Now I’ve got your attention! From time to time, I see advice given about how to lead well as pastors, especially senior pastors. The advice is “give power away.” In other words, delegate and empower others. It sounds really good at first but I’m not that sure. I don’t think that we should be delegating, I don’t think we should be passing power on.
Now before you become alarmed and think I’m advocating leaders as control freaks, don’t panic just yet. My point is this. First, when you think about delegation, the assumption is that someone has responsibility for a particular task, role or sphere of influence. They then get other people to carry out aspects of the task. It’s top down.
I don’t think that’s what we see in the New Testament. Rather, the church is given gifts, each member is a gift to the church and has gifts. Some have gifts of prophecy, others tongues, others administration and so on (we might add musical gifts, children’s work gifts, welcoming gifts, techy gifts etc). These gifts come directly from the Holy Spirit. This means that if I as an elder in our local church ask a person to serve on the children’s work rota or lead worship, I’m not delegating a task to them. I’m not asking them to help me do what I’m responsible for. My responsibility remains to keep watch over the local flock, to provide and protect. That’s not something I can delegate away. The buck stops with us as elders. What I’m doing is I’m recognising the gift that God has given you and I’m encouraging you to use it for his glory and the good of the church.
On a side point, this links into how we talk about marriage, particularly as complementarians. I sometimes hear fellow complementarians talking about their headship as meaning that they delegate specific responsibilities to their wives. I don’t think marriage works like that either but perhaps that’s for another day. Suffice it to say that we do well to keep modern business models and speak out of the church and out of the home.
Crucially though, this feeds into the matter of power. We can end up talking about power as though we men who lead churches are powerful people and that this means we become a conduit for power. We seek to pass it on. The problem is that even as we give some power away, if this is how we picture ourselves, then we will still feel the pressure to hold onto some.
So, it’s important to think about what we mean. Do we mean “authority”? If so, let’s say so though I’m still inclined to argue that authority isn’t something you can delegate down and away. You see, the true point of authority is that I’m authorised to do and to take responsibility for what I need to do and take responsibility for. As leaders, we don’t give away power, we forsake it. We minister from human weakness. The only power we are interested in is Holy Spirit power -and that’s something poured out on all of us. So, don’t delegate, instead recognise what God has directly called others to do. Don’t give power away, forsake human power for a share in the outpoured power of the Spirit.
Faithroots 