Personality takes a back seat

"Put not your trust in princes" ... or in pastors. Everyone needs to be responsible to someone. When the personality of the preacher is the center of the church, the fallibility of that preacher - and we are all fallible - is the weakness of the church. Skye Jethani writing at Out of Ur about the "Church Celebrity Deathmarch":

The spring issue of Leadership includes an interview with the pastoral team at The Next Level Church in Denver. After building a booming church around the dynamic gifts of a senior pastor, TNL imploded. The senior pastor/preacher left amid controversy and the church’s attendance dropped like Wiley Coyote from a cliff. In the aftermath, the remaining pastors reorganized TNL sans senior pastor. They’ve opted for a team approach with leaders sharing equal authority and responsibility. ....

Other young church leaders are forgoing the traditional senior pastor model. They prefer a flattened structure with shared responsibility where a team, rather then an individual, has the steering wheel. Thus no one achieves celebrity status in the congregation. .... The reason is linked to the scary rate of failure seen among senior pastors. ....

Having a single “face with the place,” a senior pastor who fills the pulpit and whose personality permeates the entire congregation, has been the popular model for evangelicals, but these ecclesial celebrities crash and burn at a rate greater than a sub-Saharan airline. As Gray points out, the problem is the system and not just the pastors. So many younger evangelicals are seeking churches liberated from the celebrity death spiral. ....

In my area we are seeing a striking number of younger evangelicals move toward high-church traditions—particularly Anglican. .... At first glance one might see this as being completely out of phase with the trend outlined above. After all, high church traditions are all about structure and hierarchy. There are priests, and bishops, and even archbishops.

But a closer examination reveals that this trend may also be coming from the same discontentment with personality-driven congregations. Anglican worship is built on a time-honored liturgy that emphasizes prayer, Scripture, and the Eucharist. While preaching is certainly present, the preacher and his/her personality does not dominate corporate worship. The same could be said of the worship leader. Personality takes a backseat to tradition.

Similarly, while some churches are trying to minimize risk through a team structure, high-church traditions protect congregations from the failures of a single leader through a hierarchy that stretches far above the local church. This is one example where the much-derided denomination still has an advantage over non-denominational churches. [the article]

Each form of polity has advantages and disadvantages. Hierarchy is not insurance against error - a hierarchical structure can make things worse - decentralization can be insurance against corruption of various kinds. But giving too much attention and authority to any individual is asking for trouble - we each need to be under authority.

Church Celebrity Deathmatch | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders