June 10, 2002
CHURCH CONFLICT: Pastoral authority
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___Who runs the church?
___In healthy churches, secure pastors and secure lay leaders share a common vision of mutual leadership, according to those who have studied conflict in Texas Baptist churches.
___But in unhealthy churches, either the pastor or lay leaders attempt to tip the balance in their favor against the wishes of the other party.
___Issues related to who controls the church are the No. 1 reason for forced terminations of Baptist pastors nationwide, according to data collected by LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. That finding holds true among Texas Baptists as well, noted analysts with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
___In recent years, the number of forced terminations of pastors by Texas Baptist churches has reached alarming proportions, reported Jan Daehnert, director of minister/church relations for the BGCT. Each year, on average, 200 to 300 Texas Baptist ministers are fired by their churches.
___In a majority of these cases, disputes over pastoral authority played a significant role in the conflicts that led to termination, Daehnert said. And in many other cases, pastors who were not fired left churches under duress related to authority issues.
___While it's easy to point a finger one way or the other, responsibility for conflict rooted in authority issues lies at the feet of both pastors and laity, Daehnert and others said.
___"The authority issue is primarily seen in the pastoral role, but it's also a layman's authority issue," he explained.
___Authority & self-esteem
___In congregations, these conflicts play out along two common scenarios, analysts report: Either the pastor is accused of being "too heavy-handed," "too authoritarian" or a "dictator," or the pastor declares that some lay leaders are thwarting his leadership by their controlling tactics.
___The theological perspectives of pastors who believe they have a God-given mandate to run the church sometimes compound the problem, according to Baptists who deal regularly with conflict resolution.
___While many people associate authoritarian pastoral styles with a fundamentalist theology, authoritarianism cuts across the political spectrum, said Howard Batson, pastor of First Baptist Church of Amarillo. "It has nothing to do with Baptist politics. It really is an interpersonal skills problem.
___"As a pastor develops a healthy self-esteem, he is less likely to be dictatorial and more likely to be a strong leader," he added. "When he's not sure of himself, he'll either hide in a corner or shout from the rooftop. When he's sure of himself, he'll do neither of those."
___Bob Sheffield, a specialist in church conflict mediation with LifeWay, concurred. "The more insecure a person is, sometimes the more authoritarian he has to be. If you're secure, you can allow people to be involved in decision making."
___Partial picture
___Conflicts over pastoral authority reveal deeper unsettled issues in the Christian church, Daehnert suggested. "Pastoral authority is a piece of the picture that has been over-emphasized because other parts of the picture are out of shape."
___The problem, he believes, is that Protestant churches "never completed the Reformation ...; we've never known how to reconcile the role of the pastor and the role of the layman in ministry."
___Sometimes, the fault lies with pastors who, even though Baptist, "have kept some of the old Catholic church tendencies" of clerical superiority, Daehnert said. That may be compounded when laity "turn over to the pastor authority that really belongs to Jesus."
___Other times, lay leaders become so accustomed to managing all the business of the church amid a succession of short-term pastors or part-time pastors that they tilt the other way and allow no room for pastoral leadership.
___Although it perhaps receives less attention, some pastors give too little leadership, Batson noted. "On that end, they're withdrawn and apathetic and provide sporadic leadership. They lack initiative."
___The best road to travel lies between these two ditches, he said.
___"What most churches want is a healthy teamship approach to leadership. You lead, but you do it as part of a team, including the committees and the congregation. It's not so much, 'God told me, and this is what we've got to do,' but 'Here's what God has told us together.'"
___Toward a shared vision
___Batson, Daehnert and others acknowledged that some Baptist churches want a pastor who will give strong direction. That's OK, they said, if the church hires a pastor who shares that vision of leadership.
___"Problems usually arise when a congregation expects one type of pastoral authority and they get another," Batson noted. This requires the pastor-search committee to "really know the story of the church and match that with the story of the candidate."
___Too often, however, pastor search committees don't understand what the church wants in a pastor, Sheffield added.
___"If you get one pastor who has been a precipative-type pastor, trying to develop a shared ministry approach, followed by a person who is very autocratic, you're going to have problems," Sheffield said. "Congregations don't realize this. They don't take this into consideration in the pastor search process.
___"Sometimes what the congregation has been heard to say is, 'We need a strong leader.' But their definition of a strong leader and the pastor's definition are different," he said.
___But more often, "the pastor search committee will go on the basis of what they think," without surveying the congregation, Sheffield said.
___That can be a problem because "most pastor search committees don't represent the church as a whole; they represent the cutting edge of the church. Why are people put on the pastor search committee in the first place? Because they're leaders and they want things to happen."
___Stages of growth
___In reality, churches may need different styles of pastoral leadership at different stages of the congregation's life, Sheffield said.
___He compares the situation to a parent's role in leading a child. "There are times, if you're pastoring a mission church, the pastor is going to have to be more hands-on and directive than he might need to be if he has developed his congregation properly."
___But just as a parent cannot give direction to a grown child the same way he or she would to a toddler, a pastor must adjust his leadership role as a congregation matures, he added.
___Leaders vs. managers
___Sheffield and Daehnert both believe many pastors have bought into an incorrect definition of leadership.
___Leaders are not managers, they insist, and authority is not the same as influence.
___"If you take Ephesians 4 literally, our job as pastors is to equip the saints for a work of ministry," Sheffield said. "We will be leaders, which is a sphere of influence, not managers."
___Daehnert concurred and pointed to a book, "The Servant," written by a corporate executive using biblical principles. The author, James Hunter, quotes sociologist Max Weber's distinction between power and authority.
___Power, he said, is "the ability to force or coerce someone to do your will, even if they would choose not to, because of your position or might."
___Authority, however, is "the skill of getting people to willingly do your will because of your personal influence."
___So a person could be in a position of power but not have authority with people, Daehnert said. "Authority is based not on position but on influence."
___A practical misapplication of authority happens when young pastors or pastors new to their churches look at older mentors with long tenures and attempt to duplicate their leadership styles, Sheffield explained.
___The older, more tenured pastors have "gone through the fire" and earned the right of leadership, he said. "Yet we may think we can be there without earning the right to be the leader."
___Problem-solving
___The problem of church conflict due to leadership issues is well-known, acknowledged Larry Ashlock, a professor of pastoral ministry at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and former pastor of Texas Baptist churches. "We seem to know the reasons for the problems but have not taken proactive steps to correcting it."
___It is possible, in fact, that even professors like himself while teaching the importance of servant leadership actually model the opposite, he said.
___LifeWay is attempting the address the problem nationwide through its LeaderCare unit, which includes counseling and other resources for ministers.
___The BGCT addresses the problem through its minister/church relations office.
___As a preventative measure, the BGCT promotes implementation of Barnabas teams, carefully appointed groups within a congregation charged with providing encouragement, education and accountability for ministers.
___One of the most practical solutions is for pastors to learn better listening skills, Batson suggested.
___"We teach people in seminary how to talk, not how to listen. The greatest skill a pastor can have is his ability to listen."
___The same may be true for lay leaders as well.
___"A healthy church is where people are submissive to the leadership of God in their lives and equally submissive to one another," Daehnert said.
___In the ideal situation, he added, "the pastor has a role and responsibility and lay leaders also have a role and responsibility. Together, they determine what is God's will for the church."
___The model that works best for a pastor, he suggested, is Jesus the Good Shepherd rather than the Old Testament model of religious leaders as "prophet, priest and king."
___Yet while the New Testament offers principles for church leadership, it does not spell out a detailed plan of church administration, Batson said.
___"I don't think (first-century Christians) ever imagined the church being structured like it is now."
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