Were Pastors Meant To Be Atlas?
Description
Everything rises or falls on leadership. Ever heard that line? Think about what it means when applied to a pastor’s role in a church. What about the priesthood of all believers? And where is Jesus in that equation?
In this edition of The Roys Report, veteran church planter and pastor, Lance Ford, challenges popular views of leadership, showing how they’re the opposite of what Scripture teaches. In the Body of Christ, the pastor is not the head; Jesus is!
In 2012, Lance Ford’s landmark work UnLeader exposed how unbiblical models of leadership have become an obsession in the church. Now The Atlas Factor, which is about shifting leadership onto the shoulders of Jesus, serves as a sequel to that book.
One of the most eye-opening truths of The Atlas Factor is that leadership, when presented as a key to organizational success, is a relatively new concept. The multi-billion-dollar industry built around teaching and training people in leadership—in both the corporate world and the church—has emerged only within the past 40 to 50 years. And this model of leadership didn’t come from Scripture; it came from the world.
Lance was featured in a recent podcast with his message from the Restore Conference titled, “It’s the System, Stupid.” If you caught that message, then you heard a preview of what Lance and Julie delve into in-depth in this podcast.
Lance’s prophetic message is a clarion call to the church to return to Jesus’ way of doing things—or continue to face disastrous consequences.
Guests
Lance Ford
Lance Ford is an author, church planter, coach, and consultant who has designed unique training systems currently being used by networks, seminaries, and leaders throughout the world. He has written several books including The Atlas Factor, UnLeader, The Missional Quest, and The Starfish and the Spirit. Lance holds a master’s degree in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary. Learn more at LanceFordBooks.com.
Show Transcript
SPEAKERSLANCE FORD, Julie Roys
Julie Roys 00:04 Everything rises or falls on leadership. Ever heard that line? Certainly, great leaders can make a big difference in the success of an organization. But think about what that line applied to the church really means. Does everything rise or fall on the pastor? What about the priesthood of all believers? What about the body of Christ, where each member plays a vital role? And most importantly, what about Jesus? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and joining me today is Lance Ford, who spent decades planting and pastoring churches. And recently we published his talk from the RESTORE conference where he argued that so many of the scandals and issues that we see in the church today stem from our toxic model of leadership. Well, today you’re in for a treat, because Lance is joining me to discuss his new book, The Atlas Factor. And this book eviscerates the conventional wisdom that leadership is everything. In fact, one of the most eye-opening things I learned in this book is that leadership is a relatively new concept. Sure, there have always been people who lead and manage organizations. But leadership as this thing that’s crucial to the success of organizations is relatively new. And certainly, the industry that’s been built around teaching and training people in leadership in both the corporate world and the church is super new, like within the past 40 to 50 years. But I think the pressing question, especially in the church concerns whether these notions of leadership we’re training pastors to follow are actually biblical. And if they’re not, what’s the alternative? We’ll dig into those questions in just a minute.
Julie Roys 01:46
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Julie Roys 02:49
Well, again, joining me is Lance Ford, a church planter, coach, and consultant who spent decades pastoring and planting churches. And out of that experience and biblical study, he’s designed unique training systems that are being used by seminaries, church networks, and leaders throughout the world. Lance is also the author of several books, including one of my favorites called Unleader. This book exposes the obsession in the church to unbiblical models of leadership. It’s fantastic and eye opening. And Lance’s latest book, The Atlas Factor, is essentially a sequel to Unleader, and it’s quickly become one of my favorites as well. So, Lance, thanks so much for joining me. I’m really, really looking forward to our discussion.
LANCE FORD 03:29
It’s always one of my favorite things to do is visit with you, Julie.
Julie Roys 03:32
I’m glad to hear that. And I should mention that you also are a recent addition to The Roys Report board. So, we’re pretty excited about that. But I know you spoke at RESTORE and I heard from so so many people, but our board as well, just saying, hey, we need to get this guy on our board. So just really, really glad for all the wisdom that you’re going to bring to the board. So, thanks for being willing to do that.
LANCE FORD 03:55
Well, it’s a huge honor to be invited to be a part of y’all. The boardroom didn’t get smarter because I showed up it probably got a little dumber When I joined.
Julie Roys 04:04
I do not believe that. But as I mentioned, you spoke at RESTORE and gave a great talk on toxic leadership and our obsession with it and probably had the best line of the entire conference I have to say, which became the title of the podcast that we put out with your talk, which is, It’s the System, Stupid! Just briefly for those who didn’t hear your talk, which if you didn’t hear Lance’s talk, it’s the System, Stupid!, I think it was like back in mid-December, we published that. Go back and listen to his talk. It is so so good. But talk about what you meant by that, that it’s the system stupid.
LANCE FORD 04:41
I think probably Julie one day I was probably somewhere along the midst of listening to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, and I was just thinking, they just keep talking about symptoms, symptoms. They never get to the solution, and I just said it out loud. It’s the system stupid. And it reminded me, James Carville’s deal with Clinton. It’s the economy stupid. So that’s kind of where that came from is that all these problems that we have are downstream from a messed-up system. And you can’t just deal with the symptoms and try to throw drugs at the symptoms. You have to bandage the wounds, pouring the oil on the wine, that’s necessary to say the least. Well, let’s do some preventative medicine. Let’s go back to the headwaters of this thing and try to nip some of this stuff in the bud. And it just seems that the answer almost every time, especially internally, from the groups that are in the midst of these falls and these breakdowns in leadership, usually their answer is, well, we just need better accountability. But it’s the same type of what they call accountability. So rare is it that when you hear a group say, well, we need new leadership, they don’t mean they need new leadership systems. They mean, we need a new hero leader.
Julie Roys 06:05
Yeah. Oh, exactly. I mean, I remember when Rick Warren was stepping down. And of course, there’s all sorts of issues with Andy Wood, who was picked as his successor. And we’ve published many articles on how he apparently is a horribly abusive leader. But he’s now in that position. And when I heard the language, though, it was like we need to find a successor for Rick. And I thought, really, who can be the successor to Rick Warren, and who is capable of being in a position over so many churches and having so many people following you? And I sit there and wonder, because there’s this idea that there’s going to be this really good, noble, full of integrity leader that can handle those kinds of pressures. And I sit there, and I look at that, and I’m like, I don’t know that I can handle that. That’s an awful lot to shoulder. And I think that really is at the root of what you’re talking about in this book, The Atlas Factor. The metaphor is grea
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