From the beginning of his life, Jesus faced significant obstacles to God’s pursuit of peace and goodwill. Today, many of these barriers remain and over the ages have only grown in breadth and depth. Primarily these hurdles center on the universal presence and experience of pride and fear, both of which are complicated and accentuated by individuals’ relation to their particular group, culture, and context. It is important to realize that, even for the first hearers of the gospel, the pronouncement created great fear. The shining of the “glory of the Lord” terrorized the “Christmas” shepherds tending their flocks by night, just as it threatened King Herod’s domination. This terror was, and is, well founded. Simeon the prophet predicted that the child Jesus was “destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed” (Luke 2:34–35). Hearts being exposed, true motives revealed, kingdoms falling, rising, and resisting change—these predictions are indicators of world revolution. Fear and terror are often the preamble to changes in leadership, even benevolent change.
Just as Simeon predicted, the new wine of Jesus’s new leadership paradigm caused the old wineskin of Judaism to burst, and fear has been a part of the journey of the gospel through human agencies ever since (Luke 5:37). Conversely, the kingdom of God, led by his Christ, does not abide in the pride and fear that have so often characterized and fueled the structures and institutions of human societies. There is endless irony in God’s plan to lead the world back toward flourishing in his kingdom through the birth and death of a perfect human being, who was executed by God’s own chosen people, in concert with the power of the greatest civilization then known, using the highest form of moral law to condemn him to the worst form of human execution, all of which occurred in Jerusalem, the “city of peace.” Such hypocrisy exposes how fear wreaks havoc and eventually destroys even the best of human intentions and abilities. Fear must be done away with, especially in those endeavoring to lead as good shepherds.
The resurrection of Jesus marks the end of self-righteous, law-fixated religiosity advocated by much of the first-century Jewish leadership.8 In its place, the church became the new spiritual community, birthed from within Judaism as a continuing fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Acts of the Apostles records the activities of two main leaders of this new movement, Peter and Paul. Both were Jews who were instrumental in the unfolding of God’s new universal community tasked with the identical overarching objective previously reserved exclusively for Israel. No longer would the kingdom of God be accessed exclusively through the Jewish faith. This wondrous new way of being and living was now available to all people. Whosoever will may come.
Unfortunately this lesson of open access to a new creation is still to be learned (Gal. 6:14–15). We now know that the early Christian community did not fully escape its cultural and intellectual captivity to Judaism. But in time the captor changed from Judaism to Roman and then Christian sociopolitical systems. The Jews eventually became as despised as their gentile neighbors, and the early leadership of the church struggled with cross-cultural and cross-religious integration.
WHERE IS AMERICAN CHRISTENDOM LEADING US?
Although much progress and some regress have been made over the past two millennia, this summary roughly brings us to the central question for leaders in our day: What role are Christianity and its leaders to play in our contemporary society?
The Divine Conspiracy discussed the hurdles American or Western forms of Christianity struggle to overcome. Together these adaptations fall under the umbrella of a single, daunting obstacle—the calcification of the message of Jesus into a form of nominal or civil religion. This has been a recurring phenomenon in the Western world from our earliest beginnings. In the contemporary context of the United States the resistance to the growing tide of nominalism sparked attempts by Christian leaders Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and John Wesley, among others, to bring back to life (revive) the religion they saw dying around them. This resulted in what we now call the Great Awakenings. In the centuries before and since, Western civilization has labored to unshackle itself from a lukewarm brand of Christian religion that values profession of belief or outward acts of piety over transformed hearts, lives, and communities.
It is here, in the gaps and shadows of these key issues, where the gospel of Jesus must be understood, interjected into the discussion, and eventually manifested in the lives of our servant leaders, professionals, spokespersons, and pastors today. This is precisely why this work follows on the heels of The Divine Conspiracy, which addresses the problems of how and why our Christian culture may have allowed the inertia of previous generations to marginalize or obfuscate the central message and objective of Jesus. This is the key proposal that lay behind the ideas of the gospels of the left (concern primarily for the elimination of social and structural evils) and the right (concern primarily for the forgiveness of the individual’s sins).9
Since the publishing of The Divine Conspiracy, another gospel has arisen that is similar in effect, but different in cause. This third gospel can be termed the gospel of the church or “churchmanship.”10 Here the local church—or more specifically those with church membership, affiliation, or commitment to religious structures and priorities—is understood as the means through which the good life, or salvation, is attained. Although there are many wonderful and beneficial aspects to local church membership and commitment in their own right, Jesus’s gospel and the testimony of the entire New Testament oppose blind devotion to any religious tradition as a substitute for unbridled confidence in God as the way of achieving the truth for life and living (John 14:6).
The church is a marvelous and beautiful living reality that Jesus can be trusted to build and bring to perfection. Yet the gospel is not the same as the church, nor is the church identical to the kingdom of God. As has been previously stated, the local church is for discipleship, and disciples are for the world.11 Thus, here we want to focus on precisely why leaders, spokespersons, and professionals who are disciples of Jesus Christ can and must enter the world, fully empowered by the Holy Spirit, to take on the responsibilities and duties of representing and pursuing the public good by holding fiduciary relationships with all they encounter. Such representatives will intentionally act as worthy ambassadors in a kingdom characterized by a just, benevolent, empowering, and endlessly loving king, with whom their allegiance ultimately lies. Therefore, such persons will be able to consistently testify and demonstrate, to all concerned, precisely how and why the best way, the clearest truth, and the fullest life are achieved by applying a Christlike model to both private and public issues.
The critical point to grasp in this discussion of servant leadership, as seen in the historical role of Israel and the ambassadorial role of Christlike disciples manifesting God’s kingdom ethos, is the duty of modeling that our leaders are to accept and perpetuate in and through all of our societal structures. Leaders serve us best when they model the knowledge and beneficial effects that proceed from the life they first experience and then uniformly profess as worthy and honorable through word and deed to others. Israel and later the first disciples of Christ were intended to act as examples, lights, and beacons of the good news and the way of life with God. When this is done well, when individuals work together in dedicated, loving, and sacrificial service to God and his kingdom, their efforts will shine in such a way that all will see their benefits; it will be impossible to hide the effects. When leaders exemplify the reality of God’s ways, everyone in society is well served. This is the sacred calling of servant leadership in the scriptures.
THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERSHIP
The history of God’s use, direction, and purpose for leaders throughout the scriptures has brought us to a point where we can now consider, more precisely, the leadership function and why leaders are so integral and have such potential for either good or ill. Neither the Judeo-Christian perspective nor the theistic viewpoint, in either contemporary or historical terms, is alone