Why The CEO-Leader Model Doesn't Serve The Purpose Of Going Missional

In an interview with Pastor/Professor David Fitch with the editors of The Leadership Journal here are a few of his perspectives on leadership in the Life on the Vine, in Long Grove Illinois, a chruch seeking a more missional posture.

"At Life on the Vine, we recently added a fourth pastor. Some people
told me a model with multiple visible leaders would never work—there
would be no single face to attach to the vision of the church and the
church would never grow. Balderdash (is that a word?). The church
continues to grow. There are signs of healing, new mission, and new
souls finding God."

1. It doesn't make sense to build a church around a personality
People start coming to hear that one guy (most often it's a guy), and
as the crowds get bigger this pastor becomes distanced from the
congregation at which point he loses the ability to speak into the
people's lives that he knows.

2. There are no supermen or superwomen
With mutliple pastors the whole ministry of the chruch is fed from their may gifts, and all are invited to participate in the empowerment of the gifts as modeled by the many faceted leadership. No single pastor has the gifts required to bring this about.

3. Isolated pastors can get tunnel vision
Multiple pastors in submission to one to another can work against this.

4. Pastors benefit from being bi-vocational/bi-ministrerial (since bing the secular workplace is ministry)
Pastors who have jobs outside the chruch can get to know non-Christains and spend time in non-Christain settings.

5. It models the diversity and interrelatedness of the Body
The notion of a senior pastor puts up a false impression that one
person is especially qualified and elevated to ministry. But with
multiple pastors, he/she does not stand alone. The whole body is called
to minister the gospel inside and outside the church as a way of life.

6. It protects pastors from the temptations which lead to moral failure and/or disappointment.
Multiple leaders in mutual submission to each other in Christ, there
can be no temptation to put any of the pastors on a false pedestal as
an image of the perfect Christian.

7. It is hard for pastors to be servants when they are put on a pedestal.
All pastors should have to clean toilets, serve the poor, and vacuum floors after potlucks. We should see ourselves in submission to the Body of Christ, not over it. (Mark 10:42-45). This "amongness" is not always possible as a senior pastor.

8. Because the senior pastor position is an impossible position to live up to.
Therefore, by accepting this role we are setting ourselves up (and the church) for inevitable failure.


While Pastor David Finch agrees that in some contexts and ways of bing the Body of Christ, the senior pastor position may still have validity - it doesn't work at 'Life on the Vine' whilst they seek to be missional.