The Dilemma of Leadership

It's been sometime since my last blog and therefore a lot has been going through my mind. I hope then that this blog is not too confusing...

As a pastor of many years now and therefore a leader, I have for a long time battled with what I call the dilemma of leadership. A strange title I know, but let me explain. As pastors the book of Ephesians instructs us to "train the saints for ministry...". I can honestly say this has been my heart and desire and would almost proudly confess to doing this for the period of my ministry. I have become aware though, self preservation often gets in the way of being true to this calling.

As pastors and leaders within the body of Christ, our very existence relies on the body of Christ (the church) needing and wanting us. Indeed you could argue that some of the salaries that pastors receive almost mandates this as we often need to validate these enormous sums. Not that I have ever been the recipient of such wages in my time, but I do know of some pastors, who will remain nameless, who are on CEO or corporate type remuneration packages. And this is not for me to judge whether or not this is right or wrong, but the question still remains, when we are on so high wages is there then a need to validate these wages. I would argue YES there is!

This then creates a dilemma. If pastors feel the need to validate their wages and therefore their very existence within the body of Christ, are we the body who employ them creating monsters of our own demise? Why is this you might ask? Well, if the body of Christ in general are the very ones who are called to be doing the ministry, in effect pastors and leaders should be doing themselves out of a job.

In a world of big budgets and high pressure roles it is easy to forget why we are here. Peter calls the church to be a "Royal Priesthood..." and indeed when we examine God's original plan for mankind it is obvious he wanted all to be ministers and not just a chosen few. It is easy though as pastors and leaders to budget for our various departments and objectives when we know we have the body contributing to the income based on a tithe or 10% giving. Yet this was never God's intention to lower the body of Christ to a place where our only contribution was through our giving at the offering time. Indeed His plan was that we would be doing the very things that Jesus did when He walked the earth.

I believe we have gotten things confused or even back the front, the real role is for the believers of Christ to be in every way fulfilling the great commission of Christ and the role of pastors and leadership to help and support the body in this mission. In the same way, our programs have taken pre-eminence over people, yet it was the programs that were created to help and reach out to the people. Perhaps it is time to put things right and give the body of Christ the mantel and platform it should really have and ask the leadership to serve as we were once called.