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The Communion Liturgy at New Life Downtown

Every once awhile, I am asked what our liturgy is at New Life Downtown. Our service flow (in general) can be found HERE. But the most 'liturgical' part of the service-- i.e. the part that uses the ancient prayers, practices and sequence-- is when we come to the Lord's Table.

While I am an ordained Anglican priest, I serve as a pastor at New Life Church, a non-denominational, charismatic church, where I have been on staff for over 14 years. Fortunately, a trademark of Anglican worship is its adaptability to different contexts. 

Almost all these words are from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The only tweak I've made is in the way I announce forgiveness in the 'absolution' section. We have the band on stage during all of the below, providing a soft, worshipful bed of music. Once the invitation is given (the last section of the communion liturgy), the worship leader begins the song she has chosen for that week. From Easter to Advent, this is the longer section of musical worship, where we sing 4 songs.

Below, the bold are the 'movements' or sections of the Eucharist liturgy; the italics are an abbreviated version of the instructions I give.

-------------------------

CONFESSION (All):
Take a moment and let the Holy Spirit nudge you about ways that you can surrender, ways that you can turn away from self-reliance and toward a dependence on God. Now, let us pray this prayer together:

Most merciful God, 
We confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved You with our whole heart;
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

For the sake of Your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; 
that we may delight in Your will, and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your Name.

Amen.

[UPDATE] WORDS OF ABSOLUTION/FORGIVENESS (Me): 
May the Father of all mercies cleanse you from your sins and restore you in His image to the praise and glory of His name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

[UPDATE] THE PEACE:
The peace of the Lord be with you! Now turn to one another, and pass on the Lord's peace, speak His life and His love to one another.

EUCHARIST PRAYER:
Me:             The Lord is here
All:              His Spirit is with us.

Me:             Lift up your hearts.
All:              We lift them to the Lord.

Me:             Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
All:              It is right to give Him thanks and praise

WORDS OF INSTITUTION (Me):
On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, “Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.”

After supper he took the cup of wine; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, “Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”

MEMORIAL ACCLAMATION (All):
Christ Has Died, Christ Is Risen, Christ Will Come Again.

THE EPICLESIS-- 'Come, Holy Spirit' (Me)
Stretch your hands forwards as a Kingdom of priests:
“We pray you, gracious God, to send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts that they may be the Sacrament of the Body of Christ and his Blood of the new Covenant.” 

Lift your hands up in surrender:
“Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace; and at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.” 

THE INVITATION (Me):
“The gifts of God, given for the people of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.”

Related articles

Five Marks of a Good Liturgy

The Liturgy: What the Community Builds Together

"The New Local Church" (an article I wrote for NEUE Quarterly)

[This is an article I was asked to write for Relevant Magazine's NEUE Quarterly. This is just how the article opens. You'll need to click on the link to read the article itself!]

I didn’t want to be a pastor when I grew up.

My father is a pastor. He knows the people in his congregation. Many of them have been there since the church began fifteen years ago. He and my mom have talked and eaten and prayed and wept and laughed with these people. They don’t use software with pictures that pop up under each name to keep track of their members. They don’t need a fancy online database with barcode keycards to remember which child goes with which parent; they know those families. They’ve been in each other’s homes. My father is a pastor.

I didn’t want to be a pastor because I didn’t think I could do that. Or maybe it was because I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to achieve, to accomplish, to make my mark, to be known, to be significant, to do “great things for God.” Yes, I led small groups and met with people and enjoyed regular moments of helping people one on one learn what it means to follow Jesus. But could I spend every day doing that? I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t want to be a pastor when I grew up. Later I learned I had to grow up in order to be a pastor. I had to put away adolescent obsessions with success and the spectacular; I had to stop being fixated on efficiency and numbers, programs and systems. The lessons came as I paid attention to two men—a farmer and a pastor—who spent the majority of their lives on the margins of society....

[READ the rest of the article, published for NEUE Quarterly, HERE. You'll need to use the arrow buttons on the top left of the page to "scroll" to page 42-44 to read it.]

What the Tebow Pick Says About Leadership

I'm sitting here on a stuffy plane stuck on a runway in DFW thinking about the Denver Broncos-- another large group of frustrated people who can't get where they want to go. And I'm thinking about the Tim Tebow pick. I was excited when we traded a low pick for Brady Quinn several weeks ago and thought he might be the QB of the future. So I-- like everyone with a pulse and the ESPN channel-- was surprised by the pick. After thinking about it overnight, here's what I've decided:

Tim Tebow is a winner. He's a gifted leader whose own convictions make him outwork those he leads. He's the kind of guy that shapes the culture of a team, the atmosphere of a locker room. And in the wake of a 2-time super bowl winning QB being suspended for shameful, immoral actions (see "Ben Roethlisberger"), a leader whom players, coaches, and fans can respect is worth his weight in gold.

So, as a statement about the kind of team Coach McDaniels wants to have, and the kind of leadership it takes to get there, Tim Tebow is the right choice. Who knows? Maybe his drive for excellence and his uncanny knack for winning will carry this Bronco team to their desired destination. If only the same could be said for my grounded American Airlines flight.

Rethinking "Every Tribe and Tongue"

[The following piece was written for Worship Leader/Song Discovery Magazine. What does it mean to "take worship to the nations"? It's a complex and layered subject...one that demands more a short piece like this. But perhaps this will be enough to get the conversation started. Here's my perspective as a worship leader who's grown up on both sides of the world. This post will link to the full article at SongDiscovery.com.]

As the famous American worship leaders returned to the table with platefuls of aromatic curries and rice boiled in coconut milk, their faces wrinkled with curious interest in something other than their discoveries at the buffet line. It was the faint lines of music drifting through the humid air. The sultry notes being squeaked out on a stringed instrument defied conventional pitch. And the light tapping on small bongo-like drums had no sense of "groove" or, for that matter, time signature. 

"Why don't Malaysians write worship songs like this-in their own style?" blurted one of the Americans. Because it's awful, is what I thought....[Click HERE to read the FULL ARTICLE]

Are Worship Pastors Becoming Extinct?

 Over the past seven years, I have served as the Director of the New Life School of Worship, a 9-month program designed to train worship leaders for local churches. We believe that to effectively prepare our students for local church worship ministry they need to be trained in more than music. They need to be grounded in theology, familiar with church history, and responsible with their handling of the Scriptures. Moreover, they need to learn what it means to be a pastor: to shepherd the people under their care. 

But it seems that some churches aren't looking for that. They would prefer a musician who can lead the "singing", oversee the tech team, and produce recordings of their original songs. None of these are bad expectations, of course. But are we looking for these trade skills at the expense of other, more essential pastoral qualities? Are worship leaders simply highly skilled technicians who have a "steady gig" at a church? 

Today's worship leader may spend more time with his Macbook than with a real book. She may be more familiar with GarageBand than the people in her band. He may be better versed with directing the choir than providing spiritual direction. 

Of course, the trade side of being a worship leader and the pastoral side are not mutually exclusive. A person can be good at Pro Tools and at pastoring the people on his team. The trouble is we've lost the sacredness of the pastoral vocation. Any person who says their core role is to pray, study, and provide spiritual direction is not as "useful" to the corporation we call church. What else can you do? we ask. Then we proceed to fill so much of their time time with scheduling bands, arranging music, and working with the latest recording software that they are no longer doing any pastoral work. Musicians and singers become cogs in a wheel, things we use to fill slots. True, the administration needs to be done. And yes, musical excellence is valuable. But at what price?

Ross Parsley, the long-time worship pastor here at New Life, is fond of saying that music ministry is not about music; it's about people. Worship ministry is first a sort of a "helps" ministry that serves the Body of Christ. But more to the point, it is an excuse for us to connect with one another. Music is the table we gather around, the place where we see each other face to face, and then learn how to walk alongside one another in this life of faith.

Perhaps the question every church who hires a worship pastor-- and every aspiring worship pastor-- should answer is this: What will Jesus ask us about: the music we produced, the services we programmed? Or the people we pastored, the sheep we fed?

Take time today and think about the people on your team. Pray for them. Pick up the phone and call them. Break bread with them. Talk to them about more than the setlist. Remember your calling as a worship pastor, not a music program manager. Clear some of the clutter from your week. Maybe it's time to appoint others to do the tasks that are keeping you from your role as a shepherd. You have never met a mere mortal. Our music will not last forever; these people will.

Rethinking The Way We Worship (Reflections on Deuteronomy 12)

It is probably not surprising to you that God has an opinion about the way we worship. As is the case with so many other things, God is not only interested in our doing of a particular thing but in how we are doing it. Obedience is not just about right action or right result; it's also about right "way". Jesus was obedient, even to death on the cross. The central temptation of Jesus was to get Him to do God's work in the Devil's way. Much has been written about the three temptations Jesus faced in this regard, from Dostoevsky to Eugene Peterson.

When this principle is applied to worship, however, the discussion usually becomes about physical actions: God wants us to lift our hands, dance, clap, etc, we say. And that may be true. The one who made us just might know something about what helps engage our whole being in worship. But I read something in Deuteronomy today that made think of a few other "ways" our worship must be:

"Do not worship the Lord your God in the way these pagan peoples worship their gods." Deut. 12:4 (NLT)

The Book of Deuteronomy puts a great emphasis on avoiding idolatry. Even Deuteronomy 12 opens with an injunction to destroy pagan shrines and every trace of idolatry, echoing a theme that has surfaced several times in the preceding chapters. But God doesn't stop there. It wasn't enough to not worship idols; they were not to worship Yahweh in the way pagans worshipped idols. So, what were the ways pagans worshipped their gods? Are those ways still prevalent in how people in our culture worship success or fame or wealth? In what ways was the worship of Yahweh to be different from pagan worship? Based on Deuteronomy 12, here are some thoughts on the way we worship our God:

1. Be Communal Not Privatized
The first thing God says about His "way" of worship as opposed to the pagans is about place. "Rather, you must seek the Lord your God at the place of worship he himself will choose from among all the tribes-- the place where his name is honored." That specific place is where they are to bring their burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes, sacred offerings, offerings to fulfill a vow, voluntary offerings, offerings of the firstborn of their flocks (vs.6, 10-11). You get the point. But in case you missed it, Moses goes on: "Be careful not to sacrifice your burnt offerings just anywhere you like. You may do so only at the place the Lord will choose within one of your tribal territories" (vs. 13-14a). 

In John 4 Jesus helps us understand that there is nothing inherently sacred about a geographic location anymore. It is worshippers who worship in spirit and in truth that the Father is after. But wherever those worshippers gather in His name, there He is. And every gathering has a place just as every family has a home. Place matters because that’s where the gathering is. By specifying a location for their worship in Deuteronomy, God was teaching Israel that worship was not a private matter. They could not freely offer sacrifices anywhere they liked. It had to be at the chosen place within their tribal territory. Their worship was to be in the context of their tribe-- or in our language, community.

There is something dangerous about our tendency to privatize or individualize everything. When worship becomes privatized it becomes vulnerable to error-- false worship, wrong thinking about God; moreover, it becomes anemic. Our worship must not only remind us that we belong to God, but that we are His people, we are part of His tribe. This is likely why Jesus' chosen word for the His new people was ekklesia, the gathering or assembly, a word that conjures images of a city gathering with purpose. Much can be said about our current trend toward meeting with a few friends just like us in a home and calling it "church", but that must be saved for another blog. For now, it will do to start us thinking in a more communal or corporate way about worship.

2. Honor Life, Don't Desecrate It
Moses continues by telling them that could eat meat so long as the blood was drained: "But you must not eat the blood. You must pour it on the ground like water" (vs. 16). From Leviticus 17, we know that "life of every creature is in the blood". Blood was for atoning for sins, not for eating or drinking. Wrapped in this strange command is an instruction about the sanctity of life.

By telling Israel not to eat the blood of an animal when they joyfully ate its meat as part of their worship celebration, God was teaching Israel not to let worship make them self-indulgent. It's as if He was saying, "Don't get so caught up in the joy of worshipping Me that you forget about others, that you think your life is more valuable than theirs." Later in Israel's history they would be rebuked for celebrating great sacred festivals and feasts at the expense of the poor and the needy (Amos 5). Our worship, while being communal, must not be insular. Life is precious: the Life that was given so that we might truly live, the lives that are suffering without that Life, and the lives that are trivialized and extinguished by genocide, abortion, abuse, and injustice all around the world. Worship must lead us to honor life and to protect it.

3. Involve Our Children, Don't Sacrifice Them
Toward the end of the chapter, Moses adds a very specific detail about how pagans worshipped their gods, one that Israel had to avoid:  “You must not worship the Lord your God the way the other nations worship their gods, for they perform for their gods every detestable act that the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods” (vs. 31). When Moses talks about what Israel was to do with their children, the two ways come into sharp contrast: “You must celebrate there in the presence of the Lord your God with your sons and daughters and all your servants” (vs. 12a). In Yahweh worship, children are included in the celebration; in pagan worship, the children are sacrificed. 

How often do we aim to serve God, to worship Him, to bring Him honor, but do so at the expense of our children? Far too many servants of Yahweh—pastors, missionaries, marketplace ministers—are sacrificing their children to carry out their work for God. This is how our culture works for its gods of wealth and success. But our God does not want to be worshipped in that way. His way of being worshipped means that we bring our children into what we are doing for Him. We are to talk with them when we are “at home and when [we] are on the road, when [we] are going to bed and when [we] are getting up (Deut. 6:7).

It's good that we are learning to put away idols and idol worship. Now perhaps it's time we rethink the way we are attempting to worship God, so that we aren't doing it the way the ancient pagans did. The way we worship matters immensely to God.

When Bottom-Line Thinking Ruins Everything

This year was supposed to be the year my football team broke out of their rebuilding phase and rose to challenge the Patriots, Colts, and Steelers for the right to represent the AFC in the SuperBowl. Instead, we have sunk to cellar, hoping to crawl out with a new head coach who is younger than his best veterans and without a Pro Bowl quarterback who was supposed to be the second coming of John Elway.

The trouble began months ago when a teary man in his mid-sixties simply said he was firing one of best friends because "it was time". Pat Bowlen's joint press conference with Mike Shannahan, his Superbowl-winning coach of 15 years, was the most crying I've ever seen in the NLF-- except of course for the time Brett Favre retired...the first time. Pro football, as we are reminded every offseason (which should be called "contract dispute season") is a business. And in any business, the bottom line is what matters most. Friendships are good; team loyalty counts for something, especially during the season. But in the end, players, coaches, owners, and VPs must produce or be fired. 

America's pastime, baseball, now marred by multiple steroid scandals, is carnage on the altar of bottom-line thinking. Is it really surprising that the immense pressure to produce godlike statistics to match their godlike salaries has driven so many pro athletes to Performance Enhancing Drugs? Teams want to make more money; to make more money you have to win more; to win more you need the best coaches and players; to get the best players you've got to pay them the best salaries for their position. And when you pay them that much, they better produce. And when there's that much pressure to produce, vocational purity is lost. There is nothing sacred or pure about the game anymore. There is no longer anything special about being a baseball player or a football player or a basketball player. It's all just a business.

Such thinking is all around us. A few years ago, my wife and I took our daughter to a pediatrician that many of our friends recommended. At first, we appreciated his efficiency, the way we got in and got out. But after a few visits, he seemed more willing to write a prescription for Amoxicillin than to listen to our concerns. We began to feel like we were being herded through the office and rushed through an appointment so the maximum number of patients could be seen each day. In short, it seemed our pediatrician had reduced his vocation of caring for children and attending to their health to simply a business. And the more patients he had, the better his bottom line. Eventually we left and found a different pediatrician who was more willing to take her time with her patients, one who was running her business but preserved the purity of her vocation.

Bottom-line thinking has a way of undoing our best intentions. I know because my vocation is not immune to it. Pastors are tempted to evaluate their work through the same grid as pro athletes and pediatricians: as managers of a business. Our bottom line, though it could be measured in dollars, is more often measured in people. Because of that, it seems purer. And to some degree it is. It's better to evaluate a church by the lives it is affecting than by the money it's bringing in. But still, it's a way of reducing the richness and complexity of our calling as pastors into something as static and unreliable as numbers. Worse, it often leads us to justify a way of doing ministry that looks nothing like Jesus simply for the sake of reaching more people. The proof of the pervasiveness of that thinking is in popular church campaign slogans like "Reach the Lost at Any Cost."

It might be worth noting that Jesus didn't reach the lost at any cost. When the rich young ruler walked away sad because he wasn't about to sell all he had and give it to the poor, Jesus let him. When the prodigal son left home, the father didn't run after him. To top it off, Jesus seems to have made a concerted choice to avoid a more popular and potentially more effective approach to reaching people simply because it was less personal. The two large cities in Galilee of Jesus’ day were Sepphoris and Tiberias. Sepphoris, Galilee’s capital, was only a few miles from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Both cities were centers of activity and influence. Both were within view of the places Jesus frequented. Yet neither is mentioned in the stories of Jesus. (Tiberias gets a passing mention of people coming in boats form Tiberias to look for Jesus.) Instead, Jesus, as Eugene Peterson suggests, worked out “his way of life in the intensely personal and God-oriented small towns of Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida.” It wasn’t that He didn’t have any other options. He most certainly did. Could it be that Jesus chose these more personal settings on purpose? It seems consistent with the rest of His ministry approach. When Jesus did set His face toward Jerusalem it wasn’t to perform a spectacle at the Temple, as Satan had earlier suggested He do; Jesus went to Jerusalem, to the epicenter of culture, to die. These are certainly not the choices of a person driven by the bottom-line of producing more or reaching more.

To be sure, all vocations have an element of business. We are to be shrewd managers, faithful stewards, making the most of what we have been given. It's not wrong to get paid for what you do...even as pastors. (Paul makes a strong case to young pastor Timothy about the merits of rewarding those who serve as elders, governing the affairs of the church, in particular those who teach.) And it's not wrong to watch the bottom-line in your business. But at some point, too much attention to the bottom line corrupts the purity of any vocation. We must ask ourselves not simply how well our business is doing, but how well we are doing business. Are we losing the purity of our vocation-- as doctors or lawyers or pastors or athletes-- because of an obsession with the bottom line? The bottom line is one piece of what we do as a professional in any field. But if the bottom line drives our decisions and shapes our vocation, we will find ourselves in the place my beloved Broncos are in: ruined.

From Moses to Google: When Unity Isn't the Answer

The most common way we become an obstacle to Christ’s work is actually disguised as Christian virtue. It stirs the emotions of tender-and-almost-bleeding-hearted believers everywhere. It comes in the language of unity. No doubt you’ve heard it.

“All denominations should go away; we should all just work as one.”

“We should just have one main church, one main missions organization, with one person in charge, or a committee where everyone has a say.  We don’t need all these different ministries or organizations.”

“We need a city-wide rally where all the churches come together for a night of worship.”

The list is long. But if you listen closely, the plea is not truly for unity; it is for uniformity. It is not for collaboration; it is for control. It is not for single-mindedness; it is for “sameness”. 

When unity comes to mean sameness, unity is no longer the answer. 

When unity is about one method, one organization, or one event, it elevates a person. When unity is about one desire, one mission, or one goal, it elevates a purpose.

The diversity and dissimilarity of the Body of Christ is not its weakness; it is its greatest strength. We don’t all need to follow the same methods or the same human leader, or participate in the same program or campaign. We don’t even need to sing the same songs. [Ouch. That one’s going to hurt me personally.]

Diversity—whether applied to races, cultures, or ways of following Christ—is an idea we love to talk about and swear allegiance to with our lips, but one that we have great difficulty actually embracing. We like the way we are. And deep down we wish everyone else could be as wonderful as we are. It’s one thing when we choose our friends by the things we share in common. It’s good to have a select few whom we connect with, ones with whom we will walk through life. It’s even better to be able to work with our friends. There is nothing like linking arms with our best friends and working toward a common goal. Indeed, if we are going to last we have to have those kinds of people around us. But if we limit the spread of our cause to people just like us, we’ve missed the whole point of having others involved. When we look to advance Christ’s work and create lasting change by reproducing ourselves, the temptation is strong to reproduce ourselves exactly. We tend to find people who are like us or to persuade everyone to adopt our methods and approach.

Appreciating and allowing diversity is only the first step. It must also be empowered.

The strength of diversity is only fully seen when control is decentralized. James Suroweicki elaborates on the brilliance of decentralized decision-making and problem-solving in The Wisdom of the Crowds. Suroweicki defines the concept as a system, organization, or company where “power does not fully reside in one central location, and many of the important decisions are made by individuals based on their own local and specific knowledge rather than by an omniscient or farseeing planner.” (Suroweicki, pg. 70-71) Two important benefits immediately surface. First, decentralizing “fosters, and in turn is fed by specialization—of labor, interest, attention, or what have you.” (Suroweicki, pg. 71) By individuals narrowing their scope and becoming better at specific tasks, the collection of individuals becomes more knowledgeable, efficient, and productive. It also has the potential of increasing the diversity of opinions and information, as they can be as many unique approaches and perspectives as there are people within the system. Which leads to the second benefit, a concept economist Friedrich Hayek described as tacit knowledge. (Suroweicki, pg. 71) Suroweicki explains:

Tacit knowledge is knowledge that cant easily be summarized or conveyed to others, because it is specific to a particular place or job or experience, but it is nonetheless tremendously valuable…Connected with this is the assumption that is at the heart of decentralization, namely that the closer a person is to a problem, the more likely he or she is to have a good solution to it. This practice dates back to ancient Athens, where decisions about local festivals were left up to the demes, as opposed the Athenian assembly, and regional magistrates handled most nonserious crimes. It can also be seen in Exodus, where Moses’ father-in-law counseled him to judge only in “great matter[s]” and to leave all other decisions to local rulers. (Surweicki, pg. 71)

I’m sorry. Did I read that right? Did a business column staff writer for the New Yorker just cite Exodus for leadership insight? Perhaps we should have started with Jethro’s advise to Moses, found in Exodus 18, so you don’t think I’m simply grabbing trendy business concepts and trying to baptize them into Christian culture. Perhaps it is Western culture that has grabbed timeless Judeo-Christian truths, drained them of their spiritual implications and demands, and laid them as the foundations for life. Back to decentralization. In summary, our new favorite writer concludes: 

"Decentralization’s greatest strength is that it encourages independence and specialization on the one hand while still allowing people to coordinate their activities and solve difficult problems on the other. Decentralization’s greatest weakness is that there’s no guarantee that valuable information which is uncovered in one part of the system will find its way through the rest of the system….What you’d like is a way for individuals to specialize and to acquire local knowledge—which increases the total amount of information available in the system—while also being able to aggregate that local knowledge and private information into a collective whole, much as Google relies on the local knowledge of millions of Web-page operators to make Google searches ever-smarter and ever-quicker. (Surweicki, pg. 71-71)"

Releasing control and empowering individuals allows a system or a cause to harness the power of each individual’s specialization and tacit knowledge. You could say then that the test of our belief in the blessing of diversity is in our willingness to let others lead, work, and use their uniqueness for the cause.

[This blog is an adapted excerpt from Chapter 11 of my book Butterfly in Brazil: How One Life Can Make a World of Difference.]

Leadership and Authority: Why We May Have It All Wrong

What gives you the authority to lead others?

Whether you're a CEO or a middle manager, your perceived source of authority is crucial. Anyone who has ever read anything on leadership understands that there are basically two sources of leadership authority: positional authority and relational authority. 

Positional authority is the authority we gain because of the position we hold. It is a delegated authority. It comes from the top down. The boss says you're in charge of all marketing decisions, so you're in charge of all marketing decisions. Whether the people under you in the marketing department like you or not, they know you're in charge. But, of course, since you're not a Neanderthal, you know that to be effective and productive you need to have your team on board; you need them to buy in; you need the chemistry to be strong. You know positional authority is not enough; you have to win their relational authority. 

Relational authority is the authority you earn from individuals because of their trust in you.(That explains why Michael Scott from "The Office" tries so hard to impress his subordinates, win their admiration, and gain their friendship.) Nevertheless, in almost every corporate environment, positional authority is granted first; relational authority is earned later. 

We learn early on that positional authority precedes relational authority.

And without even questioning this, we take it as a law of life, a veritable "irrefutable law of leadership." In the Church world, we apply it to our leaders, citing Jesus' declaration that "all authority in heaven and on earth" had been given to him, and therefore our authority as leaders comes from God. In essence, we are making the "positional authority" argument with God as the ultimate authority who delegates his authority down to certain leaders. 

This is harmless enough, until you start to probe the issue further. A whole host of questions arise:

Who says YOU are God's delegated authority? What gives YOU the right to be called "God's mouthpiece"? 

For a church leader, our opening question is more critical and maybe more complex: 

What gives you the authority to lead others?

The platform you stand on? The microphone in your hand? The title on your business card that says "pastor"?

Most in positions of ecclesiastic power will eventually get around to telling you that their authority comes from...GOD...(gasp!). Then they likely will proceed to defend it with stories of the tragic deaths and diseases that befell those who questioned Moses' authority so long ago. They might gently remind you how young David the refugee refused to "touch the Lord's anointed", and that we would be wise to heed his example. Strangely, all their examples will have one thing in common, the same glaring flaw: they are an Old Testament model of leadership. 

Not everything from the Old Testament is different in the New, but leadership underwent a severe overhaul. My leadership mentor, Paul Stanley, insightfully points out that in the Old Testament the man of God went up to the mountain of God to get the word of God and then came down and told the people of God what to do. But in the New Testament, we are all a Kingdom of Priests, each with individual access to God. This was God's original intent. It was the people of Israel who were afraid and refused, begging Moses to go for them. This inclination to have someone else in charge surfaces generations later when they plead with God, "Give us a king!" God wanted to be their King, to have each of them follow Him. But they refused. Strong human leadership is easier; it's more convenient, and far more efficient. Just put someone in charge and let him delegate authority down.

1 Timothy 3 contains the New Testament guidelines for elders and deacons. Here is just one line from the long list of qualifications, and this is one for deacons:

"A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and household well." (1 Tim. 3:12, NIV)

Who was the best and greatest king of Israel? No brainer-- David. Every other king is measured against David. For God's love for David, He wouldn't punish Solomon for his sins during his own lifetime. Even the best of the kings of Judah that followed couldn't hold a candle to David. He was the greatest.

Yet David would not meet this New Testament qualification to deaconship. 

What did deacons in the New Testament church do? Remember in Acts 6? Deacons were appointed to wait on tables to help with the care of the widows. Wait a minute. You mean David would not have been allowed to wait on tables in the New Testament church? Yup.

The greatest leader in the Old Testament would not have qualified for the lowest position of leadership in the New Testament.

Why? Because in the Old Testament, leaders got their authority to rule from "divine right"; in the New Testament, people get their authority to lead from earned trust. Every one of the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 and even in Acts 6 when they chose the first 7 deacons has to do with trust. What kind of reputation do they have? Are they known for servanthood? Are they known for being people of wisdom, full of Spirit of God? Have they been tested? Do they have the abilities necessary? (Paul says specifically, "able to teach".) He doesn't ask if they've been prophesied over as children or if they have a calling on their lives or if they believe they are called to be a prophet to the nations or even if they're anointed. He asks what sort of reputation they have. In essence, can they be trusted? 

Trust is the currency of leadership in the New Testament era. And trust is earned by serving.

Jesus turned old notions of leadership on its head when he arrived on the scene. If anyone could have cited God as the source of his authority, Jesus could have. He could have repeatedly coerced people to follow or believe by dazzling them with divine power. Yes, Jesus does say that He only does what He sees the Father doing-- i.e., His boss is God. But He doesn't use that line to get people to follow; He uses it as an explanation for his decisions and as the source of His miracles and ability to forgive sins. Furthermore, every time Jesus appeals to God as the source of His authority, He's talking about an authority over demons or over their souls-- a spiritual authority. Likewise, when Jesus in Matthew 28 says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him therefore, go, He's not saying, "Tell everyone that you're in charge because I said so." The authority He's talking about is an authority over hell and demons. It's the authority to heal and disciple and rescue people from destruction. It's a spiritual authority not a governmental or organizational one.

How do I know? Because in Matthew 20, He specifically tells His disciples not to lead like the Gentiles, exercising "authority" over them. Spiritual authority from God is not enough to be the basis for our authority over others. Just because a person can prophesy or preach doesn't mean they should be in a position of leadership. In John 13, Jesus shows us the most dramatic display of how a leader should use his spiritual authority.

"Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him." (John 13: 3-5, NIV, emphasis mine)

We learn a few things from that passage: All authority comes from God. Romans 13 confirms this. Jesus had all authority. Jesus chose to serve his disciples by washing their feet instead of using authority over them. It is a model of a new kind of leader. It shows how we use authority, but also how we earn it with others. OK, so you believe that God has given you authority. What then? You don't demonstrate it or make it public and actually earn authority with others by declaring that God has set you up as an authority in their life. You display it by washing their feet.

There are authority structures even in the New Testament church. It's not spiritual anarchy. The church in Jerusalem was led by a council of elders, the head of which appears to be James. Authority is not a bad word. Furthermore, all authority ultimately comes from God. The question is how God wants to establish that authority publicly in His domain, the Church. It seems that in God's Kingdom, you gain authority by serving-- the last shall be first, the least shall be the greatest. From the examples in Acts and from Paul's writings, the process seems to be as follows:

1. God works in an individual's life, giving him gifts and the desire for leadership.     


2. The individual gains the people's trust by his servant's heart and solid character.


3. He then earns the people's trust in his giftings by his faithful and skilled service  


4. The established leaders (who've already been through this process) lay hands on him in front of the people, confirming his calling and setting him in office  

So, by the New Testament pattern, relational authority-- gained by earning trust because of a servant's heart, solid character, and strong skill-- leads to positional authority.

This is a new kind of a leader. Technically, it's 2000 years old. But it's ironic that the Church, of all places, so often resorts to an Old Testament leadership model and process and not the one they pioneered back in Jerusalem in the 1st century. Maybe we can be the generation of leaders that revolts against our culture of business leadership models and return the original counter-cultural leader. 

A leader is one who demonstrates God-given authority by serving others and earning their trust. 

Your authority comes from God; your leadership comes from trust.

Leading With Schwerpunkt

*Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by my friend Cameron Schaefer, Air Force pilot and author of Schaefer's Blog.  Cameron and I enjoy playing Madden and solving the world's problems.

Many believe that great leadership is the ability to have the right answer to every question, the correct response to every situation, or a detailed plan for how each subordinate should conduct their affairs.  The term “micromanage” is often abhorred, but in practice many leaders are forced into this corner by their own inabilities to develop other leaders around them.

By creating a clear commander’s intent or focal point (Schwerpunkt), developing your followers into leaders and decentralizing control, you can create a powerful organizational culture that in turn will help you reach your objectives.

The term “blitzkrieg” comes from the swift and seemingly chaotic method of maneuver warfare the Germans used in WWII to overwhelm the enemy on the battlefield. Blitzkrieg, which literally means, “lightening war” was effective because of its ability to disguise perfect harmony in chaos.  The rapid movement and scattering of the German tanks went completely against the sluggish, line-on-line, trench warfare to which the world’s militaries had grown accustomed.

Years later, Col John Boyd, USAF, studied what made blitzkrieg so effective.  Here are some of his thoughts from, “Boyd: The Fighter Pilot That Changed the Art of War,” by Robert Coram:

How does a commander harmonize the numerous individual thrusts of a blitzkrieg attack and maintain the cohesion of his larger effort?…In a blitzkrieg situation, the commander is able to maintain a high operational tempo and rapidly exploit opportunity because he makes sure his subordinates know his intent, his Schwerpunkt.  They are not micromanaged, that is, they are not told to seize and hold a certain hill; instead they are given ‘mission orders.’  This means that they understand their commander’s overall intent…The subordinate and the commander share a common outlook.  They trust each other, and this trust is the glue that holds the apparently formless effort together…This gives the subordinate great freedom of action (Coram 336, emphasis mine).

While, these ideas changed the art of war they can be utilized effectively in any organization.  The following statement comes from an executive summary explaining the culture of Toyota:

“Have a philosophical sense of purpose that supersedes any short-term decision making.  Work, grow and align the whole organization toward a common purpose bigger than making money” (The Toyota Way pg 37).

The German military leadership made a very intentional decision to allow their ground-level commanders to make their own decisions based on real-time information.  In war, as well as business, the situation is so complex and dynamic that by the time information is passed up the chain of command and back down, the situation has already changed and opportunities are lost.  Schwerpunkt is a focal point that all members of an organization understand and base their decisions around.  As I surveyed the idea of leading with Schwerpunkt, the following three themes emerged:

1)    Speed – Blitzkrieg worked because of its speed.  Had the German tanks slowed down they would have been destroyed.  They were effective because their decision-making cycle was much faster than that of the Allied forces.  It was this rapidity that made the whole process seem chaotic to Allied commanders.  The speed factor is just as important in war as in business.  With the rise of free markets barriers to entry and change have nearly vanished, making the business environment one of constant change, and one requiring speed to successfully play the game.

2)    Decentralization – having all of the power hoarded by one person at the top may have worked several centuries ago when the pace of life was much slower, but the increased velocity of today’s wars, business environments and geopolitical arenas makes decentralization a must.  Ground-level leaders are the ones closest to the situation with access to the most current information, so it makes sense for them to have authority to make decisions and act immediately.

3)    Leader Development – If you’re going to lead this way you must have reliable leaders underneath you who understand the heart of the organization’s culture and objectives.  The German tank commander's were well-trained and understood the overall strategy set forth by their superiors.  This does not happen magically, it takes intentional effort to train and develop followers into leaders.  This must be a top priority of any organization that hopes to be successful and money and resources should align accordingly.

Implementing these three ideas requires a special type of leader.  A leader who is secure in their own abilities and willing to relinquish control and trust their subordinates.  Also, many leaders are not equipped to develop their subordinates.

In thinking about these ideas on leadership I couldn’t help but wonder if this is why we sometimes struggle with God’s will for our lives. 

Frustration often stems from my desire to have God micromanage me -- lay out a detailed map of my life, an answer to every question and coordinates for each location.  Maybe this isn't how God wants to lead.

Could it be that He wants to lead us with Schwerpunkt, giving us His overall intent, then allowing us to do what is necessary to accomplish it rather than telling us how to walk out each individual step?  Is God looking to develop us so that we can make the right decisions based on a deep understanding of His overall plan and a common outlook?  Does God actually trust us to help accomplish His objectives?

There are some aspects that don’t think necessarily translate into our spiritual lives and I’m definitely not claiming to know the right answers to these questions, but it seems like something that should be considered.  I’m not calling for a life lived independently of God, only to reconsider the reason behind the paralysis that often shows up in our lives as Christians when we find ourselves afraid to take a step in any direction without hearing clearly from God.

This is not the safest way to do business, allowing your subordinates to make their own decisions, trusting that you’ve developed in them a good understanding of your commander’s intent.  But then again, as I’ve learned so well lately, He isn’t a safe God, but He is good...and given His willingness to relinquish control, develop His followers and trust them to carry out His plans, He is the ultimate leader in Schwerpunkt.