Servant Leadership Jesus And Paul

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 30 (2008) 147-191

Efrain Agosto, Servant Leadership: Jesus and Paul (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2005). 256 pp., $29.99, paper.

Efrain Agosto, Professor of New Testament and Director of the Programa de Ministerios Hispanos at Hartford Seminary, helps ﬁll a scholarly gap in the otherwise well-supplied booklist on Christian leadership. His work is prompted by his experience of Hispanic Pentecostals who lead eﬀectively, his ongoing work in Hispanic theological education, and his doctoral study of commendations in Paul’s letters. Servant Leadership: Jesus and Paul challenges church leaders to follow the “prime exemplars” of leadership in the NT by communicating primarily Third-Quest and social-scientiﬁc NT scholarship, in part carrying forward Richard Horsley’s work on the Roman Empire, Jesus, and Paul.

The Introduction discusses leadership and Max Weber’s leadership typology (charismatic [Jesus]; traditional; legal; with Paul evincing a charismatic-traditional hybrid). The ﬁrst chapter sketches the social system of the Roman Empire, the matrix of the New Testament. Empire ﬁlls the book as the antagonist of Jesus and Paul and the reiﬁcation of sin and evil. Jewish elites, the “traditional Jewish leaders,” functioned as imperial allies and, with Rome, fostered a “climate of peasant revolt” throughout Palestine (15). Gospel for both Jesus and Paul targets Empire, resisting its oppressions. The good news delivers the oppressed into the alternative life of the kingdom of God in communities Paul calls ekklēsiai, churches.

Chapters two and three study leadership in the Synoptics and behind them, through a T ird-Quest reconstruction. The chief ﬁnding: Jesus and John were itinerant charismatic leaders of anti-imperial peasant religious movements who targeted ministry to “the poor and neglected in the face of . . . oppressive Roman domination”; and such a focus was “a key, indeed a sine qua non , expectation of gospel leadership” (27) for Jesus and the Gospel writ- ers. John announces God’s judgment on an unjust society, its elite leaders especially, while expressing concern for the poor. Jesus also challenges the powerful as he calls the powerless (ﬁshermen, ostracized tax collectors, and women), ministers to them (children, servants, daughters, lepers, demoniacs, and tax collectors), and commissions disciple-leaders for ministry to the same. Leaders must grasp the nature of gospel leadership: Gospel leaders serve, rather than seek to be served; they serve sacriﬁcially and through suﬀering, in egali- tarian inclusive teams, not as hierarchical “lone rangers,” laying aside demands for position and prestige. The ﬁrst disciple-leaders succeed in kingdom-announcing missions yet fail to embrace distinctively gospel leadership in numerous ways.

Chapters four through six explore Paul’s leadership through his undisputed letters, espe- cially 1 and 2 Corinthians. For Paul, the cross symbolizes authentic spiritual leadership, and through its centrality, key features of leadership expressed in the Synoptics continue in his communities. What Paul values in leaders, he commends throughout his letters. Whereas typical Greco-Roman commendations “invoked high status, patron-client ties, and ﬁnancial wherewithal” (127) along with “family ties,” Paul commends none of these qualities but “hard work, service, and concern for the community” instead. He commends women and men as coworkers and leaders, and some commendations express strong personal aﬀection. Overall, they express Paul’s conviction that gospel work is a diakonia, a service to God, occurring within koinōnia, within a team of partners who embrace all of the church.

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 30 (2008) 147-191

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The study succeeds in demonstrating continuity regarding leadership among Jesus, the Synoptic Evangelists, and Paul, and it rightly insists that we understand these in light of the Roman Empire. I regret, however, that the study presumes throughout that Jesus leads from an anti-imperial stance. Christopher Bryan’s Render to Caesar (Oxford University Press, 2005) identiﬁes four stances of ﬁrst-century Jews toward Roman rule: (1) acceptance of and full cooperation with it (Herod’s family); (2) acceptance, while challenging injustice non- violently (Philo; Bryan’s Jesus); (3) nonviolent rejection (Horsley’s and this study’s Jesus); (4) violent rejection (Judas the Galilean). By interpreting the Synoptics (and Paul) within option (3) only, the study errs, I believe, and diminishes its value in several ways: Its recon- struction reduces reality to binary conﬂict between Empire and peasants, harming its han- dling of Synoptic texts that point to a more nuanced reality and misjudging the value of canonical texts by a refutable reconstruction. T ree examples illustrate. First, the Pharisees do not ﬁt the reconstruction. The Synoptics portray them as leaders who conﬂict with John and Jesus outside the class-conﬂict, anti-imperial paradigm of this study. Pharisees are nei- ther a priestly movement (instead, a peasant movement, by the study’s logic) nor imperial allies. Second, this paradigm distorts Jesus’ encounter with an imperial agent, the centurion who asks Jesus to heal his servant (Matt 8:5-12 // Luke 7:1-10). Jesus praises the centurion’s faith — no anti-imperial act — which, with the healing, the study takes as “an indict- ment . . . of Israel’s established leadership” (66). In this reconstruction, the centurion’s faith refers not to his belief that Jesus can heal but instead to “the nature of leadership as taking care of the weaker ones among us” (66), a “faith” Jewish leaders lack. But this view confuses faith and compassionate leadership (related, but not the same); and this text nowhere indicts Jewish leaders (who, in Luke, urge Jesus to heal the servant). By theory-smothering the Synoptics, the study makes it hard to harvest its worthy leadership insights. T ird, the study ﬁnds that the rest of the NT (except the Revelation) fails variously to uphold the exemplary anti-imperial stance of Jesus and Paul. But were it to adopt Bryan’s second option (which I believe is correct), more — if not all — of the NT canon would be seen as consist- ent with its exemplary leaders.

Yet the study contributes to scholarship and ministerial education, especially through its masterful treatment of Paul’s commendations. While Pentecostal-Charismatic leadership needs more than this study oﬀers (not less), seminary leadership courses that take Scripture seriously will ﬁnd it useful.

Reviewed by Mark E. Roberts

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