WHY SHOULD TWENTIETH-CENTURY Christians read Galatians? What application does it have to a church removed from its original audience by nearly two thousand years? That’s the question I kept asking myself as I read Scot McKnight’s excellent commentary on this letter of Paul. And I found myself coming back again and again to this answer: The book of Galatians speaks to a crucial issue facing the church today, the question of how to exercise visionary leadership. Let me explain.
As editor of Christianity Today Magazine and Leadership Journal for ten years, I visited hundreds of churches across the country and met thousands of pastors and lay leaders. Among the many things I learned, one issue stands out: how difficult it is to lead a church community today.
It is not difficult, mind you, to grow a church, to manage the day-to-day affairs of a church, or to chair committees and task forces. True leadership, however, is another matter. It’s tough to lead primarily because people don’t want to be led. If the people won’t follow, what’s a church leader to do?
Two approaches probably won’t help. We can’t turn church members into good followers overnight; it takes time to change behavior patterns so deeply entrenched. And it’s questionable if more leadership skills or training programs will help. In our managerial age, we have booked, seminared, and tested church leaders to the point of exhaustion. So what can we do?
Enter Paul and Galatians.
One of the major issues facing Paul in dealing with the churches of Galatia was a faction in the church that questioned his authority. He struggled with a group of people who did not want to be led. In this situation, Paul did what most of us would do—he defended himself (see chaps. 1–2). Paul was human, after all. But it’s instructive to note the way in which Paul defended himself.
Most of us would lash out angrily and then begin toting up our list of accomplishments and reasons why our authority should not be questioned. Paul lashed out too—but not angrily. Paul toted up a list of reasons about how his authority was valid—but what an odd list of reasons. Paul did list his “accomplishments”—sort of. He listed the things in his life that he was surely ashamed of, particularly his former persecution of Christians. His intent was to show the marvelous reversal that had come about when God touched his life. He used his own weakness to show God’s strength.
Thus, when Paul defended his authority, he admitted he had none of his own. He claimed his standing came only from God, not from other human beings. And when he defended the content of his preaching, he did not cite its theological coherence and trustworthiness. In fact, Paul didn’t talk about “doctrines” at all. He simply wrote: “My gospel is correct because of where it came from—from Jesus Christ.”
Paul ended his defense by noting his call. He had not decided to become an apostle to the Gentiles. Rather, God called him to this task, and he could do nothing but obey.
In summary, Paul argued that his effectiveness came about because of his ineffectiveness, that his authority came about because of his submission to God, that the content of his preaching could be traced solely to his reliance on Jesus Christ, and that his biggest claim to fame was that he once was a sinner but now was saved.
It was this approach to visionary leadership that enabled Paul to confront the burning question of Galatians: the relationship of the Mosaic law to the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Scot McKnight so expertly details, Paul challenged the Galatians’ mistaken understanding of the law. They were, in effect, creating a new gospel. Had Paul been content to focus on leadership technique and style and to list his leadership accomplishments in the standard way, he would have been implicitly using the same methodology as the “Judaizers.” Instead, at every possible point, Paul pointed away from himself toward Jesus Christ. That is the essence of visionary leadership, and that is the essence of Scot McKnight’s “new” approach to the book of Galatians.
—Terry Muck