Churches Need Fathers

For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. (1 Corinthians 4:15)

A chance remark by one of my younger staff members a while back caught me by surprise. She relayed to me how she described my ministry to some first-time guests to our church. “He’s fatherly,” she told them.

I wondered at first if she meant I was old enough to need help in a few areas that, well, older people sometimes need help in. Like climbing the many stairs around our church (not true), using social media (also not true) or hearing clearly when soft-spoken people talk to me (true). Only later did I realize that she was describing my approach to church leadership as personal. In other words, as a spiritual father. And to that charge I’m happy to plead guilty.

The leadership style of many biblical figures was that of a spiritual father. For example, the Old Testament prophet Eli raised up the prophet Samuel as a child in his own home, calling him, “my son.” The apostle Paul called his young associate Timothy “my true son in the faith” as he encouraged him to emulate his own example. The apostle John addressed the people in his congregation as “my little children” because of his deep parental love for them.

Those phrases weren’t just terms of endearment. They identified the basic way leaders in the Bible understood their role. Just as earthly fathers protect their children from harm even as they challenge them to grow into maturity, so spiritual fathers like Samuel, Paul, John and others worked toward the same goals for the people entrusted into their care.

“Father” isn’t the only word for spiritual leadership in the Bible. Sometimes, leaders are compared with shepherds. That’s what’s going on in John 21:16 when the resurrected Jesus tells Peter to “feed my sheep.” In Acts 20:17, the Apostle Paul calls the leaders of the church at Ephesus “elders.” Later in the chapter, in Acts 20:28, Paul addresses the same leaders by another name, “overseers.”

The one word “father” wraps all the other words into a single image. Not that there aren’t specific giftings and responsibilities that go with different church offices; but in a general way, from guiding to teaching to protecting to providing to oversight to leading, the various New Testament functions of pastoral leadership come together in a unified vision with the notion of spiritual fatherhood.

But for many American pastors spiritual fatherhood is a distant goal, if it’s a goal at all. Instead, we’ve adopted styles more in keeping with cultural expectations.

For example, some pastors today use the word “professional” to describe themselves. By virtue of their education, training and standards they want to be thought of in the same way as other professionals in our society. Like doctors, lawyers or teachers.

I learned this model for pastoral leadership in my seminary education. The text book in my first class had the daunting title of “Profession: Minister!” While at the time I was excited to join the ranks of professional ministers, I’ve learned since that pastors aren’t professionals, not by a long shot. We’re instead God-called, Holy Spirit-led servants of Jesus whose ambition is to love, serve, sacrifice, lead and care for God’s people.

It would have saved me a lot of grief later on if the first book I read in seminary instead had been John Piper’s more biblical perspective on ministry, “Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.” His prayer in that book should be on the lips of every pastor who longs for something more than just joining the ranks of professionals:

Banish professionalism from our midst, Oh God, and in its place put passionate prayer, poverty of spirit, hunger for God, rigorous study of holy things, white-hot devotion to Jesus Christ, utter indifference to all material gain, and unremitting labor to rescue the perishing, perfect the saints, and glorify our sovereign Lord. Humble us, O God, under your mighty hand, and let us rise, not as professionals, but as witnesses and partakers of the sufferings of Christ.

Other pastors view themselves through the lens of American corporate life. In this model, the pastor’s job is to manage a religious organization and lead it to expand its clientele and influence, just like secular companies do only with a religious flavor.

I believe this has become a dominant model of church leadership in many circles. It’s easy to understand why. Since a church is composed of different sub-systems like membership, mission, budget, communication, facilities and staff, a pastor can easily drift into the notion that his job is to lead all these areas as Chief Executive Officer.

Pastors who lead this way believe their chief task is to manage programs that grow attendance and lead to even more people involved in more programs. The bottom line for pastoral leadership is the same as for any secular business executive: if you have more people attending your church this year than last—and more dollars—then you’ve succeeded.

Another model of pastoral ministry is when the pastor takes on the role of Champion—for one cause or another. What often follows is that he becomes so agenda driven that he loses sight of his own people. I’ve seen many such agendas down through the years. Morality, politics, social issues, denominational changes—there’s no shortage of urgent, painful and immoral conditions in America that cry out for attention. And we pastors can’t ignore them. But our main thing must always be Jesus’ call on our lives to care for his people. When we lose sight of that central task, we lose our biblical identity, the purpose of our calling and the source of our spiritual authority.

Then there’s the celebrity pastor. I know that there are many different definitions of celebrity pastor, most of them involving size of church, social media influence, personal wealth, voice in the larger community, speaking engagements at conferences and number of books sold. But I think a better definition might be this: a celebrity pastor is a pastor who uses his church as a platform for building his personal brand. In other words, this approach to church leadership is more about the pastor than his church.

I have to confess that from time to time I’ve lapsed into one or more of these styles of pastoral leadership. It’s hard not to because congregations are often so enmeshed in secular understandings of leadership that they expect their pastors to function in the same way. And congregational expectations are a powerful thing. But now that I’m older and less moved by people’s approval than I used to be, I understand that the leadership I’m called to provide for my church is spiritual and the best way I can provide that kind of leadership is to accept my role as a spiritual father.

The word “father” today has so many shades of meaning that it’s hard for many people to understand what it means. For those who have painful memories or present experience with absent, manipulative or abusive fathers, the notion of pastors as spiritual fathers may be hard to deal with. And, to be sure, there are examples of power-hungry or perverse pastors who abuse their role and manipulate or even groom those in their charge. That grieves me deeply, as it does all responsible ministers. So let me be clear. For a pastor to relate to his congregation as a spiritual father isn’t to assume a position of power, prestige, manipulation, or the right to coerce others to your point of view.

Instead, it’s to take on a spirit of humility and a willingness to sacrificially serve those who have been placed in our care. It’s personal, authentic, rich, fulfilling and biblical. It’s also counter-cultural to much of the religious culture we live in as well as to the secular culture that surrounds us.

In today’s environment of declining membership, failing denominations and dysfunctional congregations, we pastors need to abandon the leadership styles that helped bring us into the sorry state we find ourselves in. It’s obvious by now that we’re not called to be CEOs, celebrities, champions or professionals.

We’re called to be fathers.

This essay is an edited form of a previous article.