Conclusion: Christ or Culture?
C O N C L U S I O N
Christ or Culture?
During the last thirty-five years or so I have had the privilege of traveling to many countries and observing the church and its leadership. As a result, it is my firm conviction that there is too much autocracy in the leaders of the Christian community, in defiance of the teaching of Jesus and his apostles, and not enough love and gentleness. Too many behave as if they believed not in the priesthood of all believers but in the papacy of all pastors.
Our model of leadership is often shaped more by culture than by Christ. Yet many cultural models of leadership are incompatible with the servant imagery taught and exhibited by the Lord Jesus. Nevertheless, these alien cultural models are often transplanted uncritically into the church and its hierarchy. In Africa it is the tribal chief, in Latin America the machismo (exaggerated masculinity) of the Spanish male, in South Asia the religious guru fawned on by his disciples, in East Asia the Confucian legacy of the teacher's unchallengeable authority, and in Britain the British Raj mentality—the overbearing pride associated with the period of British rule until Indian independence in 1947. It is easy for Christian leaders to assimilate one or other of these models without realizing it. But we need to determine that there is no place in the Christian community for the guru or the Confucian teacher or the African chief, for British Raj mentality or Spanish machismo. These models are not congruous with the spirit of love and gentleness.
Basic Christian Leadership James Stalker was a Scottish minister and author at the end of the nineteenth century. In one of his books he wrote:
When I first was settled in a church, I discovered a thing of which nobody had told me, and which I had not anticipated, but which proved a tremendous aid in doing the work of the ministry. I fell in love with my congregation. I do not know how otherwise to express it. It was as genuine a blossom of the heart as any which I have ever experienced. It made it easy to do anything for my people.1
We have considered in 1 Corinthians 4 four models of ministry Paul paints of his own apostolic ministry which are also applicable to Christian leaders today, even though they are not apostles. "This is how you should regard us," Paul writes. "We are underlings of Christ, stewards of revelation, the scum of the earth and the fathers of the church family."
Further, the common denominator of all four is humility: humility before Christ, whose subordinates we are; humility before Scripture, of which we are stewards; humility before the world, whose opposition we are bound to encounter; and humility before the congregation, whose members we are to love and serve. My prayer as we come to the end of this study is that Christian leaders who peruse these pages may be characterized above all else by what the apostle Paul called "the meekness and gentleness of Christ" (2 Cor 10:1).