God's Potters

Jackson W. Carroll submits his thoughts on church leadership in his “God’s Potters: Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations.” While Anderson writes to all believers, and more specifically leaders of Restoration Movement churches, Carroll’s audience is pastors of Christian churches. For semantic purposes I must note that while shepherds in Restoration Movement churches participate in the pastoring activities of the church, Carroll refers, in this work, to pastors as the single prominent leader of a congregation who usually is employed by the church and has primary responsibility for preaching the Word to the congregation. This model of church leadership stands in contrast to the typical Restoration Movement church which generally uses a plurality of lay men to govern her activity and pastor her flock. While Carroll and Anderson do not necessarily present identical ideas or mutually exclusive information, and while both books have value, we must realize that these books are written to two very different audiences.

As a side note, God's Potters reads as a litany of statistics and survey summaries and does not make for a fun read.

The premise for Carroll’s thoughts is that it is pastors who do the work of forming their clay jar congregations. While careful exegesis of Second Corinthians 4:7 might show that “jars of clay” refers to individual believers rather than communities of believers, Carroll uses this metaphor throughout his work. Regardless of the exegesis of this specific text, Carroll is correct in his assumption that pastors do a forming work. To begin his book, Carroll carefully sets up “The Cultural Diamond” in which he lays out how the pastor creates a congregational culture through both the social context of the church and her existing cultural objects. This theme of the pastor shaping church culture runs throughout. Using several sources of data, Carroll builds a case for pastors having greater influence on congregational culture than any other influencer.

In order to equip his readers with a better understanding of social influences on the church, Carroll provides insight and inspires further research on our culture’s socio-economic and racial diversity, our receptivity to religion and, perhaps most importantly, our tendency in all things to be consumers. Church shopping and hopping is driven by the congregant’s continual search for the most satisfactory set of religious goods and services. This mindset presents delicate challenges for today’s pastor.

Carroll then presents demographic data on Christian ministers in America in order to demonstrate the diversity among the pastoring group. Pastors not only vary greatly in their demographics, they also vary in their tasks, duties, and activities. Carroll offers interesting data in the breakdown of actual activities in the work week of a pastor. For instance, we, pastors, have seen a 33 percent decrease in work hours per week since 1934. Also in that shift in our work rhythms, we have seen a movement towards more allocation of time to administrative and evangelistic duties, while decreasing the amount of time spent for worship and sermon preparation and in actual pastoral duties. Of course these activities vary in each of the four groups of Christians, Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Conservative Protestants, and Historic Black. Widening the differences in these groups is the different hermeneutics applied to Scripture and the best selling authors and theologian leaders of each group.

Carroll goes on to provide interesting data on the differences between leadership styles of pastors and how those styles are actually perceived by congregants. This is helpful to the pastor in letting them see themselves through the lens of the average church member, although Carroll’s primary framing of church leadership here is decision making and church direction management. Little is said regarding spiritual formation of the community or individuals. Carroll rightly dedicates space to the stresses of managing and leading a church. He advises that these stresses can take dangerous tolls on the health and family life of the pastor. Still, for the pastor who sets appropriate boundaries, church leadership is reported to be a rewarding fulfillment of one’s call to ministry.

Finally, Carroll offers some measurable characteristics of healthy culture-producing, master potters. These excellent pastors excel in producing spiritual disciplines in their congregations, leading with an open style, achieving trust and deep relationships with the members, leveraging that trust in bold leadership, continuing to educate oneself and staying connected with the congregation. In hopes of achieving these master potters in our churches, Carroll concludes with a call for intentional recruiting, sound education and skills equipping, and proper emotional and financial support for the next generation of pastors.