(I am at last emerging from a long period of health challenges, none totally debilitating but all rather energy-sapping. And I find time again to think and write!)
The long-serving President of the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa, Dr Isak Burger, has just retired at the age of 65 yrs. His replacement, elected by the National Conference in September 2016, is Pastor George Mahlobo, who is himself over 60 yrs old and has been the General Secretary of the denomination since 1996. Isak Burger became President of the church in 1988, in the place of Dr F P Moller who had held that office since 1965. Mahlobo’s election presents the movement with its first non-PhD president in 51 years – but is noteworthy not for that, but for his age.
On receiving the news of Isak’s replacement (he and I had served as College lecturers together in the 1980’s) I browsed the newsletters and web-site of the church and discovered that almost every current national leader of the church (Office Bearers, Trustees, and Departmental Directors) was of the same generation: Baby Boomers. Between 1988 and 1991, the conference-elected or appointed leadership of the church as represented by these categories had come to consist (with a single exception) of then-40-something Baby Boomers with high formal theological qualifications (PhD’s). All of us had in our younger days been encouraged to gradually develop our skills and input into the national church under the enlightened and confident presidency of Moller – who had the confidence to delegate and entrust significant aspects of development to those who showed potential. However, it appears that we have not ourselves been as successful in facilitating individuals in the next generation to develop as we were encouraged and permitted to do – or we have adopted social filters that preclude identifying or recognising anything or anyone who does not fit the cookie-cutter mold for “leadership” brashly and unrelentingly mouthed by the Church Leadership brigade for the last 25 years.
The challenge for that particular church (which, although in Africa has a large modernised Western component) seems: where can they find leaders who are younger and not in this category of due-for-retirement Boomers, who can demonstrate obvious and recognisable potential and ability? The UK church may be in similar straits. Even wider secular society is experiencing these dynamics: it is Boomer faces and issues that dominate politics on both sides of the Atlantic: Trump, Clinton, Sanders, Corbyn, Merkel, May… indeed, it is retro that lives, as the late-Gen-X clones Obama, Cameron, Osborne, Milliband and Clegg retire from public focus leaving no memorable legacy. Even the normally apathetic young on both continents have been revitalised and motivated by the rhetoric and ideals of the aged – back we go, to the Big Visions of the Right and Left, long live the 1970’s!
Analytically, the problem can be depicted as:
- The post-Boomer generation is Gen X, who have never really been suspected of being generationally or culturally suited for responsible leadership. Not a natural breeding-ground for dynamic leaders.
- The following generation is the Millennials (now 18-40 yrs old in most Western nations) who are not particularly respectful or desirous of leadership. Not out of rebellion, but because they prefer informal and relational dynamics to organisations shaped by strong personalities. This may be why they are absent in their millions from the leadership-oriented churches and political parties of the West – they don’t argue, they just don’t buy into personality-led structures, they stay away.
- A pre-occupation with “leadership” that has dominated Western churches for the last two decades (at least), seems to have failed in attracting or developing strong leadership, except a few so-called entrepreneurial or “apostolic” models. This can be detected in the South African church, where the so-called new leadership-savvy ministers are rarely the ministers of those local Christian communities where sinners are finding Jesus as Saviour. In view of the lack of formal statistics in the UK Pentecostal churches it will demand some major empirical studies to determine whether the last 25 years of emphasis on leadership has significantly (or even slightly) increased the rate of conversion of sinners here, where the growth rate of Pentecostalism outside of the immigrant communities is probably less than 1% p.a. The North American church is not dissimilar.
- When the previous General Superintendent of a UK Pentecostal church admitted to its College faculty in 2014 that he could not identify a single minister in his church that was capable of fulfilling the role of Director of Training for the movement, this was an astonishing admission of failure of a leadership model that had proposed to “Build bigger people.” The new leadership paradigms have produced or promoted some entrepreneurial leaders, and some leaders who confidently claim “apostolic” status – but neither class of leader has demonstrated the ability to train, encourage and equip their replacements or competition. This is evident in the crises of transition that have shaken so many personality-led movements as the Boomer generation departs. Most “savvy” leaders have preferred to surround themselves with good “team people” rather than with those more irritating souls who could press, challenge and perhaps even threaten their personal security, comfort-zone and abilities. This tendency is not conducive to developing a new generation of capable people.
- At seminaries we have noticed for at least the last 20 years how few of the students who enter or exit our doors seem to demonstrate the ability to function as confidently and effectively as the then 30-or-40-something Boomers did a generation ago. Most seem complacent about at most finding a niche in the team of some entrepreneurial leader, while those braver souls who choose to attempt church planting on their own initiative are only more or less successful, with few drawing attention to themselves as dynamic and effective agents of the gospel – and few enjoying any corporate support unless being prepared to submit to some form of intrusive oversight.
- Where a more traditional type of Christian leader has emerged has been in those contexts (not exclusively but mainly in the Global South) where converts are being won among people who are significantly less enabled, developed, modernised or socially mobile than the ministers themselves. In these contexts the leader is compelled to facilitate modernisation and social enablement as a crucial part of discipling the converts. The models being employed in the West, especially the Great Man of God model, can have precisely the opposite effect: upward mobility and modernisation can in fact be subverted by an insistence on submission to leaders (entrepreneurial or apostolic) who may be significantly less socially developed than their team or church members (relatively few of whom came to conversion under that leadership anyway.)
- The educational systems of the West have adopted a cotton-wool approach to pupils and students which attempts to accompany them pastorally in every aspect of their lives, and apologises and changes its ways when the more disciplined demands of study (such as home-work, memorising and intensive research) threaten the emotional and psychological well-being of the young. This nanny-ing approach was never going to encourage the production of strong, confident and professional leadership – especially not of the sacrificial and persevering kind.
The crisis:
In essence, the next generation of Western Pentecostals, after a generation of emphasis on leadership, is ironically faced with a crisis of leadership. How to “lead” (actually, to win) the Millennials, how to promote the social, economic and educational good of the new converts – indeed, how to win converts! How to convince the wider membership of potential and ability, how to demonstrate the traits of a strong leader, perhaps as summed up in Kipling’s poem If… (Then you are a man, my son!) How to model a clear sense of direction, how to exemplify wisdom, how to develop one’s intellect, how to be a humble servant of both God and men – and crucially, how to identify and enable the next generation of leaders, once your course is run…
Time to strategise? To take time out from the weary and ineffectual shibboleths of the leadership gurus? Time to rediscover the power of God and the potential that is resident in even the most unlikely? Time for the humble servant heart, dedicated to the development of the people, to come to the fore again?
Mathew Clark 