Servant Leadership

[This was shared during the Service of Installation for Pastor Dwight Hanson as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Eaton, Ohio.]

Mark 10:42-45
Recently, someone asked me whether the term “Christian leader” wasn’t an oxymoron, an internal contradiction. 

The question wasn’t unreasonable. After all, Jesus, the One we confess as our Lord and God, was a servant “Who,” [according to Philippians 2, despite being] in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant...he humbled himself  by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” This, the apostle Paul tells us, is how you and I are to be with each other in the Church, humble servants (Philippians 2:5-11).

Is it possible then for anyone to be a servant and a leader as a Christian? 

In Romans 12, Paul gives a list of seven spiritual gifts God grants to individual Christians for the benefit of the church and how the people given those gifts should use them. “If [your gift] is to lead,” Paul says, “do it diligently.” So, it appears, one can be a Christian and a leader. (Romans 12:8)

The reason that the phrase Christian leader may seem like a contradiction, I think, is that we get confused by what the world says a leader is. The world tells us that a leader is a kind of dictator who always gets his or her way. 

But even without delving into the Bible’s understanding of leadership, the world’s definition doesn’t pass muster. A friend of ours, General Curtis Scaparrotti, the son of the congregation I formerly served in Logan, Ohio and today the commander of NATO, once told me that even a general must rely on more than power to lead people. You can hold a title, but you only earn the right to lead others by being a servant. Leaders never ask those they’re called to lead to do things that they themselves are unwilling to do. And so when he was second in command in Afghanistan, General Scaparrotti regularly jumped out of aircraft with his paratroopers. Friends, nobody is worthy of designation as a leader who is not first of all, a servant.

That’s why I was happy to see the lessons from the Bible chosen for Pastor Hanson’s installation. It shows that he has a healthy, Biblical understanding of what it means to be a Christian leader who is a servant and disciple of Jesus Christ!

Our gospel lesson, Mark 10:42-45, teaches us all what it means to be a disciple and a leader in Christ’s Church. Just a few verses before, Jesus has told the disciples that soon, in Jerusalem, He’s going to be rejected, arrested, crucified, buried, and then, raised by God the Father. According to the gospel of Mark, this is the third time that Jesus told the disciples about His impending cross. They’re at least as oblivious this time as they were the previous two times. They don’t even react to the prediction. The idea that the Messiah--the Christ, God’s anointed King--would be overcome by opposition is so foreign to them that Jesus’ prediction of a cross doesn’t compute. “There He goes again,” they may have thought.

Just how little they thought of Jesus’ words can be seen in what happened immediately after He spoke them. Two of the twelve, James and John, brothers, make a request of Jesus: When He becomes king in Jerusalem, they want to become His right- and left-hand men. The vision that James and John, and apparently the other ten apostles, have of the kingdom Jesus has come to bring to earth is pretty much the same as all the other kingdoms in the world, only with Jesus and them in charge. They envisioned a reign in which they would have a piece of power, prestige, and patronage.

It’s in the midst of this confusion that Jesus brings clarity about what life in His kingdom is all about. Take a look at our lesson, starting at verse 42: “Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’”

“The Gentiles, the pagans, the people who don’t know God or His amazing grace,” Jesus is saying, “have their own ideas about what it means to be important, to be a leader. They go around barking orders, always seeking to get their way.” But this is not how it is when you belong to the God we know in Jesus Christ.

This God sets free all who dare to trust in Jesus Christ, the One Who bore our sin and the punishment for it we deserve, death, so that when He rose from the dead, He could offer new and everlasting life to all who repent and believe. The only sermon given by Jesus that is recorded by the author of today’s gospel lesson, Mark, is contained in just one verse. Jesus says, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15) That’s it!

We can do nothing to make ourselves fit for life with God. We can’t be good enough, influential enough, enough of a big shot, enough of anything. Only Jesus Christ and our faith in Him can make us fit for His kingdom. Only Jesus can justify sinners and make them forever new. And Jesus’ salvation can come to all kinds of people when they daily believe in and follow Him: big shots, little shots, no shots. 

So, in the Kingdom of God, there’s no reason to push or shove. When I trust in Jesus Christ, I already have the kingdom of God and because of that I can be a servant, accepting whatever role that Christ has given to me. When you know you belong to the King of all creation, you’re not particularly concerned, as James and John were, with the seating arrangements. And speaking only for myself, I would say that in light of what a sinner I know that I am, I’m so content to be a saved child of God that I have long been cured of any human desire to be a big shot. That’s what it’s like to belong to a servant Savior in Whose kingdom the first are last and the last are first.

Because we know how much God loves us and all that He has done for us in the crucified and risen Jesus, the Christian can dare to pray the most revolutionary of prayer petitions, “Thy will, Your will, and not mine, be done, O Lord.” 

That’s the prayer that Jesus teaches us to pray, of course. But, servant-leader that Jesus is, it’s also the prayer He offered in the garden as He prepared to go to the cross for you and me and for all who, without a relationship with Jesus, would face a Christ-less eternity. 

Jesus has the authority to tell us to fall into the arms of God the Father because He dared to do just that on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday! 

And, Pastor Hanson, you will have the authority to call this people to follow Christ when they see that you, however imperfect and human you are, seek to follow Christ yourself.

Dear people of Grace Lutheran Church, you’ve waited a long time for this day. I’ve been following your journey and praying for you and I know how difficult it has been for all of you. But God has blessed you with a servant leader. He clearly understands what it means to be a Christian leader. 

• I ask you to pray for him and honor him for what he is for you, a gift from God. I ask you to pray for Kelly and him as they adjust to their life in a new place. 
• I ask you to take it upon yourselves to be servants of Christ in serving and working alongside them. 
• I ask you to honor his work here, the same work which the young pastor Timothy was reminded to do in our second lesson: “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.” (2 Timothy 4:2)

Pastor Hanson, I ask you to be a servant of Christ to these people and this community as you seek to be faithful to the Lord Who has set you free from sin and death by grace through your faith in Him and has brought you to Grace Lutheran Church.

Galatians 3:28 tells us that in Christ’s Church, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Understanding that the only way to freedom from sin, death, and darkness is in following Jesus Christ as the Lord over our lives, Martin Luther once remarked that, “a Christian...is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian...is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one.”

In the freedom that comes from belonging to Jesus Christ for all eternity, I urge you, people and pastor, not to be afraid to serve each other, to pray for each other, to listen to each other, to worship together, to confess sin and be absolved from sin together, to work together, to witness together, doing all of this knowing that while you may differ in the functions to which God has called you in Christ’s Church, you do not differ in status. You are all redeemed children of God called to join together in telling the whole world the good news of new and everlasting life through faith in Jesus Christ.

God has called this congregation and this pastor and his wife together in partnership for one purpose and one purpose only: to be and to make disciples of Jesus. Dear servants of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen One, since that is your one and only mission: Have at it! Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

[Welcome to Pastor Dwight Hanson, installed today as pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Eaton, Ohio. The clergy of our Southwest Ohio Mission District are incredibly supportive of one another and a contingent was able to be present there today. Clergy l to r: Brian McGee, Dean Haferman, Heidi Holst, Alan Knoke, Dwight Hanson, me, David Matevia, and Marv Hileman. (Thanks to my wife for snapping the pic.)]

On Handling the Holy

My mentor and one of my New Testament professors when I was in seminary, Pastor Bruce Schein, used to warn us against becoming too accustomed to handling the holy things of God.

He wanted us to always remember that God is greater than we are and so, to never take His Word, Christ's offering of Himself on the cross, the sacraments, or anything about the God revealed in Jesus for granted.

When we take the things of God for granted, the Church risks losing its way and begins down the pathway of faithlessness toward Christ. The danger of this happening is particularly high among clergy.

People ask me why I bow to the body (the bread) and to the blood (the wine) during the words of institution that come before the sharing of Holy Communion each Sunday. Apart from this being liturgically indicated, I bow to remind the congregation and myself of Who we are about to receive in, with, and under the bread and the wine: Christ Himself and, with Him, God's forgiveness. He deserves to be received with gratitude, solemnity, joy, and faith.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

God's Plan for Churches and Pastors

Ephesians 4:11-15
It’s often said, rightly I think, that we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes.

Today, with Philip and Amy, and with you, the people of Saint Peter Lutheran Church, I want to share with you what I have learned from what may be the biggest failure of my nearly 32 years of pastoral ministry.

It’s a failure I have really only lately begun to see clearly, even though it should have been obvious to me and I should have addressed it a long time ago.

I can only ask God to forgive me for my past blindness and pray that you, Philip, and you, the people Saint Peter, will be spared having to fail yourselves to learn this lesson.

It’s a lesson which, if we will only be open to it, God gives to us repeatedly in His Word.

Let me bore you with a little background. Ann, Philip, and I went to our first parish in northwest Ohio when Phil was one day shy of his third birthday. I was nearly thirty-one, a newly certified and minted pastor and raring to go.

Within two months, our second child, Sarah, was born. At the time of Sarah's birth, our church had eleven people in hospitals scattered in an arc from Fort Wayne, Indiana up into Ann Arbor, Michigan. For people who aren’t from Texas, that’s a lot of territory. I visited all eleven people three times in five days!

But I was bound to prove myself. I wouldn’t have articulated it in this way, but I was going to be Super Pastor. Preacher on the spot. I was everywhere, doing everything. I decided that I would do the church’s ministry.

You know, a pastor can get a lot of compliments when they do everything. And I was getting them.

But within a few months, as I was visiting the parishioner of another congregation whose pastor asked me to drop by for a visit and prayer, I became ill and was rushed from the cardiac care unit where I was visiting, and sent to the hospital ER.

It turned out to be a stress reaction. My body was revolting against my ego.

Now, I don’t tell that story to prompt Phil to avoid stress or to advise the congregation to take it easy on my son. Doctors tell us that a certain amount of stress is good for us. They call it eustress and it prompts us to do our best, using all of the gifts God has given to us to God’s glory.

What I am saying is that my stress reaction was caused in large part by the fact that I was so bent on being Super Pastor that I neglected fulfilling the actual call God had given to me as a pastor, a minister of Word and Sacrament.

That was my failure. And it’s one that, to greater and lesser degrees, I have replicated more than a few times through the years.

What makes it such an epic fail is that by playing at Super Pastor, I was denying the whole congregation the opportunity to do the things that Christ might have been calling them to do. I thought I was doing the work of God. But really, I was so insecure about being a pastor, that I pulled out all the stops to prove myself to people, not to glorify God.

Now, we all know about do-nothing pastors. They think that justification by grace through faith in Christ is God’s license to sit around and do nothing. They practice a cheap grace and reason that since God loves them, they can do and not do whatever they please.

As I’ve told you many times, Philip, anyone who has been called to be a leader gains credibility as a leader as they make deposits of service, love, work, and faithfulness. The call to pastoral leadership is from Christ. Whether God makes our call to serve a congregation all that’s intended to be depends on whether we earn credibility from our deposits of service, love, work, and faithfulness, into the life of the community and the congregation we serve.

My mistake as a new pastor is that I was flailingly busy without thinking about what my true call from God was. I was missing the mark and the people I led, impressed though they may have been, were not being led as God intended for me to lead them.

Philip, don’t make this mistake.

Saint Peter, don’t let Philip drift into this mistake.

If you want this congregation to be all that God intends for it to be and if you want the partnership between congregation and pastor into which Philip is officially installed today to be what God wants, you must clearly understand your calls as pastor and congregation.

Our lesson from Ephesians 4:11-15 helps us to see what our calls as pastors and congregations are.

Please look at verse 11: “And he [that is, Christ Himself] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds [the word in the original Greek here is ποιμένας and we translate it as pastors]...”

Christ has established this office of pastor. Christ has made you a pastor of His Church, Philip. Christ has given you a pastor, people of Saint Peter. For those who think that Christ is long ago and far away, the calling of a pastor who personally trusts in Christ and views the Bible as the living Word of God by a congregation that has the same beliefs, is proof that Christ is very alive and at work!

And He will keep being at work in their life and work as congregation and pastor if they understand what Christ has called them to do. Take a look at verse 12, please: “[Christ gave pastors] to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…”

Your mission as pastor of Saint Peter Lutheran Church, Philip, is to equip the people to be the Church.

That means empowering them, living alongside of them, teaching them, training them, and inspiring them to do the ministry.

It doesn’t mean that you’re to be the minister.

It means, to paraphrase the Augsburg Confession, that basic statement of Lutheran Christian belief, rightly teaching, preaching, and living the Gospel, the Word of God, and rightly administering the sacraments, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

The Church doesn’t need Super Pastors.

Christ doesn’t call anyone to be a Super Pastor.

Christ has called you, Philip, to work as a servant leader, teacher, preacher, comforter of the bereaved and the sick, and trainer so that the whole congregation can do ministry.

A strong tenet of Lutheran belief revolves around the priesthood of all believers explained in 1 Peter 2:9. Speaking to all Christians--laypeople and pastors, Peter says: “...you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

The whole Church--laypeople and pastors--is called to tell the world about and to live out its faith in Jesus.

And your call, Philip, isn’t to do the ministries that God has called and empowered the people of your congregation to do, but to equip them, first by being a model, to do those ministries.

Our lesson from Ephesians then tells us what the goal of this equipping is.

Verse 13: “until we all [congregations and pastors] attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…”

Do you all remember the sense of accomplishment, maybe relief, you felt the first time you rode a bike without training wheels or tied your shoes?

Or graduated from the sixth grade, then high school, maybe college, even grad school?

Or on your first day of a paid, honest-to-goodness W2-worthy job?

Or when you got a raise or promotion?

Beyond the money or the compliments that come from meeting such milestones, there is a deep-down sense of fulfillment that comes from them all. They make us feel like we’re growing up, like we're moving forward.

It’s a fundamental truth of life that we’re either growing or we’re dying; there’s no middle ground.

No responsible father keeps tying his kid’s shoe when the kid is thirty-five.

No good mom takes her daughter’s tests or fills in for her at work.

Super Parents like these would rob their kids of growth and fulfillment.

Just so, God wants us to grow in our faith into the fullness of Christ, living, in Luther’s phrase, as little Christs: people who love God and others passionately, people who can help others know Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, and people who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can help others know the Word of God and apply it.

Your call, Philip, isn’t to be the token Christian who does all of this.

Your call is to multiply the impact the crucified and risen Jesus can have on every life by equipping the people of Saint Peter and yourself to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…”

If you focus on that, I promise that you’ll have more than enough work to do!

You’ll forgo having everyone think of you as Super Pastor. But you will sense God telling you, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

And people of Saint Peter, if you will allow yourself to be equipped for the life of ministry to which every believer in Jesus is called, you will know the joy and the fulfillment of living in sync with God, of growing up and knowing more of His blessings, and, most importantly, knowing Jesus Christ Himself.

Saint Peter, Amy, and Philip, I pray God’s blessings as you take your journey of faith in Christ together.

[This was shared during the installation of Philip Daniels as pastor of Saint Peter Lutheran Church in Walburg, Texas.]

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

"Unfortunately, some of you are bound for early success..."

"...in ministry," says Pastor Chuck Swindoll in the video embedded here.

The insights he offers here are good for everyone who experiences success in any sphere of life, not just ministry. Success can be dangerous to one's character, relationship with God, and relationship with others. Learning to be successful as a human being and at one's calling may be the hardest lesson of all.

The Christian's Ministry is in the World

Just this past Monday night, a group of us at Saint Matthew were talking about how the Church is too institutionalized and how Christians, especially pastors, believe that church members are "in ministry" only when they're engaged with some church activity.

But being a Christian doesn't mean being a "prop" (whether by that you mean an instrument that holds an object up or an object on a stage) of the institutional Church. The Church exists, in part, to empower and encourage believers in Jesus to go into the world to do their ministries at their jobs, their homes, and the places where they encounter people socially.

John Schroeder talks about this topic convincingly here.

Look here.