Pastoral Leadership: Being Male Is Not Enough
A Presentation in a Roundtable Discussion for Reformed Evangelical Seminary
Recently, I was invited by Reformed Evangelical Seminary to join Rich Lusk, Aaron Reen, and C. R. Wiley in a roundtable discussion concerning masculinity and the pastoral ministy. Below are the notes from my opening presentation.
Pastoral Leadership: Being Male Is Not Enough
I believe that all of us here agree that the office of pastor is a male-only office. There are reasons for that to which I will make reference later. However, being male is not enough. We need masculine pastors. Churches need the masculine presence to reduce the chronic anxiety that fills the air in our society and lead them in a positive direction.
Being masculine is not the boisterous machismo that you see from many online personalities who must always tell everyone how masculine they are. If you are masculine, you won’t need to tell everyone that you are.
There is a scene in the movie City Slickers (1991) in which the city boys are sitting around the fire talking about riding out with Curly, the leather-skinned cowboy played by Jack Palance, who had made his appearance earlier that day. Some are frightened to go with him on the cattle drive. Ed speaks about him with awe and says that he is “one of the last real men,” an “untamed mustang,” compared to this group of “trained ponies.” Curly is not the perfect man, to be sure, but he had a masculine presence that provoked immediate respect and either drove the fearful away or inspired others to be better, all the while making the lone woman in the group feel safe.
A masculine presence is not a technique. It is character, and it is a character we desperately need to lead churches.
This character can be and must be developed in men who desire to be pastors.
These principles can and do apply to all areas of leadership in the home, in the workplace, and in society. However, I will focus on the ecclesiastical necessity.
Without masculine leadership in a church, chronic anxiety will rule and destroy a congregation.
Some of you might be familiar with the phrase “chronic anxiety” from Edwin Friedman’s book The Failure of Nerve or from Joe Rigney’s more biblical framing of Friedman in Leadership and Emotional Sabotage.
This is the flammable atmosphere in the room that will explode when someone strikes a match, and the match-striker is always blamed.
Friedman describes chronic anxiety in an organization as having five characteristics (which I can’t describe in detail here): reactivity, herding, blame displacement, a quick-fix mentality, and lack of self-differentiated leadership.
Reactivity – people are highly reactive and have lost a sense of playfulness.
Herding – everyone adapts to the most dysfunctional member(s), always accommodating and walking on eggshells.
Blame Displacement – Becoming victims instead of taking responsibility for one’s own well-being; my problem is that “you weren’t there for me.”
Quick-fix mentality – consistently seeking symptom relief instead of doing the long, hard work of fundamentally changing.
Lack of self-differentiated leadership – this is the failure of nerve that contributes to and perpetuates the first four.
This last one is where the masculine presence comes in.
Why is this masculine presence in leadership needed to dispel the chronic anxiety?
The answers are rooted in our creation, the way and purpose for which we are created.
The epitome of masculine leadership is Jesus himself, the faithful Adam.
Leadership: The Masculine Responsibility
Paul speaks of the manner in which we were created and the order of our creation as male and female as defining our purpose and the hierarchy of creation.
1 Tim 2:11-15 – man is created first, so he is the one to be leading worship and not women.
1 Cor 11 – the woman was made for man, not the man for the woman. Neither is independent of the other, but there is a hierarchy built into our creation.
The cosmos is patriarchal. That is the way God created and sustains it.
The word “patriarchy” has fallen into disfavor, and some may want to abandon it.
With the abuses that some of us have seen with a tyrannical patriarchalism, our tendency is to throw the patriarchal baby out with the masculine bathwater.
We simply want to be complementarian … and thin complementarians at that … bordering on egalitarianism.
But we shouldn’t be so quick to abandon patriarchy. In fact, we can’t.
I wouldn’t get into a fight over words, but patriarch is a fine word to use. I would even argue that it is a biblical word.
When Paul says in Ephesians 3.14 that he bows his knees to the Father, pathr, from whom every family, patria (a derivative of pathr), in heaven and earth is named, he is, among other things, indicating that the world is patriarchal.
Every family is not a mhthr.
The world and every family in it derive their origin and are under the authority of the Father, the Patriarch, and the families, households as well as nations, fatherlands, image that fatherhood.
The father is their source and their authority.
When Peter quotes the promise given to Abraham in Genesis 12, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Ac 3.25), he uses the same word Paul uses in Ephesians 3.14.
That promise given to Abraham in Genesis 12 is restated with a variation in Genesis 18 and 22: the nations are blessed in Abraham.
I don’t believe that these are at odds. Nations are extended families. The table of nations in Genesis 10 is a family lineage.
The place from which we hail is our fatherland.
Families and nations are named by him, taking on his name of “Father.”
So, patriarchy is a perfectly acceptable to describe the structure the created order.
God created the man to be the primary ruler of the home, church, and society.
The woman’s role includes rule with the man, but that rule is not the same kind and is derivative from and subordinate to the man.
We see this in the two Adams. Though the woman is included in the name “Adam,” Adam was Adam before the creation of the woman, having the responsibility for the mission God gave him.
He wasn’t glorified Adam, but he was Adam, nevertheless.
When the woman was created, though she was distinct, she was given his name in order to join and help him with the mission God gave to him.
They have a responsibility of dominion, but it is the man’s responsibility in a way that it is not the woman’s.
Christ Jesus, the second Adam, is the man who takes up the responsibility with the authority in a way that the church never could.
The church has a responsibility with Christ, but we are not equal to Christ.
We can’t say, “The Church is Lord” in the same way that we say, “Jesus is Lord.”
The world is patriarchal.
This is embodied primarily in males being responsible for the mission of dominion in the world, not only in the church, but in the family and in societies.
The patriarchy is male responsibility. When Paul says, for example, that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, these are not arbitrary roles or thin types.
They are not merely superficial “roles” assigned to males that could just as well be handled by females, only held back by a bald prohibition by God.
Patriarchy is reality. This is why the structures that Feminism desires will never work.
You can defy reality, but you can never destroy it. It will destroy you if you fight it because reality is rooted in the immutable character of God himself.
Working with the grain of reality means men owning the leadership responsibility given to them.
To sum up, men are called to lead. Women are called to help.
Men are called to initiate. Women are called to respond and complete or glorify.
Men advance and take the land, setting up and protecting walls/boundaries. Women work within those garden-lands, making them beautiful.
This is not only true in marriage, but it is true throughout societies. Where it is ignored, we do so to our peril.
While masculine leadership is the standard throughout out all societal structures as embodied in this archetypal relationship, something that we can tease out through doing biblical theology, masculine leadership in the sanctuary is not something we have to tease out (even though we do need to consider the setting).
The Garden was a sanctuary; the place where God would meet with man at the trees that were in the midst of the Garden.
The fruit of those trees was sacramental fruit, the Tree of Life being the fundamental sacrament given to man.
Before the woman was created, God created the man, gave him the mission of dominion, planted the garden, gave him access to the Tree of Life, forbad the TKGE, and told him to work and guard the Garden.
After this (remember order is important), God created the woman to be his helper; to help him complete his mission.
Because she is created in the Garden, she becomes a part of the Garden ministry he is to work, guard, and make fruitful. His leadership is for her as well as the rest of creation.
She and the world need this masculine leadership.
That masculine leadership is summarized in the two duties given to man before the woman was created: work and guard the garden.
Masculine leadership covers much more than one can put in a simple dictionary definition.
Work and guard assume many strengths and skills that need to be developed and are expansive to the whole of what it means to be a man.
Recognizing these limitations, I will summarize masculine leadership as the responsibility coupled with the authority to protect and provide for the feminine so that she can have the safety and provision that she needs to help him complete his mission.
He glorifies her through protection and provision, and she glorifies him through glorifying what he gives her.
Interestingly, the feminine is both the dirt from which the man comes, the earth, adamah, as well as the woman who is created to be his helper.
Adam is a husbandman to the earth and to the woman. He provides for and protects both so that they can help him bring his mission to completion.
Masculine leadership provides direction and purpose. This is done archetypically in creation and then Christ giving his church the commission to disciple the nations.
Masculine leadership equips with resources.
Christ provides the church with the Spirit as well as the gift of pastors and teachers who empower and equip the saints for the work of the ministry, respectively.
These masculine responsibilities to the work-and-guard Garden ministry are made later as the Levites are given this same charge with regard to the Tabernacle, the new post-fall Garden, complete with trees and cherubim.
“Work and guard” are the priestly ministry. The same two commands given to Adam in Genesis 2.15 are repeated concerning the Levites in Numbers 3.5-10.
Adam is a priest in the sanctuary.
One of the priest’s duties is to teach.
Adam, having received the word, was to teach his wife about everything, including the trees.
When it was time, Adam would give the fruit of the tree to his wife; he was responsible for the sacramental ministry to his wife.
Masculine leadership in the sanctuary is God’s plan from the beginning, and it is something that has held true through the years of our history until today.
Just as in the beginning, when all this was reversed in the fall, and the woman takes the sacramental fruit and gives it to the man, assuming his role, bringing chaos and destruction, so it is still today when women take the lead, especially in the sanctuary.
This order of creation defines the nature of masculine-feminine, male-female relationships.
We are oriented to one another in terms of God’s created order.
The man is created to lead, to be a protector and provider, and the woman is oriented to the man so that she needs his masculine protection and provision, whether she wants to believe it or not (or whether he wants to believe it or not).
She is able to fulfill her purpose when the man fulfills his.
She is created with this need for masculine leadership, and when it is not present, you guessed it, it creates anxiety.
The relationship between the pastor (and the elders who share some of his ministry) and congregation is a masculine-feminine relationship.
What might get confusing here is that the church is made up of men as well as women, yet, as a whole, the church is feminine.
This is because masculine-feminine relationships are not always male-female relationships.
While the masculine-feminine relationship is derived from the archetypal relationships between the man and the woman, masculine-feminine relationships can also be between those of the same sex or even females taking a masculine role and males taking a feminine role.
For instance, when Paul speaks about the relationship between the Father and Christ in 1Cor 11, he uses this as an analogy of the authority structure between the man and the woman in the church.
Moses stands in a masculine relationship to Joshua as his deacon, who occupies the feminine.
A General stands as masculine to the feminine Colonel in the military.
A mother stands in a masculine relationship to her minor son, who is to obey her.
Pastors are in a masculine relationship to the church as a whole, even though there are many males within the church.
Pastors also stand in a masculine relationship to the feminine elders and deacons though they are males.
While all masculine-feminine relationships aren’t male-female relationships, all masculine-feminine relationships are derived from the original male-female relationship.
Consequently, the need for masculine leadership relies upon males.
Women are derivative from and oriented to the man.
So, for instance, in a home, the woman is better able to exhibit a masculine presence with her children when her husband is providing her with masculine leadership.
She is less anxious because she is safe with him. This provides her the ability to be a better mother to her children.
So, while women may occupy masculine roles in some relationships, they are still dependent upon men giving them what they need to do so.
When men don’t fulfill their responsibilities, women are burdened in ways that they were not created to bear.
As pastors, we are stand-ins for Christ to the congregation, his representatives.
We have a responsibility to lead, teach, provide, and protect, or to put it succinctly, “shepherd the flock of God” (1Pt 5).
Good leadership doesn’t always mean that the woman will respond faithfully.
If YHWH’s bride didn’t respond faithfully to him always, should we expect that she will always respond to his representatives faithfully?
Our responsibility is to provide everything God has called us to provide so that the “woman” has all the gifts that she needs to do what she is called to do.
Whether the congregation admits it or not, they do need and look to the pastor for leadership.
Sometimes we get confused about this because of the way they act toward us, always pushing us.
Well, this is understandable at one level.
In the beginning, the woman was “thrown under the bus” by the man who refused to lead.
Since that time, she has been anxious about his leadership; whether or not he has the strength and fortitude to lead.
If the serpent comes, will he just hand me over to him?
Occasionally, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, she will test the husband, challenging him to see if he has the resolve to stand up to her and tell her, “No, you may not do that.”
If he doesn’t, she loses respect for him and trust in his leadership. If he can’t stand up to her to do what is right, why should she expect him to stand up to her enemy?
There are many aspects of our leadership that will be challenged by the congregation, some of it is done out of vicious rebellion, some out of anxiety, wondering whether or not you are going to be the man.
Dealing with anxiety like this with your own wife in your home has its own challenges.
But your household is the training ground for your relationship with the church, for you must rule your own household well so that you can know how to rule in God’s household (1Tm 3.4-5).
Dealing with this anxiety with a congregation takes it to a whole new level of difficulty as multiple relationships are involved and the dynamics are intensified.
If our congregations are going to have a chance to do what is right and be steadfast in the midst of an ever-changing, highly anxious world, we must provide the leadership that they need, which will include enduring these tests.
Conclusion: The need of the hour is deliberate, self-conscious, faithful, obedient masculine leadership from men. Women can’t do what we are called to do. To abdicate our responsibilities as men, forcing women to step up, whether through our laziness or some misguided idea of female empowerment, will continue to create explosive situations in the church (as well as other areas of societal life). Steadfastness depends upon men being men.