ken wilson online

Young pastor, prepare thyself for the not-so-local church. You grew up, perhaps, in a local church, or you were drawn to pastoral ministry through your experience in a local church (if not, get thee to one pronto, unless you plan to give away what you haven’t experienced). You may have been to seminary and taken classes on leadership in the local church–teaching, managing budgets, working with boards, and all that. These leadership classed may have been based on the assumption that the local church is led by local leaders. But the local church has changed, and it has changed rapidly and dramatically. It’s not so local anymore. And that means that you, pastor, aspiring or actual, are not in the same position of leadership that pastors once were. You will find within the local church, the powerful influence of leaders you don’t know and will never meet, some of whom you admire at a distance, others who make your skin crawl, and here’s the kicker, most of whom work at cross purposes with each other.

I refer of course to leaders as powerful and as disparate as James Dobson, Mark Driscoll, Rob Bell, Phyllis Schaffly, Tony Perkins, Jim Wallis, Joyce Meyer, Ken Hamm, Francis Collins, Brian McClaren, Todd Bentley, James MacArthur….well you’re pickin’ up what I’m layin’ down. People get their leadership from many sources these days, and the sources don’t lead in the same direction, and the sources offer different prescriptions curing different diseases, based on different diagnosis’ of symptoms that admit of several explanations, most of them present to one degree or another in what you like to think is a local church.

You receive emails from people who have been listening to your sermons through ears informed by the influence of these other leaders. Some of the things you say in your sermons are things which have been commended by some of these leaders and condemned by others. Some of the leaders provide their followers with ingeniously crafted strategies for how to convince you otherwise of things you believe, how to move you along the change process, how to prevent you from leading everyone and everything to hell in the hand basket of your leadership.

It’s always been the case in every local church that leaders not so local have had a voice. Check out the letters of Paul and how often he references the effects of different leaders on congregations that he likes to think of as “his”–meaning ones he fathered in Christ. So this is not new, it’s just more so. More so with the advent of cheap books back when the paperback was invented. More so with the advent of the radio. More so with the invention of the television. And now, mega more so with the Internet and the blogosphere and twenty four hour God-TV.

All right then, what are you to do? Try to batten down the hatches so yours is the only voice they listen to? Good luck in that endeavor. And should you succeed, we’ll keep an eye out for you on the cult-watch sites.

Strap on your gospel shoes and walk as though through a minefield at midnight, humbly, and trusting in your God. If I can think of any other advice on this one, I’ll offer it.  But don’t hold your breath.

Tags: brian mcclaren, change, church, controversy, criticism, francis collins, Internet, james dobson, james macarthur, jim wallis, joyce meyers, ken hamm, leadership, pastor, seminary, todd bentley

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 12:02 pm and is filed under advice to young pastors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.