Pastors: CEO or Discipler-in-Chief?

Current events have caused me to be thinking about the way the role of pastor is structured in American Evangelical churches these days. One event was the announcement by a local megachurch pastor that he is stepping down to make way for a new and younger pastor after 37 years at the church. Another event was the recent announcement from Josh Harris, author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye back in the 90’s and former pastor of a megachurch in Virginia, that he is both divorcing his wife and abandoning Christianity.

When the local pastor announced his plan to step down he provided input to the church that he views his role as the senior pastor of a megachurch (4000+ members) with this kind of approximate work division: 70% CEO of a large organization, 30% preaching.  This is not to say that the organizational work has no ministry component to it, since that organization exists in order to do ministry. Yet I found this description somewhat troubling and I still do.  For a long time I have been concerned about the failure to make disciples in local churches (see this prior blog:  https://dad-isms.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-failure-to-make-disciples.html ). As I have pondered this division of work in the daily role of a megachurch pastor, it seems to me that we may be structuring churches in a way that essentially guarantees that pastors are not disciple-makers.   The megachurch model may very well demand an effective organizational manager who also preaches but it seems to leave little time for personally making disciples. It seems more aligned to a commission to ‘go to all the world and do church’ rather than to the Great Commission of ‘go to all the world and make disciples’. It seems to me that senior pastors should first of all be ‘discipler in chief’ more than CEO.

The Josh Harris apostasy reminded me of this and also brought into focus the celebrity dimension of pastoral temptation. It is true that significant leadership of many kinds involves at least some amount of celebrity/notoriety and the temptations that come with that.  Harris was vaulted into a celebrity position early in life with his book at age 21, and then he became a megachurch pastor soon after, and that without having had theological education.  It seems clear in retrospect that he was unprepared for either the celebrity or the pastoral role, but more fundamentally it seems he never became a disciple himself let alone a disciple-maker of others. Yet he appeared to ‘succeed’ as a megachurch CEO and pastor until he voluntarily stepped down to go get an education (which then led to other problems apparently though it is not clear how all this unfolded: see this Al Mohler podcast https://albertmohler.com/2019/08/01/briefing-8-1-19 ).  This makes me question if the entire megachurch structure is part of the problem. Other recent issues with megachurch celebrity pastors have also contributed to this concern (see this blog regarding Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald and others: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/07/kissing-christianity-goodbye ).  Recent concerns about Andy Stanley’s sermons advising the church to ‘unhitch from the Old Testament’ come to mind as well regarding megachurch leaders who seem theologically unprepared as Harris also was. Though Stanley did go to seminary, the depth of his theology is questionable.

I continue to be troubled by the CEO model of the pastoral role. In my 40+ years of work in corporate America I had the opportunity to have some acquaintance and work contact with some CEO’s and those one level down who were competing to be the next CEO for a large Fortune 500 company. I cannot say I would want to be like them nor would I want my children to be like them. They may feel the same about me, but this experience alone troubles me about making the CEO a model for the church. As I consider these recent events, I am becoming more convinced that the CEO model in churches is guaranteeing the end of discipleship as a primary role for pastors.

Learning How to Learn

In my early years at Kimberly-Clark Corporation we had an excellent statistics expert on staff by the name of Jim Gander. Jim had taught a number of years at the Institute of Paper Chemistry before coming to K-C and had a much better approach for helping students understand the idea of statistical concepts than many statistics classes that simply focus on how to do the calculations with a very minimal effort on the concept. Jim taught both a 'think version' and a 'do version', where the 'think version' was about the concept and the 'do version' focused on the calculation. The 'think version' struck me as key to learning how to learn.

His approach to teaching about the standard deviation in statistics is a great example of this. When asked 'what is the standard deviation?', a common mathematical definition of that is the root mean square deviation of a sample of data. That is a definition that describes how it is calculated. This is a useful number that finds application in many areas of engineering, physics, predictive models in such places as economic models, and other things. You might sometimes get a more descriptive answer such as it being a measure of how variable a data set is, or it is a measure of how wide the distribution of a data set is, or how much actual values (the data set) departs from a predicted model (the assumed mean).  Those are all correct but were not as helpful to me as how Jim described it: it is the average distance from the mean. This takes some explaining, as to why you have to take the differences (X-bar minus X), then square them, then divide by n-1 (versus n for a typical average), and then take the square root. But when you walk through all of that, it becomes clear that the underlying concept is an average distance from the mean. I just did some online searches for 'standard deviation' and 'root mean square' and did not find this 'think version', and I have not seen it in text books that I have used on statistics. However, I think it is a good and clear way to think about the concept and understand it. It is a good way to actually learn the concept that is behind the calculation.

Much technical professional work in fields like engineering, medicine and physics is 'rules based'. Many practitioners use calculations like this correctly in their work without necessarily having fully thought through the concept. They can build things that work and make working predictive models or other things by following the rules and doing the calculations correctly. This is one form of learning but seems to be a less than ideal way to learn to me. Some of this kind of work is subject to automation as the rules based decisions are converted into mathematical algorithms to deal with the vast amounts of data being generated in our modern society. But thinking about the outputs still requires understanding the concept and whether it is being applied in a reasonable way.

 This kind of 'do version' approach allows covering more material in classes, as you have to spend less time on the underlying concept. But it does not build a habit of thinking through concepts, or learning how to learn. It focuses on the doing. In that way it is much like 'rote memory'. You learn the formula and do it, but may not really understand it. Rote learning still has its place, especially early in life, as my son pointed out to me. They are not yet ready for abstract reasoning, but still need to learn the alphabet, numbers, words, and many other things before they are ready for abstract reasoning. They also learn these things very readily, soaking it up like a sponge. Even throughout life, some things just have to be learned more or less by rote. At some point, however, especially in regard to  more complex ideas in math and science, having both the 'think' and the 'do' versions becomes very important.

Many of the engineers I have known through the years have been totally focused on the doing; they want to go do something, go build something. They are not always that interested in the conceptual underpinnings. 'Just tell me what you want and I will figure out how to build it' was a common lament. On the other hand, many scientists I have known have been totally focused on the concepts and figuring out what should be built, but they were not that interested in the translation to doing it in a practical, profitable way. One key part of my work in R&D management was pushing the engineers toward understanding the underlying concepts and pushing the scientists toward making it work commercially. Both are really necessary in applied development. This has been a classic area of conflict between engineers and research scientists.

Many people go through all of their educational years using a rote approach to learning. They work to remember by rote the formulas or data they need for the test and then do it. The concept doesn't 'stick', though, and so they lose the knowledge quickly unless they are using it regularly. But I do not think I will forget Jim's teaching of statistics even though I haven't used it very much in years. The concept stuck.

Now it may be clear why this matters for statistics or other mathematical concepts, but does this approach apply to other kinds of learning? As mentioned above, I think there are some things that we may need to learn by rote, at least up to a point. When learning some basic geographical facts like states and their capitals, this may be the obvious place to start. Yet if you can visit states and get a real understanding of the geography that is certainly more memorable. That kind of reverses which of  the 'think' versus 'do' approaches is more memorable compared to the statistics example, where here the 'think' is learning it on a map and 'do' is the more memorable visit, but this combination of both a 'think version' and a 'do version' does seem transferable to me and helps me to learn. This is one reason I enjoy traveling so much: it is a great way to learn.

I think it is transferable to other kinds of learning as well. I am thinking of theology at the moment. Much of what is taught in churches, like catechism classes or creeds, along with many sermons and teaching of doctrines, are essentially 'do versions'.  The Old Testament Law, at least in the way it is often presented, is a 'do version' (though in reality it is more than that). These are largely 'rules based' approaches to morality and life. Yet the actual teachings of Christ in the gospels are much more like
'think versions' where He went about challenging the thinking of the experts in the Law (the Pharisees) and challenging everyone including His disciples to actually know and understand God. The rules based approach can be useful in not having to think everything through in detail in every instance that comes up every day in life, but the 'think version' is necessary to actually be committed to a Christian life and to be able to explain it to our children or to those outside the faith.

This is a matter of life-long learning, just as in our professional lives we continue to learn throughout life. But learning how to learn is critical to actually understanding what we are doing. I have found that considering both a 'think version' and a 'do version' has been a big help in learning how to learn across many areas of learning.

Adam's Rib

As Memorial Day 2019 approaches I have been hearing comments about plans to barbecue ribs for the holiday celebration. One man commented, 'I will be making my famous ribs!' for the family cookout. I have recently been thinking about ribs but not the barbecued kind; I have been thinking about the most famous rib, Adam's rib in Genesis 2.

As I consider the sexual revolution in our culture and its various dysfunctions, one of the major concerns is the idolatry of the autonomous individual. Our culture has made an idol of the idea that the meaning of freedom is unhindered autonomy for the individual. The individual should be free to create their own world regardless of the realities of their body for example. The view is that the autonomous individual is the basic unit of society. What we see in Genesis is quite different.

At the end of Genesis 1 we are told that God created man in His own image as male and female. The language used is that God made 'him' (singular) as 'male and female' (plural). As Francis Schaeffer pointed out in his book Genesis in Space and Time, one 'man' consists of male and female. (See my prior blog for more on this:  https://dad-isms.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-image-of-god-in-marriage.html)

Genesis 2 then shows us how God demonstrated to the man, prior to the creation of the woman, that there was more to be done before the creation of 'man' was complete. The text says that God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him." (NASB) This has often been understood to mean that the basic problem was that the man was lonely, that  loneliness was the thing that was 'not good'. I think that ignores what was already stated in Genesis 1, that God's completed creation was one 'man' consisting of male and female to bear His image. As I point out in the prior blog referenced above, the image of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is borne by the union of man and woman in 'one flesh' that cannot be borne by one individual alone. The bearing of God's image in 'man' requires both male and female united as one and bearing the image of the communion within the Trinity. So the key issue that was 'not good' was not mere loneliness; it was incompleteness. God was not yet done with His creation of man, so of course it was not yet good.

So God takes His time to show Adam that something was missing, and Genesis 2:19-20 relates how God taught the man that nothing else in creation would fill the bill. There was much to do in this new world and there was the personal God there to keep him company, so mere loneliness is not the whole story. The man is missing something fundamental. To treat this text as if the man's loneliness is the main issue is to treat the creation of woman as an instrument to solve the problem of the man's loneliness. This makes the woman merely instrumental, which is not the message we got in Genesis 1 about bearing God's image. Man alone cannot bear the complete image of God, and God has taken pains in chapter 2 to make the man understand that before He makes the woman.

He had made the man from the dust of the ground, but He did not do that for the woman. He used Adam's rib. If all He wanted to do was make another autonomous individual, the dust of the ground would have been just fine for making the woman too. If mere loneliness were the main issue, another person from the dust of the ground would have been just fine. But to have 'one flesh', for the woman to be part of the man and truly 'one flesh' with him, God used Adam's rib instead.

When he sees the woman, Adam's response is, "This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." Many sermons have made light of this by creating their own version of Adam's response, trying to make the text say something like 'Woo-Hoo! Wow!' in excitement over the woman, While this usually gets a laugh, it completely misses the point. The point is not that the man was excited about the woman, though he may well have been. The point is that the man recognizes that she is indeed 'one flesh' with him, the completion of him. She is in fact the rest of him, made from his rib. Now it is good, not because his loneliness has been fixed, but because the creation of God's image is complete.

The bearing of God's image in this world is not complete in autonomous individuals. That task requires the unity of male and female, which makes the family the basic unit of society rather than the individual.  So if you are cooking ribs this weekend, it may be a good time to contemplate that most famous rib.

100 Years Ago Today

One hundred years ago today on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the shooting stopped. All was finally quiet on the western front. Armistice day was first celebrated a year later and then became a national holiday eventually to celebrate the end of what had been until then the most deadly war ever. Sadly, in a few years an even worse war would overshadow it.

My paternal grandfather was a veteran of World War I; a few short years after it ended my father was born. He would serve in World War II and a few years after he returned from that war I would be born. On this Armistice Day, now Veterans Day, I have reached age 65. From this vantage point 100 years doesn't seem that long ago. I do not remember my paternal grandfather since he died when I was a preschooler but I did get to know my maternal grandfather since he lived to be 95. The world they were born into and were living in at that first Armistice Day had more in common with the world of Abraham Lincoln than it has in common with my world, especially in the isolated communities of Appalachia where they both lived. The mechanized killing of World War I along with the end of the age of empires and imperial monarchies that it heralded must have been a huge shock to their world. Things would be changing quickly going forward.

As I ponder the world today on my 65th birthday I am still shocked at the speed of change. I still recall childhood days of going to my grandfather's farm to pitch hay onto a horse drawn wagon, to draw water by hand from their well, and to wake on winter holiday visits to a cold floor that caused me to dress in a rush and scamper to the warmth of the pot bellied stove in the living room or hang around the wood stove in the kitchen. Those times that seemed so idyllic to me were actually long after the world had been shattered by that Great War. I am told that my grandfather was not the same after the war though it was not clear to me if that was from disease or heart issues or something else. He was not alone.

I am grateful today for all those who served in both World Wars; I also wonder how confused and sad they might be if they saw our nation today with its inability to recognize such basic traits as male and female and its confusion over marriage and morality and life itself. In some ways 100 years doesn't seem so long ago; in other ways it seems an eternity.

The Failure to Make Disciples

Thoughts from The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard                                   October 30, 2018

While the title refers to a ‘conspiracy’ by God to subtly overcome evil with good, the message that came through most to me had to do with addressing the question of why the church has been so ineffective in making disciples. The book opens stating the basic problem and his conclusion that both the theological left and right in the church preach a partial gospel that is disconnected from personal integrity and personal character, which are foundational for personal holiness and discipleship. They are fundamentally disconnected from leading people to Christ-likeness. He proposes that the theological left promotes a gospel of commitment to fixing societal/structural sin without really dealing with personal guilt and sin, while the theological right promotes a gospel that is primarily forensic and deals with personal guilt without addressing society. Both of them focus on a salvation that lies somewhere in the future (at death for the forensic gospel, when social justice is achieved for the social gospel) and are what Willard calls ‘gospels of sin management’ rather than of new life.  Neither one really requires a personal, daily walk with Christ; while things like prayer may ‘work’ for some, it isn’t really necessary if you are saved from your guilt on the one hand or aligned with the current politically correct social causes on the other. He comments on this matter that “prayer is not needed either to go to heaven when you die or to be committed to the cause of liberation.”  The result in our time is a Christianity that has little to do with the kind of person you are.  He issues a challenge: would the gospel that I preach cause people to want to become full time students of Jesus? I think he makes good points about this and I have also been concerned about the failure of disciple making in the institutional church. If discipleship happens it is not a result of the programs and culture of the institutional church.

One of my life-long disappointments in the local church has been the near total absence of anything that looks like a serious effort to make disciples. Having been very involved in CRU while in college with their small groups approach to building disciples, I was hoping to find some sort of discipleship in the church that is more aimed at families rather than students. Students have very flexible time schedules so I knew it would be much different after marriage and entering the workforce, but it was very disappointing to find that no such thing exists in local churches. I have lived in Wisconsin, Chicago, Dayton, Memphis, Atlanta, and western Massachusetts and have never found any organized plan to make disciples anywhere.

The CRU approach can be summarized in the 3 words Win, Build, and Send. The CRU approach to evangelism incorporates it as part of discipleship as small groups train their members to do ongoing witnessing. It seems to me that local churches focus on Win (evangelism) but more as events with preaching than by personal witness. Churches tend to have a patchwork of various programs on the other 2 matters. Willard’s book doesn’t really say very much about the Win part or the Send (multiplication of disciplers) part, focusing the Build disciples part. His focus is on being an apprentice to Jesus such that we actually live the new life in Christ and develop habits that overcome our natural, fleshly reactions to life. In that regard he focuses less on what we do and more on the kind of person we are. Most other discipleship definitions seem to be mostly aimed at what we do. 

He also goes on to outline some obstacles to making disciples that are inherent in our current ‘gospels’ in addition to the incompleteness of these 2 that confine the impact of the kingdom of God to some undetermined time in the future. One of these obstacles is our view of God as either far away from us as a result of our view of the cosmos being vast with God out there somewhere beyond space and time, or else an opposite view of God being inside us but not really active in the world around us. Both of these cause us to think of God and His kingdom as being in a location that is not very important in our physical life here and now. He spends time addressing the nature of the cosmos as being within God’s kingdom and God being available everywhere, along with how our limited view of the reality of both matter and spirit limits our openness and willingness to living in the kingdom now.

Another obstacle is our view of Jesus; we often view Him as holy but not actually smart or having great ability; we think of Him as wise but never think of Him as having humor or laughing; we think of Him as having eliminated obedience as important by providing the solution to our sin and guilt but do not see Him as demonstrating what it looks like for obedience to the Law to be our natural and automatic response when we have life in the kingdom. The result is we don’t seek to grow in obedience and holiness; as Willard points out, though, “Trust in Christ is inseparable from the fulfilling the Law” and “Law is not the source of righteousness but it is the course of righteousness”. In misunderstanding Jesus we also misunderstand His teaching, and he uses the Sermon on the Mount to walk through that.

The partial gospels do not require prayer and our misunderstandings inhibit prayer. He encourages praying for what we are concerned about since “prayer simply dies from efforts to pray for ‘good things’ that honestly do not matter to us.” This actual connection with God then leads to a discussion of what building disciples might look like.

Like Piper, he points out that delighting in God is the real goal of discipleship. He finds that getting to that requires some discipline, however, with ‘disciple’ and ‘discipline’ sharing the same root. Delighting in God, desiring God, loving that which is lovely and virtuous; these are all part of the goal and should involve both body and spirit since we are made as unified body/spirit creations. The gospel taught to disciples must be the gospel that reveals the God who can be loved with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, which is to say with both our spirit and our body.  This includes delighting in God’s creation, both of the cosmos and of ourselves. Loving father and mother as in the 10 Commandments requires being thankful that God created us as part of His creation, for example. He sees discipleship as a course of apprenticeship to Jesus that is intended to create habits of body and spirit that break our bondage to natural, fleshly responses to life.  This disciplines us so that our body becomes a spiritual asset.  He recommends 4 basic disciplines in this course: 2 of Abstinence (Solitude and Silence) and 2 of Activity (Study and Worship/Service).

I agree with much of what he has to say, and I think his concern about the need for discipleship is exactly on target. I think it would be good to expand the core disciplines to a few more that go back to the Torah: Sabbath, giving/tithe, and the Levitical constraints on sex. All of these involve key areas where body and spirit connect in important ways.  He mentions Sabbath briefly, and it may be that Sabbath and giving can be included in the Worship aspect, but our current age and the sexual revolution cries out for a specific response to the sexual dysfunction that has also become an obstacle to discipleship in our time. The regular practice of abstinence called for in Leviticus 15 is a stark contrast to the current culture and teaches very directly that regular abstinence and self-control are required disciplines for the body if the body is to be a power for good. Sexuality has become a defining issue of our time and it will need to be better addressed in the church as a result; I think the church has failed in regard to adequate teaching on marriage and sexuality just as we have failed in discipleship (of which marriage and family is an important part).  But you can’t cover everything in one book so overall I appreciated this book a great deal!

Corporations and a Sense of Place

This week Kimberly-Clark announced the impending closure of 2 manufacturing plants in Neenah, Wisconsin. While this sort of thing happens all the time in the business world, it marks the end of an era for this town. K-C was founded there in 1872 and has had manufacturing plants there ever since. Over time the corporate office presence became larger and larger compared to the manufacturing presence, but as recently as the 1990’s K-C still had 2 tissue mills, a diaper plant, 2 nonwovens sites, and a feminine care plant there for manufacturing. These closures will bring an end to production sites there though the corporate locations will still be a very large employer there.

Corporations have historically had a connection to a place, both for manufacturing and offices. For K-C that place was Neenah, WI, but many others come to mind. Ford was connected to Detroit, Dow to Midland, MI; P&G to Cincinnati; Anheuser-Busch to St. Louis. The founders started the company in a place, and as human beings they had ties to that place. It made sense for the factories to be in that place as well. Both the people and the corporation that were extensions of those people had a sense of place. People have a natural love for home, and work has a natural connection to home. Chesterton wrote that “men did not love Rome because she was great; she was great because they had loved her.” Benedictine monks make a vow to stay in one place, one monastery, for life. This blog from First Things is good commentary on that: https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/05/on-the-importance-of-place . Perhaps Israel is the best example of this: God’s promises to Abraham and his descendants are not only spiritual promises but also promise of a place, The Land.

That seemed to hold for corporations until after World War II. The economic expansion that followed the war and which had been pent up during the Great Depression resulted in many corporations opening new places of production first all over America, then later all over the world as the global corporation came to be common.  The sense of place began to be diffused and corporate leaders became vagabonds as they moved from place to place to build a career. Those who would reach the top of the corporate ladder often had a much less definite connection to the historic community where the corporation began. Over time as corporate leaders began to come from outside the company, the sense of place also seemed to fade even more.

There are economic reasons of course. It may be better for logistics or energy cost or raw materials to be in a different place. And often the reason for the starting place of a company was the resources available in that place. I am sure there were various economic challenges in the past, but the sense of place seemed to be the impetus to innovation in approaching those problems. Today the focus seems to be more about wanting a target market to be the impetus rather than a desire to stay in a place. The love of a place seems less vital now.

Some think this is a good thing,  promoting the idea that we should be ‘global citizens’ and not so locally oriented.  I am not convinced that is altogether a good thing. I agree with C. S. Lewis , G. K. Chesterton, and Wendell Berry  that connection to a place is one important way we learn to respect and care for creation. As a Christian my ultimate loyalty cannot be simply to a place, but a sense of place contributes to my role as a steward of the land and of life.

So I am saddened by these recent events. Perhaps these were economically necessary moves, but I cannot help thinking that they are nonetheless additional signs of the loss of our sense of place.

Prayer

I recently read Timothy Keller's book Prayer and I found it helpful in the ongoing quest to understand what prayer is all about. I still find myself returning to C. S. Lewis' thoughts on prayer more than to anyone else's writing about prayer but there were some helpful insights in Keller's book as well.

I blogged some years ago about my lack of interest in most of the writing that has been done about prayer as conversation with God. Much of my discomfort with that commentary is that it seems to bring prayer down to the level of  'chit-chat'. Keller in his book maintains the idea of discussion/conversation but makes it clear that this is not mere chit-chat.  In particular I liked his emphasis that this is a conversation that God Himself initiated, both through His Word and through Christ, and our prayer is a response to the conversation that He has initiated. We respond to His Word, to the life and work of Christ, and to the Spirit; it is a conversation that cannot happen without His initiation. I find this a much more clear and also more reverent approach to this idea of conversation with God than what is presented in most things I have read or heard on prayer. Keller's comments taken from Eugene Peterson about how we learn to talk, where 'all speech is answering speech, we are spoken to before we speak' was very timely input for me as I have been watching my young grandchildren learn to respond and to talk. Applying that to us in prayer, where God speaks to us in Scripture and our prayers can and should arise from Scripture was an appreciated insight.

Keller also continues with some of Lewis' thought about how prayer recognizes God as God, the One to whom we must bring our concerns since He alone is sovereign. Lewis adds to this that in prayer God grants to us the high position of  'person'. These two concepts belong side by side in my opinion. Keller goes on with this line of thought by noting that this kind of communication can only happen between persons. He points out that if God were impersonal then prayer would be an illusion. This would help explain some Eastern religions where a meditation without thoughts, words, or concerns seems to be the goal rather than the Christian concept of prayer. Keller goes on to point out that if God were unipersonal then love could only appear after he began to create, which would mean that power is more fundamental than love; love (and its results like communion between persons) would be less important than power. But if God is triune then words and communication take on a power and importance that would not fit those other alternatives. There was communication and love in the Trinity from all eternity; this makes the concept of The Incarnate Word all the richer!

These were the elements that struck me most in this book, and they all come in the first 100 pages. The remainder was more about how to practice prayer more fully, which is practical and certainly needed in our time when it seems that prayer is less abundant than the decadence of our culture calls out for. It is certainly the case that I need to cultivate the practice of prayer more than I do. I especially appreciated from the book those first 100 pages that strengthened my understanding of why prayer is fundamental in the Christian life.