Leading in Times of Significant Change

By Dr. Greg Wiens

As I have talked with pastors over the past ten years, it seems that many feel challenged as they strive to lead a healthy growing church in these times of chaotic change. They feel as if someone has changed the rules, or at least the expectations for pastoring. Many people in the pews feel this same sensation. For years, those in the congregation knew what to expect of their pastor:

· He/she would preach a message to them that would teach them the scriptures.

· He/she would sit on boards and observe, but let the lay leaders make the important “business” decisions and would only speak up on “spiritual” issues.

· He/she would visit them in their homes every once in awhile to see how they are doing.

· He/she would be there to console them and nurture them through the pain if a crisis happened (so he/she spent a good share of time at the hospital).

I grew up under these kinds of pastors and expectations. I knew I would never fit into that kind of a mold. In fact, when I told my parents I was leaving General Motors to go to seminary, my own mother told me I couldn’t be a pastor, because I didn’t love people! When you own momma tells you that, you need to listen. What she meant was that I would not be able to love people like the pastors she had known.

But then our whole culture and world as we know it was turned upside down. Morals that were a given 30-40 years ago are now seen as crazy to the general public. Where as it was a normal assumption during the sixties that people would go to a church, now we know in Florida that less than 18% of people are in a church on any given Sunday. The world around us has changed radically (see Easum’s article from August 9^th) and so have the expectations for a pastor in churches that are healthy, growing and transforming their communities through Christ.

I can’t tell you how many times I have had a sincere saint in a church tell me that they just want the church to be like it used to be. Or they wish their pastor was like we had back…it is like saying you just want TV shows like “Leave it to Beaver”, “Fathers knows best” or you want to watch football like they played in the 1960’s or music to be played from the LP’s. It isn’t going to happen. The world has changed and so should our methods of engaging this world. If Christ tells us to engage the lost, we have no choice but to change our strategies, and with that comes changing the expectations of the role of a pastor.

Let me say clearly that we all have real needs to learn the scripture, have close friends and people that can help us through crises. However, as roles morph, so do the ways these needs are met and by whom they are met. In Ephesians 4 Paul talks about the variety of gifts and roles that leaders in the church fulfill. He states: It was he (Christ) who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, ¹²to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Paul states that the church will become mature if you have these five roles in leadership helping the body to grow up and use their gifts. Paul uses the word for pastor here, which literally means shepherd, but he is talking about gifting, not the position as it is understood today. Alan Hirsch has pointed out in his writings that for the first 200 years in our nation we had a predominantly Christian culture. In that context, you would primarily need shepherds and teachers. This has been the primary gifting of our “pastors” during that period of our or nation’s history. The APE’s (apostles, prophets and evangelists) were not needed because the culture, for the most part, accepted the Bible as authoritative; that is until somewhere between 1965 and 1980. We were no longer a predominantly Christian culture in the majority of our nation.

Sociologists now describe our culture as a post-Christian culture; in other words, one that is no longer Christian. We don’t know for sure what it is, but we clearly know it is no longer a Christian culture. We are in a period of extreme cultural shift away from our Judeo-Christian heritage. So we now live in a period of time when we need the APE’s back in leadership. Remember, Paul is talking primarily about gifting. We need leaders who have apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic gifts to complement the shepherding and teaching gifts, which have predominated for centuries in the roles of a pastor.

Apostolic individuals create chaos; they always are changing things and wanting to do things differently. They are the entrepreneurs. They are not content with only producing disciples from those who are already Christian, they like Paul (See Romans 15.20) want to go where “no man has gone before” and reach those who have yet to be reached in a community. They are good a starting new things and not good at following through (See Titus1.5)

Prophetic individuals deal with asking the tough questions. They are the provocateurs. Too often we think of prophets as only dealing with the future. If that were the case why were they so often, beaten, tortured and killed? According to Fee and Stuart, 95% of what they said had to deal with people getting right with God in their own time. These people are quick to point out sin or behaviors that keep one from fully pursuing God.

Evangelistic individuals are never satisfied until they are convinced you are right with God. They are the marketers or the communicators. They always want to be outside the church figuring out how the church can be more relevant to those who are far from God. They are great at putting the gospel in terms that those who are far from God can understand. They are the front door kind of people for a church.

Shepherding individuals are passionate to nurture and protect. They are the humanizers. They have compassion for those who are hurting and suffering. They are patient with those who are struggling and the ones who best accompany people through challenging times in their faith and their lives.

Teaching individuals desire to understand and explain the scriptures. They are the philosophers. They want to communicate scriptures in a way that causes people to grow in grace and knowledge of the faith. They want people in the church to be solid in their faith so that they will not fall away from the tenets of the faith.

I hope it is obvious by now that in today’s culture all of these five gifts are needed to see a healthy growing church transforming its community. Like Paul says in Ephesians 4. ¹²to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

The rules have changed for the role of a leader in today’s church. That is because the world around us, to which we have been called to reach, has changed dramatically. For the roles not to change would be like still trying to buy or sell music on those old LP records. You can do it, but your audience is pretty limited.

There are many difficulties in working with this kind of a team of leaders in the church, next week we will look at how to practically make this work.