Where do we find models for Christian leadership? The “Harvard Business Review,” the “Wall Street Journal,” the ocean of material flowing through the web and filling bookstore shelves? Are biblical models important today?
It’s been 37 years since Catholic theologian Avery Dulles published “Models of the Church” and a decade since John Fuellenbach built on that classic in his excellent book, “Church: Community for the Kingdom.” Fuellenbach describes how the scientific device of “model” has become useful in theology. A model is “a conceptual or symbolic representation or system by which we try to grasp and express reality in whole or in part.” Fuellenbach distinguishes models of and models for -- “a model of symbolizes what a reality is, while a model for is like a blueprint for a new construction.”
Scripture offers a variety of images that are both faithful models of and dynamic models for leadership in the community that Jesus calls into being. Some, like servanthood, are familiar and might seem obvious; others are less so.
One model taught by Jesus that has gone largely unnoticed is set forth in Matthew 13:51-52. Here he charges his disciples (the Twelve and probably also the larger group of men and women known as disciples) to become “scribes trained for the kingdom.”
Here’s the background: After a day of teaching “great crowds” on the lakeshore (13:1ff), “he left the crowds and went into the house.” This was the house in Capernaum that Jesus used as his ministry headquarters (Matt. 4:12-13; Mark 2:1). It essentially functioned as the first theological seminary -- the setting where Jesus probed more deeply with the disciples into his teachings and the meaning of his ministry. He asked hard questions about their own fitness for leadership (Mark 9:33) and they were free to question him about the parables (Matt. 13:36) and religious law (Mark 10:10).
When the disciples ask Jesus to “explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field” he may have rolled his eyes. He spells it out, proceeds with a string of brief parables of the kingdom, and then asks, “Have you understood all of this?” In what is either one of the gospels’ most comical or courageous moments, Matthew records: “They answered, ‘Yes.’”
This is when Jesus gives them (and us) a model both of and for the vocation of Christian leadership. “Therefore,” he said to them, “every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”
How surprising that Jesus calls us to embrace such a model. Scribes and Pharisees plotted Jesus’ downfall, and with good reason. After all, he warned against their inflated religiosity (e.g., Mark 12:38-40) and blasted them with a litany of “woe to you” denunciations (Matt. 23). But some scribes were attracted to Jesus, responded to his call to discipleship (Matt. 8:19-22), and received his blessing (Mark 12:28-34). Remarkably, Jesus caps his blistering attack on them as “blind guides” and “whitewashed tombs” with this promise: “Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes,” knowing that these ministers would soon be persecuted (Matt. 23:34).
As a model of ministry: Scribes were religious leaders trained as interpreters of Scripture. The archetypal scribe Ezra, with his colleagues, “read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8). Jesus rebuked most first century scribes’ declension from this great tradition of spiritual leadership, for becoming mere professionals occupied with status and institutional success.
As a model for ministry: Scribes trained for the kingdom, today as then, are agents of the gospel serving the church for the sake of the world. Scribes trained for the kingdom become skilled in discerning and communicating God’s mission, making sense of the ancient Word in the context of contemporary culture. That is to say, leadership means bringing out the treasure of “what is old” in conjunction with the treasure of “what is new” in the unfolding history of God’s mission.
Charles Hambrick-Stowe is pastor of the First Congregational Church, Ridgefield, Conn. He was formerly an academic dean at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.
