During his second missionary journey, Paul crossed over from Asia to Europe to share the gospel in Macedonia. On the first Sabbath after they arrived, Paul and Silas won a God-fearer named Lydia to the Lord. The missionaries soon attracted the attention of local authorities, when Paul cast out “a spirit of divination” from a slave girl who had “brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling” (Acts 16:16–18). The girl’s owners dragged Paul and Silas into the marketplace, where they were charged with advocating “customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice” (v. 21). The magistrates “inflicted many blows upon them” and threw Paul and Silas into prison.
That night an earthquake freed the missionaries from prison, and the Philippian jailer and his household became followers of Jesus. The next day, the magistrates sent word to release the missionaries. Luke’s narrative suddenly takes a striking turn, when Paul responds as follows:
They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out (v. 37).
The magistrates became “afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens,” they apologized to Paul and Silas, and they begged them to leave Philippi (vv. 38–39).
The story of Paul’s ministry in Philippi is captivating in so many ways—the exorcism, the earthquake, the conversion of the jailer and his family, and not least, the striking status reversal that finds the local magistrates apologizing to the missionaries after initially treating them so harshly. Most informative for Paul’s convictions about Christian leadership, however, is an issue that Acts 16 leaves completely unaddressed:
Why did Paul and Silas not reveal their citizen status to the magistrates at the outset, and save themselves the beatings and imprisonment?
The answer to this question leads us to very the heart of Paul’s understanding of servant leadership. It depends, however, on some crucial background concerning the centrality of honor, and the importance of citizen status, in a Roman colony like Philippi.
Original Setting [1]
Roman Social Values
Rome was a highly stratified honor culture, with distinct classes defined by law. Public indicators of social status guaranteed that everyone would know “who was who” in a public setting. The various classes—senators, equestrians, decurions, citizens, noncitizens, slaves, freedmen—wore clothing that differed according to social status. For example, only a Roman citizen could wear the Roman toga. It was a capital crime for a noncitizen to pose as a citizen by wearing the toga. Senators and other officials had further markings on their clothing that identified them according to their privileged position in the social pecking order.
People also sat according to rank at public events and private parties. Persons of highest status, of course, had the best seats at the theater and gladiatorial games. The Romans even dispensed justice according to social status, meting out different punishments for the same crime depending on the defendant’s rank. Accordingly, a Roman citizen who committed a capital crime was beheaded; a noncitizen was crucified.
Romans leveraged their social capital to protect and augment the honor of their extended families. Roman males competed with their peers for honor, aggressively pursuing public offices and priesthoods, in order to lay claim to the prestigious titles that went along with them. Families then listed these titles on inscriptions and funerary monuments prominently placed in public settings throughout the empire.
The Romanness of Philippi
Philippi was an imperial colony, founded by the emperor Augustus during the first century bc. By the time Paul arrived in Philippi, some seven decades later, the formerly Greek settlement had been Romanized through and through.
Persons of every class in Philippi competed with their peers for coveted titles and offices, which the victors then displayed in “résumé-form” on inscriptions like this one, erected throughout the colony:
Publius Marius Valens, son of Publius, from the tribe Voltinia, honored with the decorations of a decurion, aedile, also decurion of Philippi, priest of the divine Antoninus Pius, duumvir, sponsor of games.[2]
The inscription catalogues the ascent of a second-century aristocrat through the various status levels available to a local elite in a colony like Philippi. Romans had a technical name for the social pecking order: cursus honorum, “a course (or “race”) of honors.” From this inscription we know that Publius was a Roman citizen from birth (“Voltinia” was his citizen tribe). Because he was born into a family that included persons who served as decurions (Philippi’s town council), he was “honored with the decorations of a decurion,” likely while still a child. Publius became a “decurion” himself as an adult, and soon won two important civic honors: the office of “aedile” and a priesthood in the imperial cult (“priest of the divine Antoninus Pius”). Finally, Publius became “duumvir” of Philippi, the highest civic office in the colony (the “magistrates” of Acts 16:20). It was in that role, presumably, that he financed a display of public entertainment for the municipality (“sponsor of games”).
Scholars have concluded, from more than seven hundred such inscriptions unearthed at the site, that Philippi was the most status-conscious town of all the locations Paul visited on his journeys.[3] This judgment is confirmed at several places in the account of the Paul’s ministry in the colony in Acts 16, where we discover that Luke was quite aware of the Romanness of Philippi.
Luke on Roman Philippi
First, Philippi is the only town that Luke explicitly identifies as “a Roman colony” (v. 11). This is striking to say the least, since Paul’s travels, as Acts describes them, take the apostle through at least eight other Roman colonies.[4] One of those was Corinth, where Paul remained “a year and six months” (18:11). Not a single one of these colonies—not even Corinth—is explicitly identified by the author as such. Luke reserves the designation “colony” solely for Philippi.
Secondly, only in Philippi are Paul and his team accused of advocating “customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to accept or practice” (v. 21). Paul did not change his tactics in Philippi. He preached the same gospel elsewhere, and he performed exorcisms in other towns as well. At Ephesus, moreover, Paul’s activities created an economic dilemma for local craftsmen that was in some ways analogous to the scenario with owners of the slave-girl at Philippi (Acts 19). Only in the colony at Philippi, however, is Paul explicitly accused of promulgating anti-Roman customs.
Thirdly, only in the Philippian narrative does Luke use official titles for the magistrates of the colony. A council of elite decurions governed the colony, with two key men at the top. The official Greek title for the two co-leaders was strategos, a designation Luke uses only here to identify officials in a Roman colony (esv, “magistrates” [vv. 20, 22, 35, 36, 38]). Luke also employs technical terminology in Acts 16 to refer to the “jailer” (desmophylax) (vv. 23, 27, 36) and the “police” (rabdouchos) (vv. 35, 38). Luke is clearly concerned with assigning official titles to the key players in the Philippians narrative.
None of this is accidental. (1) The explicit identification of Philippi as a “colony,” (2) the unique charge against the missionaries, and (3) the multiplication of official titles—phenomena found nowhere else in Acts—reflect Luke’s awareness of the Roman values that permeated social life in Philippi more than anywhere else Paul traveled in the Greek East. A fourth Lukan anomaly in Acts 16, the theme of Paul’s Roman citizenship, proves even more illuminating in our quest for the apostle’s theology of leadership.
The Centrality of Roman Citizenship
The most significant social distinction in the colony was that between citizen and noncitizen. It is estimated that approximately forty percent of the people in Philippi were Roman citizens. Each Roman colony, when it was founded, was typically identified with one of Rome’s citizen tribes. Philippi’s tribe was Voltinia, and those who possessed the franchise were proud of their Roman heritage.
One-half of the first- and second-century inscriptions unearthed at Philippi contain the abbreviation VOL (Voltinia), highlighting the person’s Roman citizen tribe. Even a two-year-old child had the expression engraved on his tombstone:
Nepos, son of . . . of the tribe Voltinia,
It is fair to conclude from the archaeological data that nowhere in the Roman East were the residents of a local municipality more concerned to proclaim their citizen status than in the colony at Philippi.
Once again, this accords remarkably well with what we encounter in Acts 16. For only at Philippi, among the places Paul visited on his three missionary journeys, does Roman citizenship become an issue in Luke’s narrative.[6]
Paul, Silas, and Citizen Status
As Roman citizens, the missionaries possessed a significant degree of social capital in the colony. The legal privileges associated with the franchise were particularly valued by Romans who found themselves in the provinces, far away from the capital city of Rome. Cicero explains:
Such trust have they in the single fact of their citizenship that they count on being safe, not only where they find our magistrates, who are restrained by the fear of law and public opinion, and not only among their own countrymen, to whom they are bound by the ties of a common language and civic rights and much else besides: no, wherever they find themselves, they feel confident that this one fact [their citizenship] will be their defence (In Verr. 2.5.167).
Peter Garnsey elaborates on the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, as it might manifest itself in a veteran colony like Philippi: “In a Roman colony it appears that arrest, beating, and imprisonment were normal for aliens, but that it was potentially dangerous to give citizens the same treatment.”[7]
The magistrates at Philippi assumed, of course, that Paul and Silas were “aliens” and treated them accordingly. When they found out otherwise, the officials became “afraid” (v. 38), and understandably so. For Rome had a tradition of prosecuting governors who mistreated her citizens in the provinces.
We return now to our initial question: Why did the missionaries not reveal their citizen status to the magistrates at the outset, and save themselves the beatings and imprisonment?
The answer is found in Paul’s determination to use power and authority, in whatever form, not to protect himself or to further his own agenda but, rather, in the service of the gospel, for the eternal good of his fellow human beings. For Paul, this is what it meant to be a servant leader.
Paul and Silas had the right, as Roman citizens, to demand a fair trial. To do so would certainly have been in their best interests. It would not, however, have been in the best interest of the gospel and the fledgling church in Philippi. The self-defense of an early claim to Roman citizenship on the part of the missionaries would have generated a two-class system in the church. Brian Rapske elaborates:
The signals sent would also have put the church at risk of dissolution if the new Philippian converts did not possess the Roman franchise. At the least there would have been uncertainty surrounding Paul’s commitment to his message. Converts might wonder whether only those suitably protected (i.e. by Roman citizenship) should become believers in Christ, and they might think it disingenuous for Paul and Silas to ask others to suffer what they themselves were able to avoid.[8]
Nowhere is Paul’s practice of (and the cost of) servant leadership more visible than it is in Acts 16 where, in order to preserve the relational integrity of the gospel, the apostle refused to draw upon his social status as a Roman citizen to save himself a beating and imprisonment.
Theology (=Christology) of Leadership
As it turns out, Paul’s self-sacrificial attitude toward his citizen status in Philippi finds its origins in the apostle’s understanding of the incarnation and crucifixion of his Lord Jesus. A decade or so after Paul left Philippi, he wrote a letter to the church. At the heart of Philippians is one of the most magnificent portrayals of Jesus in all of Christian literature:[9]
We generally do not turn to Philippians 2:5–11 to craft a Pauline theology of leadership. Students in training for ministry, for example, encounter this familiar passage in their systematic theology courses, where they consider Christ’s divine and human natures (vv. 6 and 7, respectively), drawing upon theological categories fully articulated only later, at the ecumenical councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon. The practical theology departments in our seminaries generally turn elsewhere in Paul’s writings (e.g., 1 Thess. 2) to introduce students to the apostle’s convictions about leadership. This is unfortunate, since Paul’s understanding of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ, as outlined in Philippians 2:6–11, is at the very heart of his philosophy of ministry as an apostle and church planter.
I cited the HCSB translation above, because of the rendering of a key term (harpagmos) in verse 6: something to be used for his own advantage. The most recent NIV adopts the same translation, and the NRSV reads similarly: “[He] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” Bible translators are now jettisoning older translations of the term (e.g., “a thing to be grasped” [esv, cf. nasb]), for translations of harpagmos that more accurately reflect the meaning of the Greek original. The reason is that scholars are increasingly recognizing that Paul is concerned in the passage not with the nature of Christ’s “equality with God” but, rather, with what Christ chose to do with it the privileges associated with his divinity.
To be sure, one can effectively argue from Christ’s status of “equality with God” to his divine nature. The acclamation of Jesus as “Lord” (OT Yahweh) in verse 11 points in the same direction. But this argument is not Paul’s—not explicitly, at any rate. His interests relate, rather, to Christ’s position in the pecking order of the universe, so to speak. Paul focuses throughout 2:6–11 not upon Christ’s essential nature but, rather, upon what Christ chose to do with his status (and corresponding authority) as the Son of God. This is why translators now render harpagmos (v. 6) like they do.
Other key expressions in Philippians 2 that have traditionally been interpreted ontologically, in fact, lack an ontological component when used in contemporary literature. For example, the NIV erroneously translates en morphe theou (v. 6) as “in very nature God.” We now know that the term morphe generally refers to outward appearance, not inner essence. Thus Paul can write about persons “having the appearance (morphe) of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Tim. 3:5). In the case of Jesus, the gospel writers use the cognate verb metamorphao to describe the change he underwent during the transfiguration (Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:2). Clearly, this is a change only in outward appearance. We certainly would not argue that Jesus’ change of morphe at the transfiguration involved an alteration of his essential nature, as well!
According to Peter O’Brien, then,en morphe theou in Philippians 2:6 is “a picture of the preexistent Christ clothed in the garments of divine majesty and splendor.”[10] That is, it is the outward appearance of the preincarnate Son that is primarily in view—not the inner reality. The theme of social status (and corresponding power and authority) remain at the center of Paul’s picture of Jesus throughout Philippians 2:6–11, as illustrated by the headings in the boxes placed alongside the HCSB translation above.
The humiliation of Christ, as Paul outlined it in Philippians 2:6–8, would have struck the residents of Philippi as absolutely counterintuitive. In contrast to local elites in Philippi, who boasted of their climb up the cursus honorum by means of public inscriptions (as illustrated by Publius Marius Valens, above), Christ willingly embarked on a social descent that led him down a “course of dishonors,” from the highest status in the universe to the utterly humiliating position of a crucified slave—all so that you and I could be in relationship with God and his people.
We return now to Paul and Silas in Philippi to consider the connection between (a) Paul’s behavior as a leader in Acts 16 and (b) the apostle’s portrayal of Christ in Philippians 2. The passages exhibit several remarkable parallels.
Philippians 2 and Acts 16
Christians at Philippi who heard Paul’s letter read for the first time would have encountered in the incarnation of Jesus (2:6–11) a striking and unexpected status reversal. Jesus “did not regard equality with God as something to be used for his own advantage.” Instead, he took on “the form of a slave” and “became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (vv. 6–8). Then, in a divine fiat that wholly subverted the values and expectations of the dominant culture of the Roman colony at Philippi, God vindicated Jesus’ counterintuitive approach to status and power by exalting him to the highest place, guaranteeing that Jesus would be publicly honored by all (vv. 9–11).
In God’s radically subversive social economy, it is not those who leverage their status for their “own advantage” (cf. v. 6) who ultimately receive honor. It is those who willingly relinquish their status in the service of others.
Like Christ in Philippians 2, Paul and Silas resisted the temptation to use their status as Roman citizens to serve a personal agenda. Instead they gave up the right to a fair trial and unnecessarily endured a beating and imprisonment, in order to preserve the social integrity of the Philippian church. And just as he did for Jesus, God undertook on behalf of Paul and Silas, delivering them from prison by means of a well-timed earthquake. Later, as the story draws to a close, the missionaries’ citizen status is revealed, and positions of power are completely reversed, as the colony’s esteemed magistrates now humble themselves before Paul and Silas, pleading with them to leave the colony. A point-by-point comparison is illuminating:
Paul & Silas (Acts 16) Messiah Jesus (Philippians 2)
Refused to exploit their Roman citizenship Did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited (v. 6)
Willingly suffered the humiliation of flogging and imprisonment at the hands of Roman magistrates (vv. 19–23) Willingly suffered the humiliation of slave status, and of crucifixion at the hands of a Roman magistrate (vv. 7–8)
Vindicated by a sudden status reversal; citizenship (true identity) publicly recognized and oppressors put to shame (vv. 35–39) Vindicated by a sudden status reversal; divine lordship (true identity) recognized and publicly acknowledged by all (vv. 9–11)
It is beyond the scope of the chapter to treat these parallels in detail.[11] One issue, however, is particularly revealing. When Paul describes Jesus “assuming the form of a slave” (v. 7), he is referring to the incarnation. That is, Jesus took on the form of a slave by “taking on the likeness of men” (v. 7). The second clause explains the first. Paul’s point is that the reduction in status willingly embraced by Christ in the incarnation was tantamount to a well-heeled Roman citizen willingly selling himself into slavery, the lowest legal order in Paul’s social world. Such was the social distance between the preincarnate Son of God and the peasant craftsman he became in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. It was as if God himself had become an abject Greco-Roman slave.
Only in Philippians 2:7, moreover, in all Paul’s letters, does he refer to Jesus as a “slave” (doulos). This is no accident, in view of the beating Paul and Silas endured in Acts 16. As outlined above, citizenship and public flogging were mutually exclusive categories in Roman thinking. The physical beating of slaves, however, was an accepted social reality.
Jennifer Glancy, in an illuminating study of the relationship between whipping and social status, finds that “[t]he scars of a first-century body instantiate relationships of power, of legal status (freeborn, freed, or enslaved), of domination and submission, of honor and shame.” She argues, in turn, for “a semiotic distinction between a breast pierced by a sword and a back welted by a whip.”[12] Scars left from wounds suffered in battle are marks of honor—in the words of Plutarch, “inscribed images of excellence and manly virtue” (Mor. 331C). Scars from a beating have an entirely different socio-symbolic resonance.
Public flogging in antiquity was essentially a status degradation ritual, so that “any free person who was whipped or struck suffered an injury to honor far in excess of whatever temporary pain or permanent mark was inflicted.”[13] More to the point in the present connection, public beating in the Roman world was typically associated with the institution of slavery. Consider Apuleius’ description of a group of rural slaves encountered by his protagonist:
Good, gods, what scrawny little slaves there were! Their skin was everywhere embroidered with purple welts from their many beatings. Their backs, scarred from floggings, were shaded, as it were, rather than actually covered by their torn patchwork garments (Met. 9.12).[14]
Glancy summarizes: “whipping, which brings dishonor to the one who is whipped, is suitable only for slaves, so one who is whipped, even if legally free, warrants description as servile.”[15]
The parallel between Jesus “assuming the form of a slave” in Philippians 2:7—the only place in his letters where Paul uses doulos to describe Christ—and the flogging of Paul and Silas in Acts 16:22–23 now becomes readily transparent. Like Christ in Paul’s grand narrative, the missionaries in Acts 16 did not regard their citizen franchise as “something to be exploited” (Phil. 2:6, nrsv) but, instead, assumed what was tantamount to slave status in order to preserve the integrity of the gospel. It is little wonder that Paul, in another context, calls his scars “the marks of Jesus branded on my body” (Gal. 6:17; cf. 2 Cor. 11:24–25).
After the beating, Paul and Silas reach the nadir of their decline in honor and status, when they are imprisoned and have their feet fastened in stocks (Acts 16:23–24). Jesus, on his part, experiences the utter public humiliation of crucifixion in the Philippian narrative (“even to death on a cross” [2:8]).[16]
But God did not leave Paul and Silas in the darkness of a prison in Roman Philippi, at the mercy of their Roman accusers. Nor did God leave Jesus in the darkness of a tomb on the outskirts of Jerusalem. In each case God vindicated his servants’ selfless attitude toward status and authority by means of a striking reversal of status.
It was not long before Paul and Silas had the magistrates apologizing to them and begging them to leave the colony (Acts 16:38–39).
It was not long before Jesus rose from the dead. And it will not be long before he will return, and every sentient being—angels, demons, and human beings alike—will publicly acknowledge that “Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11).
The message to God’s leaders is crystal-clear: God ultimately honors those among his followers who use their resources—social status, authority, gifts, education, finances—in the service of others, even if this involves relinquishing these privileges and temporarily suffering the consequences. Any Pauline theology of servant leadership must begin here. For this, in a nutshell, is what it meant for Paul to lead like Jesus.
Leadership Significance
Later in his letter Paul instructed the Philippians, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us” (3:17). The charge is given to the church as a whole, of course, but adopting a Pauline approach to status and power has special application to those who occupy positions of authority in the community. Perhaps this is why Paul greeted church leaders by title only in Philippians (“overseers and deacons” [1:1]). The imitation theme surfaces several times in the apostle’s letters. At least twice it appears in conjunction with Paul’s willingness to forego his own rights as an apostle in the service of others (1 Cor. 10:33–11:1; 2 Thess. 3:7–9).
The practical implications of leading like Paul are manifold. Such an approach to ministry might find application in something as mundane and symbolic as repainting the church parking lot, so that a reserved spot marked “Pastor” no longer exists. Or it might involve something much more significant, such as forgoing the right to a paycheck from the church, as Paul did with the Corinthians (1 Cor. 9:6–18). Imitating Paul might even lead to a difficult sacrifice of status within the congregation itself—such as sharing the pulpit with another leader whom God has clearly gifted to teach. Indeed, giving away the ministry may be at the very heart of servant leadership, as it works itself out in day-to-day church life.
Paul seemed to think so, at any rate. We read in Ephesians that to do the work of the ministry is not to keep the ministry to oneself—it is to equip others to do the ministry (4:12). When I see God raising up another gifted leader in my church, I would do well to adopt the attitude John the Baptizer took toward Jesus: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
Consider the example of Barnabas. The church at Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch to tend to the “great number” of Gentiles who had believed and “turned to the Lord” (Acts 11:21–22). In response to Barnabas’ pastoral oversight, Luke tells us that “a great many people were added to the Lord” (v. 24). Had Barnabas kept the ministry to himself, he could have been the first senior pastor of a Gentile megachurch. Barnabas, however, had a give-away attitude toward his role and authority as a leader. He immediately recruited Paul from Tarsus to share the ministry with him in Antioch (v. 25). “For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people” (v. 26). By the time we get to Acts 13, several other men have now joined Paul and Barnabas as church leaders: “Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul” (13:1).
An Authority Crisis [17]
The notion of other-centered leadership, of not viewing one’s authority as “something to be exploited” for personal gain and the attention of others (Phil. 2:6, nrsv), has fallen on hard times in some circles today. Recent decades have seen numbers of nationally known pastors step down from their roles as church leaders because of authority abuse and other self-serving practices. And the issues are not limited to high-profile public figures. Similar problems with the exercise of spiritual authority manifest themselves in many of our local churches.
The reasons are not hard to discern. The family has been in crisis in America for more than a generation. More and more young men, gifted and called to the ministry, are coming to seminary from highly troubled homes. Lacking “the relational straw to make bricks,” so to speak, they attract crowds on Sunday with their rhetorical abilities, but they often hurt those with whom they serve in the more intimate settings of leadership development and staff relations.
And the problem is not limited to the Christian community. The secular business community currently recruits its leaders from the same dysfunctional family backgrounds. Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries traces narcissistic, abusive leadership in the corporate sector directly to emotional deprivation in childhood:
The degree of encouragement and frustration children experience as they grow up and begin to measure the boundaries of their personalities has a lasting influence on their perception of themselves and others and the relationships they form throughout their lives. Any imbalance between their feelings of helplessness and the degree of protective nurturing they receive from their parents will be felt as a psychological injury. An inappropriate level of frustration, arising from their environment, handling, or ability to cope with discipline, will feed their natural sense of impotence, and they will commonly respond with feelings of rage, a desire for vengeance, a hunger for personal power, and compensatory fantasies of omnipotence. This dynamic continues throughout life, and if it is not adequately resolved within individuals as they grow up, it is likely to be reactivated with devastating effect when they reach leadership positions and learn to play the game of power.[18]
The “devastating effect” to which Kets de Vries refers manifests itself primarily in a leader’s relationship with subordinates:
One of a leader’s most important roles is to be aware of and to accommodate the emotional needs of subordinates. Leaders driven by excessive narcissism typically disregard their subordinates’ legitimate needs and take advantage of their loyalty. This type of leader is exploitative, callous, and overcompetitive, and frequently resorts to excessive use of depreciation. This behavior fosters submissiveness and passive dependency, stifling the critical function of subordinates.[19]
The above description of narcissistic leadership is, of course, directly at odds with what we have seen of Barnabas in Acts 11, Paul in Acts 16, and Jesus in Philippians 2. Yet we encounter precisely this kind of narcissism surfacing in our churches, with a correspondingly “devastating effect” on the lives of subordinates and others in an abusive leader’s social orbit. My office at Talbot School of Theology has become a clearinghouse, in recent years, for persons who have been on the receiving end of emotional abuse by pastors and others in church leadership.
Compounding the problem is the fact that narcissism and public leadership tend to be mutually attractive. As Kets De Vries asserts, “[I]t is only to be expected that many narcissistic people, with their need for power, prestige, and glamour, eventually end up in leadership positions.”[20] This means that a disproportionate number of our leaders, vis-à-vis the general population, are poorly equipped to work with others in healthy, mutually encouraging ways.
These tendencies would seem to call for some checks and balances in our churches, so that we can help our leaders use their power in appropriately selfless, nurturing ways. Unfortunately, the institutional approach to church ministry characteristic of much of American evangelicalism has nothing to offer in this regard.
For Paul the metaphor of the church as a family was no theological abstraction. As it turns out, a hierarchical model of ministry—where a sole or senior pastor figure functions as a CEO, supported by a theologically unsophisticated corporate board of directors (elders or deacons), who are more interested in numerical growth and financial solvency than healthy relations among church leaders—proves to be a breeding ground for precisely the kind of unhealthy, narcissistic leadership that Kets De Vries describes, above.
What are we to do? Kets De Vries traces narcissistic leadership to unhealthy family relationships. The cure, it would seem, is just the opposite: healthy family relationships.
Sadly, we cannot give emotionally challenged pastors and seminarians a second childhood, though we should certainly do what we can to help our students become self-aware of relational blind spots generated by an unhealthy families of origin. There is another family, however, that offers great promise for encouraging church leaders to lead like Jesus (Phil. 2) and Paul (Acts 16). That family is the family of God.
For Paul the metaphor of the church as a family was not theological. It was a social reality that the apostle personally experienced on a daily basis, in the context of deep and meaningful relationships with both his coworkers and his converts. And Paul’s relational approach to leadership was intentional. Paul knew very well that the best way to encourage a Christlike use of power and authority is for a leader to minister in community with others, where there are relational checks and balances.
There are, of course, no guarantees that anyone will lead like Jesus in the broken, sin-stained world in which we live. But a model of leadership that finds a pastor sharing life and ministry with fellow leaders and congregants will go a long way to encourage the proper exercise of authority in our local churches.
The next chapter examines Paul’s relationships with his coworkers and converts in some detail, from Acts and Paul’s letters. If you imagine Paul to be a lone-ranger, a towering super-leader who alone took the gospel to the Gentiles, and who alone suffered severely for his faithfulness to Jesus, prepare yourself for a profound course correction. In marked contrast to popular views of the apostle, we will discover that throughout his ministry Paul served his Savior deeply imbedded in community with fellow leaders and converts alike. For to serve in relationship with others was an indispensable part of what it meant for Paul the apostle to be a minister of the gospel. [Benjamin K Forrest (2018). (p. 421). Biblical Theology for the Church: Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader. Retrieved from https://app.wordsearchbible.com]
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