The Genius of Jesus: Leading with Decentralized Authority and Responsible Freedom

Jesus is a genius.

Duh. He is God in the flesh, incarnate, with us. Now. By and in the Spirit. In the Word—His Word. Through His body and blood. Through and in us—the Church—His body.

The mystery is jaw dropping.

Why was Jesus a genius? There are many reasons . . .

His power and authority to heal body and soul—the curse reversed.
His sacrificial willingness to suspend His power through His suffering …so much suffering.
His hanging on a Roman cross for our sins—the sins of the world.
His rising from the dead—awakening hope seemingly suspended.
His ascending to rule and reign at God’s right hand.
His sending of the Spirit to accomplish His heavenly kingdom-expanding reign. Through us—the Church—the baptized and taught. The baptized and taught sent to baptize and teach others all He had told us.

It’s quite astonishing when you think about it. God gave us His authority. God’s in control. Complete control. Nothing goes on apart from His control. Yet, He’s invited all of us to His “leadership table.” He’s decentralized His authority to broken and rebellious sinners forgiven by faith.

To be clear—this is what Jesus did. He gathered and taught the twelve. He invited them into His kingdom-expanding mission. Watch and learn, and then do. Go proclaim the kingdom of God, heal, and cast out demons. You give them something to eat. You wash their feet. You go and make disciples.

Jesus is a genius. Why? Jesus started the greatest movement of love through dispersed leadership development, all for the sake of more and more believing in Jesus. It was not complicated, but far too rare. It still is today.

What is our leadership tendency, in dysfunctional businesses and even in the church?

Controlling hierarchy, setting rules, and enforcing compliance.
Centralized decision making.
Power in the hands of a few.
Discouraging innovative problem solving. (It could get too messy. Stay in your lane.)
Exert power over, rather than power through.

Leading Through: Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership, by Kim, Jonathan, and Erin Clark outlines four leadership teachings. This is one of the greatest leadership books I’ve read in some time. The Clark family offers a new framework for building healthy, sustainable, and scalable businesses. So many of the principles directly apply to our work in the local church—and to those who lead in the LCMS.

Innovation through initiative distributed through teams, rather than a bureaucratic hierarchy.

Jesus worked in ever-expanding and multiplying teams. These teams became networks of leaders and churches by the Spirit’s power. These teams discovered, developed, and deployed leaders who built other teams. These teams formed the church freely carrying the message of the Gospel to their communities.

Personal agency through responsible freedom.

Jesus gave personal agency to the disciples. It started with an invitation: Come, follow me. There was no demand. It was an invitation to adventure, I believe sealed with a smile and tone signaling humility and courage. A voice worth following. The disciples followed in faith.

Jesus gave His authority to His Church. Baptize. Teach. Heal. Forgive. The Church grew as the apostles distributed Jesus’ authority with a call to responsible freedom. Empowerment is a synonym for responsible freedom. The early Christians were empowered with Holy Spirit inspired agency. Freedom to rest in God’s presence through sins forgiven. Freedom to proclaim the One who had called them out of darkness into His marvelous light. Freedom to find men who could teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ freedom, and encourage them to find other such men (2 Timothy 2:2).

Responsibility to the truths of the Gospel created unity.

Freedom to teach and train future teachers created a Gospel-expanding movement.

Thanks, Paul.

Here is a thought experiment from Leading Through (p. 140):

Imagine I got back from a three-day road trip and my young kids were dirty and they told me they had not eaten in three days. What would I do? I would feed them and give them a bath. Now think about a similar situation in an average organization: you come to work and you hear about a problem. In most cases, you would not do anything about it; because it is not your problem. Somebody else in a different, well-defined role created it, so you do not need to fix it.

This sad story can occur in the local church. Pastor, you feed them. You visit them. We know they are lost and hungry. You go find and feed them. This is sad. There are so many in our neighborhoods waiting to be noticed and fed. All of the baptized need to be trained to find and feed.

This sad story can occur in the LCMS. Leaders, please help our churches find pastors. Please help our churches not shut their doors. Please help us start new churches. Please help. This is sad. We have a congregational polity that should lovingly invite local churches and leadership teams to exercise their responsible freedom.

Decentralized rather than centralized decision making.

Jesus decentralized authority. Go, make disciples. You will receive power to feed the forgiveness of sin from the Holy Spirit. He did not set up a top-down strategy for decision making, well, unless the “top” was the Holy Spirit.

Think about how much trust was needed in the early church to make sure the purity of the Gospel was preserved. The world was big. Roads and letters—rather than videos, texts, and emails—helped preserve the message. Did heresy happen? Yes. Did the Church respond? Yes. Creeds and confessions maintained the truth of the Gospel.

How much easier is it today to preserve the truths of the Gospel? Every LCMS preacher is online (hopefully). We can hear if false teaching is being promoted. Imagine if local churches, districts, and Synod leaders freely trusted and championed decentralized initiatives to advance the Gospel in our unique contexts. Imagine if more responsible freedom was entrusted to the thirty-five LCMS district presidents to solve our similar and diverse problems.

Principles with clear guidelines rather than rules govern behavior.

This teaching is a bit more nuanced. Leading Through says, “Rules tend to prescribe specific behaviors in advance of when action is needed, leaving people with very little room for agency. In contrast, principles tend to be less specific and more general and universal, preserving more freedom of action.”

For example, a rule would be “every attender at our church will receive a handshake.” A principle would be “we will make every attender feel like they belong at church.”

It appears as if Jesus wanted “just enough structure” evidenced by the calling and sending of the twelve apostles. Their principle would be love—love for all—and the Gospel heard and believed by all. It is very evident the church did not immediately establish rules for what worship liturgy or pastoral development would look like in every church.

Instead, they led with principles to preserve the truth of the Gospel. They did not stifle personal and contextual judgment or creativity. This responsible freedom allowed the Gospel to spread freely and quickly.

Here are two contextual questions for those of us who lead in LCMS churches and institutions.

Which of these four principles display our greatest opportunity for change in our local churches, circuits, districts, and through national leadership?
Are we leveraging the genius of Jesus by the Spirit’s power?

I pray we will. The days are too short to do otherwise.

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