The Dreams of Distorted Leadership Leaders do not need to be "The Marlboro Man"

This is modern leadership- You're to be this rare, special, elite visionary, charting a path no one else has ever walked....and you need to bring the muddling masses of people along to that vision, as they will have noting to do without you.... 

Ideas and plans are great, and I have my share of them. However, I have come to realize I don't need to "create" an "sell" vision. The vision is Jesus, and the vision comes from Jesus. I need to do more pointing to him, as He can keep his children busy enough, if they are actually looking at him and listening.

CEO views of leadership- we have to go back to the OT, where we find these rare and special anointed figures. In the NT, we are all the anointed and our direction comes from him. What about accountability we ask,,,, Well, what about that in the NT? I'm not seeing what many are talking about.... Lately, I have been sensing that Jesus is enough. He will move us to serve others, if we are looking to serve. And we can nurture that in the body... But this "out to make a mark" smacks more of "in the eyes of men", than of Jesus. 

I want to get off the platform. I don't want people thinking I am such "Hot" servant. I think all new leaders wrestle with that, and its an ego thing, not a God thing.

I am just so glad to hear others are seeing a different path. My friends, yes, you with the huge Kingdom heart. You do not need to be this kind of leader to be "Sucessful". Share and live the vision of Jesus. His Yoke is easy, and his burden is light..... When the churches is not, you know there is a real misalignment.... Be you, as light, free to follow Jesus, and flow with him into the various relationships before you. And step out of the muddling crowed. How? By willingness to plant your light in the very dark place of this community, and world. That is the core of kingdom vision being the light of Jesus, where their is none.  You are released to be you, doing your part as you point others to His path... You need chart no path of your own. You just need to look, find darkness, and go there and love your neighbor, and keep loving God.

Your young family will thank you.

 Jesus and the Marlboro Man

Posted on November 27, 2011 by kinnon

I’ve been away from blogging for a little longer than I intended. More on that in a later post.
I originally mindmapped this post in the spring with plans to make it part of the Celebrity Driven Church series (which has multiple mindmaps but no prose as yet).

My decision to sit down and finally write this was triggered by a recent post from my blog world friend, JR Briggs. The post was about his response to the image on the right - you can see a much larger version of it at his blog. He wrote this,

I absolutely love this image.

It reminds me of the role of the leader, the visionary, the church planter, the pioneer, the entrepreneur, the kingdom fire-starer, the person with an apostolic wiring.

Visionaries do the hard work of going ahead, going before and creating paths that no one else has thought about or dared to travel . (Emphasis in original)

I asked, in the comments, whether he was being ironic. No response. So. I’m assuming he wasn’t.

The image he professes to love leaves me cold. It’s an image that fits with America’s love of the mythic super-hero. The one who saves the damsel in distress and by extension the world.

This is the myth of the rugged individual and it is one, I’d suggest, that has done more damage to the church in the west than we care to realize.

As I was lamenting JR’s post, an email from Leadership Network arrived in my InBox talking about the latest study by Thuma & Bird on Mega Churches. This bulleted point from the email reinforced the American Church Leader myth:

— The leader at the helm makes all the difference.
Seventy-nine percent say the church'€™s most dramatic growth occurred during tenure of current senior pastor.

It’s all about that one man at the top, now isn’t it. (The document tells us that these leaders are, on average, 51 and male.) As my friend Sonja said in an email exchange,

“ As I read that report all I could think was, “well, of course, most of that data is self-identified. I wonder if the surveyors did any kind of independent quantification of those markers?” That’s what you think when you’ve grown up with a statistician for a dad ”

And as I read the report, I was reminded of the saying popularized by Mark Twain, “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” And yes, I have used that one here a time or two before.

However, the original trigger for this post was Darrin Patrick’s book, Church Planter. Note the image from the front cover. The mythic pattern persists. Darrin, a leader in the Acts29 network promotes the prophet, priest and king model of church leader.

Kings develop strategies for bringing the vision and mission of Christ-centered living to fruition. They tend to ask the question How? They function like executives of the church because they spend a great deal of time and energy building and executing plans to sustain and grow a healthy church. Church Planter (Darrin Patrick) Highlight Loc. 1464–71 (Kindle)

I don’t quote Darrin approvingly. In fact, I heard this same kind of language in my charismatic mega church days and witnessed (first hand and otherwise) the kind of damage done by this warped belief to both the “kingly leader” and his subjects. (Jesus’ powerful statements on servant leadership in Matthew 20 and Mark 10 are strangely missing from Darrin’s book. ) Darrin writes a lot about the need for and qualifications of elders - but then focuses on the single person church planter/senior pastor (with hopefully a wife supporting him.)
The full title of his book is Church Planter — The Man, The Message, The Mission.
The Man and thus my concern with those who buy this message and buy the myth that they are singlehandedly called to plant God’s next great church in whatever neighbourhood.
Believing they are called to be, in J.R.’s words, visionaries (who go) ahead, going before and creating paths that no one else has thought about or dared to travel. No wonder so many of them fail.
This is far different from the Matthew and Mark passages mentioned above, as well as the equipping and sending that Jesus does in Luke 10. A hint, he sent them out in twos "into the harvest" with no resources other than prayer. The single "harvester" on the front cover of Darrin's book runs counter to what Jesus teaches in this passage. How odd.
The American church (along with its global acolytes) has bought the myth of the rugged individual as conqueror and builder,€” represented well by the iconic Marlboro Man a character created by Ad Agency, Leo Burnett. It’s a fabulous marketing image… for selling toxic substances.
A final aside: A horrible irony is that two of the men who portrayed the Marlboro Man died of cancer from consuming what their images had been promoting. (http://kinnon.tv/2011/11/jesus-and-the-marlboro-man.html)