Leadership on the Front Foot

Leadership on the Front Foot Zachary Veron Anglican Press Australia, Sydney, 2009. 204pp.

Pragmatism is always dangerous: passages like 2 Corinthians 4:2, 1 Thessalonians 2:3-6 and 2 Timothy 4:3-4 warn against certain methods that seem to get results and gain listeners for your message. But pragmatism is also commended: passages like Matthew 10:16 (in the context of a gospel preaching mission) and Luke 16:8 (in the context of using money to make friends for eternity) recommend ‘shrewdness’, rather than stupidity, in ministry dealings.

I was challenged recently when I put Zachary Veron’s new book Leadership on the Front Foot into the category of principled pragmatism. Some suggest the word implies overtones foreign to the New Testament (perhaps from business), and that the practice of pragmatism should be dropped altogether. They are right if we mean pragmatism as a philosophy where “truth and conduct are to be judged by practical consequences”.¹ But I think I’m right if we stick with pragmatism’s primary meaning: “character or conduct which emphasises practical values or attention to facts; practicality”.²

Indeed, Veron says he wrote the book so people could hear from “effective practitioners”, not just academic theologians (p. 9). Over the course of a decade, Veron led a parish in gospel growth: new congregations were planted, attendance increased sevenfold and offertories, tenfold. This occurred, not in a middle class Bible-belt, but in a multicultural area of Sydney where the number of nominal Anglicans was falling fast! The publisher’s blurb explains,

This new book by Youthworks CEO, Zac Veron, outlines 23 principles to inspire and encourage church leaders. Practical guidance is offered for all aspects of parish ministry with application guides at the end of each chapter for further reflection, planning and decision making.³

Veron especially talks to new ministers of the gospel. In brief, he wants ministers to plan and operate in effective ways. So his book moves from the personal, through the day-to-day operational and tactical, to the strategic big picture.

Here lies the book’s appeal and its danger. Ministers with a good theological education and a Bible-based conservative evangelicalism like Veron’s will benefit from his wealth of practical ideas. But his book could have a dangerous effect when read by people who do not have those theological convictions, or who fail to filter what he says through the grid of Scripture.

Highlights

Here are some of the books highlights. I liked the way each chapter stated the principle up front and then immediately followed it with a corresponding error to avoid—a bit like the antithetic parallelism so common in Proverbs! Stating the negative often clarified the positive.

I also liked the intentional focus on gospel growth, rather than transfer growth. It helped me see that numerical growth matters because individuals matter:

[E]ach number represents a soul rescued from hell. Numbers at church are very important. Each number represents a person who will spend eternity in only one of two places. (p. 75)

A second area of focus is leadership in the area of finances. Five of Veron’s 23 principles give attention to the matter of raising money for ministry. Pastors must teach about money (as Veron clearly demonstrates from Scripture), model generosity, take advantage of electronic funds trans­fer, budget to expand, and so on. This area of Veron’s book will attract more than its share of disagreement. However, even someone who disagrees at points like I did will benefit from thinking about financial leadership. It cannot be left to lay church officers, and a wise leader can grasp the essence of Veron’s insights, even if Veron’s particular application does not commend itself.

Another strength of the book is Veron’s advice about developing a church staff team—how to recruit, mistakes to avoid, and the need to look for staffing diversity (not clones) while ensuring compatibility in ministry mindset. Don’t put candidates into a job description straitjacket, but don’t just settle for Mr Near Enough either.

Critically, this staffing advice does not come at the cost of lay ministry. Veron does not want to professionalize ministry, and stresses the importance of developing a converted and effective lay leadership team. As such, his book talks about how to gather, appoint (rather than elect!), and train leaders. A particularly important principle is involving leadership in vision development, rather than doing it alone. The minister who is a control freak will stifle growth.

One last strength is the application guide written by Ken Noakes, which appears immediately after each chapter. The guide provides further biblical and practical input, with questions for reflection and application. Sometimes there was a theological perspective that, if not added in the application guide, would have left important matters unsaid. For example, in chapter 12 on training lay leaders, it was only in the application guide that the importance of theological convictions and godly character was made explicit. Often it was the application guide that drove us into the Scriptures relevant to the topic. So we should thank Veron for having Ken work with him on this book.

Weaknesses

What of the book’s weaknesses? Firstly, Veron stresses the importance of application, and often provides a number of helpful tips for implementing particular principles. This means it’s a little frustrating that, for other principles, either little was said of an explanatory nature (some chapters are less than two pages) or else the practicalities were quite underdone.

For example, Veron rightly says that we must train lay people for their ministries and that this will mean delegation. But he says next to nothing about how to delegate effectively. (The application guide admits “Delegation is a hard principle to teach”—p. 99).

Perhaps I am asking too much of a book that crams 23 stimulating leadership principles into 204 pages. Yet maybe a few more references for further study would have done the trick. Several Matthias Media titles would rate a helpful mention here. For example, the very first principle on being personally prepared could be profitably explored further in Peter Brain’s Going the Distance. In addition, Col Marshall’s Passing the Baton and The Trellis and the Vine develop the whole gospel ministry training mindset Veron promotes.

My other concern is really the one I began with: the book’s strength is also its weakness because it is a book of pragmatism. Don’t hear me wrong; Veron’s theological convictions are clear. He believes in the authority of Scripture, and in “preaching exegetically throughout the Bible”, instead of just topically (pp. 58, 66). He believes in the Bible’s standards of sexual purity (principle 3). He believes in preaching regularly repentance and faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins (pp. 46-47). He believes in the uniqueness and supremacy of Christ and the greats solas we love, like faith alone, Christ alone and Scripture alone (p. 127). Veron also admits up front that his style is black and white. But often his ministry axioms end up sounding like universal truths instead of wise generalizations. Furthermore, sometimes they are offered as assertions without explanation or defence from the Bible—for example, the application of the homogenous unit principle to our church gatherings, the need for a disproportionate focus on youth, and the suggestion that a spouse halves or doubles a minister’s effectiveness.

In addition, in the chapter on training church ‘elders’, he uses a biblical term in an unbiblical way, talking only of financial and property administration, and nothing of what the Bible says an elder’s job is—shared congregational oversight in faithfulness to God’s word. Veron would have done better to refer to deacons or ‘administrative leaders’, rather than ‘elders’, which is a misnomer.

In his introduction, and following Paul, Veron speaks of the need for “theologically-founded, pragmatic principles” (p. 9). But here his theology is more assumed and implicit, rather than explicit and developed. As I said, this will present problems for ministers and young leaders who do not have solid grounding in the Bible. For this reason, I would only recommend giving Leadership on the Front Foot to trainees if they were also encouraged to read something like The Deliberate Church by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, which provides a theologically driven evangelical vision for ministry.

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Veron never expects his readers to do everything his way. Instead, he seeks to provide lots of food for thought. I was stimulated to think about how I can promote conversion growth in my church, rather than transfer growth. I also plan to explore seriously with our church leadership two of his more radical ideas—phasing out the passing of the offertory plate in favour of electronic giving (at least in some of our congregations) and rejigging Bible study groups every two years. My church ended up purchasing 20 copies for pastoral staff, parish councilors, congregational ministry team leaders and synod representatives.

Fundamentally, this is a book about courage in leadership—courage in bring­ing about thoughtful changes to promote gospel ministry, and doing this in such a way that gives you the best chance of bringing people with you. Let me conclude with some of the application guide’s final words:

Pragmatic principles in church mean nothing if they are not theologically formed, and as such the hope is that you will be a theologically-principled pragmatist. (p. 193).

Sandy also provides a detailed review of the principles of this book in a series of blog posts on The Sola Panel: http://solapanel.org/
author/sandygrant/.