LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Assignment Title: Honor Culture among Christian leaders
Course: CHMN 699 - Internship
Student: Kristine Sage
Date: January 29, 2022
Professor: Dr. Joel Breidenbaugh
Honour Culture among Christian leaders
A common mistake is made in how we view Christian leaders. They are often perceived as the
people up the front who have it all together, with everyone else aspiring to be like them but always
falling short. This can be both explicit and implicit. An extension of this is seeing such people as being
the ones who mediate God’s vision and aspirations for the community, thus the vision and the
aspirations of the people at the top become the thing that all others serve. In a number of churches of
all sizes and across traditions this attention is often focused towards one person for varying reasons.
Therefore, a danger exists that the vocation of the average congregational individual undertaken outside
of the institution is given less value through the messaging of the inner culture of that institution. In
such a model the visionary leader’s wellbeing becomes paramount to the success of the institution. An
alternative vision for the Christian minister is to understand that they have found their way to the foot
of the cross and are to embrace the role of showing others the way. This involves vulnerability rather
than perfection.
Since the inception of Arise, a large degree of authority seems to have resided in the hands of one
person. Again, this is not unique to Arise and nor is it a feature of only large churches. For Arise it was
written into the original trust deed in a manner that resulted in what many believe had been a board
without the governance ability that would usually be expected. Because of this, questions could rightly
be asked about whether accountability and healthy friction were able to flourish as they need to for the
good of a community and for the good of those who guide the congregation.
It is a cultural feature of many such churches that the senior pastor is the seat of God’s vision for
the local church and thus most worthy of honour in the eyes of others. Many who see this as
problematic might seek to lay sole blame for this at the feet of senior leaders, but it is a complex system
that leads to and enables the issue. This approach is reinforced through theological understandings,
constant messaging, and in conjunction within a wider community of similar church cultures.
The public picture shows that the result of this in the case of Arise has probably been a culture of
entitlement where some of those with power felt able to use others for their own gain whether or not
they understood that was what they were doing. No doubt this has felt justified in many ways.
One possible cause of this is a problem that appears in wider church culture where, too often,
charisma is valued over character with charisma being that which draws crowds. When the numbers of
people present and increasing budgets are the chief targets, charisma is prized. The risks inherent in this
can be seen in the litany of global stories of church leaders with high levels of charisma who have
succumbed to abuses of their power and been found wanting when it comes to their depth of spiritual
formation and character. In every instance of such occurrences, the fallout is significant.
Feeding into and flowing from this, is a culture of celebrity where being known and cultivating the
perfect image is highly valued. It shapes a context where people fawn over those in the church
environment who are viewed as celebrities. Those on the lower rungs of the power ladder aspire to be
known by those at the top and aim to be like them. Those on the bottom will often go out of their way
to impress those at the top; to be known by them and seen with them. It creates an exclusive club
where access is coveted. In some Christian circles that exclusive club is full of musicians, pastors, book
writers, and others who occupy roles that get a lot of attention. This adulation often leads to some with
significant status in the community believing the hype and feeling entitled to their perceived pedestal
and the benefits that come with it. It is likely they won’t perceive it like this. It feeds personal egos and
those egos then engage in ongoing mutual affirmation. It justifies the forcible removal of disagreeable
voices and the mistreatment of subordinates. It results in those with ‘celebrity’ often not seeing the hurt
they cause in the lives of others. It can be a jarring experience when the hurt is revealed, leading to
varying responses from those with status, some of which magnifies the fallout.
In his book In the Name of Jesus, Nouwen lists the three big temptations of Christian leadership as
wanting to be relevant, spectacular, and powerful. We create reasons as to why all three are not only
fine, but necessary in service to the Gospel. We create environments that affirm the pursuit of these
things. He lists the antidotes to these as contemplative prayer, confession and forgiveness, and
theological reflection.[25] In what some leaders have allegedly pursued and modelled to others, it seems
that parts of Arise may have fallen to all three temptations. Where being relevant, spectacular and
powerful are pursued in church settings there always exists a large number of broken people in the
wake of them. This is not reflective of the way of Jesus.
Church as Business
If we misunderstand what the church is, it is easy to then misalign priorities and adopt ways of
being that do not reflect a biblical understanding of the community of the faithful. Arise, like many
others seeking techniques for growth, may have often prioritised a way of being that is more reflective
of a business than a community – pursuing numerical growth, ongoing expansion, money, prestige, and
influence.
Where a business model is prioritised in the local church context, Church has been corporatised.
In this model, seen in a number of churches, the leader has more in common with a CEO than a pastor
nurturing people towards Christlikeness, which in turn justifies a large salary and various monetary
rewards. Learning leadership principles and practices then often becomes more critical to those in
authority than prayer, reading scripture, and providing spiritual guidance. The pressure to drive growth
as a primary outcome can be immense. It is their job to formulate and push vision, mission, and strategy
– to ensure the measurable success of the organisation. As Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan put it
in their book, The Pastor as Public Theologian, pastors are all too often “exchanging their vocational
birthright for a bowl of lentil stew: management skills, strategic plans, leadership courses, therapeutic
techniques, and so forth.”[26] As part of his research on relevant issues, New Zealand minister, Joseph
McAuley reflects on Vanhoozer and Strachan’s work, stating that pastors should embrace their call (or
‘vocational birth right’) as public theologians – those who open up the Scriptures to help people
understand God, the world and the human condition in a manner that causes the hearts of congregants
to “burn within.”[27] [28]
In a business the vision, mission, strategy, and brand are paramount, as are those who drive it
forward. Where personal drive is prized, the damage of people is often excused as being inevitable in
the movement towards success; broken people are seen as acceptable collateral damage within the
bigger picture.[29] In a business model, success is determined by measurables – number of ‘converts’,
level and frequency of attendance at events, money given, properties purchased, social media
engagement and the like. Vision, mission, and strategy are not inherently bad as they can provide
direction for a community, but when they take primacy of focus in the church setting and their success is
determined by easy measurables like attendance numbers and dollars, they can be detrimental to the
life and rhythms of the church as a community of people. Sadly, in a business focused model, one of the
jewels of the Christian faith, the Bible, is robbed of its nuance and colour as it is often scoured primarily
for leadership principles and other ways to gain ‘success’ in life.
The Church has a different way of operating. In the words of Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer:
‘The Gospel invades our achievement-oriented, meritocratic world – where success is measured by
accomplishments and numbers – and it says no, no, no. It says success is not measured by numbers. It
says pastors and churches have an entirely different agenda – namely, helping others grow in
Christlikeness. This is a lifelong process and pursuit, and we are all at different points along the way. It is
a process based on love, not on business management or leadership principles… The pastor’s calling and
the church’s calling are to nurture people into Christoformity – to nurture people into tov [a deep and
rich goodness that speaks of life]… Growing in Christlikeness stands in stark contrast to an achievement
culture measured by numbers, power, prestige, and money. It is a constant temptation for churches and
pastors to be drawn away from a Christlike culture and sucked into the culture of the world.’[30]
In contrast to a business model, to further quote McKnight and Barringer, ‘…the entire mission of
the church and its pastors [is] to become like Christ and nurture others to become like Christ.’ How
might the culture of Arise change if the whole focus, and everything it does, becomes directed towards
Christlikeness; towards discipleship and spiritual formation? Many churches have a focus on proclaiming
Christ, but becoming like Christ is a different, more challenging but richer journey. In Renovation of the
Church, pastors Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken bravely admit to building an enthusiastic, energetic and
growing church that was failing to see people’s lives transformed into the image of Christ. They argue
that making disciples is excruciatingly more difficult than growing a church, with discipleship being a
“wonderfully inefficient process that does not often lend itself to mass production.”[31] Nevertheless it is
a worthwhile journey and one that Arise could pursue, with Carlson and Lueken noting that “the
contrast between the transformative power of the kingdom of God and the high-pressure, frenetic,
crazy-paced life of the entrepreneurial, attractional model of church can hardly be overstated.”[32] Sadly,
whilst Arise, as with many churches, seems to have strongly adopted a business framework in a number
of areas, experiences shared in the public domain show it may have failed to measure up to some basic
HR principles in the care of its people. The adoption of a business mindset and culture for how church
life is viewed seems to have detrimentally flowed into other aspects of Arise’s culture, including the gain
and use of money, excellence and performance culture, and what is now often referred to as ‘toxic
positivity’.
