If you read this blog regularly, you know that I think institutionalized western Christianity's recent faddish pursuit of leadership development is both theologically corrupt and doomed to disastrous failure.
As far as theological corruption is concerned:
In a kingdom, the only leader is the King. So, when an institutional hierarch presents him/herself as a leader who hopes to develop other leaders for the Kingdom of God, something that closely resembles blasphemy takes place.
I've challenged the self-perceived leaders in my own faith tradition to think carefully about the significance of what they are doing when they present themselves as leaders hoping to develop other leaders...but, to no avail.
As far as doomed to disastrous failure is concerned:
When I think about leadership as Jesus practiced it, I have to guffaw at the image of today's denominational hierarchs attempting Jesus-style leadership.
Imagine it happening:
When Jesus presented Himself as a leader and challenged others to commit to His leadership, He offered this invitation (I'll translate literally):
"Come after me." (That adverb could also render the invitation, "Come behind me.")
The adverb there is opiso, the same word Jesus used when He said to Peter: "Get behind me, Satan." (Mt. 16:23)
And that is how the leadership of Jesus worked.
That adverb is the essence of Jesus-style leadership.
When Jesus led, He literally, physically, led.
Jesus went from place to place and the people who embraced His leadership challenge went behind Him...
...literally.
In a physical way, they actually followed Him...from place to place. In the most literal way, they walked in His steps.
The leadership of Jesus was literally leadership and following Him was following Him. There was nothing symbolic or metaphorical about it.
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Now, do you see the humor?
In my denomination as an example, the executives who occupy offices in the headquarters buildings hope to develop other leaders. Yet, imagine those hierarchs practicing Jesus-style leadership.
Can you picture anyone going behind your Bishop or Executive Director or whatever his/her title might be?
What would that person do? Sit on a chair in the back of the corner office for hours on end as the leader boned up on reports written by other denominational hierarchs? Then, sitting in that same corner office chair, watch the leader tap away on a keyboard, writing his/her own reports?
Then, what? Mosey, following behind the leader down a hallway to a meeting room to doodle, in the back of the room, while that, uh, leader leads a meeting of one of the many committees, commissions and task forces of which s/he is a member?
And, the next day, sit, I guess in the back seat (trunk, perhaps) of a car while the leader drives, or is driven depending on the denominational budget, to an out-of-town conference or committee or commission or task force meeting, then sitting in the back of the room?
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Today's church leaders can't develop leaders because they are not followable!
While they presume the ability to lead in the Kingdom, the lives of the self-proclaimed leaders in the church bear absolutely no resemblance to the life Jesus lived.
Peter and James and John could go behind Jesus because Jesus was going somewhere...
...And, where Jesus went and what He did when He got there was followable...
...And, doing the things Jesus did and repeating the things Jesus said are precisely the things that make a person righteous. Obedient. A disciple. A FOLLOWER.
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The adverb opiso absolutely pollutes the Gospels but it also appears a few times in the New Testament in Acts and in the writings of Paul and Peter and Jude and in Revelation.
But, never as a part of a leadership challenge. Neither Peter, nor Paul nor anyone else after Jesus presented themselves as a leader to be followed. None said, "Come behind me."
They used the verb mimeomai. Can you see the word mimic there?
Modern translations make it imitate. "You yourselves know how you should imitate us." (2 Thessalonians 3:7) Mimic. Not follow.
Paul and his coworkers didn't suggest people should follow them. Jesus is Lord. Follow Jesus. And, imitate us as we ourselves follow the Lord.
The problem with the hierarchs today is that, while it's a laugh for them to think that they should be followed in the way Jesus was followed, it's tragic to think they would be imitated in the way Paul or Silas or Timothy could be.
I personally know some hierarchs. On the level of who they are, they are mimickable.
But, as hierarchs, fulfilling their job descriptions written by the institutionalists of previous decades and generations, the notion that someone would imitate what they actually do with their lives is knee-slappingly laughable.
Pardon me for framing it this way, but we must drain the institutional swamp.
We must repent.
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