The Silver Bullet?
sil·ver bul·let — a simple and seemingly magical solution to a complicated problem
Is fully embracing Ephesians 4:1–16 the silver bullet we seek as a leadership pathway into the unknown? Is it the key to changing the status quo?
September 17–19th in Dallas was a gathering of fifty church leaders open to the question. Facilitated by the 5Q team, including Alan Hirsch, the answer is that if you can only do one thing, there is no better biblical answer — one supplied by Jesus Himself. And while theory is one thing, putting it into practice is yet another. That was why this group made the learning pilgrimage to Cliff Temple Baptist Church — to learn and practice together.
For theological grounding, we reviewed the summary of Ephesians 4:1–16. It starts as Christ’s call to, first and foremost, Unity of Spirit (vs. 1–6), moves to Diversity in Practice (vs. 7–11), and ends with the Maturity of the Body of Christ. It is Christ Jesus’ elegant approach to framing and leading the Church. It is Jesus transferring his intelligence to us as a body. His body.
Hirsch commented that it is hiding in plain sight for us to discover. It has been for years. For generations! Which begs the question, why is it hidden? Why have we yet to embrace this before? If it is the potential silver bullet, why hasn’t someone already shown the way? The attendees shared some insights.
The first is that we, as leaders of the institutional form of church, have tamed the energy of it. This taming has occurred over hundreds of years, and so slowly and incrementally, we have convinced ourselves that a. it is not needed or b. we ARE living it out. It is genuinely a frog in the kettle parable. As to why there is now a new awakening, Hirsch reflected: “If you love something long enough, it will reveal itself to you.”
A second insight, vulnerably embodied some many of the attendees, is an awareness and fear of what we might lose. As we consider the implications, we know irrevocable change is likely. We have institutionalized Shepherd and Teacher’s gifts and put those gifts ‘in charge,’ informally or formally. The APEST intelligence, in its fullest expression, requires communal and shared leadership and distributed power through the priesthood of all believers. It is antithetical to our current hierarchal and heroic structures. A quote bantered around in breakouts summing up the fear is from Upton Sinclair’s political campaign. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
A related barrier to embracing Ephesians’ 4 approaches to leadership to cultivate change is not as personal but more systemic. Hirsch reminded us that if we are in love with the current system, we lose the capacity to change it. Our systems, our forms, are just human systems. If we can fall in love again with the system’s ultimate purpose, the maturity of the Body of Christ, we can take responsibility to address the flaws in the system. Hirsch reminded us that the recent book Metanoia gives a pathway to doing just that, introducing the required work of unlearning before we can learn.
For those at the conference, there were many suggestions for taking the following steps to embrace this APEST leadership model. The discussion among the attendees was rich and insightful. It is good to be with kindred spirits, not alone.
The 5Q team has much to share as they have been exposed to many initiatives. Their blog is a beautiful resource; the training courses and coaching cohorts are great foundations and opportunities for communal learning. Eventually, however, all change initiatives run up against the power of the status quo and become a culture change and organizational building function. For the APEST intelligence to be embodied, it must be done communally. The 2024 5Q Leadership Summit focuses on Shared Leadership to facilitate this next frontier.
As for what the participants had to share, it is impossible to summarize. It means something different to all who participated. Through the ricketybridge open innovation network, we desire to share over the next year. We create a valuable space where those implementing APEST change efforts can share their experiences, successes, and failures and keep the conversations going between times of meetings. Together, we will discover how the Ephesian elegance of the fullness of Christ in the Church is emerging in our 21st-century context. What will the Spirit do if we give this ‘silver bullet’ a fighting chance?
