Leadership is at the centre of contemporary discussions about the church. Questions such as: What does it mean to be a church leader? When did the church start using the language of leadership instead of priest, pastor, presbyter, or pastor? Is leadership really appropriate in relation to God’s church?

I think there is a real danger at the heart of our discussions around leadership.

Leadership is Almost Never the Answer

There have been several people in very visible church leadership who have turned out to be abusive – people like Ravi Zacharias, Mark Driscoll, Bill Hybels, and Mike Pilavachi, to name just a few. There are the failures of structures and systems that should have protected victims but covered up for abusers, such as with the recent Justin Welby resignation.

There are the churches that collapse and fail because of hubris and ego. The pastoral failings of people who feel they have been sent to lead, which means being in charge. The abuse of embedding spiritual authority in organisational authority leads people to feel pressured into accepting decisions rather than challenging them.

The churches continue to invest in leadership. The answer to bad leadership is frequently presumed to be good leadership: better discipline, better discernment, better training, and better supervision.

But what if something else is going on? What if the very idea of leadership is essentially flawed? What can we do about it? Is there something else to replace it? These are the questions I’m trying to answer.

Looking for Answers

Plenty has been written about leadership, for good and bad, in recent years. However, I have found the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer particularly helpful in starting to think about these questions.

On the 1st of February 1933, two days after Adolph Hitler became the democratically elected chancellor of Germany, the 26-year-old theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave a radio address on what he called “The Fuhrer Principle.” His comments and critiques of leadership have been helpful to me, and I hope they will be helpful to you.

I have kept his original language in the quotations. As such, it includes gendered language to refer to people in a leadership position. However, there should not be any gender restrictions on the adoption of leadership positions within the church.

What is Leadership?

People in the church often speak of leadership as directed influence. Leadership entails building patterns and relationships of influence that we can use to encourage people to follow us in the direction we think we need to go.

This is the kind of leader people mean when they talk about community leaders or when they say someone is a leader because people look up to them. But I don’t think that is what we normally mean when discussing leadership.

Charisma and influence are definitely key to building a following, without which no one is really a leader. You can’t call yourself a leader if no one is following you. But, influence establishes the possibility of leadership, it is not leadership itself.

We might draw a distinction between influencers and leaders. An influencer will affect how you act, what you do, what decisions you make. However, a leader is someone you delegate the responsibility to make decisions on your behalf.

Can we do without leaders?

Having a leader is not something we can really get away from. Bonhoeffer said, “Naturally, there have always been leaders. Where there is community there is leadership.”

As soon as humans lived in groups of more than a handful of people, there had to be someone delegated to make decisions on behalf of others. This was especially true when decisions needed to be made quickly with significant consequences hanging in the balance or when there were multiple competing interests to be balanced.

Sometimes, a group will delegate their decision-making authority to a person or group of people through elections. Laws and decision take their authority because they emerge from individuals whose authority has originated in delegation through election.

Sometimes, it will be in a voluntary association such as a church or club where the organisation has delegated organisational authority to selected individuals, and the members of that association agree to delegate their decision-making to that chosen person but can withdraw that agreement by withdrawing from the association.

Then, there are groups where a leader has authority because of their ability to use force, whether direct or coercive. This includes most workplaces and the military, which are obvious examples. If you do not do what the leader wants you to do, then there will be punishment of some kind. However, the leader whose authority depends upon force still requires consent. A person may refuse to recognise that leadership, may leave that situation, and may resist their punishment.

Leadership based on force creates authoritarianism

Obedience to a leader can be compelled through force, but that ceases to be leadership and becomes a form of authoritarianism. Leadership requires consent and depends on delegated authority. A leader can attempt to use direct or coercive force, including social stigma and community rejection, to make someone follow them. Unless a person has freely consented to follow the leader, that leader must use increasing force to achieve their results.

When we talk about force, there are two types of force in place: direct and coercive. Direct force includes violence, threats to fire someone or take away their pay or demote them, locking people up, taking away their rights, fining them, or really anything else where there is direct control, which is non-consensual.

Coercive force includes manipulation, social control, cancellation, scandal, isolation, threats, and blackmail. It can include asking someone to do something they don’t want to do and getting them to agree through guilt tripping them, or it could be turning other people against them until they agree to do what you want them to do. The necessity of force is a failure of influence.

What Are Leaders?

Leaders are people who are given the authority to make decisions on behalf of other people. Leadership has a simple purpose, to allow communities to make decisions in the best possible way which reduces harm and increases good. This includes individuals, groups, and organisations. Leadership depends on influence and force to achieve its results. Leaders are necessary for communities to function, but leadership can easily go wrong and result in people being harmed.

What it means when we say that leadership is necessary is key to this discussion.

Bonhoeffer’s Warning Against Charismatic Leaders

Leadership is meant to be a prosaic and functional office.

The authority of leaders is delegated to them to perform a function. It is not an inherent quality of an individual; a person does not possess ‘leadership’; they are good at utilising and deploying the intersection of influence and force. The problem comes when a leader ceases to fulfil a function and instead adopts that authority in their personality or when people cease to view their authority as delegated but as, in some sense, divinely inspired.

For Bonhoeffer, the problem comes when “the originally prosaic idea of political authority is transformed into the political-messianic idea of leader that we see today.”

This is particularly dangerous for the church, especially in churches who strongly emphasise that leaders are called by God and their authority has a divine source.

In the political sphere, leadership becomes dangerous, destructive, and oppressive when the prosaic role of political leadership is fused with quasi-religious functions such as giving people hope, providing meaning for people’s lives, and explicitly tying the spiritual realm into the political.

This creates a dangerous and potentially unlimited and unchallengeable power. When the leader’s authority comes from a divine source, or when they become the embodiment of a people’s source of identity, that leadership becomes unassailable. Leadership becomes “personal and not objective.” In such circumstances, the leader (Führer) can very easily become the misleader (Verführer).

The threat becomes even more pronounced in the church. While denominations take different approaches and theologies to leadership, there are essentially three ways of thinking about leadership in the church: sacral, ministerial, and representative.

Three kinds of church leadership

1. Sacral leadership:

This is rooted in a sense of transformation of the nature of the individual through ordination. Priests are no longer the same people as before they were ordained. They perform their function rooted in the authority of that ordination, which combines the direct authority of God through the sacramental process and the delegated authority of the church, which itself derives its authority from its role as Christ’s body on earth.

2. Ministerial leadership:

This draws together some elements of the sacral and the representative. It is rooted in personal vocation for ministry, recognised by the organisation, and appointment to roles of church leadership. The authority of the leader is based partially on the recognition that God has called them into ministry through personal vocation and on the recognition by the church establishment of that vocation, giving them appointments to lead a church.

3. Representative leadership:

This sources the authority of the leader in the people they represent. Whether elected or employed, the person chosen to be the leader of a community draws their authority from the people who have chosen them to fulfil that role. The authority of a representative leader is directly delegated by their community.

The difference between ministry and leadership

I suggest that we must distinguish between ministry and leadership practices.

A church leader holds a functional office. Their role as a leader is to undertake a specific purpose. It exists for a finite time, is limited in scope and capacity, and is subject to higher authorities.

When the leader starts to perceive their role as something originating with Divine empowerment rather than contingent circumstances, then problems start to creep in.

When the leader, whether church or political, fails to recognise the limitations of their role, makes themselves the ultimate authority and allows their decision-making to be determined by the wishes of their followers rather than for the good of the community, then that person has turned their leadership into an idol. They have become what Bonhoeffer calls a misleader – someone who is destructive and harmful.

Bonhoeffer writes:

If [the leader] understands his function in any other way than as it is rooted in fact, if he does not continually tell his followers quite clearly of the limited nature of his lack and of their own responsibility, if he allows himself to surrender to the wishes of his followers, who would always make him their idol – then the image of the leader will pass over into the image of the misleader, and he will be acting in a criminal way not only towards those he leads, but also towards himself, the true leader must always be able to disillusion. It is just this that is his responsibility and his real object. He must lead his following away from the authority of his person to the recognitions of the real authority of orders and offices….He must radically refuse to become the appeal, the idol, i.e. the ultimate authority of those whom he leads….

Populism, charismatic leadership, cults of personality, and beliefs in divine authority create the breeding ground for authoritarian or abusive leaders.

The role of the leader is not to solidify their role, nor to centre the community around themselves, but to enable the community to no longer need a leader. There is a limit to the role of the leader. Leaders cannot claim ultimate authority for themselves, nor should they allow others to regard them as a source of ultimate authority.

To be a church leader is to take on an organisational, functional role to undertake delegated decision-making for the sake of and on behalf of the community in their responsibility.

Removing Spiritual From Leadership

One of the best ways to reduce the danger of unhealthy leadership within the church is to remove any sense of spiritual authority from the role of a church leader.

Church Leader Not Spiritual Leader

This means separating the functional role of leading a community from the spiritual role of ministering to a community. The mandate for ministry originates with God. The authority for leadership is functional, organisational, temporary, and entirely prosaic.

This means recognising that ministry and leadership are not the same thing. Leadership is undertaking delegated decision-making on behalf of a community or organisation. Ministry is the performance of the spiritual tasks of preaching, teaching, pastoral care, evangelism, and service.

Everyone is called to ministry, but not everyone is called to leadership. Some people are suited to specific ministries and take them on. Others feel a sense of calling to a form of ministry and explore that.

The foundation of discipleship is the universal call to ministry. However, not everyone is suited to lead a community. Not everyone will be a leader, but everyone can minister.

The leadership of a community does not draw its authority from God. A person who claims divine backing for their authority can claim ultimate authority. If someone says no to them, they are saying no to God.

(This draws on the arguments I made in my article in Word & Deed, which is available for download on this blog’s Publications page.)

The union of organisational leadership with what some call spiritual leadership creates a spiritually abusive situation. The function of leadership needs to be separated from spiritual authority.

To this degree, we need to stop talking about ‘spiritual leadership’ as a leadership category. People are leaders in a particular operational and functional context. To claim a form of spiritual leadership alongside functional leadership is to risk making what is penultimate into something ultimate.

Bonhoeffer reminds us that all leaders are only “penultimate authorities” under the authority of God; the “leader and office that turn themselves into gods mock God.” We can talk about people in ministry, or in leadership leadership, and people who perform both roles, but we should not talk about spiritual leadership.

A Way Forward in Understanding Leadership

In the 1933 Bethel Confession, drafted by Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse, the nature of Christian ministry is defined in explicit contrast to leadership. “The power of the ministry,” the confession states, does not depend “on the powers with which a human soul may be gifted.” Hence, “we … protest against the attempt to apply the modern leadership principle to the preaching ministry.” Christian ministry, as “service to the Word,” is “the opposite of any magical powers of leadership.” Perhaps this is something we need to return to.

Church leadership begins with discipleship

We need to begin with discipleship, not with leadership. Suppose we ground the lives of Jesus’ followers in discipleship, in the radical call to ministry by each member of God’s church. In that case, we will grow a community of responsible individuals equipped and empowered to ministry and positive influence.

Everyone is called to be a follower of Jesus, which is what it means to be a disciple. Ministry is the function of discipleship.

The church will recognise that some people are called to make the ministry their full-time commitment and grant them an income so they do not need to work in another field. This person makes the function of discipleship their employment.

They can also become a leader within the church; they are delegated the authority to make decisions on behalf of other people. Their ministry is granted the quality of representing the church and not only their own initiative. Some are then also granted leadership over a particular community of people.

In each case, the role of being a leader is to undertake a specific function as an agent of a community or organisation.

Functional Leadership

This is functional and prosaic; it does not convey spiritual authority or gain its authority from divine mandate. It is temporary – the leader does not want to be the leader forever – the purpose is to render the need for hierarchical leadership redundant by equipping the community to take responsibility to act on behalf of Jesus. It is representative.

Bonhoeffer says that the leader “puts them [the community] above himself, as a good parent does a child, wishing to lead that child to someday be a good parent. Another word for this is discipleship.”

The church leader’s task is to support discipleship formation so that others may take up their calling to ministry.

Church leadership needs to be non-coercive and not based on personal power but grounded in organisational functions and exists entirely for a purpose, not for itself.

Bonhoeffer writes:  “The leader points to the office.”

Leadership is not about me, it is about Jesus

The church leader does not point to themselves because being a leader is about who they represent, not who they are. The church leader represents the community and the organisation of the church. They make decisions on behalf of that community and the church organisation. They point towards Christ with their personal discipleship, but they do not represent Christ in their office as a leader but in their function as a disciple.

Most of all, leaders need to be honest about the limits of their responsibility. The church leader is not an absolute, they have limits, and are fallible.

Bonhoeffer remarks: “The true leader must always be able to disappoint.”

The leader must base their capacity to perform their function not on personal power but on personal dependence upon Jesus.

Leadership begins with dependence on grace

There will always be a need for structure, order, decision-making, and leadership. Communities cannot always make decisions for themselves. You need representatives to make decisions as soon as you get beyond a handful of people.

Hierarchies provide order and stability. But they are inherently and entirely only of this world – they are penultimate forms of organisation. They are, by nature, corrupted by humanity’s sinfulness. They exist only for a while, but they look towards the time when it will no longer be needed.

What church leadership looks like and how we approach it should and must change. We need to move away from ideas about spiritual leadership, refocus our commitment to discipleship, and reintroduce a functional model of the leader.

Bonhoeffer reminds us that:

Only when a man sees that office is a penultimate authority in the  face of an ultimate, indescribable authority, in the face of the authority of God, has the real situation been reached. And before this Authority the individual knows himself to be completely alone. The individual is responsible before God.

This is only the start of an answer, but I think it gets us in the right direction to think carefully about what leadership in the church looks like and how to make it healthy and positive.

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