The Progressive Wing of the LCMS loves the word “leadership.” Get ready to hear that word a lot more as the LCMS political season heats up in anticipation of our convention and election. To the Progressive Wing, leadership is virtually a sacrament. They use this word as an incantation more than they say the name “Jesus.” It carries the freight of a successful business venture, and safely removes its advocates from the embarrassing situation of being a pastor, theologian, or churchman. And when combined with ditching the clerical garb of the Lutheran pastor, and getting rid of the liturgy and hymnody of the Church, it leads to opportunities for acceptance by, and advancement in, the world. It is secular newspeak, argot for the Secular Man.

To be clear, while leadership is overrated, it is certainly not a bad thing. And to learn leadership skills, one can join the military. They are very good at teaching leadership. If you don’t want to join the military, you can join the Air Force Auxiliary (Civil Air Patrol) as a civilian volunteer, and receive all the benefits of leadership training. Another path to learning leadership is membership in the Project Management Institute (PMI). They offer an international credential as a Project Management Professional (PMP). Both of these are valuable endeavors. I’ve been a PMP for eight years. I’ve been a CAP volunteer for five years. I recommend both for more than just the leadership training and praxis. That said, I’ve been a pastor for eighteen years, and pastoral leadership is not the same as military or corporate leadership. And you cannot shoe-horn the pastoral office into the role of officer or manager. The Office of the Holy Ministry is sui generis.

It is pathetic to hear men who have been given the gift of the call and ordination into ministry in Christ’s Church yammer on using business buzzwords more befitting that of a CEO of a company that manufactures widgets than that of a shepherd of the Church of Jesus Christ who saves souls.

These church leadership fetishists always fall back on more corporate buzzwords, like best practices, mission statements, and vision-casing rather than quoting Scripture and the Creeds and Confessions of the Church.

In the Old Testament, nearly every use of the word “leader” refers to political leadership rather than ecclesiastical - especially in the Old Testament’s approximately twenty uses of the word.

Jesus uses the word “leader” (ἡγούμενος) in the context of leading the church as a servant (Luke 22:26). St. Luke refers to Jesus as “leader” (ἀρχηγὸν) appointed by God (Acts 5:31). The Book of Hebrews uses the word “leaders” (ἡγουμένων) three times, and in all cases, commanding the people to “remember” (13:7), “obey” (13:17), and “greet” (13:24) them. Hebrews gives more instructions regarding followership than leadership.

I think a key to actual biblical leadership is found in Psalm 23, where the word “leader” is not used, but rather “shepherd” (23:1). The Latin title of this Psalm is Dominus Regit Me (literally, the Lord rules me). The idea of shepherding as a specific kind of leadership applicable to pastors is built into the very word “pastor” - Latin for “shepherd.” The model for actual pastoral leadership is not the CEO, the hipster buzzword factory, the general, the politician, or the quarterback. A pastor is a pastor, a shepherd. That is a very different kind of leader.

Another biblical clue is in the words used to describe the pastoral ministry in the New Testament: overseers (KJV: bishops) (ἐπισκόποις) and elders (or presbyters (πρεσβύτεροι). The former title is one of oversight or supervision, it is the hierarchical polity of the church in her catholicity that our reformers sought to continue (they were not able to in Germany, but were able to in Scandinavia). See Ap 14:24:

It is our greatest wish to maintain church-polity and the grades in the Church [old church-regulations and the government of bishops], even though they have been made by human authority.

Episcopal polity is not something you hear much about among the Best Practices advocates.

The latter word, presbyter, refers to the pastor as elder, as one to be obeyed like a father. To most of the leadership crowd in the LCMS, they would be most uncomfortable being addressed as “Father” and having that kind of leadership over the congregation.

The word “leader” appears a couple times in the Tappert translation of the Book of Concord, and it is referring to civil and ecclesiastical government rather than the kind of thing being advocated by the Leadership Cult.

Another part of our Lutheran tradition is our hymnody. The word “leader” appears three times in LSB: 672, 718, and 861. In all three cases, the leader is Jesus. LSB has 49 uses of “lead,” two uses of “leadeth,” and four uses of “leading.” In every case, the subject of the verb is Christ.

To take our cue from the Bible and the confessions, we need first and foremost to submit to Jesus, as His Lordship causes our pastoral leadership to pale by comparison. We are disciples, followers of the Christ. The advocates of Leadership just seldom talk about Jesus. As one of my colleagues worded it watching one of their videos:

I played a drinking game for every time they said, "Leadership" (take a sip). I have now destroyed 22 livers and put several Total Wines out of business. Then I counted the times they mentioned Jesus and I turned into a skeleton waiting...

We don’t need the world’s wisdom in the Church. We need Jesus, our Good Shepherd. We need pastors (shepherds) armed with the crook and the sling to manfully beat back false prophets and to protect the flock. Pastors need to be blunt and courageous. We don’t need effeminate advocates of hipster fads. We need the Scriptures and authentic worship. We need pastors to be proclaimers of the Word and celebrants of the sacraments. We need churchmen, not CEOs. And we need disciples: men and women who are willing to follow Jesus no matter the cost. We shepherds need to constantly preach the Gospel, let the Scriptures guide us, let the Confessions norm us, and let the resurrection of the body and life everlasting be our hope.

The world is not our friend. This world is fallen. The world is doomed to destruction by fire. The pastor’s job is to shepherd the flock, drag those who have fallen out of the pit, and as St. Paul bids us in 1 Tim 4:16:

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

So yes, pastors can learn leadership skills, like time management, planning, and people skills. Those are all fine as far as they go. But what we really need is what we have always needed: faithful shepherds and faithful flocks who follow Christ, our Good Shepherd. And that is the work of the Holy Spirit, not a best practice one learns while pursuing an MBA.