About three years ago I sat down to read a book,
In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership by Henri
Nouwen, for a class I was taking at Fuller called Henri
Nouwen: A Spirituality of Imperfection. Taking the title of the class a little too seriously, I wallowed in my imperfection by procrastinating reading the book. With a review of the book due in two days I decided to try to read it in one night. After all, it was the shortest book I was ever required to read in seminary: 107 pages with large font and large margins. Armed with my usual highlighter and notepad I was ready to identify key phrases, analyze arguments, form opinions and efficiently bust out an "A" review like many I had written in the past. Little did I know how much that night would change me. I didn't get past the first few pages before I stopped reading the book and started listening to the writer. He said something startling, "I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant." I had to reread that sentence. Irrelevant?! Was that a typo? How could that be? For the past year everything I had been working on at church and thinking about at seminary had been focused on being relevant; making the gospel meaningful for the current generation; replacing old methods of doing church with new methods more important to the emerging postmodern generation. Heck, I even got a subscription to
Relevant magazine. What was Nouwen thinking? I read on. Before long my eyes began to tear up as I began to realize the truth in what the author was saying and the error in my own ways of thinking and being.
Last night, having felt somewhat confused about ministry of late, I read the book again. As it did three years ago, Nouwen's insights and illustrative stories adjusted my priorities and focus in ministry. Here is just a little of what he talks about.
Nouwen uses Jesus' temptation in the wilderness as a model for the temptations that Christian leaders of the future will face: the temptation to be relevant, the temptation to be popular, and the temptation to be powerful. His identifying these as temptations rather than goals or blessings is completely opposite of what we are often are told - not just by the world, but by the church. Some of the influences in this direction are obvious like with Joel Olsteen's books
Your Best Life Now and
Become a Better You. But some are less obvious, like this article entitled "
A New Approach to Success" in
Relevant magazine. Both, however, operate under a similar assumption, that God's desire is for His followers, and particularly leaders, to be relevant, popular, and powerful (they use softer terms like meaningful, well-networked, and influential).
Nouwen challenges this way of thinking by offering three alternative ways of living. First, through an intimate prayer life we build a firsthand knowledge of God's unconditional love for us and others that acts as an anchor when we are constantly encouraged to prove our competence. Second, by confessing our faults and forgiving those who have wounded us we remove the safe distance between ourselves and those to whom we are called to minister and keep ourselves from projecting an ego-boosting image of spiritual superiority. Third, instead of moving along a path of upward mobility that involves manipulating and controlling others while we get to where we want to go, we choose to follow Christ down a path of downward mobility full of humility and powerlessness that ends where we don't want to go.
Adopting these principles as a foundation for ministry enables the Christian leader to think with the mind of Christ. This kind of thinking - thinking modeled by Jesus - is what is needed for Christian leaders to go beyond being one of the many voices in our world "trying to help their fellow human beings cope with the stresses and strains of everyday living." It postures one to understand and proclaim all the seemingly random events of our lives as opportunities to be led deeper into the heart of Christ, a journey that ultimately ends in spiritual healing and victory.
This is a message I need to hear over and over again. The question God is asking me and asking his church is not, "What have you done for me lately?" or,"What do others think of you?" but, "Do you love me?" That is the only question that matters, and my answer to that question has nothing to do with whether I'm relevant or irrelevant, whether I'm popular or unpopular, or whether I'm powerful or powerless.
This is why I believe theology is so important. Theology is just another word for studying or knowing God. Ahead of studying church-planting strategies, creative methods of ministry or diagnosing the culture, ministers must be theologians. They need to know God - who He is and how He works in the world. Theology must never be allowed to move to the sidelines of our lives, because when it does we can easily miss the lessons God wants to teach us.
The sin of the Pharisees wasn't legalism as much as it was missing what God was doing in their midst.
