The church’s pastors
It would be difficult to think about the life, mission and renewal of the church without giving thought to its ordained ministers. For it is plain from the New Testament that God has always intended his church to have some form of pastoral oversight. Moreover, the condition of the church in every place depends very largely on the quality of the ministry it receives. As Richard Baxter quaintly put it, ‘If God would but reform the ministry, and set them on their duties zealously and faithfully, the people would certainly be reformed. All churches either rise or fall as the ministry doth rise or fall, not in riches or worldly grandeur, but in knowledge, zeal and ability for their work.’
Yet there is a great deal of contemporary confusion about the nature and function of ordained clergy. Are they priests, prophets, pastors, preachers or psychotherapists? Are they administrators, facilitators or social workers? David Hare’s award-winning play Racing Demon portrays a team of Anglican clergy in South London. Each has a different notion of the purpose of the ordained ministry. To Lionel Espy, the gentle and largely ineffective team rector, ‘our job is mainly to learn. From ordinary, working people. We should try to understand and serve them.’ ‘Mostly, in fact, it’s just listening to the anger’, and like a punchbag absorbing it. In complete contrast, the young charismatic curate, Tony Ferris, is frighteningly self-confident. ‘I have this incredible power,’ he claims, which enables him to ‘spread confidence’ around him, but he does so at the expense of other people. The other characters are more modest in their expectations. The diocesan bishop emphasizes the administration of Holy Communion: ‘Finally, that’s what you’re there for. As a priest you have only one duty. That’s to put on a show.’ His suffragan, the episcopal diplomat par excellence, sees the heart of his job as ‘preventing problems growing into issues’. To Donald Bacon (‘Streaky’), who sings tenor, gets drunk and describes himself as ‘a happy priest’, there are no complications. ‘The whole thing’s so clear. He’s there. In people’s happiness.’ Harry Henderson, the homosexual clergyman, is a trifle more ambitious. ‘There is people as they are. And there is people as they could be. The priest’s job is to try and yank the two a little bit closer.’ Meanwhile, the sincere, agnostic girl, Frances Parnell, sees the ordained ministry as the ‘waste of a human being . . . always to be dreaming’.
Some people, seeing clergy marginalized by secular society, and rejoicing in Paul’s vision of every-member ministry, question whether ordained ministers are necessary any longer, and suggest that the church would be in a healthier condition without them. Others react in the opposite way. Whether on theological or pragmatic grounds, they put clergy on a pedestal, or acquiesce when they themselves are put there. Then, when the reins of ministry are entirely in their hands, the almost inevitable consequences are either clerical breakdown or lay frustration, or both.
All down its long history the church has oscillated between these extremes of clericalism (clerical domination of the laity) and anticlericalism (lay disdain for the clergy). Yet the New Testament warns us against both tendencies. To the Corinthians who developed a personality cult of leaders, Paul exclaimed, ‘What do you think we are, that you pay such exaggerated deference to us? We are only servants, through whom God worked to bring you to faith.’ To others, however, who regarded their leaders with contempt, Paul wrote that they must ‘respect’ them and ‘hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work’. Again, ‘Here is a trustworthy saying: whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task.’ Or ‘to aspire to leadership is an honourable ambition’ (neb).
What, then, is the nature and function of ordained clergy? In general, churches have given two answers, depending on whether they see ministry as directed primarily towards God or towards the church. On the one hand, there is the priestly model, in which the ministry is exercised towards God on behalf of the people. On the other hand, there is the pastoral model, in which the ministry is exercised towards the people on behalf of God.
The priestly model
The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches see their clergy as priests, especially in relation to their role at the Eucharist. Lutheran and Anglican churches have also traditionally called their clergy ‘priests’, but for a different reason. At the Council of Trent the Roman Catholic Church affirmed that in the Mass a true and propitiatory sacrifice is offered to God, and that the human priest who offers it represents the Christ who offers himself. The essence of this teaching was endorsed at the Second Vatican Council, which said priests are ‘given the power of sacred Order to offer sacrifice’. ‘They sacramentally offer the Sacrifice of Christ in a special way when they celebrate Mass.’ True, they are said to represent the people of God, as well as representing Christ, when they do this. But the heart of their priesthood is still conceived as offering the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Protestant Christians, who place the authority of Scripture over the traditions of the church, cannot accept this. For the fact remains that the New Testament never calls Christian leaders ‘priests’ and never refers to the Eucharist as a sacrifice. The Greek word for a sacrificing priest (hiereus) occurs many times in the New Testament. There is one reference to a pagan priest, and several references to Jewish priests. The word is also applied to the Lord Jesus, our great high priest, who offered himself once for all as a sacrifice for sins. It is also used of Christian believers who are ‘priests of God’. This is ‘the priesthood of all believers’ on which the Reformers laid much emphasis. Collectively, we are a royal and holy ‘priesthood’, who offer ‘spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’. If we ask what these sacrifices are, they all come under the general heading of the church’s worship. They include our bodies, our prayer, praise and penitence, our gifts and good deeds, our life laid down in God’s service, and our evangelism by which we present our converts as ‘an offering acceptable to God’. These eight sacrifices are offered to God by the whole church in its capacity as a holy priesthood. But not once is priestly language or imagery used of a particular group of Christian leaders who might correspond to the priests of the old covenant.
When we remember that the Levitical priesthood had for centuries been central to Israel’s life, and still was in the Palestinian Judaism of Jesus’ day, the fact that Christian leaders are never likened to priests must have been deliberate. Charles Hodge, the nineteenth-century theologian, said,
Every title of honour is lavished upon them [i.e. Christian ministers]. They are called the bishops of souls, pastors, teachers, rulers, governors, the servants or ministers of God; stewards of the divine mysteries; watchmen, heralds, but never priests. As the sacred writers were Jews, to whom nothing was more familiar than the word priest, whose ministers of religion were constantly so denominated, the fact that they never once used the word, or any of its cognates, in reference to the ministers of the gospel . . . is little less than miraculous. It is one of those cases in which the silence of Scripture speaks volumes.
Some Reformed churches, including the Church of England, retained the word ‘priest’ because the English word ‘priest’ comes from the word ‘presbyter’. It therefore translated the word ‘elder’ (presbyteros) rather than the word ‘priest’ (hiereus). ‘Priest’ was used because ‘presbyter’ was not a word in common English currency. At the same time, there is evidence that the Reformers would have preferred the unambiguous word ‘presbyter’. For instance, John Calvin complained in the Institutes that the Roman bishops created ‘not presbyters to lead and feed the people, but priests to perform sacrifices’. In England Richard Hooker, answering the Puritans who criticized the retention of ‘priest’ in the Prayer Book, expressed a preference for ‘presbyter’, since ‘in truth the word presbyter doth seem more fit, and in propriety of speech more agreeable than priest with the drift of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ’. Today few people know that ‘priest’ is a contraction of ‘presbyter’, and even fewer are able to perform the mental gymnastics of saying ‘priest’ and thinking ‘presbyter’. It would therefore be better for both theological clarity and biblical faithfulness to drop the word ‘priest’ altogether from our vocabulary. We could then follow the wisdom of the united churches of South India, North India and Pakistan, and refer to the three orders of ordained ministry as ‘bishops, presbyters and deacons’.
We need to define the essence of ‘priesthood’ (according to Scripture), and remember that the Old Testament priests were pastors too. They exercised a dual role. On the one hand, as priests, they had a Godward ministry: ‘Every high priest is selected from among men and is appointed to represent them in matters related to God.’ In this capacity it was their privilege to approach, or draw near to, God, to offer sacrifices and to make intercession. On the other hand, as pastors, they had a people-ward ministry. In this capacity they cared for the people’s welfare; they taught them the law; they blessed the people, that is, sought or pronounced God’s blessing upon them; and they acted as judges and made decisions.
Since the cross, no more sacrifices for sin can be offered. And so the remaining Godward privileges of the priesthood have, through the work of Christ, been inherited by the whole people of God. We may all draw near to God, and ‘have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus’. We are all invited to offer the ‘spiritual sacrifices’ of our worship. And we are all to pray for one another. None of these ministries now belongs, as they did in Old Testament days, to a privileged caste, to clergy in distinction from laity. Although this ministry of intercession may be a special responsibility of clergy, it cannot be claimed as a distinctively ‘priestly’ work which is restricted to them.
In Old Testament days the priests and the prophets complemented one another. Both ministries were representative, but in opposite directions. The priests represented the people to God, especially in offering sacrifices; the prophets were spokesmen of God to the people, especially in uttering oracles. But in the new covenant this double mediatorial ministry is now exercised by Jesus Christ alone. It is through Christ that we come to God; and it is through Christ that God speaks to us. He is the only priest through whom we enjoy access to God, and the only prophet through whom we enjoy the knowledge of God. Human mediators are no longer needed.
So it is the pastoral ministry of the Old Testament priests, their responsibility to care for the spiritual well-being of the people of God, and in particular their teaching role, which have devolved in New Testament days on clergy. Insofar as priests were pastors in the Old Testament, I suppose one could call pastors ‘priests’ in the New Testament. But pastoral duties do not have anything distinctively priestly about them (except perhaps intercession), and in fact, as we have seen, neither Jesus nor his apostles ever referred to pastoral leaders as priests.
But God does want his church to have pastors. True, the pastoral responsibilities of caring and teaching belong in some degree to all the people of God, since we are called to ‘teach and admonish one another’ and to ‘carry each other’s burdens’. Nevertheless, the New Testament assumes that each church will have a group of elders whose main task is to pastor God’s flock, especially by feeding, that is teaching, them.
The pastoral model
Since ‘pastor’ means ‘shepherd’, and the image comes from a rural context alien to today’s urban communities, it is sometimes suggested that we need to find a more appropriate term for the church’s leaders. City apartment-dwellers, perched on the ledges of their perpendicular cliffs of glass and concrete, know little about sheep and shepherds. Yet I doubt that most us are ready to jettison the self-portrait of Jesus Christ as the ‘good shepherd’ who came to seek and save lost sheep. Nor are we likely to stop singing the popular hymns which embody this imagery, such as ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd, I’ll Not Want’ and ‘The King of Love My Shepherd Is’.
We are told that Jesus was moved with compassion when he saw the crowds, ‘because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’. Shepherdless sheep must still arouse his distress and concern. Ultimately, he is himself their shepherd. But he delegates some of this responsibility to under-shepherds. ‘Pastors and teachers’ are still among the gifts with which he enriches his church. In fact, all Christian ministry is derived from Christ. His ministry is the prototype. He is the true servant, who came ‘not to be served, but to serve’. And now he calls us to follow him in the path of service.
Jesus called himself ‘the good shepherd’. Elsewhere in the New Testament he is named ‘the Chief Shepherd’, ‘that great Shepherd of the sheep’ and ‘the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls’. If, then, pastors are under-shepherds, we will be wise to understudy the good, the great, the chief shepherd. For he both taught and exemplified all the main principles of pastoral ministry. The good pastor, who models his ministry on the good shepherd, has at least seven characteristics.
First, the good shepherd knows his sheep. He ‘calls his own sheep by name . . . I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father’. The ancient Middle-Eastern shepherd was very different from modern shepherds in other parts of the world. Because Western sheep are mostly reared for meat, they live only a brief life with no personal relationship with the sheep farmer. In Palestine, however, the sheep were kept for their wool, so the shepherd had them in his care for many years. As a result, a relationship of trust and intimacy developed between them. The shepherd could know and call each of them by name.
This was certainly the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. He knew his sheep personally. As in the Old Testament, Yahweh called Abraham, Moses, Samuel and others by name, so Jesus knew and called people personally. When he saw Nathanael approaching and said of him, ‘Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit’, Nathanael asked in astonishment, ‘How do you know me?’ Jesus went on to call Zacchaeus by name to come down from the sycamore-fig tree in which he was hiding. After the ascension, Jesus called Saul of Tarsus by name on the Damascus road. And, although at our own conversion we heard no audible voice, we too can truly say that he called us personally.
So perhaps the first and most basic characteristic of Christ’s under-shepherds will be the personal relationship which develops between pastor and people. They are not our clients, constituents, patients or customers. Still less are they names on a register or, worse still, numbers on a database. Instead, they are individual persons, whom we know, and who know us. Moreover, each of them has a ‘proper’ name, a symbol of his or her unique identity, and genuine pastors make the effort to remember their names. Many years ago I had difficulty in recalling the names of two elderly ladies who came to church every Sunday together. As a result, the best I could do was to greet them as ‘you two’. So when the ladies in question began to sign their letters ‘U2’, you can imagine my embarrassment. ‘Greet the friends . . . by name,’ John wrote.
The best way to remember people’s names is to write them down and pray for them. When Paul told the Thessalonians, ‘We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers’, it sounds as if he had some kind of list. It is, without doubt, the regular mentioning of people’s names in prayer which – more surely and quickly than by any other means – fixes them in our mind and memory. To forget somebody’s name is, as likely as not, a token of our pastoral prayerlessness.
Jesus also indicated that his relationship with his people would be both reciprocal (‘I know my sheep and my sheep know me’) and intimate (‘just as the Father knows me and I know the Father’). There was something transparently open and guileless about Jesus. He had nothing to hide. It was a mark of his true friendship, he said, that he made himself known to his disciples. This does not of course mean that pastors have to disclose all their secrets to the congregation. But they should at least be willing for the costly and humbling step of forgoing some of their privacy, and of being known to be frail and vulnerable like everybody else.
Second, the good shepherd serves his sheep. ‘I am the good shepherd,’ Jesus said. ‘The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’ For Jesus is devoted to their welfare, and his whole life is dominated by their needs. God’s chief complaint against Israel’s leaders was this: ‘Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock?’ Now sheep are not particularly pleasant animals. We cherish a rather romantic picture of woolly, cuddly lambs. But real sheep have no great concern for their cleanliness, and are afflicted by a variety of nasty pests. Hence the need to plunge them several times a year into powerful chemical solutions. They also have a reputation for being stupid. So there is a good deal of dirty and menial work in shepherding. It includes strengthening the weak ones, healing the sick, binding up the injured and bringing back the strays.
Jesus himself laid down his life for his sheep. He was no hired hand, doing his work for money. He genuinely cared for them, sacrificing himself to serve others. Pastors need this sacrificial, serving love in their ministry today. For, like sheep, human beings can often be ‘perverse and foolish’. Some can also be demanding and unappreciative, and we will find it hard to love them. But then we are to remember that they are God’s flock, purchased with Christ’s blood and entrusted by the Holy Spirit to our care. And if the three persons of the Trinity are committed to their welfare, then surely we must be as well. We need to hear Christ’s words to us as Richard Baxter imagined them: ‘Did I die for them, and wilt not thou look after them? Were they worth my blood, and are they not worth thy labour? . . . Have I done and suffered so much for their salvation, and was I willing to make thee a co-worker with me, and wilt thou refuse that little that lieth upon thy hands?’
Third, the good shepherd leads his sheep. Here is another difference between Eastern and Western shepherds. In the West shepherds seldom, if ever, lead their sheep; they drive them from behind with the use of sheepdogs. Because of the Palestinian shepherd’s close relationship with his sheep, however, he is able to walk in front of them, call them, and they will follow him. Chua Wee Hian, a former General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, tells the story of an Arab guide explaining this tradition to some tourists. Then the tourists ‘spotted a man in the distance driving a small flock of sheep with a rather menacing stick’. Was the guide mistaken, then? ‘He immediately stopped the bus and rushed off across the fields. A few minutes later he returned, his face beaming. He announced, “I have just spoken to the man. Ladies and gentlemen, he is not the shepherd. He is in fact the butcher!”’
Israel’s relationship to Yahweh, and especially their passage across the wilderness, are likened to the movement of sheep following their shepherd: ‘Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock.’ The godly individual Israelite thought of Yahweh in the same way: ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing . . . he leads me beside quiet waters.’ So Jesus, the good shepherd, took over and developed the same picture: ‘The sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.’ The reciprocity is clear. If the good shepherd knows his sheep’s names, they in their turn come to know his voice. Christian ears are attuned to the voice of Christ. We develop a certain sensitivity to his mind and will. Gradually we come to know instinctively what would please or displease him. And so we follow where he leads and where he calls.
Something similar is true of Christian pastors. It is our solemn responsibility to lead people in a way that it is safe for them to follow. That is, we have to set them a consistent and reliable example. Jesus introduced into the world a new style of leadership, namely leadership by service and example, not by force. The apostle Peter said, ‘Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care . . . not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.’ As a matter of fact, for good or evil, whether we like it or not, people will follow us. It is frightening to think how undiscerning many sheep are. That is why it is essential to lead well, to set a good example, with no gap between our preaching and our practice, so that we will not lead them astray.
Fourth, the good shepherd feeds his sheep. ‘I am the gate,’ Jesus said. ‘Whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.’ The chief concern of shepherds is always that their sheep have enough to eat. Whether they are being kept for wool or meat, their health depends on nutritious pasture. So Jesus himself as the Good Shepherd was pre-eminently a teacher. He fed his disciples with the good food of his instruction.
Pastors today have the same paramount responsibility. The ordained ministry is essentially a ministry of the Word, with the sacraments understood as ‘visible words’ (as Augustine called them), dramatizing the promises of the gospel. The pastor is primarily a teacher. This is the reason why presbyters must be ‘able to teach’, and they must ‘hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that [they] can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it’. Pastors must both be loyal to the apostolic teaching and have a gift for teaching it. Whether they are teaching a crowd or congregation, a group or an individual, what distinguishes their pastoral work is that it is always a ministry of the Word.
Nothing is needed more today, in either the tired churches of the West or the vibrant churches of many developing countries, than a faithful and systematic exposition of Scripture from the pulpit. ‘Do you love me?’ Jesus asked Peter. Then, ‘Feed my sheep.’ Too many congregations are starving for lack of the ‘solid food’ of the Word of God. The ultimate goal of our pastoral ministry is ‘to present everyone fully mature in Christ’, and ‘to equip his people for works of service’ (better, ‘for their work of ministry’). It would be hard to imagine a nobler ambition than through our teaching ministry to lead God’s people both into maturity and into ministry.
How then do shepherds feed their sheep? Strictly speaking, they do not feed them at all. It is true that if a newborn lamb is sick, the shepherd may take it into his arms and bottle-feed it. But normally the shepherd’s way is to lead his sheep to ‘good pasture’ or ‘good grazing land’, where they can feed themselves. It is not, I think, far-fetched to see in this a parable of sound pastoral education. Spoon-feeding and bottle-feeding are for babes in Christ. Only pasture-feeding will lead them into maturity in Christ. As the preacher opens up the Scriptures, he invites people into them, in order that they may feed themselves in this rich pasturage.
Fifth, the good shepherd rules his sheep, accepting that he has a certain authority over them. I am tempted to omit this dimension, but to do so would lack integrity. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin is right to complain that ‘the figure of the good shepherd has been sentimentalized’. In classical Greek the king was known as the ‘shepherd’ of his people, and the king-shepherd analogy occurs frequently in the Old Testament. For example, the people reminded David how God had said to him, ‘You shall shepherd my people Israel, and you shall become their ruler.’ This does not mean that pastors are to be autocratic. Nevertheless, alongside the New Testament’s emphasis on the humble service of presbyters, there are also allusions to their leadership role, their being ‘over’ a local church ‘in the Lord’. Congregations need to ‘obey’ them and ‘submit to their authority’, although their authority is to be exercised through their ministry of the Word and their example. And it is plain from several New Testament passages that if discipline has to be exercised, it will be done through the local congregation collectively, and not through a single pastor.
Sixth, the good shepherd guards his sheep. The sheep’s chief enemy in ancient Palestine was the wolf; sheep were defenceless against wolves. If the shepherd was merely a hired hand, he would see the wolf coming and would abandon the sheep. He would run away, leaving the wolf to attack and scatter the flock. Only a good shepherd would risk his own life to defend his sheep.
There is no difficulty in interpreting Jesus’ allegory. ‘Watch out for false prophets,’ he had said in another place. ‘They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.’ If the sheep are God’s people and the shepherds are their faithful pastors, then the wolves are false teachers and the hired hands are unfaithful pastors who do nothing to protect God’s people from error. Sadly, there are still wolves in Christ’s flock today, deceivers who deny some of the fundamentals of the historic Christian faith. True pastors will not behave like hired hands and run away. They will stand up to the wolves. It will be a costly task. For shepherds cannot shoo wolves away by shouting at them or waving their arms about. They have to get to grips with them, as young David did with both a lion and a bear. In the same way, pastors need to accept the pain and the danger of close combat with false teachers. Vague denunciations will not be enough. Instead, we have to study their literature, listen to their teaching and wrestle with the issues they are raising in order to counter their arguments effectively in our teaching.
While this is a risky ministry, it is also a necessary and compassionate one. We should never relish controversy. It will always be a distasteful duty. The only reason we engage in it is compassion for the sheep. The hired hand takes to his heels because he ‘cares nothing for the sheep’. It is only because a good shepherd does care, and care deeply, for the welfare of the people he serves, that he will stand up to error in the church. Shepherdless sheep are an easy prey to wolves. Must it be said of God’s flock today that ‘they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and . . . they became food for all the wild animals’? Not if we care enough to ‘keep watch over our flock’. It is sometimes said that we must always be positive in our teaching, never negative. But this is not true. Jesus himself denounced false teachers. And the duties of the pastor are not only to teach ‘sound doctrine’, but also to ‘refute those who oppose it’. Feeding the sheep and routing the wolves cannot be separated.
In the seventh place, the good shepherd seeks his sheep. ‘I have other sheep,’ Jesus said, ‘that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.’ It is clear that by these ‘other sheep’ Jesus was referring to Gentile outsiders. Yet he could also say ‘I have’ them and ‘I must bring them’ in. We need the same kind of assurance in our evangelism. Wherever we live and work, we may be sure that some of Christ’s ‘other sheep’ are there, that they already belong to him in the purpose of God, and that he is determined to bring them in.
This outreach to people who are alienated and lost is an essential part of the pastor’s ministry, even if it belongs even more to lay church members who live and work among outsiders. It is true that we often distinguish between ‘evangelists’ who seek lost sheep and ‘pastors’ who nurture those who have been found. Yet their ministries overlap. If Jesus, the Good Shepherd, not only feeds the sheep in his fold, but also seeks those outside it, his under-shepherds who understudy him must do the same. If we evade this responsibility, God will again complain, ‘My sheep . . . were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.’ Jesus himself will say to us, ‘Did I come down from heaven to earth, to seek and to save that which was lost, and wilt thou not go to the next door or street or village to seek them?’ On the other hand, if we do go out to bring people in, then we shall share in the heavenly rejoicing ‘over one sinner who repents’.
Here then is the beautiful picture of pastoral ministry which Jesus painted. Wherever there are sheep, whether lost or found, there is a need for pastors to seek and shepherd them. Following the example of the Good Shepherd himself, human pastors will endeavour to know and serve, to lead, feed and rule the sheep of Christ’s flock, to guard them from marauding wolves, and to seek them when they have gone astray. And then, however little they may have been honoured on earth, they will receive from the Chief Shepherd, when he appears, ‘the crown of glory that will never fade away’.
The pastoral ideal exemplified in Jesus the Good Shepherd, which he wanted leaders to copy, needs to be complemented by two other models which he warned them to avoid.
First, Jesus said there are the secular rulers who ‘lord it over’ and ‘exercise authority over’ people. ‘Not so with you,’ he added emphatically. Leadership in his new community is to be entirely different from leadership in the world. ‘Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.’ As T. W. Manson put it, ‘In the kingdom of God service is not a stepping-stone to nobility; it is nobility, the only kind of nobility that is recognized.’
Second, Jesus urged his disciples not to imitate the Pharisees. The Pharisees loved both places and titles of honour, for these were signs of the people’s servile respect. ‘Do not do what they do,’ Jesus said. Christian leaders are not to be called ‘Father’, ‘Master’ or ‘Rabbi’ (Teacher). That is, we are not to adopt towards any human being in the church, or allow anybody to adopt towards us,
To do so, Jesus implied, would be both to usurp the prerogatives of the Holy Trinity (God our Father, Jesus our master and the Holy Spirit our teacher) and to disrupt the brotherly-sisterly relationships of the Christian family.
Here are two different contemporary models of leadership, one secular (rulers) and the other religious (Pharisees), which nevertheless shared the same basic characteristic: a hunger for power and prestige. Today the model we are most likely to imitate is that of business management. It too, despite some acceptable parallels, is often more worldly than Christian. We have to beware lest, as the status of pastors in society declines, we seek to compensate for it by demanding greater power and honour in the church. The essential mark of Christian leadership is humility, not authority; servitude, not lordship; and ‘the humility and gentleness of Christ’.
Chuck Colson, no stranger to political power before his conversion, says, ‘The lure of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is service to others. It is difficult to stand on a pedestal and wash the feet of those below.’ Again, ‘nothing distinguishes the kingdoms of man from the kingdom of God more than their diametrically opposed views of the exercise of power. One seeks to control people, the other to serve people; one promotes self, the other prostrates self; one seeks prestige and position, the other lifts up the lowly and despised.’