Occupy Leadership

A few weeks ago, I was in Philadelphia visiting a friend. I stayed in a hotel in downtown right across from City Hall where Philadelphia's Occupy Movement had set up camp, so I decided to spend some time in the camp to see if I could get to the heart of what this movement is all about and the implications it might have. The air was electric with the excitement of progress as the mayor's office had agreed to meet with some members from the group. As night fell, the group's General Assembly Meeting got underway to discuss the "demands" they would bring before the mayor.

They began with a proposal :

We propose a group of us meet with the Mayor's office and make three demands.
1. The police stop doing morning walkthroughs of our camp.
2. The police stop taking pictures of us.
3. Something I can't remember at this point but also dealt with the treatment of protestors by city officials.

By now, it's likely you've seen video of one of these General Assembly Meetings. They're structured in such a way that anyone present has the opportunity to provide input by asking a question, voicing a concern or offering an amendment to the original proposal. And since there's rarely access to a sound system all of this is done by one person saying 4 words at a time, and then the 10 or so people closest to that speaker repeating it in a yell so the rest of the group can hear.

After about an hour and 15 minutes, I left for bed just as they were reading through and voting on all of the amendments - none of which were related and most of which could not exist in tandem with one another.

As I went back to my hotel room, I was thinking about what I had just experienced in terms of leadership. The tension and angst in the air gave me the perception that the root of this "democracy" isn't a desire for every voice to be heard but - rather - a deep skepticism and mistrust of anyone that might have the desire and ability to represent them well. As a result there seems to be a lack of unified direction and message.

My church back home in Orlando was in the middle of a series on spiritual gifts, so I had been studying Ephesians 4 closely, and being present in the leaderless Occupy movement made me want to truly discover the fullness the passage's implications on leadership. Verse 7 says that God gives gifts to people and then verses 11-13 say :

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Much of what we see in world politics is a small group of individuals fighting one another to maintain and gain more power, often leading to the oppression of people. And this broken model of leadership and struggle for power is often what we see in the Church today as well. It's the root of the skepticism and cynicism we see throughout the Occupy movement and in much of the world.

But what we see in Ephesians 4 is in stark contrast to that self-centered struggle to stay at the top. We see God gifting certain people with specific abilities then giving those people as gifts to lead the Church and make it all it is intended to be. It's God saying, "I love my Church so much that I will enable people to lead it, and those people are a divine gift." God views leadership as a gift - not "gift" in the sense of an ability like singing or plate spinning but "gift" in the sense of an amazing present wrapped up and under the Christmas tree!

As we look at Ephesians 4, we begin to see a picture of healthy leadership. Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers all have a specific role to play in helping the Church become all that God intends for it to be. Most of our churches call all of our leaders "Pastors," but that's one fifth of the total picture.

The heart of a pastor is to care for the needs of people today. It's a beautiful gift, but what happens when it functions independently from the other leadership roles in Ephesians 4? The Church becomes exactly what it has become - a group of leaders who are so focused on the needs of people that we are reduced to providing services that generate great consumers of our menu of programs. Our desire to serve people well, where they are today, has crippled them to becoming perpetual infants.

The same is true for any leadership role operating independently from the other gifts.

If we only have prophets, we're always looking forward. It would be easy for us to forget the things God has done in the past and we would neglect the needs of the people today.

If we only have teachers, we're solely looking backwards at what God did and said in the past through scripture, history and experience, and we would lose a sense of vision.

If we only have evangelists, we're always looking outward, and we lose our need for and effectiveness in discipleship.

And if we only have apostles, they're tired and overworked, and the Church falls apart.

It's only when we trust those God has enabled with these abilities to step into the fullness of their leadership together that we begin to see a fully functioning church. We see Apostles equipping leaders and providing broad oversight, Prophets painting a vision of the future, Evangelists working to reach the world, Pastors caring for the daily needs of people and Teachers instructing us from the words and activity of God and helping us know Him better.

When we take a hard look at Ephesians 4, it might have profound implications for the leadership structures of our local churches. It may mean that the titles of our roles change. It may mean that we start filling different roles than we're currently filling. It most likely will have us recognizing that our leadership teams are incomplete, and we have to make some changes. Our natural response might be to build walls around our roles to protect our jobs and our ability to maintain power. But let's surrender to God's model for leadership for the New Testament Church and trust that as we do so, He will be faithful to build His Church in ways that we could have never done on our own.

I don't know how things will work out in the end for the people of Occupy Wall Street. Ultimately, the movement of the Spirit is the sole thing that binds good leadership together and makes leadership trustworthy. But it looks like OWS is coming to the point of recognizing the value of leadership. The Wall Street Journal published the article, Occupy Wall Street Protest Reaches a Crossroads, on November 4 in which it reported :

"Recently, the protesters voted to revamp the process: the general assembly would still decide broader issues, but representatives of smaller groups would form a "spokescouncil" to handle day-to-day operations. The change was voted on last weekend. Some opponents feared that the general assembly would lose power. Others worried that small groups would gain a disproportionate voice.

"Mikhail Bakunin warned us of the hierarchy of bureaucrats," one participant cautioned the group, citing the 19th-century Russian anarchist.

"We really are trying to arrive at a solution right now; otherwise there are endless meetings," someone replied.

A few minutes later, more than 90 percent of the group voted for the new framework."

 

 

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