What's the greatest question in Christian 'Leadership'?

I was invited to answer this question by an e-mail from a Bible school I had attended.

Here is my answer:

My greatest 'leadership' question is why has the church followed the world in its obsession with 'leadership'?

The scripture calls us to SERVE. Our leader is the Holy Spirit!

We need to revive the notion of ministry and ministry as support of the discipleship of others, of each other! We have grown a flabby church with insufficient dedication to reading and understanding the scriptures in private devotion and study, insufficient emphasis on the service of all believers in their congregations to each other and insufficient application to our daily routines and behaviour.

The notion of 'leader' passivates the average Christian and offers a mantle that many rightly eschew. What we need is to train Christians for their ministry: be it teaching, preaching, evangelism, administration, etc. and to take responsibility for the application of those gifts.

For those who are younger or less mature, the title 'leader' is an invitation to pride, if not hubris. One has to ask, if one is a leader, who are the followers? Do the followers then defer to the leader for their own spiritual responsibilities?

What we must do as the church is train our brethren in their own growth in faith, in study of the scriptures, in application to reading of fruitful Christian literature (at the maximum level of their intellectual capability) and in serving each other in grace and humility (Phil. 2:3, 4). We must also train in communicating the gospel: Koukl's books Story of Reality, Tactics and Street Smarts are good resources (I add, even though I diverge from aspects of his theology).

BTW, for some background, I have served churches over the decades in administrative committees and as a full time administrator of a medium sized church in Sydney. In my prior professional life I have worked as a senior executive responsible for a budget in excess of $1b (billion). I have served both my employer(s) and my team(s) by building up people to develop their own capability and in taking responsibility for (the management triad): clarifying the mission, providing resources and developing capability: of the team and its individuals.

If anything, this 'triad' is perhaps the nub of taking a role of responsibility for the work of a (any) group!

 

That's the answer.

 

As an addendum I note that it has taken a scholar in management to put his finger on the problem. Henry Mintzberg, who may or may not be a believer, complained about the obsession with leadership rather than, as he puts it, 'communityship'.

Second addendum: in the church I worked for we  avoided the term 'leader'. We had 'convenors' for home study groups, 'coordinators' for various outreach ministries, 'organizers' for others. Some groups had ministry team members, helpers, facilitators, workers, arranger, moderator...and so on.