Evangelicals Now
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Metaphors of Ministry - biblical images for leaders and followers

Metaphors of Ministry:
biblical images for leaders and followers
By David W. Bennett
Paternoster Press. 207 pages. £10.99
ISBN 0 85364 719 4

What does the New Testament teach about leadership? What sort of patterns of leadership did Jesus teach in the Gospels? Why did he never use the word 'leader'? Should a leader be a commander, a supervisor or a manager? Should a leader aim to have mastered certain skills?
These are the sorts of questions David Bennett seeks to answer in this wide-ranging book. He examines over 30 terms used in the Gospels to describe his disciples; terms such as servant, worker, friend, witness, sheep and child. He then proposes a taxonomy for the various terms and draws out some overall themes that characterise Jesus' teachings about patterns of leadership. In the second part of the book, he considers how these terms are used and developed in the rest of the New Testament, as well as some new images used by Peter, Paul and others.
Bennett concludes that it is possible to divide the Gospel images between comparisons to people and comparisons to things. These categories are then further sub-divided into images that emphasise the personal relationship of Jesus' followers (to Jesus and to others), such as brother, sister, child, friend, disciples, and images that focus on the tasks which Jesus' followers are supposed to perform (such as aspects of being a servant, a shepherd, a worker, a witness, or images related to growth, such as soil, the branch of a vine, or wheat).
Perhaps the most helpful (and challenging) aspect of the book is when Bennett draws out seven fundamental themes which show the standard of life for which Jesus was preparing his followers (chapters 4 and 13). Thus he notes that the disciple is called to participation in a community as well as to a task (and that this delicate balance between task and relationship is one a leader can easily lose); the disciple is both under authority (that of God) and is also to exercise authority in their position of responsibility; yet the disciple must never forget that their role and responsibilities are always derived from a prior call of God, to which there must a willing human response; disciples are on the same level in their relationship to God, even though they may have different areas and amounts of responsibility - Jesus' emphasis is not on particular structures of leadership, but on the attitudes that should characterise the leader; to be a disciple of Jesus is to identify with him both in his pattern of life and in his suffering - to serve is to suffer; and all disciples will be evaluated by the Lord in terms of their character as well as their service.
Summing that up in seven words, we have function, authority, responsibility, derivation, status, identification and accountability.
In the final chapter, Bennett challenges the church as to how it is using these New Testament images of discipleship and leadership - for example: 'Do our leaders think of themselves first as 'brothers/sisters' and as 'servants' or as rulers and bosses? Does their emphasis on equality for all in the fellowship blind them to their own need to be willing to come under the authority of a fellow-servant or perhaps to exercise authority as a fellow-servant?'
There is a wealth of biblical material in this book which repays careful study. To do so might well force us to refocus our understanding of biblical leadership, or at least to get the balance in a direction which is more in keeping with the designs of Jesus Christ, the head of the church.

Paul Woodbridge
Oak Hill College, London