Horizontal Leadership

In my last post I discussed the difference between those who are visionaries, teachers and practioners. In the Body of Christ they are all important. Some people have more vision than others; some can teach the vision better than the visionary, and the practioner sometimes doesn’t have the vision or experience to teach. The role of the visionary and teacher are vital. Unfortunately, like all things with a body, the high profile gifts of a visionary or teacher oftentimes dwarf those who in fact do the work, the practioner.

Like most corporations, the mission industry structure is usually top down. The western church functions so much like a business firm that we have adopted its language, thus we have CEO’s, vice presidents, department heads all the way down to the people who actually churn out a product – in our case, a church plant.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this structure; doesn’t make any difference whether it’s right or wrong, it’s a system that we are stuck with. We pray our CEO’s will learn “servant leadership,” and we tell our teachers that they are now “facilitators.” In many organizations, certainly not all, neither the visionary or the teacher has planted a church, wrestled with the pain of growing a church and haven’t spent twenty-four hours in a village among the unreached people they proclaim to have heart for. I know of one CEO who failed on the field, didn’t even plant a cell group, didn’t get along with the nationals or colleagues on the field but is now head of his sending agency! Go figure. But I digress.

In a perfect world, with a perfect church the perfect structure is not vertical but horizontal. What shall we call it? How about the Jesus model? Jesus knew how to cast the vision; He did ministry (not in a five star but something between a foxes hole and a birds nest), and he taught/coached in the process. His followers wanted Him to be the CEO of the Kingdom, but He turned it down. He could have been the great rabbi/guru, but He wasn’t content just to tell others how to do it, He actually did Kingdom work, He taught by example.

There are very few people that possess all the abilities that characterize a discipler, even though that is what Jesus called us to be. The best we can hope for is a visionary who can see what needs to be done based on having touched and smelled the battle that he is asking the practioner to commit their lives to; for teachers who instruct out of experience, not mere academic theory; through their failures as well as successes in the trenches of real life. A true servant leader is one, like our Lord, who walked the talk, who led through doing, whose chief aim was to do the will of the Father. He did it all by serving alongside, no, in the midst, of those He came to serve.