In Matthew 25, Jesus chastised the Jewish religious leaders of his day for being charlatans. He said that they sit in Moses’s seat, but they shouldn’t do the works they do. In other words, they should be listened to out of respect for their positions, but that they shouldn’t follow their ways, and that his disciples shouldn’t be overly dependent on them to hear from God. I believe Jesus was encouraging his followers, as they matured, to strive for the kind of biblical relationship with him where the Word and the Holy Spirit would guide them more and more, and man, less and less. This is not to say that we shouldn’t have a spiritual covering for our lives, preferably from a godly pastor, whenever that is possible. But eventually, God expects us to flesh out our own convictions, without being unduly coerced by any particular leader or group.
In Matthew 23, I believe Jesus was addressing these maturing believers when he said, “Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.” That’s pretty clear, but some pastors, the heavy-shepherding types, must have different Bible translations, one that says it’s their business to be up in everyone else’s business, invited or not, as if they were commissioned from Above to be the lord of their congregant’s lives.
These types of leaders are “moralists,” who, because they usually lack the fruits of the spirit in their own lives, they attempt to control others through what author Asher Intrater called, “manipulative guilt.” You won’t hear a sermon from them on the subject of “grace,” or on celebrating what Jesus has done for us. No, their idea of preaching is to dish out another serving of guilt, legalism, and three-point sermons on how you should be more like them. Their shamed-infused diatribes subtly and purposelessly cripple their recipient’s ability to experience the love of God, nevertheless, like religious masochists, they keep coming back for another dose of condemnation as if addicted. Neil Andrson likens this practice to living under a “moral fog of legalism.”
So, what should biblical leadership look like? Again, it’s not as if God didn’t leave us a pattern to follow. I believe it can best be described in a letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians. “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy…” One commentary on that verse said, “Paul refused to conform to the worldly pattern of leadership or take advantage of God’s people.”
The Old Testament saints were tasked with living for God without the benefit of the new birth. As a result, because they couldn’t go to God directly; they had to go through Moses as a mediator. In the New Testament, of course, we don’t need the Old Testament human mediator because Jesus is our High Priest, and we can go directly to the Father through him.
However, some pastors still believe they belong between their flock and God. As a childhood Catholic, I remember being taught that you couldn’t interpret the Bible without your priest. As absurd as that is to New Testament believers today, these heavy-shepherding pastors are very much the same, with their own unique doctrines on leadership that make the people more dependent on them than God.
It is said that one of the chief characteristics of people who feel compelled to control others is that they are extremely insecure themselves. And nothing challenges these insecure pastors’ pride more than discovering that one of their “own” has escaped their dominion. They would leave the ninety-nine and search out the one who got free. And in speaking from personal experience, for I was once one of them, I can say that pastors in these groups medicate their insecurities and fears on the power they have to control others. It is a specific type of carnality unique to leaders in these types of churches.
This dysfunctional system also takes advantage of many sincere, trusting believers in Christ, who innocently liken their pastors to God-like attributes of pope-like infallibility. In turn, these pastors often can’t resist the temptation to usurp their congregant’s sincere devotion to Christ by subtly grooming them to depend more on them for their self-worth than on God. And this goes to the very heart of why Jesus hated religion so much: that religious leaders would steal the glory that is due to God and use it for themselves.
It’s not only okay, but extremely healthy for people to eventually discover that their pastor isn’t perfect. This is good for pastors too, especially those who’ve been pastoring for many years and have forgotten what it is to be human without their title. The goal of church people is not to become more like their pastors; they’re supposed to become more like Jesus. Paul wrote, “The head of every man is Christ.” Pastors should echo what Paul said to the Corinthians, “For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong.” Or like John the Baptist when he said, “He must increase, and I must decrease.”
An example of godly leadership can be seen in a parent’s relationship with their children. When a child is young, they don’t know what to think, so their parents need to do most of their thinking for them, including answering their billions of questions. To that child, their parents are God, but eventually, they learn there’s no Santa Claus and their parents are actually human. And so, as a child matures into their teens and young adulthood, it’s not healthy for them to keep blindly accepting their parent’s convictions unless they have also discovered these same truths for themselves. It’s as unhealthy as a forty-year-old “child” who never left home and continues to live off their parent’s spiritual coattails.
This same truth can be seen between pastors and congregants. The young believer doesn’t know what to think yet, other than knowing God has radically changed them. And they have a billion questions that need biblical answers. But eventually, as that believer matures, a godly pastor would begin to wean them from being co-dependent on him and encourage them to read, pray, and study for themselves, to become Bereans, and to dig out the truths they would live and die for.
Unless a pastor is growing in godly wisdom himself and isn’t threatened by his congregant’s personal growth in Christ, the average church member, however maturing, is bound to an authority that doesn’t allow them to grow beyond their pastor’s influence, which is why so many of them are stunted in their spiritual growth, having become lazy and comfortable, content to have it that way. And some weaker believers prefer being controlled, believing that it is the same as being led by God, and so are overly dependent on their pastors, having been taught not to think for themselves, but to rely on them to do all the work of revelation and discernment for them.
But this is not what God intended. Jesus himself said of his followers, “Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do…” If Jesus hoped for his disciples to do “greater works” than himself, would it not be healthy for human pastors to do the same? As I began to break away from this pattern in my own ministry, I once told my African congregation that I hoped one day they would do greater things than me. And I still hope they will.
In the church organization I was a part of for three decades, I was privileged to pioneer and pastor churches as a missionary in two foreign fields. Although this group instilled in me some valuable spiritual disciplines and gave me a good foundation in Christ, it came at an ever-increasing cost; it required a cult-like allegiance and submission to “headship” that should be reserved for Christ alone. Their leadership style slowly began following the pattern of the world, using “shame,” “intimidation,” and other coercive techniques to keep people “in line” and dependent and submissive to them. So, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “I didn’t leave this above-mentioned church organization, they left me.”
Now, since leaving this group years ago, instead of being conformed to the will and whims of a particular pastor or group, I have been discovering what it is to be conformed to the person of Christ, and the ever-widening differences between the two. The Apostle Paul perfectly captured this leadership truth when he wrote in Galatians 4:19, “My little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.”
This is God’s highest purpose for us, and so it should be for us too.
Changing from glory to glory 