Any church can expect to have people holding to a range of views in it. You might expect people from different theological backgrounds, there might also be specific disagreements on issues from when and who to baptise, what songs to sing accompanied by what instruments and then there may be a range of ethical and political issues that people differ on, from the pros and cons of Brexit to current events in the middle east. This will be true whether or not your lead a long-established church or a new church plant. Here are some thoughts on how to lead well.
Keep the main thing as the main thing
This links to what I’ve written recently about holding lightly and holding tightly. We want to make sure that our church keeps focused on the Gospel and on Christ. We want that to be the thing that people pick up from us if they visit, check out or website, watch online services or get to know our members. It’s important that leaders model that focus.
This enables us to provide a form of triage. We can work out what is essential (things that link directly to the Gospel and our knowledge of who God is), what is secondary (important to our church and its identity) and what is “third order” things that we are in effect indifferent to as a church though they may be important for individuals.
Identify the field of play
Within any discussion, we might identify boundaries, a field of play in which there might be room for differences and discussion within a church family. The field of play might be smaller and the boundaries drawn more tightly when it comes to those essential issues.
For example, in terms of the Trinity, we say that the boundaries are: no denial of oneness, no denial of equality and no denial of distinction. However, there are still boundaries to other less central debates, if we go beyond what Scripture has to say, then we cross the boundary and that moves something from being a third or second order issue to becoming essential. We help the church family by showing them where those safe boundaries are. For example, take the debate on men and women in leadership and teaching roles. First, when it comes to creation, men and women and created equally giving us one boundary but that there are distinctions between us to give the second one.I believe that the boundaries we see coming through in Scripture are second, that in terms of the husband/wife relationship, husbands are referred to as “the head” (with much discussion about what that means) but secondly that mutual submission (to one another) is also explicitly there. This gives quite a large field of play and it means that within that field of play Christians may hold different views and indeed we may change our view from time to time without straying outside of the boundaries.
We model humility by not imposing our view
I think there are two elements to humility. First, by modelling what proper plural, servant leadership looks like. At times, there can be an expectation on leaders, especially senior leaders that they get to dictate the agenda and direction of travel of the church or at a minimum have a veto. We do need to know where our own red lines will be but we should not use that as a means to coerce or emotionally manipulate the church. There might come a situation where the church makes a different decision to what you might be comfortable with and at that time it might be right for you to move on but that should happen with grace and gentleness.
We model humility by letting God’s Word disagree with us
The second aspect to humility is that we need to show that we know we are not right on everything. This means that we are quick to say sorry when we recognise we got things wrong. It means that we also model holding tight and holding light by being willing to talk through those things where we have changed our mind or modified our personal view whilst holding tight to the essentials of the Gospel. The crucial thing here is that we can show how it is God, through his word who has disagreed with us. We should always be willing to respond and change in the light of what Scripture says.
- We should listen to and represent those we disagree with well
I suspect that many fall outs in church happen because of misunderstanding. We end up talking past each other. We can help prevent this by making sure we’ve heard well, that we take time to listen and ask helpful questions. Alongside this, we should seek to represent the arguments of those we disagree with well. It may even be that those holding to another position need some help in communicating it.
We should distinguish between consensus and compromise
Our aim should be to build unity in the church on an issue. I think that healthy unity recognises the diversity in the church but also states what we can unite on. This is different from compromise where a fudge brings everyone down to the lowest denominator or offers an alternative third position that no-one is truly happy on. Sometimes this means recognising that the Scriptures we use in debate are not really there to support our arguments and coming together to reach clarity on what they are about.
Faithroots 