Pastor as Catalyst: Four Transformational Postures for Pastoral Leadership, Part 7 of 11

The Posture of Discipleship

There has been so much ink spilled on the topic of leadership both in the culture and the church. Strangely, I have read nothing that grounds our church’s capacity for leadership in what Len Sweet likes to call “followership.” Perhaps this is because it lacks the overt sexiness of the leadership terminology. Followership, in a room full of narcissistic personalities, takes too much of the emphasis off of the self. Nevertheless, it is where we have to begin.

In his comprehensive work called Pastor, Will Willimon looks at the pastoral office and work through a multiplicity of lenses. Interestingly, he does not explicitly come to the topic of pastor as disciple until the last chapter of his book entitled, “The Pastor as Disciplined Christian: Constancy in Ministry.” Even so, it grounds the notion of discipleship through a pastoral lens only.

I want to suggest however that discipleship as followership begins not with a follower’s identity as a leader, but simply in the baptismal calling of a follower of Jesus the Messiah. To be a disciple is to call someone other than oneself Lord, and to call Jesus Lord is ultimately to be subject to him. I believe that a “subjected leader” is the starting point or “enzymatic posture” for all leadership in the church. The daily source of strength for the Christian vocation of the baptized comes not from an office of leadership in the church but through a daily relationship with and following of Jesus. What we are talking about here is the differentiated expression of a life that is being formed and transformed by the movement of the disciple’s life from the story of the world to the story of God’s resurrected future. A life that takes on this shape has Jesus at the head, and is filled with his grace, power, and his Spirit of abundance.

I wonder as I write this if this does not evoke an “of course!” It should be obvious should it not? And yet in my experience, albeit anecdotal, and in the many and varied books on leadership I have encountered related to leadership in the church, the pastoral leader as first and foremost a follower who is subject to Jesus seems to be anathema. Let me state this clearly: followership of Jesus is not only the ground of being for the discipleship of the baptized, but for the Christian leader as well.