Who Leads the Church?

Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. 28 And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues ? Do all interpret? - 1 Corinthians 12:27-30 (NIV)

I am a bit concerned with the way The Salvation Army has begun to adopt the business management model to our leadership paradigm. Many books promoting this model have been passed around and even sent out to our officers en masse. It seems we are being encouraged to operate our Army as a business.

Now I don't want to discourage our use of successful business practices at all, but when you boil it down to the basics, the Church is not a business. The Church is a living organism that is designed to function as a body. In other words, each part has a role to play in the successful operation of our mission- to make disciples (Matthew 28:19-20). The Salvation Army's mission carries this commission to its obvious conclusion- to make disciples while winning the world for Jesus!

But can we do that successfully if we use a business model instead of a Biblical model of leadership?

Often God's decisions fly directly in the face of good business practices. Imagine if Joshua had hired an administrator when preparing his attack on Jericho. I mean, come on! "Walk around the city 7 times for 7 days then shout at the wall." Does this seem like a good business practice to you? It's certainly not a good military strategy. Who in their right mind would have thought to do that? An administrator? Oh, right- God spoke His plan to His prophet/leader, who got the vision of it and led his people into a great victory. Would this event have ever happened if God had charged the leadership of His people to an administrator?

The passage at the top of this entry gives us some place to start in our quest for a biblical leadership model. It appears that those placed in leadership of the Church should be Apostles and Prophets (numbers 1 and 2 on the list). These are the ones God anoints with "what it takes" to lead the Church- vision and spiritual inspiration. Isn't it interesting that we (TSA is not alone here) typically place in leadership those who are gifted in administration, seventh on the list?

Who leads "the Church" (God's people) in the Old Testament? The Prophets. Who leads the Church in the New Testament? The Apostles.

The Twelve (apostles) gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables (administrate). 3 Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." - Acts 6:2-4 (NIV)

This passage tells us the early Church used administrators in their proper gifting to do the work of administration. In no place do we see these administrators being appointed to lead apostles and prophets while plying their giftedness in the body. The apostles and prophets are set free from this very task of administration so that they may have more time to pray, study, teach, train the body and make more disciples (and win the world).

Now please don't take this as a negative diatribe against our Army or its leadership. That is not my intent nor my heart. My desire is that we look at what we have become and change it(us) as necessary in order to actually accomplish our mission more successfully.

I also realize there are sometimes administrators who have gift mixes that include the apostolic and/or the prophetic. Often we are blessed with their unique style of leadership they can provide. But on the whole, it appears our aim is to put administrators in, what we have considered to be, pastoral leadership positions (those gifted in this way could feasibly play either role and/or both. However this is not as common a gift-mix as we seem to assume). I have long argued that our Divisional Commanders cannot perform pastoral duties because of their business responsibilities and usual lack of pastoral gifting. We need to realize that the gift of pastor is another whole gifting we haven't even mentioned yet in this writing. Notice pastor is not even among those in our passage above as a leader of the Church? Hmmm.

I'm sure there are a variety of ways we could approach this issue, but here is one suggestion that seems interesting to me (let's approach this from a Divisional Headquarters point of view for now):

1) Actually discover the spiritual giftedness of our people (officers and soldiers alike) so we can make good decisions about what part they will play and where they will fit into our body.

2) Set up two "leadership tracks-" a) one for apostles and prophets who would be the Divisional Commanders and Youth Secretaries, b) one for administrators who would help the DC and DYS do the administration (personnel, property, finance) and free them to work their vision (that God has given them). Each person considered for either track should actually be gifted in these respective areas. Personal charisma should have little or no place in formulating the outcome of this equation.

3) Not just officers should be appointed as administrators. If our officers are raised up to be spiritual leaders, then train those leaders to give visionary leadership rather than do administrative tasks. Give qualified soldiers some of these positions (this should also show up in who is actually accepted into officership. Some of our current officers are better gifted (only gifted?) in administration than in spiritual leadership.


What would this look like when practiced? I think we'd see a lot more risk taking in our decision-making process. Assuming the leaders are carefully listening to God for their vision and tactics (as spiritual leaders are more likely to do over administrators), we would see more dramatic successes in a wide variety of areas of ministry.

Certainly after yesterday's blog, I would be remiss to point out that these leaders should also listen to their administrators for wisdom because God has given us reason as one fourth of our basis of sound judgment. But we are currently doing that almost to the exclusion of sound vision. Hence this writing in the first place.