This post is the sixth in a series of reflections on the chapters in Seven Practices of the Church in Mission, by David Fitch. I have appreciated pastor/academic Fitch's analysis of how God's presence becomes real in today's church, and here I offer some thoughts and responses based on my own experience as a pastor and discipleship coach.
In this chapter of his little book about practices that usher in the presence of Christ, David Fitch writes about leadership, in churches but also in communities. He asks if is it possible to have accountability and authority in a community founded on mutuality?
Today’s businesses, organisations, and even governments seem to be brimming over with instances of harassment and coercion; brutal reviews, threats to livelihood, even bullying and racism. The manipulative leverage of position and influence can be indirect but nonetheless threatening. And - he says - churches have taken on these bad habits. We hear of – or have perhaps even suffered – respected pastors who fail sexually or financially, or who are found to have abused and exploited people. They seem to understand leadership as imposing their will on a congregation.
In today’s business world and NFP organisations, participative management and collaborative workplaces are becoming the norm, particularly in service industries. But Fitch says it’s clear that hierarchy still dominates Christian thinking about leadership, just as it did in Jesus’ day. In Mark 10: 42 – 44, the disciples were competing for a place at the top in Jesus’ incoming administration. But he tells them No, in the Kingdom of God, there is no hierarchy or coercive power. No one person rules; those who are servants are the most honourable. The Kingdom model then - and now - is of mutual shared leadership under the Lordship of Christ.
So how does this work? Fitch says through the fivefold ministry model of Ephesians 4. Its founded on recognising those among us who are called by the Holy Spirit to lead in their respective giftings, and enabling them to exercise their gifts in mutual submission to one another. He often goes to visit churches to talk about the leadership model in place at the Chicago church plant where he is part of the Ministry Team. Members’ giving is used to resource a team of four bivocational pastors who have each freed up 10 -15 hours a week from their professional life to serve at Life on the Vine. The structure has no senior leader, but is rather based on each taking responsibility for an area in which they excel. Discernment of job description is aided by a gift inventory and is refined over time. Fitch claims it is working well. However, when he presents this paradigm of multiple leadership to the wider church, listeners often push back about “getting things done”, and “knowing where the buck stops”. They feel “someone needs to be at the top, to help us understand where we are going.” He says this is a contemporary version of the Hebrews’ demand for a king like other nations. Because groups of people need lines of authority, we default to hierarchy. But at heart, he suggests, God knows we long for mutuality.
Fitch offers some definitions here, which I will list but without necessarily endorsing his take on them.
- Apostles initiate gather and pioneer new works, calling people to live now in the Kingdom
- Prophets speak so as to reveal the truth and call of God (he says, especially in relation to the poor)
- Pastors tend to and sustain people’s souls, especially when they are hurting
- Evangelists bring the good news, offering an alternative reality based on Christ’s presence (see Practice 3)
- Teachers help explain and deepen people’s faith
There have been many expressions of the fivefold gifting over the centuries, starting with monasteries and various other reforms and revivals, but it has been especially notable since 1824 when Scotsman Edward Irving claimed that the paradigm needed to be restored. But Pastor John Frye (a contributor to the Jesus Creed blog) argues Ephesians 4:11 in context is descriptive, not prescriptive. “There is no exegetical basis or hermeneutical reason to make the Ephesian text prescriptive…. we don’t read that Paul appointed or exhorted Timothy and Titus to appoint apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers in every church." In fact no one in church history took Ephesians 4:11 to be prescriptive until the nineteenth century Pentecostal movement reinvigorated the model. Another blogger says the ascension gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4 are simply gifted people whom God gives to the body of Christ. They are the natural outgrowth and by-product of organic church life.
I’m not sure how useful the five named gifts would be in my own context. Fitch may be overly-specific because of what is working in his own North American Christian and Missionary Alliance context. The Life on the Vine congregation sees its leadership as a pneumatocracy; authority is delegated within the area of the gift, in dependence on the Spirit. Fitch concedes the particular gift inventory used at Life on the Vine is not a magic wand; rather, the questions and answers open up a conversation that helps leaders come together in a deep self-awareness. Ministers ask each other, have we experienced this person’s strengths or weakness in the way the test did? Accuracy isn’t the issue; its the conversation that brings transparency and authenticity, and people learn how to both trust and challenge each other. When wider issues arise, the leaders meet together for discernment, perhaps with a proposal for addressing the dilemma. Then a conversation based on giftings explores who will be affected, what this would mean long term, and so on. The proposal may then be expanded, or brought to the whole church for deeper discernment. (It may even be ditched.) This kind of collaborative process is described in my 2017 post about Biblical discernment. It can be useful whatever ministry polity is in place.
So I’m not sure that Fitch has got this right. However what I do find compelling is his conviction that practising this discipline – mutual shared leadership - opens space for Christ among us, a space where He can direct and organise his mission. As a Presbyterian, the notion of a mutual shared leadership is a polity utterly familiar to me, and it is also expressed in the Ministry-Led model used in many Baptist churches in New Zealand. Both traditions look to Ephesians 4 as the Biblical mandate, although few specify the roles named in the fivefold gifting literature.
"Practising this discipline – mutual shared leadership - opens space for Christ among us."
Paul declares in both Ephesians and 1 Corinthians that the gifts the church needs are multiple and interdependent. No one person (or pastor) can carry out all the ministry. “According to the measure” (Eph 4:7) … “for the common good” (1 Cor 12: 7). No-one can say ‘I don’t need you’ because the gifts are inextricably interrelated, and require a mutual submission to discern what God has planned. Collaboration of the called and gifted – whether at leadership executive level, in a whole congregation, or in a family - will open up space for the Spirit to move. Compared with the striving and competitiveness of the world, this community is participatory and centred on Christ’s presence.
By contrast, some members seem to have the mentality “We pay you as staff to do the ministry." That totally goes against the Biblical precept that the entire church is called in ministry and we all have ministry gifts. (I wonder if these days part of the gifting might include the time and/or financial resources to serve; that seems to influence the copastor model at Life on the Vine). A collaborative ministry team (fivefold or not) needs to be good at recognising gifts of others, and at mobilising the kingdom by releasing the rest of the community’s giftedness. Becoming present to Christ at work in one another evolves into becoming present to his work in the congregation. Fitch connects the concept of fullness (pleroma) in verse 13 with the rabbinic notion of shekinah - a Hebrew word that represents “the manifestation of God’s presence.” Fitch says Paul is describing the way Christ is fully present in his body, the church, and in particular through the collaboration of Christians in their giftedness.
The book's paradigm of three circles of faithful presence applies here as in the other chapters:
- The five functions are needed in the close circle of believers, in mutual submission to Christ as Lord. But they are not confined to this.
- They are also needed in our neighbourhoods; in fact ‘dotted circle’ ministry cannot really exist without these gifts, especially of apostles and evangelists, who call attention to needs and initiate responses. Fitch encourages churches seeking to to be missional to start with locating, affirming, training and sending apostles. Later the other gifts will be needed. This is a useful insight.
- In the third circle, places of great need, each function plays its part again. The fivefold gifting flows out into the world. Fitch tells the story of an innovative ministry at a women’s refuge. A hierarchical leadership might have stifled the dream; however, the ministry has flourished because people on the streets were empowered to summon Christ’s presence.
When Christendom became the reality in the fourth century, any shared ministry being practised was overtaken by clericalism, in order to manage efficiently the huge growth of that era. But the legacy of hierarchy is that it took ministry and leadership out of neighbourhoods and confined them in church buildings. This applies to Protestant churches just as much as to Rome. We pay lip service to servant-driven leadership but still end up with hierarchical lines of authority. Perhaps that’s because looking to the presence, power and authority of Jesus takes time and energy.
To consider: How do you see mutuality of leadership gifts at work in your own fellowship? does this passage from Ephesians enhance your shared goals?
We all have gifts to share
Everyone, everywhere
Let the truth be told
Miracles unfold
We all have gifts to share
When we all share
The truth that we know
And see the gifts in each other
Then we can be
The change we want to see
In the world with our sisters and brothers...
©Susan Kay Wyatt
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