Christian
leadership has been considered from many different angles throughout the
history of the Christian church. There has been a movement in recent time to
consider leadership in the Christian church from a model of accompaniment. This
creates a greater sense of equality between the leaders and members of the
congregation. Accompaniment as a model for church leadership is rooted in the
story of the “Road to Emmaus” from the 24th chapter of Luke. Jesus
appears to Cleopas and another disciple, but they cannot recognize him. It is
not until he walks with them for some time and sits with them for a meal that
they truly recognize that this is the risen Christ. Accompaniment as a model
for leadership is about walking with people that each might see Christ in the
other. Accompaniment forces vulnerability, which can be seen as risky, but
without this vulnerability there is no Christian leader. Pastors are called to stand
with their flocks and to walk with them in times of great joy and abundant
grief—this exposes pastors and their flocks to vulnerability of the soul.
Linda Crockett defines accompaniment in
her book, The Deepest Wound, where
she writes,
Accompaniment
goes beyond solidarity in that anyone who enters into it risks suffering the pain
of those we would accompany. Accompaniment may include all of these actions
[protest marches, pressing for changes in law, civil disobedience] but it does
not necessarily share the assumption that we can fix, save, or change a
situation or person by what we do. It calls for us to walk with those we
accompany, forming relationships and sharing risks, joys, and lives. We enter
into the world of the one who suffers with no assurance that we can change or
fix anything… Accompaniment is based on hope despite evidence that there is
little reason for optimism.
Through
accompaniment, we share the sorrows and hopes of our brothers and sisters, and consequently
we interact with the Spirit of Christ in each and every one of God’s creation. Church
leadership often refers to this as a ministry of presence. It is clear that
pastors and other church leaders cannot fix the situations of life that people
are exposed to because every human is subject to the human condition and human
brokenness.
Accompaniment is about seeing every
Christian as a missionary. Christians tend to think that missionaries are
people sent around the world to share the message of Jesus Christ with people
less fortunate. The reality is that every Christian is a missionary and churches
are beginning to lean towards accompaniment as a model for their missionaries.
The new buzzword for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and
many other Christian churches, is MISSION. Everyone talks about how churches
can become more missional, how congregations can be more missional, and how our
national church is being missional stateside and around the world. The word is
not easily defined and it tends to carry different meaning depending on who one
asks, but missional really refers to the sending out of God’s people into the
world—to walk with people, to sit with people, and to act towards people the
way that Jesus acted. Individuals, called by God and sent, are propelled into
the world to serve the other, to love every neighbor, and to treat everyone
with inalienable dignity.
The pressing reality facing the church is
the ever-present concern of the times. That is to say, the church must address
the concerns facing people in the time and place they find themselves. Darrell
Gruder, author of Missional Church: A
Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, is correct to
identity the gospel message and its relevance as important matters. The church
must always be grounded in the reality facing people—namely, their human
condition. In this way, the church must ultimately speak prophetically about
God—not humanity. The church must speak truth to power by witnessing on one
hand to the wretchedness of this world and on the other, to the embodiment of
God’s radical love in Jesus Christ. Every Christian is pushed by the Holy
Spirit to respond to the gift of grace, which God has freely bestowed upon
them. The way that every Christian responds is missionally—that is in the way
of a missionary—and accompanies one’s brothers and sister on a mission or
journey.
Church leaders are often depicted as
shepherds. The prophet Jeremiah writes, “And I
will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge
and understanding.”
In the gospel of John, Jesus says to “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He
said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my
sheep.”
In 1st Peter the author writes, “Shepherd the flock of God that is
among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would
have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly.”
The Bible is littered with references to the leaders of God’s people tending to
the people like a shepherd tending sheep. It can be incredibly difficult for
the shepherd to watch the sheep suffer and to not be able to be the superhero
who swoops in and saves the day. Adversely, it can be incredibly difficult for
the flock to watch the shepherd or other members of the flock to suffer.
Accompanying the members of the flock is difficult because it can be incredibly
painful and lonely for the shepherd. The advantage that accompaniment modeled
leadership has is that the congregation, the sheep, the people of God are also
accompanying the shepherd, the pastor, their fellow brother or sister in
Christ.
It is important that the shepherd is
understood as one who gets her hands dirty, who walks barefoot with the sheep,
the one who sweats, the one who becomes exhausted, the one who needs as much
direction as the one’s who “follows”. The accompaniment model of leadership
remains a reaction or counter to the remnants of 16th century
understandings of church leaders. In the 16th century and prior,
clergy and other individuals under vows were considered holier than their lay
counterparts. They were considered to have chosen a holier lifestyle and
consequently God favored them. In the accompaniment model of leadership there
is a solidarity shared between the leaders and the congregants—each is able to
teach, be compassionate, give hope, and paint a picture of the new life available
in the resurrection. Each is able to be a good steward of hope and to show that
hope to the other.
In her article, “Toward a Spirituality of
Accompaniment in Solidarity Partnerships,”
Kim Marie Lamberty suggests that this solidarity is one of spirituality. She proposes
that it is vital that we recognize that each person has the same amount of
dignity—leader or follower. Once this is recognized there is a breakdown and
the words leader and follower become less about what the positions
traditionally connoted and more a system to which humans organize information. The ELCA defines accompaniment as “walking together
in solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality. In this walk,
gifts, resources, and experiences are shared with mutual advice and admonition
to deepen and expand our work within God’s mission.” This allows one to see
more fully that accompaniment is about interdependence and a journey together,
and the traditional hierarchy is destroyed. The pastor and the congregants are
on a journey together absorbing God’s grace and watching that same grace
radiate out beyond the four walls of the church. Upon the culmination of the
liturgy the congregation is often said to be recessing out of the worship
space. Accompaniment is about processing, going out, into the world to walk
with one’s brothers and sisters—in life, love, hope, pain, struggle, and
suffering.
The only way that one can
understand accompaniment is to accompany others. Gregory Lee Cuéllar argues in his book, Voices of Marginality, that proximity is
necessary to fully understand the plight of the other. His argument is rooted in
Post Colonial thought and an effort to recognize the plight of the other and
how imperialism and colonialism have caused many of these negative outcomes—for
instance the aforementioned 16th century understanding of the
holiness of individuals under vows. It is difficult for individuals to speak
for their parishioners if they have not accompanied them and truly heard their
stories. It is of equal importance for the congregation to hear the stories of
the pastor, which are rooted in sermons and ways in which the pastor frames
pastoral care narratives.
The ELCA endows a program entitled
Young Adults in Global Mission (YAGM), which sends young adults around the
world as missionaries to do nothing more and nothing less than accompany the
community they are part of—this is the fruit of accompaniment partnerships.
Many individuals seeking to be pastors in the ELCA have spent a year serving
with YAGM, which is revolutionizing ELCA clergy leadership and their colleagues.
Hannah Wolfe, a current YAGM participant reflects on Gregory Boyle’s book Tattoos
on the Heart where he writes,
“Mother Theresa diagnosed the world’s ills in this way: we’ve just ‘forgotten
that we belong to each other.’ Kinship is what happens when we refuse to let
that happen.” Wolfe reflects,
We forget about our brothers and
sisters, we forget about God, we forget about the earth, and we forget our
collective belonging. This is what causes the systemic sin that separates us
from one another and allows us to build walls. If we refuse to forget that we
belong to each other and that God says, “You are mine,” we get closer to
achieving what we have in mind when we think of a world free of the barriers
that separate us and the chains that bind us. When we do this, we have kinship
and we have community, and most of all belonging. We belong to each other.
Accompaniment as a form of leadership is about
walking with people and discovering their true identity, it is about them
discovering your true identity, and ultimately it is about finding the place
where these identities rest in each other—the crossroads of identity is where
ministry happens and love abides.
The Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America, “ELCA GLOCAL Mission Gathering – Accompaniment,
2013. [www.elca.org]
Given his notorious history, there was question about how people would treat his death. In case you don’t know, Fred Phelps was the founder of West Boro Baptist Church—a small, radical group of folks who targeted various events around the country to spread a message of, quite literally, hate. They’re most known for carrying picketing signs at the funerals of soldiers which read such ignominious things as “God hates fags,” “God hates America,” and “Thank God for dead soldiers”—to name just a few of their many slogans.
In my very, very small hometown, we had the misfortune of having the West Boro Baptist Church come and protest the funeral of a man who had died after having fought in Iraq. It caused quite a stir among the community, and people from all walks of life agreed that protesting the funeral of a fallen soldier, no matter on what grounds, was despicable.
But what do we as good, loving Christians make of the death of Fred Phelps? Two particular readings from Scripture come to mind for me as we might seek to come to a faithful answer to that question:
