5
Player-Coaches as Kings, Prophets and Priests
At the new Redeemer Church Planting Centre Blog, Tim Keller reflects on Willow Creek (one of the largest and most influential churches in the world) and the tendency for Mega Churches, Reformed Churches and Emerging Churches to be reductionistic in emphasising either the kingly, prophetic or priestly aspects to church.
The time at Willow led me to reflect on how much criticism this church has taken over the years. On the one hand, my own ‘camp’ — the non-mainline Reformed world — has been critical of its pragmatism, its lack of emphasis on sound doctrine. On the other hand, the emerging and post-modern ministries and leaders have disdained Willow’s individualism, its program-centered, ‘corporate’ ethos. These critiques, I think, are partly right, but when you are actually there you realize many of the most negative evaluations are caricatures.
John Frame’s ‘tri-perspectivalism’ helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a ‘kingly’ emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a ‘prophetic’ emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church — leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision — will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a ‘priestly’ emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view ‘community’ as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching.[i]
I think Keller nails this. The churches we need to be planting are ones that are tri-perspectival with due emphasis on the kingly, prophetic and priestly. In order to do this we need what Mark Driscoll calls ‘player-coaches‘ who are able to serve as kings, prophets and priests and at the same time train other leaders. In a new church plant these player-coaches will be godly men who work a job and serve in the church with energetic joy. They have years of ministry experience, are good fathers, loving husbands, and tough. Driscoll writes,
Too often this last point is overlooked, but when Paul said that a pastor must fight like a soldier, train like an athlete, and work hard like a farmer, he had in mind the manliest of men leading the church (2 Tim. 2:1-7). Sadly, the weakest men are often drawn to ministry simply because it is an indoor job that does not require heavy lifting.[ii]
Since new churches are flat broke, we need a team of player-coaches who can get things done and lead the church through the sheer force of their godly influence. While they lead the church in this way the church planter can stay doggedly focused on mission. He is not a pastor but rather a missiologist who studies the city and who leads a church filled with missionaries who reach the city and with pastors who care for the converts.
Who’s in?
[i] Tim Keller, “‘The Kingly’ Willow Creek Conference”, Blog 09/30/2009. Online: http://rcpc.com/blog/view.jsp?Blog_param=44 (cited 05/11/2009).
[ii] Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006), 54.