Pastors as “wannabe executives”

by James Pedlar 

One of my favourite contemporary pastor/theologians is Dave Fitch  http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/ who teaches at Northern Seminary and pastors a church plant in Chicago called “Life on the Vine.”  He’s a theologian who’s got his feet firmly planted in the day-to-day realities of church life, and he often provides insightful critiques of contemporary evangelical culture and practice.  

In his book The Great Giveaway, he includes a chapter on “Leadership.” The thesis in this chapter is that the contemporary pastorate has capitulated to models of leadership found in the business world, which are fundamentally oriented toward “effectiveness” in getting results, rather than on faithfulness to Jesus Christ.  This leads to conflict resolution strategies that are high handed and autocratic.  The pastor needs to decide on a solution in order for the ministry to maintain its effectiveness (which usually means numerical growth).   If people don’t get on board, they are standing in the way of the “success” of the ministry. 

I’m really connecting with what Fitch has to say, as it sums up and connects some ideas that have been rolling around in my head for some time.   Most books on Christian leadership are simply parroting the latest trendy ideas from the world of management.   What’s worse is that they throw in the odd scripture verse and “spiritualize” the ideas they’re selling, which means that the pastors who buy this stuff are taking that back to their churches believing that they’ve got divine authority on their side as they try to implement these so-called “biblical” strategies.    

This is an evangelical issue, not just an Army issue, but it seems to me that the Army is as vulnerable as anyone else to being swept away by the latest business trends. Army officers have, on average, a greater responsibility for financial administration than your average evangelical pastor, so they are justified in drawing on business trends in some aspects of their work. 

In fact, I wouldn’t want to say that insights from the business world have absolutely no value.  They might be helpful as tools to aid in Church leadership, if used selectively within a larger biblical and theological framework.  But they should not have the defining role that they have in the contemporary evangelical world.  So whether it’s “mission statements,” “visioning,” “strategic planning,” or more recently, “branding,” churches are embracing contemporary management techniques wholeheartedly as if they were gospel truth.   People who don’t get on board then are “problems” to be managed (at best), or (at worst) hinderances to the Spirit.   If it seems like I’m exaggerating here, I’m not.  I know a person who was told that their practical questions about church finance were “of the devil.”  

For all the diversity of contemporary Western societies, it seems like we’re getting worse at handling conflict in our churches.  Everywhere you look there is a local congregation that is being torn apart by some scandal or another.   Perhaps it is (as Fitch suggests in his book) connected to the individualistic outlook  of modernity, which encourages each one of us to think that we are completely autonomous centres of decision-making power, and that each one of us must arbitrate for ourselves between competing truth claims.   The locus of authority, for modernity, is the reasoning self, and the presumption is that “reason” will lead us to the truth through the exercise of our intellectual faculties.  Of course this is a bit of a caricature, but it pretty much sums up the way things work on a practical level.  And perhaps that has something to do with the interminable splintering of denominations and congregations in modern protestantism.   If we all believe that we ourselves are the final arbiters of truth in matters of dispute, then why would we back down when faced with an opposing view? 

The question is whether postmodern understandings of self, truth, and knowledge move us any closer to a more healthy resolution of these problems.   It would seem that postmodern sensibilities are helpful in de-bunking the conflict-ridden assumptions of modernist epistemology, but not as helpful in offering constructive solutions.    

From most postmodern perspectives, no one person can claim a certain enough hold on truth to impose it upon an entire community.  This means that people of my generation are less likely to get hot under the collar about a dispute within our local church, thinking that we’re the ones who’ve got the “true” answer.  But then again, we might just stop caring at all, and become apathetic in the face of conflict, as it would seem as if no final resolution is possible.  What is needed is a normative standard to replace the reasoning autonomous self.  The standard may not be “universal” in the way that some moderns claimed “reason” was universal, but it can nevertheless be authoritative within the community for whom it is adopted.   

What I like about Fitch’s approach is that he always finds his way back to biblical depictions of church life as the normative standard.   So in this post:  http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/stuck-between-mohler-and-mclaren-the-incarnational-approach-to-leading-in-our-disagreements/ which covers some of the same ground as the chapter on leadership in The Great Giveaway, the answer to conflict in the Church is based on Matthew 18.    

What is shocking about this biblical model is that so few churches actually try to live this out.  We turn instead to the world of management theory and dress it up in spiritual language as if that were the “biblical” way of being Church.  Why is this?  Has the model that Fitch upholds been tried and found wanting?  Not in my experience.  More likely it is the fact that is just plain messy and “inefficient,” and therefore doesn’t fit with the corporate approach to leadership that we’ve embraced.

James Pedlar is a doctoral student at Wycliffe College, in the Toronto School of Theology.  He specializes in the study of the Church - especially questions involving reform movements, Christian unity, authority structures, and ecumenical dialogue.  He is also interested in Wesleyan theology, Salvation Army theology, and the theology and practice of worship. James works part-time as Assistant Coordinator of Faith & Witness at the Canadian Council of Churches.   He recently completed a two year research project on young adult attrition for The Salvation Army in Canada and Bermuda, which you can read about here.   Before that he was Community Ministries Director for The Salvation Army in the Quinte Region of Ontario, Canada.  James is married to Samantha and they live in East York.  You can read his blog here

3 Comments to Pastors as “wannabe executives”

1. Well said, James.

   I picked this book up a couple months ago after I read about it on your blog. With this post I think I’ll start reading it tomorrow.

   Thanks.

   Mark B.
markbraye on September 8th, 2010

2. Reading this just makes me sad, as I’ve concluded the bottom line in all of this is there’s no point in trying to encourage responsible and wise peacebuilding in church systems which fail at the most basic level to value people and treat each person with respect - even reverence, perhaps, for the fact we are all made in the image of God.

   Churches based on clergy/laity divide and with hierarchical and authoritarian power and control systems have not the slightest need to read books on peacebuilding, or reflect on whether or not ‘managing’ congregants is an appropriate approach. As churches we don’t need to discover for the first time that Matthew 18 deals with conflict - people like Bridgebuilders at the London Mennonite Centre and other similar centres have been training people in peacebuilding based on these scriptures years - over a thousand church leaders have been trained in the UK alone at LMC. But my observation of the churches (mainly corps) I’ve experienced in the UK is this training and preparation is entirely surplus to requirements. People bully, harass, discriminate, scapegoat and victimise freely in churches because they know for certain they can get away with it.

   Church leaders don’t need to put energy into peacebuilding because they can simply ‘move people on’ or freeze out they don’t want to work with, and the ‘laity’, the ordinary believers, get the message this is a jungle worse than our (now somewhat better regulated) workplaces, and decide never to commit. Some of my neighbours here won’t even let their children go into a church building, the church is seen as so toxic.

   Yes, lets read books on Matthew 18, lets also listen to those who have experience and expertise, and look into why we are so unable to appropriate what they have learned. Lets look deep into how the way we structure and culture our churches in terms of power impacts our spirituality individually and as a community,what it does to our deepest sense of who ‘others’ are in our own churches.

   Eleanor
Eleanor Burne-Jones on September 17th, 2010

3. Thanks Eleanor

   You always bring a lot of wisdom to your comments. I found that Fitch’s analysis rang true to a lot of things I’d seen in local church situations - and it sounds like you’ve seen the same: people who raise questions are treated as “problems” and squashed because they stand in the way of a leader’s vision. Then the leader is moved on before the conflicts can really be resolved.

   I’m interested to hear about the London Mennonite Centre’s training program. I think there’s a huge need for conflict resolution training in local churches, for lay and ordained leaders. But you’re right, the dominant mindset in church leadership doesn’t lend itself to this approach.

   James P
James on September 24th, 2010

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