the right kind of leadership

4th Sunday of Easter

Human beings hunger for God.  There is a thirst in the soul for a relationship with the Ground of our Being.  They haven't found a culture yet that doesn't give some evidence of people wanting to be united with the Reality that called them into being.  No wonder the Gospel of John pictures human beings as sheep needing a shepherd.  We all have a deep hunger, but we need to be led to where our hunger can be filled.  Our souls thirst for God, for the living God, but we need leaders to show us the way to have our thirsts quenched.  Human beings are like sheep.  We need leaders to guide us.

If the metaphor "sheep" points to anything, it signifies that human beings are communal.  We are not rugged individualists.  It is not authentic to claim that we don't need anybody, because the fact is, we do.  No one has taught himself the language that he speaks.  No one has taught herself the alphabet or the skill of reading.  We began our religious journey following someone else.  We were led into the activity of prayer by a parent or Sunday school teacher. We were led to the pastures of the knowledge of God by one who loved us enough to want us to be fed with such knowledge.  Remember those songs we sang in Sunday school?  "The B-I-B-L-E, Yes that's the book for me."  "Jesus loves me!  this I know, For the Bible tells me so."  I don't know about your Sunday school days, but I grew up to stories on the flannel graph board.  Little paper figures of Moses, Jesus, and the disciples would be attached to the board as a Bible story was being told.  And when it was time to pray, I can still hear someone instruct, "Now it's time to close our eyes and fold our hands."  And what does it all mean?  It means, like sheep, we were led to a knowledge of God by others who could lead us.  We were like sheep needing to be taken to pasture to be fed.  You and I didn't find faith by ourselves.  We found faith in a community of faith, being led by leaders.

Of course, there's a bonding that develops between shepherds and their sheep.  Those who lead and their followers are drawn together by a mysterious cohesion.  Leaders and followers bond together into a powerful oneness. Take church camp.  Before camp begins, the director and his staff meet for some community building and planning.  They dream a dream together of a wonderful week of Christian community.  They dedicate themselves to God and to each other to the task of Christian education.  The staff becomes a unit.  It is contagious.  As the campers arrive, the feeling of inclusiveness draws them into the experiment of Christian community, and the whole camp becomes one.  Often the director receives mail like the card that read:  "You may not know how important you've been in my life—I want you to know you've done something for me that's really made a difference."  Then in the writer's own personal words, she tells her director, "Thank you for all the gifts you gave me last week at camp.  Without you I wouldn't have made so many wonderful friends, had so many cherished memories, and grown in God.  You are a wonderful man and I appreciate all the time you spent setting up and teaching us at [our camp].  This summer will be remembered always and it's all because of you."  There is a wonderful bonding between leaders and those who follow them.  This is a bonding between shepherd and their sheep.

But watch out!  Such bonding can be dangerous!  The reason is that there are some shepherds bonding with sheep only to fleece them.  Or to destroy them.  Or even to kill them.  Since bonding between shepherd and sheep is so powerful, be careful who you bond to.  For there are shepherds out there who only will hurt or destroy you.  A shepherd led his flock to a fiery death in a compound near Waco on April 19, 1993.  David Koresh shepherded his flock with violence, sex, and rationing food.  News reports allege that Koresh relieved newcomers of their bank accounts and personal possessions.  Says Time magazine, "And while the men were subjected to an uneasy celibacy, Koresh took their wives and daughters as his concubines."  In a TV interview, Koresh boasted about his relationship with his flock.  "They think I'm the Son of God," he said.   "Are you?" asked the interviewer.  With a smirk on his face, the smug Koresh said, "They think I am."  David Jewell, whose former wife died in the April 19, 1993 fire in Waco, tells of a devastating phone conversation he once had with Koresh.  "In twenty minutes," said Jewell, "In twenty minutes, he took my entire Christian upbringing and put it in such a tailspin, I didn't know what I believed."  David Bunds left the compound in 1989.  He said, "Koresh would say we would have to suffer, that we were going to be persecuted and some of us would be killed and tortured."  Said Time of Koresh's flock, "They looked to him to bring their spiritual wanderings to a close."  Shepherds are supposed to lead their flocks so that their "spiritual wanderings" may be satisfied.  Koresh was the kind of shepherd that led his flock to their destruction.  Back in 1978, Jim Jones calmly told his people to take poison.  And like sheep following a shepherd, Jones led his flock to their deaths, more than nine hundred of them!  Other shepherds lead flocks in order to fleece them.  Remember the TV preacher who whined to his boob-tube congregation that unless he raised a certain amount of money, God would call him "home?"  It turns out that he was preaching a rerun; he had used the same stunt before.  But it worked!  And remember the TV preacher who sent the letter to the woman, saying that God had told him to pray for her husband, but her husband was already dead!  The same TV shepherd took prayer requests and donations.  The cash went into the bank, the prayer requests went into the trash without him even seeing them.  Shepherds out to fleece their flocks!  But people bond to these self-serving shepherds.  They follow them like sheep.  But watch out!  Watch out!  Some shepherds herd their sheep to their destruction, death, and lighter pocket books.

Good thing our kind of church sends out only qualified pastors.  The "standard-brand" Protestant churches have high standards for those seeking to enter the ministry.  There is something comforting about these high standards.  Only those who are truly qualified can become shepherds of congregational sheep.  In the first place, shepherds today must feel called to the ministry, and be able to articulate that experience.  But that's not enough in our kind of church.  There has to be an affirmation on the part of the session that the would-be candidate for the ministry has the gifts to do ministry.  Then the would-be candidate must be accepted by his or her presbytery, submit to a battery of tests, vocational and psychological.  For a candidate for the ministry there awaits study in college and then in a theological seminary.  Then the final trials for ordination:  the standard ordination examinations, then the examination by the entire presbytery.  Even then, before one can be ordained, he or she must have a call to a church or other valid ministry.  There's a comfort in this rigorous system of preparing candidates for the ministry.  It's a system that's tough to get into, and equally tough to finish in.  Our kind of denomination sends out only the most qualified individuals to serve the church as ministers.  Good thing!

Not good enough!  It's never safe to look to a human shepherd as the standard for leadership.  Human shepherds are fallible.  They are often selfish.  No church leader can be the standard for judging leadership, for they all fail.  Jim Jones, who led his flock of more than nine hundred to their deaths, was an ordained United Methodist minister.  Jones was from our kind of denomination!  The preacher whining on TV for people to send money, or he would be called "home," was also a United Methodist minister.  And you look at the list of ministers of this church.  They are an impressive collection of shepherds.  And yet, can any one of them claim to be flawless?  Certainly not the one who stands before you.  Not good enough!  We need to set our sights higher than TV preachers, higher than cult leaders, higher than local pastors.  Since human shepherds are fallible, our standards for church leadership must be set higher.

Now do you see why we must look only to Jesus Christ?  Only Jesus Christ is our true standard for church leadership.  Our only reliable canon for what a shepherd ought to be is Jesus Christ.  What makes Jesus unique?  Jesus was God's Word dressed in human flesh.  Jesus was faithful.  God's will was always on the mind of Jesus, not his ego.  Unlike fallible shepherds, we have no record of, nor could we imagine, Jesus asking one of his disciples, "How'd the crowd like my parable?"  Jesus preached for the glory of God, not for his own.  Unlike selfish shepherds, who look at sizes of churches and the cash offers plus "perks," Jesus gave himself totally to the task of being God's Word made flesh.  Unlike dangerous shepherds, Jesus does not cause the death of his sheep.  Jesus gives his sheep life, real life.  Yes, some of Jesus' sheep have died being faithful to him.  But their faithful lives were more alive than lives lived for self.  Their faithfulness was also a sign that they were living eternal life.  So Jesus does lead his sheep to life.  Jesus leads us to feed on the spiritual food that nourishes us to eternal life.  Says Walter Brueggemann, "The church trustingly relies on Jesus for its well-being.  Every alternative jeopardizes."  Indeed, Jesus is the only standard by which we can measure our church leaders.

Only thing for the church to do is point to Jesus Christ.  We have to point to Jesus with our obedient lives.  Setting up none of us as the standard for leadership in the church, we will let our lives show that our only standard for leadership is our Lord Jesus Christ.  That means we will have to choose between two very different styles of ministry.  The popular kind focuses on the individual.  The message is one of success.  The image for the church is a successful church, fine building, packed with happy people who leave the church just glad to be who they already are, or glad that they now have the power to be the best they can be.  The image it brings to mind are successful people carrying packages of goodies from the shopping malls to their cars.  Sounds like a winning church, doesn't it?  But the success kind of church serves its worshipers, not our Lord who calls us to focus our attention on God and God's kingdom.  The other style of ministry has to do, not with accumulating things, but with sacrifice.  If Jesus is the one we want to point to with our lives, then we will not focus on success.  We'll concentrate on faithfulness.  Our image will be faithful people studying the word of God in order to discern the will of God for this church.  We’ll be the ones who go out into the community with the good news of God’s love and a welcome to our church.  We’ll be the ones who proclaim the kingdom of God and take stands for love and justice in our community.  As God has welcomed us into his family as his children, so we will welcome all of God’s children into our church family, thereby proclaiming the love of God through our acts of hospitality.  We'll be the ones giving away food to the hungry through the Lancaster Outreach Center.  We'll forgive people who hurt us.  We won't be led by what makes us successful.  We won't follow any fallible preacher, for none of them is reliable.  Instead, our lives will point to our only true standard for church leadership.  Our lives will show that we follow only Jesus Christ our Lord.