There’s a great quote in Jeff Lucas‘ book Gideon: Power From Weakness that puts Christian leadership and ‘ministry’ in perspective in the light of the way it is pumped up at conferences, especially to young Christians:
The future is not in the hands of the articulate people who stand on platforms, and I say this as one who spends most of my life on one platform or another. But as a Christian leader, I am not on the ‘front line’ in God’s holy war. I am a member of God’s ordinance core, privileged to help, serve and resource the real heroes who today will be faithful to God as hospital workers and home-makers, mechanics and managers, school teachers and secretaries, or – an even greater challenge – as those unemployed, wrongly deployed or just holding down what can only be described as boring, mundane jobs. (p61)
I think he’s got it right. Not simply as a corrective in the context he mentions, but as a corrective to regular congregational life, which loads huge expectations on the minister. We foolishly believe that a new minister will change everything. It’s not only an abdication of responsibility, it’s a measure of desperation in the face of church decline and powerful social forces, in whose wake we feel hopeless. It’s also an act of social captivity, in a society of personality cults and celebrity adulation.
Our hope, however, is not in the latest ‘anointed’ leader but in Christ. To put our hope in anyone but him is an act of faithlessness for a Christian. At my welcome service here in Chelmsford, I quoted Brian’s mother from Monty Python’s Life Of Brian: ‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy.’ I may be called to be Christlike and to set an example, but I’m not the Messiah. There are no vacancies for that position.
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