Field of Dreams Part i
Having defined the function/roles of the apostolic person, we can now look at how apostolic ministry exerts its influence. Part of the resistance to the reception of apostolic ministry in our churches has been because at times when people who claim to be apostles have assumed that this involved a dictatorial approach to the leadership of the church. All too often, this has resulted in a disempowering of God’s people, and instead of seeing them mature and grow in the faith; they basically remain childlike and powerless, dependent on the autocratic and overwhelming paternal power of the ‘apostle.’ This is both a distortion and misrepresentation of authentic apostolic ministry. Apostolic ministry is authenticated by suffering and empowerment, not by claims of positional leadership with its institutional levers.
In our day I believe that the predominant, top-down, CEO concept of leadership has co-opted the apostolic so that many who claim apostolic title actually function like CEO’s. In the Scriptures the Suffering Servant/Jesus image informs and qualifies the apostolic role, not that of the Chief Executive Officer. Apostolic ministry draws its authority and power primarily from the idea of service, calling, and from moral, or spiritual, authority and not from positional authority. Perhaps a useful way of exploring the nature of apostolic authority is identify the distinctive form of leadership involved and see how this creates authority.
In a relationship based on ‘inspirational’ or ‘moral’ leadership both leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality by engaging each other on the basis of shared values, calling, and identity. It involves a relationship between leaders and followers in which each influences the other to pursue common objectives, with the aim of inspiring followers into becoming leaders in the own right. In other words, influence runs both ways. Inspirational leadership ultimately becomes genuinely moral when it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leaders and led, thus having a transformational effect on both. In this view, followers are persuaded to take action without threatening them or offering material incentives but rather by appealing to their values. They use moral persuasion rather than material reward to influence their followers, appealing rather to higher values and calling. This can be clearly seen in the way Jesus develops his disciples as well Paul’s relationship with Timothy, Titus, and the other members of his apostolic team. But it is forms the basis of his letters to the churches.
Perhaps we can best call this type of influence ‘greatness.’ To be a great leader in this sense is to inspire, to evoke, and to nurture something correspondingly great out of those who follow. Through an integrated life, great leaders remind their followers of what they can become if they too based their lives on a compassionate notion of humanity framed by higher moral vision of the world in which we live. We seldom call a leader with significant technical or managerial ability ‘great.’ We don’t build statues to commemorate great bureaucrats, do we? And it is with understanding in mind that we can identify spiritual ‘greatness’ as the basic substance that provides genuine apostolic form of leadership with its authority. And it is the strongest form of leadership available because it awakens the human spirit, focuses it, and holds it together by managing the shared meaning. Like many leaders in the Chinese underground church, it has the power to hold vast movements together without much external structure. It’s the kind of leadership mythically reflected in the William Wallace character in the movie Braveheart. A man who the people willingly followed, not because they ought, or that he had some official position (he didn’t) but because he reminded them of their right to freedom and helped them obtain it at the cost of his life.
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16 Responses to “Field of Dreams Part i”
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Great post. As I read, I see how often I want to try and motivate people by offering incentives - but how it rarely works that well, and often means that the extra effort needed to provide the incentive means there is no real gain anyway.
“Great” leadership really raises the bar for leaders to be people of integrity, being made whole by Christ. I only pray that I can live somewhere close to that.
Amen, indeed. This is what The Abbess hopes to spark with CovenantClusters.
Looking forward to Part 2
Yes, very much with you on this. Moral authority is very different from delegated authority. Different sorts of power involved, inspiration / empowerment rather than coercion / enforcement.
This becomes very important in public issues. Christian leaders have lost all moral authority in the public eye on matters of sexuality given institutional complicity in child abuse matters. Branch stacking by Christian organizations to ensure representation in courts and public forums is a flawed strategy. What we need to do is recover our moral authority, and that comes through sacrificial living.
Then again, moral authority is also important in inhouse matters. In struggling for missional church for legitimacy, we must be careful how we go about it. As I have suggested here before, seeking institutional authority to effect change could actually be counter productive in so far as that can reinforce the authority of institutional power structures. Me must model the end we seek in every means we use.
Speaking of dreams… I had a dream about you last night Al… you gave me some great advice (thanks) and I was able to pray for you (so if that was a “God dream”, perhaps others would like to pray for Al too!)
I digress as usual. But these are terrific posts!
Jan, you are always going to be one of my fave people in the world. I really do miss you. Hope all is going well.
A
Aaahhh! There’s no distance in the Spirit between good friends…
Looks like we are back at the “be the change you want to see” glocality, hey, Matt!
On reading Al’s writings and the posts on this thread, what comes to mind for me is something interesting I discovered at the turn of the Millennium when I attended a Vision New Zealand conference (if any of you are aware of an inter-denominational movement in Aotearoa that was an attempt to gain unity of vision amongst the leaders of the various church flavours in that country in the 1990’s?). A couple of creative arts APEST sisters of mine invited me along. I was really quite impressed at the variety of denominational chiefs who attended. I tried not to feel too marginalised as the only Aussie dancing girl in the ecclesiastical crowd, and was ‘defiantly cheerful’ enough to turn up at the Men Only afternoon session, to check out what issues they were grappling with. I might add, that I was extremely graciously received (overtly at least) and had a couple of kindred spirit guys chat to me about egalitarian interpretations of the Creation story etc later on. But, like Janet, I digress… my main story is that I attended a session on “Being Agents of Change”. I though Wow, I’m really gonna learn stuff from the top dudes, here… some key strategies I can implement to help me revamp the creative arts organisation I had recently been elected to lead. My expectations were met, but in a very opposite way to what I imagined… it turned out that the Uniting Church, Lutheran, Anglican, and various Pentecostal stream “men and women of power” who attended that particular elective session recommended that the best way to effect change in their stultified institutions was to get some gravel rash on the belly… get down in prayer and seek God’s heart, will and ways with groaning and travail, and then walk on into the ministry arena to face the great gladiatorial combat in the knowledge that God had gone before. That’s my interpretation, anyway. To me, that experience cultivates hope that the Christ-example is sufficiently powerful in contemporary church life and that both institutional and explorational churches have what we could now call mDNA and the possibility of APEST revival to equip the church to move on in love and power for these times… we just gotta do what we each and collectively are destined to do!
Lucy J
PS. Hopefully Andrew can get back to you, Matt. Our computer is v slow right now because of voracious teenager useage of our download limit… I write from my work computer at lunchtime, mostly.
Well, funny you should say that, because one of the things that was so striking about the dream was the powerful sense of brotherly / sisterly love… not to mention your voicing the answer to a ministry question I’ve been stuck on for ages. (Appropriate to have God speak using the voice of a brother and mentor such as yourself!)
So, the feeling is entirely mutual!
I might have to find an excuse to visit L.A…. maybe a spiritual pilgrimage to… Disneyland? (I’ve never been to the States)
Lucy, he he, I had to upgrade to cable some time back because I used to max it out just by myself. And speaking of young-uns online it seems my blog is being inundated by a class on an internet field trip. I wonder what will rub off.
Read something recently about Paul and his career as an apostle. In his early beginnings he operate dunder the canopy of the institutional framework of the Jerusalem church and the Antioch church. However, disagreements about the nature of the gospel and Gentile discipleship as it relates to the covenant and the law forced him to leave this canopy and launch out with no institutional backing or credentials. While this may have been difficult at first, it pressed him into a theology in which he was forced to find his authority and legitimacy as an apostle outside of the institutional framework. He found his authority and his legitimacy in his Damascus road experience and in the fact that his life mirrored the gospel in sufferings and victory. If it was not for this separation between him and Antioch we would not have the eloquent, profoundly brilliant explanations of the apostolic and the gospel that we have today. Leaving the institutioinal framework has its challenges, but it catapults us into deeper levels of theology and mission. The apostolic soars when it steps out from under the canopy of the institution.
Matt, he he, I AM on cable!!!!! Well, sort of… We have a cable connection and three computers running off wireless. There’s no way I want the other computers properly networked with our sacrosanct ministry-related one… CERTAIN people did not understand that logging onto a ‘free site’ to download relatively small files actually opens the door to the host of others interested in the same file being able to piggy-back download courtesy of OUR account! So we’ll be back to normal speed in a couple of weeks! We just don’t have the budget for anything more sophisticated at this time. What age-group are the cyber-trippers to who are touring with you at the moment?
Back to the blog…
Yes, Saul of Tarsus/Paul was indefatigable in many ways and I think the intensity of his Damascus Road experience fuelled his ability to ignite God-ward passion in others who responded to the message of the coming of the Christ, Jesus, to the point of becoming disciples and building communities of faith based on the work of the Spirit and the teachings of Jesus himself as passed on by the original Apostles and himself as a new-order one. His divergent views catalysed problems/challenges and his responses to them (and God’s leading in and through them) shaped the great Pauline heritage we enjoy, employ, and sometimes deploy against today. Some problems seem to diminish us and possibly make us reach for poor-choice solutions of abusive, autocratic or punitive nature, just to ‘get them out of the road’. But, some problems/challenges magnify our creative abilities. Christ was never diminished by his suffering. That’s not always the easiest example to follow.
Dr Michael Hall (whose mind/body connection research I have mentioned in another thread), I quote below (albeit guardedly and certainly not ‘wholesale’), expresses something which I think is worth considering alongside other aspects of Apostolic leadership, and in fact alongside APEST concepts in general…
“That which is won easily and without a struggle is seldom valued, let alone treasured. It is what we win through struggle, effort, discipline, and team work that we value, that calls for a celebration. It is the problem that matters, that makes a difference, that opens up new possibilities and new worlds—those are the problems that are worth solving, worth devoting yourself to, worth a full commitment for a lifetime.”
Bring on the New World, I say… but it might take a lifetime commitment for those who believe in the APEST-awakening to co-operate with God to achieve it. I guess we do have assurance from the Scriptures that the New Heavens and New Earth will eventuate in fullness!
Lucy J
Al, are you using Secretan as a source? Curious..
“Inspirational Leadership: Destiny, Calling and Cause”
A while back I reread Greenleaf and was surprised how current he sounded (Servant Leadership), and after starting Fullan yesterday, I think he has something to add too (confess.. Lowney is still a favorite here and a lot of the inspirational leadership material still feelings too “self-actualization” ish as if developed at the Crystal Cathedral)..
btw, for those interested in some of the background to this thinking, here is an excerpt from the classic book in 1978..
http://nextreformation.com/wp-admin/leadership/power-ldr.htm
I had another “God dream” last night… I was laying hands on you Al, and praying, and I woke up still praying with a very tangible sense of the Holy Spirit. (This is so weird… it hardly ever happens to me)
Anyway… I have the sense that God is breaking through and all will be well. (But extra prayers might not go astray right now).
Al - a great picture of the apostolic. I’m finding many who are ready to step out of the institution and begin apostolic ministry but most of us need a clearer picture of what that’s like and your description is quite apt.
I’d love to see a some picture of a year in the life of an apostle today. I see Paul’s life but how is it the same and how is it different?
Hey Jeremy,
I have some of the same questgions. Here is a blog I did on that question of whats the difference. May be helpful. Also, I thinnk every apostle will look different. Like Peter and Paul looked different. But there is defintiely overlap in what a poster child apostle would look like. i am thankful for Alan putting this on the map for and giving some key concepts to start the explortions of the apostolic.
http://ikonplant.blogspot.com/2007/11/whats-difference.html