In every church, there is a person, or a group of people, who are in charge. These leaders have the power to tell other people in the organization what to do. Sometimes, but not always, they also have the right to do so. The combination of the power and right to command is known as authority.
Because of the authority they exercise, church leaders can have a massive impact, for good or bad, on the spiritual health of the congregants in their care. Leaders can cultivate safe environments in which congregants grow in love for Jesus and each other, or they can foster dangerous environments which hinder faith. Realistically, they’ll probably do a mix of both. But healthy authority structures help tip the scales toward the good and prevent large-scale disasters from happening.
Therefore, it’s important that the church as a whole, both leaders and congregants, understand what healthy authority looks like.
Appointment
In healthy authority structures, leaders are appointed to positions of authority by those in a higher place of authority. In contrast, unhealthy churches allow leaders to assume authority or appoint themselves to leadership positions.
For example, in a congregational church I attended, the bylaws and constitution specify that the congregation itself is the final authority in the church. The congregation appoints elders to act as their representatives in many church matters, including searching for pastoral candidates, but they retain the right to vote on the most important steps in these processes, like the final selection and hiring of pastors. They can also vote to remove a pastor.
In an Anglican (ACNA) church I visited, the congregation, through the vestry, was tasked with searching for and finding a candidate for rector. However, in a step beyond the congregational model, the local bishop had to also approve the candidate before the hiring could take place.
In contrast, the US allows almost anyone to start a church, register that church as a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization and appoint him or herself pastor. In some sense, it meets the criteria for healthy authority: the government “appoints’’ the leaders if certain requirements are met and the right paperwork is filed. I recently read about a case like this in which two pastors who had been fired by the congregation of their previous church were starting a new church. This new venture would operate with an elder-rule structure in which the pastors would serve as the highest authority.
Is this the worst thing in the world? Is it sinful? I think the answer to both those questions is probably “no”, but it sets up a church in which two more aspects of healthy authority, evaluation and accountability, are difficult or impossible to practice.
Jurisdiction
Healthy authority is always limited in jurisdiction, unless you are Jesus Christ. Church leaders police the social boundaries of their own church and nothing more. In many churches, what this means is that they have authority (or a great deal of influence) to decide who is and who isn’t a welcome member of their congregation. In healthy churches, these decisions are made according to a set of specific criteria understood beforehand by the members. For example, if a congregant steals from the church, he or she should understand that, if caught, they will be excommunicated.
Authority becomes unhealthy when church leaders try to extend it well beyond the boundaries of their own church. This takes some discernment. For example, in healthy churches, if a husband treats his wife poorly he should expect to be confronted and, should he not change, threatened with expulsion. Love for others demonstrates a person growing in faith and love for Christ; a person who treats others un-lovingly alerts church leaders to potential danger. In contrast, I’ve heard of leaders who have tried to exercise authority over a person in regards to who she marries, what career she pursues, or exactly how much she gives to the church. In these cases, the leaders were not simply offering advice; their congregants were threatened with loss of standing in their churches if the leaders’ commands weren’t obeyed. If a congregant’s choices outside the church are not in and of themselves clearly sinful, they fall outside of the jurisdiction of church leaders.
Evaluation
A friend of mine has a clever saying she likes to apply to church leaders, “If you’re not evaluated, you have no value.” In healthy churches, usually those in which a higher authority appoints pastoral staff, church leaders are regularly evaluated according to a set of specific criteria known by the leaders, and their superiors, beforehand.
For the last few years, I’ve owned and operated my own small business. My customers are constantly evaluating me according to the quality of work I do for them. In the previous two jobs I’ve had, a middle school English teacher and a server for a national restaurant chain, those in authority over me would evaluate my job performance according to rubrics each had developed. These reviews were of tremendous benefit to me. I was able to receive feedback from my superiors and know exactly how they viewed me as a contributor. After the reviews, I understood my strengths and weaknesses and was expected to grow in my strengths and shore up my weaknesses.
I believe that only one of the four churches in which I’ve been a member have had regularly scheduled evaluations of their staff or lead volunteers. In the three examples in which no evaluations took place, the leaders of the churches were not appointed by higher authorities. Thus, there was no one to evaluate these leaders even if the leaders and churches desired it.
Reader, I hope this is as shocking to you as it is to me. Even though I consider the hard work of serving food to possess a certain nobility, I do not consider it to be as in need of regular evaluation as the job of caring for human souls. Yet, even as I was being regularly evaluated as a server, the lead pastor of the church I attended at the time was not.
In my opinion, this is a tragedy. Church leaders need to be evaluated by those in authority over them so that these leaders can receive regular support, encouragement, and, if needed, correction. Without evaluation, they are left to form their own opinions about their job performance. Rarely does anyone in isolation accurately perceive themselves, usually falling prey to an inflated or deflated view of who they are.
In one church in which I was a member, the quality of the worship music always seemed below what I thought the team was capable of. After serving on the team for years, I brought up these concerns to the pastor who led worship. He was surprised at some of the things I had to say since no one else, during the decade he had led worship there, had said anything similar to him. Why? He had no one in authority over him with knowledge of worship leading regularly evaluating him.
Accountability
Accountability is the end result of a process that includes appointment and evaluation. Healthy accountability in a church setting provides a context in which church leaders can be protected against unreasonable attacks but also corrected, up to the point of dismissal, for reasonable concerns.
For example, in a church in which a pastor is appointed and evaluated, and a member of the church is concerned about the pastor’s job performance, those in authority over the pastor can examine the member’s concerns and compare them to their own evaluations of the pastor. Perhaps, in this example, they find the member’s concerns unfounded. They can protect the pastor by presenting their own assessments of him and demonstrating how he has consistently met their expectations.
In contrast, accountability can also address normal human limitations all pastors will face by having those in authority over the pastor require more training or perhaps hire more staff. It can also confront non-disqualifying sins in a pastor’s life by demanding change and offering counseling. In the case the pastor commits a crime or a disqualifying sin, accountability can remove him from his position to protect the church.
Questions to Ask Yourself
As you think about the applications of healthy authority in your own church, it may be helpful to ask the following questions:
- Who appointed the leaders of my church?
- What criteria was used to select these leaders?
- Do the leaders limit their authority to the social boundaries of the church?
- Are leaders regularly evaluated according to written standards?
- Are there mechanisms in place in the bylaws to hold leaders accountable for their behavior?
You may discover your church isn’t the healthiest when it comes to the issue of authority. Unfortunately, self-appointed leaders who are not evaluated or accountable may believe they are dependent upon unhealthy authority structures for their livelihoods. A friend who consulted for a church about these issues was told by the lead pastor, in a rare moment of honesty, “I’m afraid that if I’m accountable, they’ll fire me.” Yes, that might happen. That pastor eventually scuttled the restructuring of his church government and moved the church to another town.
As Upton Sinclair puts it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I reserve a certain amount of empathy for church leaders who place themselves in unhealthy authority structures because this was the tradition in which they were trained or hired. But empathy only goes so far; I don’t believe it should extend to perpetuating clearly unhealthy practices in the church.
Restructuring a church government to incorporate healthy authority is a daunting task. I think for most churches it would take years. For those considering the change, Jesus encourages us with these words, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” Leaving behind a tradition of unhealthy authority may not be as dramatic and stressful as leaving behind family members (or it might be!), but the benefits of a healthier church will be worth it.
