can grow. Benjamin Francis, BMS Associate Team Leader for India, and his team have planted more than 13,000 churches with almost 500,000 people attending them. He says that if he had kept control and not empowered other leaders, the Big Life ministry would not have grown in the way it has. “The size of your ministry will grow by the size of your heart,” he says. “If you want to control, you can only grow your ministry to the point you can control.”

The pressure of being a lone hero leader can lead to a breakdown in relationships with fellow staff and followers, and a tendency to paranoia and to hide failings. Annet Ttendo has noticed the latter in Mozambique and other African countries where she has worked. “As a leader, the expectations are high,” she says. “A leader will try as much as possible to not fail or to cover up any failure. You can’t fail. Failure is a weakness.” Rob Hay says that the best way forward is for church leaders to recognize their weaknesses and to work with them, putting mechanisms in place to prevent them becoming an issue. “Leaders need to get a good degree of self-awareness,” he says. He also believes followers should be more gracious and forgiving when their leaders make mistakes. “The lack of grace I see for leaders is one of the things we have to address and we have to be quite humble about as Christians.”

There are dozens of other metaphors for leadership in scripture that we really fail to tap into and explore the implications of.

If heroic leadership has a number of pitfalls, what about servant leadership? This is the model closely associated with Jesus, of putting the needs of others before yourself and sharing power. For Ben Francis, a servant leadership has heavily affected his approach. “The higher you go in leadership, the lower your rights

become and the higher your responsibilities will be,” Francis says. “The more humble you become, the more insignificant in your ministry, the more significant the Holy Spirit and the Lord can be. When he starts becoming significant in your ministry, you don’t have to grow your ministry – he will grow it for you.” Rob Hay, however, thinks that our knowledge of Jesus’ leadership style is not sufficient for church leaders to emulate today, and that