The Man Nobody Knows is a book few of us know today. First released in 1925, it was written by the son of a preacher and founder of the famous advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn (BBDO), Bruce Barton. In it, Barton recounts that he discovered a new Jesus — the “Founder of Modern Business” — as he intentionally set aside anything he had ever heard of Jesus. The book sold more copies than The Great Gatsby in its time.

Today we hear similar metaphors: Jesus is a CEO, an entrepreneur, an influencer, or a brand. This is often done to either justify business practices in the church, or to suggest that church leaders should be more like these business leaders. While metaphors can be helpful, as can learning from business and other disciplines, the danger is that we obscure important theological differences when comparing them.

In this article I’ll investigate the metaphor of Jesus as CEO as it relates to both church leadership and our lives as Christians. I will suggest that while the dominant business leadership paradigm of Jesus as CEO is to utilize techniques to manage and control outcomes, Christians need to learn to release control and rely on the Spirit to discern how God is at work before turning to techniques.

Method, Power, and Control

Without wishing to paint a blanket picture of all business leaders, the dominant paradigm for leadership in business is to utilize tools and techniques to develop strategies to manage and control outcomes. For example, if you want to plant a church you need to do a market analysis to determine your target market that is unique and financially viable. Or, if your current church is in decline, consider a new mission statement and marketing strategy to pull your congregation together and bring new people in. Having a hard time getting to know your community? Try big data and church management software to keep track of your people.

Theologians Mark Lau Branson & Alan J. Roxburgh argue that the church’s use of such techniques is a reality of “Modernity’s Wager:” the prevailing social imagination that “life can be lived well without God.”¹Branson & Roxburg, Leadership, God’s Agency, and Disruptions: Confronting Modernity’s Wager, 2. This flows from the enlightenment idea that we are able to master the world and achieve the outcomes we desire. As Christians, we aren’t atheists, but we’re susceptible to formation by this belief system such that we learn to place our trust in strategies from technical experts promising a strategy to fix our problems and achieve our desired outcomes. The problem is not drawing help from different disciplines, but that these strategies don’t take into account the fundamental reality that God is the primary agent in the world. It is God who creates, sustains, and directs the church.

As a result, the more we rely on management strategies, the more likely that we God merely becomes an add on to help us achieve our own goals and we lose our capacity to discern how the Spirit is at work.

I’ll be honest, I do this in my own personal life, as well. I’m a recovering perfectionist with significant experience in project management. I like to think that with the right planning and communication I can get the outcomes I want.

The world continually offers us tools to save ourselves and depending on our privilege, context, or capacity, these skills or tools can get us pretty far. But eventually something will happen in our personal lives, or our lives as church leaders, that confront us with the truth. For me it was church conflict and a series of personal losses that brought me face to face with the reality that I can’t control what happens and I can’t always fix what’s wrong.

I’m convinced that when we face these disruptions, whether in our personal lives or our churches, we can either double down on control or we can lean into God’s love. We can either look for techniques to make the situation fit our expectations, or we can dive into life with the Spirit.

While the dominant business leadership paradigm of Jesus as CEO is to utilize techniques to manage and control outcomes, Christians need to learn to release control and rely on the Spirit to discern how God is at work. Share on X

In our pursuit of success metrics, we fill our churches with people deemed successful and honored by our culture. There is no place for people that complicate this expression: the poor, disabled, or otherwise marginalized. Share on X

A Deformed Imagination

Management techniques are often presented as solutions to church decline in our current age. These strategies may appear successful in the short term by stemming decline or bringing new people – but in the process they can deform the church and her witness.

This approach to leadership flows from a deformed imagination about the church and her role in the world. During colonization, the Western church’s mission became wedded to techniques of expansion and control so that “Power, control, and domination become an axiomatic part of the church’s mission.”²Branson & Roxburgh, 43. See Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination for more. This affects both our leadership practices and expectations about the church’s place of privileged influence in culture. Therefore, when we as Christians in the West feel our position decline, our default is to turn to practices of expansion, power, and control.

It’s not so much that leaders are always self-serving, though we can be, but that we look for strategies and people that fit our paradigms. Our expectations around expansion and influence mean that typical success metrics in churches are increasing attendance and increasing budgets. This means church leaders often look for what theologian Brian Brock describes as “best case scenario” congregants: achievers who are influential, autonomous, and upwardly mobile.

In our pursuit of success metrics, we fill our churches with people deemed successful and honored by our culture. There is no place for people that complicate this expression: the poor, disabled, or otherwise marginalized. Yet, the church is not a place meant to grow only in numbers, but to grow in Christ and be reborn as we encounter the Spirit amongst others different from us.

As Christians, we aren’t atheists, but we’re susceptible to formation by this belief system in placing our trust in strategies from technical experts promising a strategy to fix our problems and achieve our desired outcomes. (1/3) Share on X

The problem is not drawing help from different disciplines, but that these strategies diminish the fundamental reality that God is the primary agent in the world. It is God who creates, sustains, and directs the church. (2/3) Share on X

As a result, the more we rely on management strategies, the more likely that we God merely becomes an add on to help us achieve our own goals and we lose our capacity to discern how the Spirit is at work. (3/3) Share on X

Leading Like Christ

When Bruce Barton read the Bible “as though he were a new historical character, about whom [he] had never heard anything at all” he found a man who “picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world.”³Barton, The Man Nobody Knows, 4. Barton was formed by our modern expansionist imagination and demonstrates that when we abandon the witness of the Scripture, global church, and the Spirit – reading about Jesus only with our own lens, we are likely to make him into our own image.

Jesus developed and led a group of twelve disciples (and many more, including women!) that went on to lead the early church, but he wasn’t a CEO as we understand them today. Jesus didn’t turn to tools and techniques to control and manage outcomes. In fact, he gave up control, entering our world and becoming a human being (See Philippians 2:5-11). When Jesus was tired or faced conflict and uncertainty, he withdrew from the crowds, leaned into his relationship with the Father and focused on doing the Father’s will.

What if a leader isn’t like a CEO, but someone one who actively waits on and listens to the Spirit, leading others with them? We may end up with something that seems like a strategy, but since the Spirit often works in new, unexpected ways, that strategy is likely to look different than one driven by our own impulses and expectations. Perhaps our churches will numerically grow, but perhaps other seeds are being planted.

All of this is likely to feel precarious. In times of uncertainty it’s scary to let go of the tools we know — especially when our salaries as Christian leaders may be tied to numeric success. But there is freedom in surrendering to Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that in following Christ, “The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered. The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus).”⁴Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 58.

The same power that raised Christ from the dead (Ephesians 1:20) creates and sustains the church, and sustains and provides for his followers, as well. This Spirit teaches and guides us according to the Father’s will (John 14). God uses these seasons of waiting and wilderness to do something new, to draw God’s people to Godself and to new forms of worship. As we let go of tools of power and control we can be assured that the Spirit is doing a new thing.

“He leads the humble in doing right, in teaching them his way. The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulness all who keep his covenant and obey his demands.”

Psalm 25:9-10

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Jesus developed and led a group of twelve disciples (and many more, including women!) that went on to lead the early church, but he wasn’t a CEO as we understand them today. (1/2) Share on X

Jesus didn’t turn to tools and techniques to control and manage outcomes. In fact, he gave up control, entering our world and becoming a human being (See Philippians 2:5-11). (2/2) Share on X

*Editorial Note:  Emily’s brilliant critique of the dominant business leadership paradigm, and it’s pervasive impact on how we perceive Christian leaders, is the fourth article in a summer series that we will publish over the next few weeks, introducing our 2024 Writing Fellows Cohort in their own voices. ~CK