Archives for May 2015

Most leaders would say “absolutely” to any discussion of the importance of accountability in leadership.

However, very often an essential aspect of accountability in leadership is overlooked.

It is easy to think “leaders should have a person that holds them accountable” or that they should “be in an accountability group.” These things have the leader accountable to other leaders.

I don’t dispute the importance of those things, but they are actually missing the most important element of accountability for a leader. And that dimension is the leader being accountable to those they lead. 

That is what keeps leadership from becoming a dictatorship. If the leader is not accountable to the people they are leading, then there is no true back-and-forth. Followers’ ideas and hopes are always only suggestions, with no real authority. This, by definition, creates two classes of people.

Instead, the biblical view is that while there is a place for differences in functional authority, these differences are counterbalanced by a true two-way street of accountability between the followers and leaders.

This doesn’t mean that every decision a leader makes needs to be approved by the followers. Rather, we see good examples of what this looks like especially in two areas.

First, democracy. The president is ultimately elected by the people, and has to be re-elected by the people. If he is not governing properly, they therefore have the ultimate power to remove him by not re-electing him. That is how the president is kept accountable to the people.

Second, congregational church government. Congregationalism can certainly be applied in ways that constrict the proper functioning of leadership. But at its essence, it means that the church members are ultimately responsible for what their church becomes, and the pastors and elders are accountable to the members — not simply themselves or a higher governing board.

This creates a cycle of accountability and creates checks and balances. And it enables the followers to take ownership and play a vital part, which is essential for growth.

The necessity of leaders being accountable to those that they lead follows from the fact that all people are in the image of God and equal. Because all people are equal, no person can lord it over another. Which is the same as saying, anyone in a position of leadership is accountable to those that they lead. Nothing else reflects that equality.

We could ask, “where is this taught in Scripture?” Consider Jesus’ statement in Matthew 20:27 where, in teaching about Christian leadership, he says “whoever would be first among you must be your slave.” A slave is accountable to their master to carry out their priorities. Since leaders are to see themselves as slaves of those that they lead, then, that means that leaders are to see themselves as accountable to those whom they are leading. That is part of what it means to see yourself as the “slave” of others — in your leadership, you are accountable to them as to whether you are leading well and carrying out the priorities of the mission.

The actual process of this accountability can take many possible forms. But leaders seeing themselves not as lords over those they lead, but as their servants who are therefore accountable to them is central to the nature of true and humble Christian leadership.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen people more and more say things like “since we are all sinners, we can’t trust ourselves and we need to rely on the pastors and elders of our local churches to guide us.”

That sounds spiritual. But it represents a very significant misunderstanding.

I know that can sound radical. So, first off, let me clarify what I don’t mean. I don’t mean that counsel is a bad thing, or that the local church has no role to play in giving good counsel. “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to [good] advice” (Proverbs 12:15).

The problem with this statement is that it is reversing the way the doctrine of sin is supposed to be applied in relation to the role of leaders.

The implications of the doctrine of sin for decision making are not first about church members and everyday people needing the help of leaders to guide their lives. Centuries of human history in general and church history in particular bear out that making that the focus is actually a recipe for tyranny.

Further, it almost assumes that people are not competent to lead their own lives and fails to recognize that no human being has ultimate authority over us. “Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls” (Romans 14:4). This applies to church leaders as well as everyone else: no one is to insert themselves between any Christian and the Lord. Each person is directly accountable to Jesus Christ alone. (This is a standard Reformed doctrine, and is discussed in a very helpful way in Paul Helm’s short book The Callings; it is also the basis on which Martin Luther was able to stand up to the corruption of his day in the church.)

Instead, the first implication the doctrine of sin has in relation to the role of leaders in the church (and anywhere else) is that leadership needs to be held accountable and have checks and balances.

In other words, of course we are all sinners — and we need to remember that this applies to leaders also. Further, sin is most easily given legs to cause harm when it is institutionalized through positional authority.

For that reason, the first and most important implication for the doctrine of sin for how we lead our lives does not have to do with followers needing church leaders to help guide their lives. It has first of all to do with leaders having checks and balances and recognizing that they are accountable to the people they lead. This is the only way to prevent abuse of power. And note that the issue is not the virtue or intentions of the leaders; good leaders need this just as much as leaders of poor character (who, of course, shouldn’t be leading anyway).

Centuries of history bear this out, and the lessons have been encapsulated in the rise of democracy and the founding of our nation. The greatest danger arising from universal sin is not that the everyday people will cause harm, but that those in positions of formal authority will misuse that authority, thereby causing even greater harm to a much larger number of people.

The problem, then, with the quote at the start of this post is that it is leaving this out. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is failing to recognize that this truth about leaders being accountable to those they lead is what needs to be given pre-eminence in our thinking when we consider the doctrine of sin and its relationship to the role of leaders. That is, our first thought should not be “we are sinners, therefore we need the help of leaders,” but rather “leaders are sinners, and therefore they need to be accountable to the people and their power needs to have checks and balances.”

A true leader welcomes this mindset, because he or she does not see himself as above the people they are leading (cf. Deuteronomy 17:20) but rather as in fact beneath them as their servant (Matthew 20:27; 23:11-12).

If you don’t feel that you can handle that, then I would say you are not qualified to lead.

With that mindset in place, and only with that mindset in place, are we then in a position to say “OK, now recognizing that all of us are fallible, let’s all of us also seek input and counsel, as is relevant and natural, from those in positions of formal leadership in our churches.”

And while doing so, we also need to recognize that counsel from anyone, including church leaders, only must be followed when it is simply a restatement of what the Scriptures command. Anything that goes beyond that may be good advice, but it is never an obligation for a person. To treat it as an obligation is equivalent to adding to the word of God — which is not looked upon as a small thing in the Scriptures (Deuteronomy 4:2; etc.).