A friend sent this quote from novelist Frederick Buechner.

“The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family. There is the authoritarian presence of the Minister — the professional who knows all the answers and calls most of the shots — whom few ever challenge either because they don’t dare or because they feel it would do no good if they did. There is the outward camaraderie and inward loneliness of the congregation. There are unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety’s sake are kept more or less undercover. There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativity which are not often enough made use of or even recognised because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done.”

Two excellent scriptures on leadership and hierarchy are Matthew 20:25-28, and Luke 22:25-26. What Jesus is condemning in these text is not oppressive leaders as such. He is condemning the hierarchical form of leadership that dominates the Gentile world. The hierarchical leadership structure characterises the spirit of the Gentiles. The implanting of these structures into the church, therefore, is at odds with New Testament Christianity.

Leadership according to Jesus is a far cry from what it is in the institutional church. Our Lord dealt a death blow to both Gentiles/hierarchical and Jewish/positional leadership models. Ego-massaging models are incompatible with the primitive simplicity of the organic Church and the upsidedown kingdom of Jesus Christ. They impede the progress of God’s people. They suppress the free functioning of the believing priesthood. They rupture the image of the Church as family. They do violence to the leadership that exists in the triune god. And they place severe limitations on the headship of Christ.

The clergy profession is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church — a valuable goal but actually, however, accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy become to their congregations like parents whose children never grow up, like therapists whose clients never become healed, like teachers whose students don’t graduate.

The word adelphoi translated “brethren”, appears 346 times in the new Testament. It appears 134 times in Paul’s epistles alone. By contrast, the word “elders” appears only five times in Paul’s letters. “Overseers” appears only four times. And “pastors” appears only once.

The stress of the New Testament is upon corporate responsibility. It’s the believing community that is called to carry out pastoral functions. Viola instances 34 occasions where the expression “one another” is used. With dramatic clarity, all of these “one another” exhortations incarnate the fact that every member of the church is to share the responsibility for pastoral care. Leadership is a corporate affair, not a solo one. It’s to be shouldered by the entire body.

Plainly stated, leadership in the early church was nonhierarchical non-aristocratic, non-authoritarian, non-institutional, and non clerical. God’s idea of leadership is functional, relational, organic, and communal — just as it is in the godhead.