All authority within the church community must be consensual!

A reflection on church authority from a Churches of Christ persceptive.

Stephen Simons

Copyright 2003

The topic of authority within the church, what is it, how should it work and where does it come from are important questions for the church to deal with. This paper is my contribution to this question. My argument in brief is that that there are two types of authority, consensual and non consensual. Consensual authority is authority that operates within the trust of communities and individuals, operating within the shared values of communities. Non-consensual authority is authority that is exercised over a community and operates outside the trust and shared values of community. My argument is simple; all authority within the church must be consensual!

To understand where this argument comes from, it is important to understand the historical church background I comes from. Having grown up with the Churches of Christ is Adelaide; I would describe my position as the American Churches of Christ restorationist position. American Churches of Christ because Churches of Christ in SA, Vic and Tas trace their traditions from the American church and NSW and Qld from the British arm of the church. The position is called restorationist because the founder, with good reason, believe that what was often understood about church has more to do with historical view of church, particularly a post-Constantine view than a Biblical view. They held that we should get back to a biblical view of church, of which they, of course, put their spin on. There are no creeds but the bible was one of the great sayings.

The tradition had it origins in the early 19th century USA, in the midst of the building of American civil society and participatory democracy. It is model of church that could be called community or collective and rejects all notions of ecclesiastical structures; the church is the people both present and historic. The body, the church community, stands equal before God, all the notions of authority, accountability etc. are built into the horizontal relationships, so that the only vertical relationship is between God and his people. One of the passionately held positions is that nobody can set themselves up above the body; nobody can make a claim of power over the church community and attempt exercise authority outside the trust and shared values of the church community. All authority with the church community is functional, just like a work place where leadership positions, or any other position is just a role with no authority given by God.

I need to make it clear here that I am arguing how the way the church should work within it historic position, not how it does necessarily does work. People are people and things go wrong what ever the model used.

There is only one basis a Church of Christ minister, or any other leader, can claim authority, that is to by earning the trust of the church community by serving it, there is no other claim. There is no ecclesiastical claim to authority, no authority given by ordination, ordination is just a professional certification process to ensure the clergy have the appropriate skills, no authority given by wearing special clothes or authority given by titles, Churches of Christ minister can not even use titles like Rev., They get little organisational authority because like the Baptist Union, churches have a voluntary association with the larger Churches of Christ conference. The church community is the employer with power to hire and fire. If you start work as a minister in Churches of Christ all you really get is an office and facilities, a salary and many people with expectations of you, if you want authority then you earn it by serving and building the trust of the church community. This is the reason the Churches of Christ ministers have one of the greatest burn out rate of clergy.

The founders of the tradition would have been well versed in democratic and moral philosophy, democracy is based on deep moral philosophy, which came out of the enlightenment When I use the term democracy in this paper I mean it in it historical and philosophical meaning not its popular meaning..

The starting point of democracy is the idea that all power is given from the people (but of course originally given by God.) This is a moral argument not necessarily a theological argument. Because all power is given by the people, nobody has an automatic right to power. If you want power and authority then you need to earn the trust of the people by serving the people and in earning their trust they give consent to your authority, your authority becomes legitimate consensual authority. Lose the trust of the people and you lose their consent and your moral claim to authority. Servant leadership is not a style of leadership it is the only moral basis of leadership.

The concern I have coming from my church background where these ideas are deeply part of our tradition is that I see some part of the church where clergy and others leaders seemed to be allowed to claim ecclesiastical authority through ordination, titles etc. it can look like they are using these things to relieve themselves of some of the burden of having to having to earn the trust of their communities and its individuals.

One of the questions that I ask in assessing how legitimate authority is, "where is your authority coming from.", the answer I am looking for is that is based on earning the trust of the church community by serving them and operating transparently within the shared values of church community. This is a moral, democratic and sociological question not a theological question. I believe that many people, particularly younger people ask this question about the church. The problem is that when a middle-aged white male opens the Bible to answer these questions and to demonstrate the theological basis of their authority it can seem like an ecclesiastical claim of authority above the trust of trust of the church community and individuals and quite patriarchal. The people asking the questions are operating out of a moral and sociological paradigm and those attempting to respond to the questions are operating out a theological paradigm and this is not a good basis to have a productive dialogue.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not respond to people on the basis of authority, if a leader wants to engage me then they need to be on the basis of trust, relationship and high standard of inter-personal skills. I have nearly two hundred years of church history as well as the church community I grew up in to explain this response. The concern I have about some part of the church, is there seems be a very different view where people have to respond leaders on the basis of authority and not trust, which raises question about how consensual the authority is? I believe that one of the main reasons that power and authority has gone wrong and people damaged is people have had to respond to the leader on the basis of authority and not trust.

What makes this question difficult is that there are some serious institutional questions to ask where some churches organisational culture influences people to respond on the basis of authority and some leaders have been socialized and educated to operate in less than healthy ways. They are simply doing what they have been trained to do. It is very important for church to teach and support ways in which people respond to each other on the basis of trust and people skills and not authority.

A point that needs to made at this time is to explain the difference between issues of trust and consent and issues of approval. It is trust that makes relationships consensual not approval. Leaders are entitled to exercise leadership and make decision that some do not approve of but they can not exercise leadership and make decisions that operate outside trust or damage trust. In the context of the church this is important as there is an important role to give spiritual and moral oversight to church communities that sometime requires unpopular decision to be made, as long as trust is maintained.

The positive case for consensual authority is the most effective approach to leadership to get the best from people. If people are responding to leaders just on the basis of authority then all leader will really get is compliance. If you exercise authority to get someone to move a chair then all that will happen is chair will get moved. The type of leadership the church needs is where leader are able to engage the whole person, their dreams, hurts, fears, aspirations, skills and desires. The only way this can happen is when there are high levels of trust, so people can feel safe and so are able to fully contribute.

The other aspect to ethical leadership is shared values. It is a misuse or even an abuse of a leader's authority if they set themselves up above a church community and then impose and prescribe their values onto the community. They are imposing their will upon the community and this could be argued as non-consensual authority. A good way to see how power operates in any organisation, including the church is to see where and how the values systems operate. If they come from small groups then power comes from small groups and if comes out of an inclusive conversation and shared by many then power is being shared.

This why when a leader exercises leadership and makes decisions then they need to very transparent in the way they go about leading so people can feel comfortable that value assumptions behind the decision are shared. Feeling comfortable about the value assumption is more important than agreeing with the decision. Before any leader accepts a ministry appointment they need to check their own leadership values sit comfortable within the shared values of a community. Leaders, and any one else for that fact are entitled to challenge the communities values but this needs to be done in an inclusive and transparent dialogue not just imposed.

One of the desires God has put on my heart is teach help churches build good healthy democratic values into lives of church communities. For me democratic values in a church context are a consensual and not adversarial. The starting point is the church communities to reflect on and articulate their instrumental values of faith. There are two types of values, instrumental values and terminal values. Terminal values are end state values and instrumental values are the values we hold to work out our terminal values. In the church, terminal values of faith are our core values of faith (which are not up for grabs) Instrumental values of faith are the values we hold to work out the terminal values of faith. These are dynamic set of values and the ones church communities need to work through and articulate. A dialogue that is fully inclusive. Put simply a church community need asked the question, "Given the reality of God love shown to us through Jesus, how do we as a community work this out today.

The second part to it, involves the leadership giving moral and spiritual leadership to their communities, leadership that serves their communities in the working out of their faith values, empowering aspirational leadership giving voice to the collective faith aspirations of their community and lifting them out of their mediocrity and leading them on to the Promised Land.

An excellent book to read to explore some of these topics is James O'toole, Leading Change, The Argument for Values Based Leadership, Random house 1996. The first chapter, which opens up the argument, looks at a painting called Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 by the Belgian artist James Ensor. Unlike traditional depictions of Jesus with everybody recognising and responding to Jesus, in this huge crowd scene, he is just another face. The author (who would not call himself a Christian) asked how is Jesus going to engage the crowd and bring his message. How Jesus responds is used as analogy for leadership in the 21st century. In the 21st century, everybody sees themselves as equal, nobody is going to allow others to tell them what to do and nobody has any real power over anyone else (and if leader do try asserting power, words like leadership abuse will be used more and more.)

The argument the book makes is for ethical, values based leadership, where a leaders authority is based on earning the trust of their followers.

The book tears into many contemporary expressions of leadership; including the church as being amoral and based on situational ethics, where leaders can do anything they need to get the job done. Because a leader's legitimacy of authority is based on earning the trust of their followers, then is no room for the smallest notion of situational ethics in leadership!