CRANMER'S TAKE ON 'GROWING LEADERS'

Cranmer’s Curate has noticed in the past few years an increase in the number of Evangelical conferences aimed specifically at ‘growing leaders’ who can ‘multiply ministries'.

He would date the increase in these leader-targeted conferences from the UK tour in early 2003 of the Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen.

These are quite dynamic-sounding events so your curate is in a sense honoured to be included in the mailings. But the fact that he has definitely had more of them since 2003 has caused him to ponder the nature of the pastoral calling.

The Ordinal according to the Book of Common Prayer describes those ordained priest as ‘messengers, watchmen, and stewards of the Lord’ charged with the responsibility ‘to teach and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lord’s family; to seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever’.

Remarkably absent from this is any reference to the priest being a leader or ruler of Christ’s Church. Does that mean that Cranmer did not believe that those ordained priest were to be leaders in the sense that the organisers of these Evangelical conferences understand the term?

That would be to over-state the case. Certainly, some kind of leadership role is implied in the way Cranmer describes the office of the priest – it is a pro-active role involving real responsibility, hence later on in the bishop’s exhortation Cranmer describes Christ’s people as being committed to the priest’s ‘charge’.

Certainly, the New Testament speaks of ministers of the Word as having authority. Cranmer’s Curate does not wish to flash his limited knowledge of New Testament Greek but in 1 Thessalonians 5v12, when the church is urged to ‘respect those who labour among you and are over you in the Lord and who admonish you’ (RSV), the word translated ‘over you’ does denote authority.

Indeed both the Ordering of Priests and the Consecration of Bishops in the Ordinal speak of the 'authority' given to the priest or bishop by virtue of the fact that they are called to proclaim God's Word.

So Cranmer as a Bible-believing Christian clearly believed that ministers of Word and Sacrament had a responsibility to lead God’s people, but he does not explicitly call the priest or the bishop a leader or a ruler because he is giving due weight to the main biblical terms used to describe the pastoral office.

Cranmer thus teaches us that the idea of being a leader or a ruler of God’s people is not to feature too much in the self-understanding of those called to be ministers of Word and Sacrament. If it does, then problems can arise due to our fallen natures.

Your curate wonders about the dynamic of an army of apprentices trailing around after a celebrated Evangelical leader in a mega-church or a church plant. It is surely not only ministers addicted to the hand-holding model of ministry who can be guilty of ministering to their own needs.

Your curate also wonders about the dynamic involved in the emphasis on ‘growing leaders’. Unfortunately, in practice the ‘leaders’ being grown are often not leaders at all, but constitute a fan-club and in some cases henchmen for The Leader.

In questioning this heavy emphasis on leadership in the missives he has been receiving, your curate is not advocating the post-modern notion of consensus management with its endless talk of listening. The very thought makes his stomach churn. In practice, ‘consensus’ means he or usually she who shouts loudest gets their way on the church council or the lowest common factor is pandered to. That is not good enough for a great God.

But Cranmer’s Curate wonders whether the current emphasis on ‘growing Evangelical leaders’ who will ‘run the church’ and 'multiply ministries' as the solution to the weakness of UK Christianity owes a little more to the world than to the Word.