Jesus even taught his disciples to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out more laborers into the field. Interestingly, he didn’t specifically say more leaders, or more vocational ministers, or more priests or paid bishops. Just the word laborers. In Lance Ford’s book UnLeader he wrote,
Depending on the translation, at the very most, “leader” is used only six times in the New Testament, while the word “servant” can be found over 200 times. We should be asking why those of us who have a calling to serve the church obsess so much more over leadership than servantship. Jesus said, “I am among you as the one who serves” (Luke 22:27). If we honestly want to be like Jesus—if we honestly want to follow Jesus—we will pursue servantship rather than leadership. We will work to become the greatest servants we can be.
I’m a firm believer in true leadership as influencing people toward God’s end, but even what we call leadership gifts as mentioned in Ephesians 4 (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers) are entirely servant gifts that build up the rest of God’s family. The saints (better understood as peasant workers) are the ones called to do the works of ministry. This means the paid pros are supposed to equip normal people to do most of the heavy lifting in God’s kingdom. Yet today, many vocational ministers are stuck doing the work of ministry because they take a paycheck from consumer Christians who fail to see the full scope of their calling.
All are called as ministers and priests unto God. All are called to work and provide for basic needs (if we can), and everyone’s lot in life has the same sacred/secular potential as God’s hand directs and uses it all. Jesus worked and Paul worked, and if you get stuck in the blessed curse of hard labor—be it the bank, brewery or bookstore—there’s an uncommon joy in learning to redeem the curse for God’s glory.
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This excerpt is from Flesh: Bringing the Incarnation Down to Earth, Learning to be Human Like Jesus by Hugh Halter. Copyright 2014 by Hugh Halter. Flesh is published by David C Cook. Publisher permission required to reproduce. All rights reserved.