Leadership is a function, NOT a position title, status or line of command.Our vision is to empower YOU.People often ask leaders “What is your vision?” Our response to that question is, ‘our vision is to empower you in your vision’, so the question becomes reversed. The model of leadership that Jesus taught and modeled is servant-hood therefore it doesn’t start with you asking ‘what is our vision’, but starts with us asking ‘what is yours.” Over 90% of the conversations that Jesus had with people who came to Him started with Him asking this very simple question. ’What can I do for YOU?’ Our leadership style is not based on usury, but personal development and empowerment. Leaders are responsible for the generalities of the vision, but the diversity and specifics of the vision depend on the gifting of the people. For example, apostolic vision is rooted in reaching out to the Nations and the poor, and this is general vision. This is the unity of the vision. However, vision to reach certain specific nations depends on a grass roots movement from the concerns, burdens and gifting of the people. Specific vision can then flow from the people to the leaders and a dynamic interaction is energized.Our core values of leadership are rooted in a new paradigm. A paradigm is like a lens through which you view the world and creates your worldview. Behavior, beliefs, and values are created by the prevailing worldview. Everyone has a view of the world and they view it through their own set of glasses, or perceptions. Covey quotes John Gardner who says “Most ailing organizations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects”. They are suffering because they cannot resolve their problems, because they cannot see their problems. Dynamic change only occurs when you change the paradigm, or the map you are following. If you a following the wrong map you will reach the wrong destination. Covey also says that “If you want to make minor, incremental changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior or attitude. But if you want to make significant, quantum improvement, work on paradigms.” Our leadership is modeled on the paradigm or model of the trinity. The trinity are mutually honoring, mutually submitted and function as an interdependent team who are co-equal. Hierarchy involves status and a line of command and is the executive model for many corporations and churches. The trinity functions from a line of love, not a line of command. Sadly the hierarchal model of leadership that is dominant in the worlds systems has infiltrated the institutional church, causing it in most cases to look no different from the world that it is seeking to influence. As most informed Christians know, this un-biblical system creates control, breeds fear and sows mistrust. The trinity do not Lord it over each other, or anyone involved in their community. Jesus asserted that being the boss or executive or Lording it over people is the worlds system of modeling leadership (Matthew 20:25). The trinity plan and counsel together concerning their redemptive mission for the cosmos, and then organize their roles to fulfill this mission. Submission for the trinity stems first from mutual submission to their mission. Based on a participative leadership model they counsel together and agree on their roles. Submission is the purely for the sake of function and is a line of love. We cannot force submission as it is voluntary love yielding to love (Ephesians 5:24-30). It is not control, but submission to a common redemptive mission based on mutual love relationship. Jesus asserts that He has all authority in heaven and earth as the last Adam who is God, yet does not assert that He exercises all power (Matthew 28:18). God wants willing subjects who surrender to Him out of love, not power based coercive leadership. God leads by influence and gains authority through sacrifice. We are seeking to empower people rather than have power or status. Our servant authority is utilised to influence and build people up and together into a people. The trinity model relationship centeredness and yet they have a redemptive mission or task. The trinity are a community of persons in one being, thus they are one yet not each other. Their identity is both community and diversity of personal uniqueness. Therefore, we can be ourselves in the context of community or being one with diversity.Our leadership seeks not displace or usurp the headship of Christ. The trinity is a plural leadership team who is non-hierarchical and function as a team to empower people. Leadership that is plural seeks to empower the church, to hear God as a people together. Although a leader of the leaders may emerge they need to be rooted in servant hood, so that he/she will still seek to facilitate decision making. Such decision making is plural and involves the whole church regarding decisions that impacts it. The example is James in the early church and how they made decisions (Acts 15:6-15). Peter the Apostle in the local situation called himself a fellow elder (I Peter 5: 1). Christ not the senior pastor or the eldership is in head over the church. Headship means both source of life and authority (Ephesians 1:20-23). When leaders take a directive leadership style over the church through a senior pastor or even an eldership, their leadership is effectively usurping the headship of Christ. Participative and consultative leadership styles are the only forms of leadership that equip and empower people. The real issue in leadership is how much authority we share with people and is there a power base that controls the people, therefore disempowering them from every member ministry. Covey asserts that “At the organizational level, a controlling management philosophy drives performance, communication, compensation/reward, training, information and other core systems that suppress human talent and voice. At the relational level, again, most organizations are filled with co-dependency.” By making the pulpit and the senior pastor central (both being un-biblical) we enable a spectator system that makes us co-dependent and institutionalizes us into a process of disempowerment. This results in people losing their voice and becoming passive in their gifts. Paul’s equipping models of interactive or dialogical teaching, and participation meetings is now replaced by the pulpit. No wonder we have lost our way.Our leadership is rooted in an organism that serves life.We have an organic relationship to Christ and to one another. By organic I mean we were born out of His Spirit and we are literally members of each other. I know I am a member when I rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Every organism has organization. When the organism serves the organization instead of the organization serving the organism, it is not serving life. If the church is not serving life it becomes institutionalized and suffocated by un-biblical traditions, which now take president over the life. Anyone who has sought to bring change to these un-biblical systems will testify that change other than superficial transformations is resisted at al costs. Once we arrive at this position and see the church as institutionalizing people, then incremental changes will not fix the problem and only a paradigm shift in thinking will empower change. This in turn will make us change agents.Non-hierarchical, servant leadership.Many churches are built on a hierarchy business model of leadership instead of the Biblical picture as seen in Eph 2:20 (having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone) Therefore, we have in the church the CEO at the top of the pyramid who hires and fires people. This unbiblical system is based on a line of command, NOT A LINE OF LOVE. Hierarchy exists in status and different titles, yet leadership is not a title, but a function. The un-biblical title of senior pastor involves status and position. An elder is never called elder Terry or elder Alan because it is a function not a title. Leadership is based on recognition of gifting, thus a leader who leads well and labors in the word by teaching deserves double honor (I Timothy 5:17-18). In some systems the leader can lead badly and teach superficially, and then the denomination entrenches his power. A leader is first called to be a servant of God, but sadly this is often compromised because he is salaried, or the paid professional. Once a leader becomes a paid employee of the institutional church system, his focus can easily change from serving God to pleasing people. This is why we have resisted this un-biblical model. Functional leadership and not status oriented.The trinity have a line of love and submit based on voluntary love. The function of an elder is not to rule over in a dominating manner, as this is not the model of the trinity. An elder or leaders function is to guard, shepherd, teach, be hospitable, which are functions alongside certain character attributes. Unfortunately, these words create wrong pictures. A shepherd is a nurturer who seeks to restore souls and a guardian is one who protects from false teachers without being smothering. A teacher is meant to be more like a coach and interactive type teacher. These are not titles or positions, but only functions. Shepherd in NT testament times was not a status or a title, and if anything it carried a lower status.Leadership is based on eldership and gifts of Christ. Christ ascended to the throne of God and from the place of His new authority as head over all the powers He gave gifts to men, which are called ascension gifts. They are the equipping ministries that mend the broken nets of relationship and broken hearts; (Katartismos is the Greek word for equipping or perfecting in verse 11). The word equip in Ephesians 4:11 means to mend a broken bone or mend a net. Kartartismos in classical Greek means: “refitting a ship” or “setting a bone.” We can be so afraid of leaders and control that we fail to allow the gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor/teacher to function. These ministries are trans-local and are given by Christ to the church as gifts to equip her to do the work of ministry and in some cases they are locally based, like Peter. If these ministries are removed from the church, which in most cases they are, the church WILL NOT function according to the will of Christ. In essence we have accepted the chief corner stone but removed the apostolic foundation. No wonder the church is seen by the masses as a powerless, ineffective institution that is suffocated by man made traditions. Remove apostles and prophets from the church and we become like a plane trying to fly with one wing. Leadership understands and utilizes the process of change. Leaders facilitate participative and equipping groups for the process of change. New Testament leadership is rooted in the Hebraic model that understands that the process of change comes by dialogue, impartation and coaching. This is the model that both Jesus and Paul used. Equipping groups are designed to build up, empower and nurture God’s people, through interactive and discussion based teaching (not the un-biblical Greek, pulpit, lecture model that informs people without transforming them). Leaders who understand how to impart revelation, as opposed to information will do it through the model of dialogue type teaching.Non-salaried empowering leadership.Our philosophy leads us to deconstruct the salaried wages paradigm of being employed to a more biblical model of ‘freely we receive and freely we give’ (Matthew 10:8). We operate more on the philosophy of Paul who did not want to be a burden to the churches and was a tentmaker missionary. We are seeking to bless people by giving our ministry freely. The Philippian church was the only church that entered into a giving receiving relationship with Paul. The key principle here, is it was THEIR initiative not Paul’s (Philippians 5:17). The other key principle is that it was giving and receiving, not a wage, salary or obligation.Plural teams made up of men and women.We endorse women in leadership and ministry based on Paul’s apostolic teams that contained women as co-workers. Priscilla instructed more accurately Apollos and was a woman on Paul’s apostolic team. Paul asserts in 2 Timothy 2:2 that teaching must be passed onto to faithful men in this verse. However, the translators have translated the gender inclusive Greek word ‘anthropos’ meaning men and women as men. It actually means men and women not men. The Greek word for men is actually ‘aner’ and ‘anthropos’ is utilised in this passage. This is what I term translators bias, which is also utilised in the way 1Timothy 2:11-12 is interpreted or viewed. In most commentaries we have the paradigm that women are excluded from teaching or leading, and this false perception is extracted from this passage. If Paul wanted to exclude women from leading in verse 12 he would have most certainly used the Greek word ‘exousia.’ This is the normal word utilised for authority that means legitimate authority. The word that is used for here for authority, or usurping authority in verse 12 is the Greek word ‘authentein’ which means domination or control. It is only used here in I Timothy 2:12. The real issue was the wife usurping the authority over the husband and this is the specific context as Paul speaks about Eve, who usurped Adam’s authority. Paul was trying to prevent false teachers and wife’s usurping the authority of husbands by domination. The false teachers in Ephesus were all men. Our leadership style seeks feedback systems. We are seeking to release your voice so you can speak to us your concerns and insights and how you are responding to the ministry. Feedback needs to be constructive and is vital for our interdependence. Energy is blocked when there is no feedback system.Terry
