Painted on squad cars of many police departments is the motto: “To serve and to protect.” The calling for pastors is similarly twofold: to serve and to lead.
Two noble tasks. But those two aspects of the pastoral calling don’t always mesh smoothly. Some people want you to be more of a leader—until they disagree with something you’ve done. Then they suggest you should be more of a servant.
Leadership sat down with three pastors who’ve had extensive experience in serving, leading, and figuring out how to do both simultaneously.
Leith Anderson pastors Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, has served as interim president of Denver Seminary and the National Association of Evangelicals, and has written Leadership that Works and A Church for the 21st Century.
Erwin McManus, after planting churches among the urban poor in Texas, is lead pastor of Mosaic, a congregation in Los Angeles, and author of Uprising: A revolution of the soul, An Unstoppable Force: Daring to become the church God had in mind, and Seizing Your Divine Moment.
Glenn Wagner is pastor of Calvary Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, a former vice president of Promise Keepers, and author of Escape from Church Inc. and The Church You’ve Always Wanted.
How did you recognize your calling?
Erwin McManus: I became a believer during college, and I thought when you became a follower of Jesus that ministry was what you did! So I told my mom, “I’m not going back to college. I’m going to go out and tell everyone about Jesus.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I figured that’s what it meant to be converted.
I ended up going back to college, but I talked to my Christian friends, “It’s going to be amazing when all of us, all over the world, are preaching the Scriptures!”
“What are you talking about?” my friends said. “We’re not going to do that.” That was the first time I got any hint that “ministry” wasn’t something every Christian did.
Later I visited the church where I came to faith in Christ and heard about “being called to ministry.”
“What’s this?” I asked. They said, “Some people are called to vocational ministry.” I had no idea there was any distinction like that. So I went forward not because I felt any new calling but because when I came to faith in Christ, I figured that’s what you’re doing here, following Christ. I didn’t know you got paid or that another call was required to do ministry.
Glenn Wagner: At age 16 I was asked to work at a Christian camp, not because I was devout, but they needed a body. There a speaker challenged us to be all-out followers of Jesus. I really wrestled with that. He was a man I respected, and I wondered if God was calling me to be a pastor. The problem was there was no pastor I knew at that time whom I wanted to be like!
I spent the next years resisting all involvement in Christianity. But there was also the constant awareness that God was after me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape the thought that God said, “You’re mine.“
Right before I turned 21, I surrendered my life to the Lord. I could not get away from the impression I was to be a pastor. It was an “F.I.F.,” funny interior feeling. It was constantly there. I could not see myself being anything else.
Leith Anderson: Theologically, the call is to Jesus, not to a career. We’re talking here about majors compared to minors. The great call is to Jesus Christ; the minor call is how we vocationally live that out. To switch analogies, some would say, “I am called to be a pastor. That’s what God wants me to do. But whether I pastor in Arkansas or Alaska, that’s quite secondary.”
The call of Jesus on our life is so huge that it’s secondary whether someone fulfills that as an attorney or as a bi-vocational pastor or as a physician or a homemaker.
My primary identity is, I’m me and I’m a Christian. It’s not, I’m a pastor. I’ve never had a “sense of call” to the pastorate. I was raised in a pastor’s home, and I’ve just tried to make wise choices with the gifts and opportunities God provides.
In retrospect, I think I’ve done the right thing. I feel affirmed, successful, gifted to do it. I’m where I should be. But I’ve come to that conclusion in retrospect not in process.
McManus: I agree. Recently my 15-year-old son, riding with me in the car after church on Sunday, said, “You know, Dad, I think a person should only go into ministry if he’s called by God.” And I said, “Where did you get that?” Because he’s never heard that from me!
I said, “So you can go be an actor or an architect and don’t need to be called, right? The only people who are called by God are pastors or missionaries. Is that what you’re saying?”
He goes, “Forget it. Forget it. I see where this argument is going.”
Focusing on the call to “full-time Christian work” really reduces the life of every other believer in two ways: (1) If they don’t have “a call experience,” it abdicates them from any responsibility to have a conversation with God about their life’s work, because if you’re not called to vocational ministry, then you can do whatever you want. And (2) it demeans any other vocation as secondary in God’s eyes.
You took different paths getting here, but you’re now in ministry leadership, called to serve and to lead. Is “servant leadership” an ongoing tension?
Anderson: The term is fraught with conflict and misunderstanding. It’s almost an oxymoron. Both servanthood and leadership are culturally and contextually defined. For instance, we say the President of the United States is a public servant, but we also say that someone who waits on tables is a servant. Clearly those are different roles.
Simply stated, a servant does what someone else says to do. A leader tells other people what to do. So the expectations can create tensions.
When you talk to business guys, they’re asking, “Okay, how does this servant-leader thing work? I’ve got to make a tough decision for the good of the company, say, firing an incompetent worker, but that hurts an individual. Who am I serving?”
As Christians there should not be a conflict between humility and leadership, but there may be lots of conflicts between servanthood and leadership.
Wagner: Lots of things get mixed up. Serving Christ. Serving the body. Considering others more important than ourselves. Those are all a part of it.
Who exactly do you serve? The church? The elders? The “least of these”? God alone?
McManus: Isaiah 49 is helpful: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel.” This was Israel’s problem. They wanted God to be all about them. Their concept of servanthood was bringing back the tribes and restoring the people of Israel.
God says that’s too small—”I will also make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”
The bottom line is if the congregation’s passion isn’t to extend God’s kingdom by seeing people’s lives transformed through a relationship with Christ, then you’re not creating a servant community. Churches can’t be all about themselves. I don’t care how much they are nice to each other or not.
Wagner: Yes, as a leader I don’t serve well if I merely oversee the church continuing to serve itself. When we serve others, there’s healing in the body.
How is “servant leadership” most often misunderstood?
Wagner: When servant becomes the overarching definition of the role—doing what other people want, and losing sight of the need to lead. Rightly understood, “servant” denotes the humility with which I handle my role as leader.
McManus: Servanthood is about character, and leadership is about your role.
Wagner: Any time you make an unpopular decision, you’ll hear the accusation: “You’re not a servant!” I heard that when I had to release a staff person.
I replied: “I am serving God by being a steward of what he’s entrusted to us as leadership here at Calvary Church. I’m serving this body, and also I’m serving you, because the situation as it was clearly wasn’t right.”
But being a servant leader also means you ask yourself: Lord, is the problem me? Do I just have a personality quirk? Am I serving you in this decision? That’s an essential part of the process.
What’s the goal of a servant leader?
Anderson: The Bible describes leaders with the metaphor shepherd. I don’t think that’s because I’m supposed to walk around with a staff. The main thing is that a shepherd’s life was not his own. Usually shepherds oversaw a flock for someone else. They served by caring for and leading the flock. That’s what pastors do; they serve God by feeding, protecting, and leading the congregation.
McManus: I serve the church of Jesus Christ when I help it to reflect his heart and to fulfill its mission. Yes, this means, at times, firing people when you have to, or shutting down ministries that don’t reflect the spirit and attitude of Christ. If you’re going to lead the church of Jesus Christ, your primary obligation is to make sure that the church is becoming what God has in mind for the church.
Serving, for me, also meant that part of the decision to become a pastor was making a shift from giving my life to fulfilling whatever dreams I have for myself to seeing that other people’s dreams and visions are unleashed. That is a concrete, practical shift that servanthood requires.
Correcting or disciplining people doesn’t always feel right at the onset, but that’s serving. You’re investing in a community and trying to see an energizing environment where people are unleashed to accomplish what God has created them to do.
Sometimes the concept of servant leadership is applied in a transactional way: “I’ll serve you, care for you, visit you in the hospital, and in return you’ll let me exercise leadership and make decisions for the organization.” Is serving, then, the way you gain credibility so that when you have to make an unpopular decision, you have the political capital you need to lead?
McManus: That’s a prostitution of the biblical understanding of being a servant of Christ. That can easily become merely another form of self-serving or self-promotion. Do you gain credibility and trust when you legitimately serve people? Yes. But if I act as a servant simply in order to gain power, then I’m not functioning as God intended.
What was Jesus doing when he washed the disciples’ feet? Modeling servanthood?
McManus: He wasn’t modeling servanthood. Jesus was a servant. He wasn’t feigning something, or just role-playing to teach us something. He was letting us see who he was. He was being himself.
To say that God is a servant sounds blasphemous and heretical and demeaning because we don’t value servanthood. It’s easy to acknowledge that God is all-powerful and all-knowing and such because that’s the stuff we want. But if you see only God’s might without his loving, serving, sacrificial side, it’s terrifying.
What’s amazing to me about God is not that he’s more powerful or more intelligent than anyone else, but the fact that God is more humble.
When Jesus says we need to be last so we can be first in the kingdom, it’s not a boomerang effect—if you go last long enough then you get to be first. No, it’s because low and humble is where God is. If you want to be great in the kingdom, be a servant. Because that’s where God is.
Wagner: As pastors, we are to do the tasks that leadership requires, and do those things with the attitude and heart of a servant. So there are stewardship responsibilities and some hard choices, but I must implement them as a servant.
So, for instance, I agree with Francis Schaeffer’s observation: If you’re doing church discipline without tears, then you’re probably not doing it in the character and heart of Christ.
How do the roles of servant and leader mesh when, for instance, you’re candidating at a church and discussing salary, boundaries, expectations, and working conditions?
Wagner: I dislike that term candidating. In the process of seeing if God is bringing lives together for his kingdom glory, I don’t think the first thing to talk about is salary package and working conditions. In fact, I find it offensive if that’s the first thing on the agenda. God hasn’t even indicated we share a common vision yet, and we’re talking about benefits?
I met some people who want to negotiate their salaries and benefits as if they’re applying to IBM. And I’m not sure that’s the right approach for ministry.
But discussing it is an appropriate part of the process. I neglected that in the past. At one church I served earlier in my ministry, I showed up not knowing what I was going to be paid. I was simply told I’d be taken care of.
We didn’t know how poor we were until our child was born and social services came and said we qualified for public assistance. I was selling my plasma every week to buy books. But I didn’t know any better. We were just happy to be ministering someplace.
But as we were coming to Calvary, my wife asked for a couple of things. One, that a retirement plan be in place. And, two, for life insurance. I didn’t have life insurance, and I had a physical problem …
Anderson: Because you were giving too much plasma. (Laughter.)
Wagner: Hey, man, fifteen bucks was a lot of books in those days.
Blood money. (Laughter.)
Wagner: The point is, I have a responsibility to serve my family as well as to serve the church. And there needs to be a way to articulate that without being accused of not being a servant and without having it drive the process.
Anderson: I’m feeling the need to be more concrete in this whole area of serving and leading. I’ve tried to identify some rules to decide how to serve in particular situations. Here are three guidelines; there could be a lot more.
1. Serve the greater number rather than the greatest need. If you can serve 100 people or one person who seems to have a greater need, as a rule, you serve the greater number.
2. Give priority to the basics. Lyle Schaller would say, “You pay the rent.” If you don’t pay the rent, you don’t last. For pastors the rent is next week’s sermon and prayer and going to the board and staff meetings and having regular family time and having available margins for an unanticipated crisis. That’s the rent. Without that you can’t serve anyone.
3. Be aware of your limitations. Sometimes we think, I’m a servant of everybody, therefore I have to serve anyone who asks, when you may in fact do more damage than good by trying to serve beyond your competence. A wise counselor once told me, “If anyone calls you and insists their need is so urgent that they must see you immediately, you are not qualified to help them! They need someone more qualified.” It’s a temptation for leaders to venture into things we’re not competent to deal with. If one of you needs heart surgery right now, I wouldn’t serve you well by trying to do it.
If you pour your best time into the extraordinarily needy people, that may seem to be compassionate, but you’re failing to adequately serve the larger number. Some of the larger number may in fact be far more qualified to serve the needy person than you are.
McManus: Yes, if I’m responsible to teach on Sunday, and at 3 a.m. that morning a homeless guy suddenly calls me to pick him up somewhere, it would probably violate my serving of the many. And chances are, someone else would do a better job of serving him.
Anderson: Now if he has a gun to his head, that’s different. Sure, then you’ve got to make a situational decision. But you need a guiding principle out of which you make exceptions.
Unfortunately for some pastors the guiding principle is “whoever screams the loudest,” or “whoever has the greatest need,” or “whoever looks the most demanding is the person I acquiesce to because I’m a servant.” That’s neither serving well nor leading well.
Leith Anderson and Erwin McManus will further discuss this topic via satellite broadcast Nov. 13, 2003. For information see www.ccnonline.net.
Glenn Wagner and Erwin McManus will be speaking at the National Pastors Convention in 2004. See www.nationalpastorsconvention.com
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