In this second of a three-part series Neil Darragh discusses traditional resources for leadership in a synodal church.

Part Two: Learning from Traditional Leadership

The “synodal way” is about transforming the church. The kind of transformation we are looking for is not just about our own individual, spiritual transformation. It is about how we relate to one another, how we work and pray together, how we organize ourselves as a church. It is about transforming the organisation of the church so that it powers us forward on the mission of the church.

But are we, collectively, capable of playing our part in this transformation? What resources can we call upon? What resources do we have for leadership in this new, transformed church?

In the past, church leaders and theologians have answered this by drawing on models of social organisation with which they were already familiar in the existing religious, social, or political organisations of the time: as shepherds, synagogue elders, heads of families, local civil administrators, feudal lords, kings/queens, elected representatives, military commanders, imperial officials, spirit-filled charismatics, prophets, and so on. Some of these may still serve us today, but others have proven themselves liabilities. Like the scribe in Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 13:52) we will likely need to bring out of our collective treasure house things both old and new, both traditional and contemporary.

Among the major traditional resources for renewing the church are New Testament understandings of leadership and ministry, historical patterns of church leadership, and the church’s social justice traditions. These are “traditional” in the sense that they originate in the experience of earlier generations of Christians. This article looks at these traditional resources. A following article will look at contemporary resources.

Leadership in the New Testament: Resources not Constraints

There were many patterns of leadership in the New Testament: missionaries like Paul and Barnabas, the 12 apostles of the Gospels, the “beloved disciple” of John’s Gospel, the Hellenist leaders in Jerusalem (Acts 6), the prophets and teachers who were leaders in Antioch (Acts 13), the councils of elders in the Pauline letters, the ministries and gifts listed in the churches of Corinth (1 Cor 12: 27) and Rome (Rom 12:3-8), appointed single leaders like Titus and Timothy, the hosts of house churches, and many others less clearly identified.

The variety of patterns of leadership seem to have been adaptations to the needs of the church’s mission and the internal needs of those early Christian communities in different places and times. Yet the leadership roles in the New Testament churches were not just arbitrary. There are some kinds of leadership that are disapproved of in the New Testament. These are particularly the kind of leadership which lords it over other people (Mk 10:41-45; Mt 20: 24-28; Lk 22:24-27). Hypocrisy was a disqualification from leadership.

There are some features that must be included in any type of Christian ministry and leadership. We need to remember that the Holy Spirit is the source both for the choice of new leaders and for their ongoing ministry, and that God continues to act in new ways (for example, raising Jesus from the dead, the inclusion of the Gentiles, directing the mission of the church to the Gentiles).

It is also an important principle that leadership is service. Ministry and leadership are calls to service, not opportunities to exercise power. (See again Mk 10:41-45; Mt 20: 24-28; Lk 22:24-27). It is clear, too, that the church has need of some organised leadership or “office-bearers” for the ongoing life of the church and to serve as guardians of the faith and morals of the community.

Selected models of New Testament leadership are sometimes used today to maintain that one particular model of leadership, such as bishop or presbyter/priest or charismatic, is essential and obligatory for the Christian church for all time, a binding tradition. But this style of biblical interpretation is using New Testament models as constraints. It is unnecessary and arbitrary.

Rather than constraints, New Testament models can be resources. Resources do not in themselves determine what our churches should be like today. They stimulate, provoke and warn us. Sometimes they set boundaries and sometimes they make requirements. They provide good and bad examples, but they are not blueprints and we need not regard one or other as obligatory for all time.

Later Historical Models of Leadership: Faithful Improvisation

There were often acrid debates about legitimate church organisation during and following the 16th-century European Reformations. Few contemporary churches still claim today that their own denominational structures are the only ones legitimated in the New Testament. Over the centuries, churches have adopted and adapted some, but not others, of these early patterns of leaderships.

Since New Testament times, new movements in the church have produced many other kinds of leadership: religious teachers of many kinds, monasteries, the mendicant orders particularly from the 12th century, the huge growth of congregations of vowed women and men in the 19th century, and most recently the enormous growth of “lay” ministries and charismatic leadership in the 20th century.

The idea of “faithful improvisation” is a useful one for guiding us on how we can deal with past patterns of leadership and invent new ones. The language of leadership has frequently been adopted from the social and political world around it, then adapted to new circumstances. A central thread through all this creativity (and sometimes turmoil) is the concept of “apostolicity”. It refers to the way in which a contemporary church remains faithful to, even though not the same as, the church of the apostles as we find it in the New Testament.

Yet apostolicity has several facets. The “protestant” tradition has tended to identify apostolicity with apostolicity of doctrine, while the “catholic” tradition has tended to identify apostolicity with apostolic succession in ministry (the college of bishops).

Faithful improvisation would seek to hold apostolicity of origin, of doctrine, of succession in ministry, and particularly apostolicity of life (living the gospel) together in some form of balanced tension so that these various structures can be resources for reforms today.

Social Justice Principles: Practising What We Preach

Social justice principles are now firmly embedded in the traditions of many Christian churches, including the Catholic Church. Such principles of social justice or the “social gospel” have been formulated in a variety of ways for different audiences or different situations, but may be abbreviated as:

Human dignity (every person has an innate human dignity that no one can take away); the common good (working for the good of all); subsidiarity (ensuring decision making happens at the most appropriate level so all those affected can contribute; solidarity (actively working for the good of others who are different from ourselves); preferential option for the poor and vulnerable (prioritise the needs of those who are most vulnerable); participation (recognising that everyone has a part to play in our communities); integral ecology (care for all the environmental and social dimensions of the Earth as our common home).

These principles have been articulated in different ways and some of them overlap. But the key point here for our concern with transforming the church today is that these principles of social justice have commonly been proposed as moral requirements for human relationships in the wider society outside the church. They have not so often been applied within the church’s own organisation.

If applied within the Catholic Church, these principles would go a long way to forming a church that is, for example, more participative in its decision-making and ministry, or more carefully focused on subsidiarity rather than centralisation, or more active in a combined thrust for environmental responsibility. The church could then both transform itself and become a “witness” rather than just a teacher/preacher of these principles to the wider society.

I have looked briefly here at some of the major traditional patterns of leadership that we could use as resources on our journey of transformation. Next month I will look at some more contemporary resources that could also aid in this journey.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 292 May 2024: 4-5