Menuju Gereja Apostolik Transformatif

Peter Wagner, as an expert on church growth, stated that the Apostolic church is a church that is experiencing rapid growth. This claim is made because many Apostolic churches have been built around the world. The church continued the spirit of the apostles at the time of the early church's birth. However, it is important to conduct an in-depth study regarding the realization in the field; whether a thriving Apostolic church is carrying out God's mission or the personal ambition of a charismatic church leader. This study analyzes how the church which is said to be an Apostolic church runs its organization so that it experiences significant growth. The research method used is descriptive qualitative. The researcher tries to explore the phenomena and data obtained through respondents about the transformative apostolic church that was developed in the ministry of the Indonesian Bethel Church of Gatot Subroto. In conclusion, GBI Gatot Subroto is a transformative apostolic church, because of several things, such as a visionary church, senior pastors or mentor pastors as apostolic leaders, divine authority and the work of the Holy Spirit have an impact, the church as a center for leadership training and discipleship across generations implements apostolic ministry followed by other gifts/services, prioritizing mission, and focusing on the Kingdom of God.AbstrakPeter Wagner, sebagai salah satu ahli pertumbuhan gereja, menyatakan bahwa gereja Apostolik adalah gereja yang mengalami pertumbuhan secara pesat. Klaim ini disampaikan karena banyak-nya terbangun gereja-gereja beraliran Apostolik di seluruh dunia. Gereja tersebut melanjutkan semangat para rasul pada masa lahirnya gereja mula-mula. Namun, penting untuk dilakukan kajian mendalam terkait realisasi di lapangan; apakah gereja Apostolik yang berkembang menja-lankan misi Allah atau ambisi pribadi dari pemimpin gereja yang berkharismatik. Penelitian ini menganalisis bagaimana gereja yang dikatakan sebagai gereja Apostolik menjalankan organisa-sinya, sehingga mengalami pertumbuhan yang signifikan. Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah kualitatif deskriptif. Peneliti berusaha mengeksplorasi fenomena dan data-data yang diperoleh melalui responden tentang gereja apostolik transformatif yang dikembangkan dalam pelayanan Gereja Bethel Indonesia Gatot Subroto. Kesimpu-lannya, GBI Gatot Subroto adalah gereja apostolik transformatif, karena beberapa hal, seperti: gereja yang visioner, gembala senior atau gembala pembina sebagai pemimpin kerasulan, otoritas Ilahi dan pekerjaan Roh Kudus berdampak, gereja sebagai pusat pelatihan kepemimpinan dan pemuridan lintas generasi, menerap-kan jawatan rasuli diikuti karunia-karunia/jawatan lainnya, memprioritaskan misi, dan berfokus pada Kerajaan Allah.

Preacher Woman

When people are committed to gender equality, what gets in their way of achieving it? Why do well-intentioned people reinforce sexist outcomes? Why does dissonance persist between organizational actors’ good intentions of equality and sexist outcomes? This book provides answers to these questions by applying the critical lens of gendered organizations to moderate-liberal congregations that separated from their mainline denomination in support of women’s equal leadership yet remain predominately male in positions of authority. This critical methodological study investigates congregations affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) with some dually aligned with The Alliance of Baptists. Although the CBF identifies the equal leadership of women as a core component of its collective identity and women are enrolling in Baptist seminaries at almost equal rates as men, only about 5% of CBF congregations employ women as solo senior pastors. This book provides an organizational analysis investigating gendered congregational processes on the individual, interactional, and organizational levels, including themes such as gendered hiring criteria, a perceived incongruence of women’s bodies and leadership, unconscious biases of organizational actors, and how women pastors’ experiences of discrimination influence their riskier approaches to leadership.

Gender “Neutral” Hiring Processes

Chapter 3 examines congregational hiring processes, which are most often perceived by congregants as “gender neutral.” This chapter draws on interview data to reveal hiring committees’ aversion to an “affirmative action” approach and shows that their failure to recognize the gendered hurdles faced by women prior to the job market actually results in masculinized hiring processes rather than gender-neutral ones and reinforces sexist hiring decisions. It also explores the conscious and unconscious gender biases of hiring committee members, which inevitably play a role in hiring decisions. Specifically, this chapters highlights congregants’ preferred hiring criteria, which are commonly understood as “gender neutral,” and shows how these seemingly neutral preferences actually result in unequal outcomes for women. For instance, while hiring senior pastors, congregations often preferred younger pastors who also have senior pastor or associate pastor experience. Some congregants also preferred pastors with direct and clear career trajectories. These seeming gender-neutral preferences disproportionately advantage men because women often connect with their callings and find opportunities for professional development later in life as a result of the gendered hurdles they face on their ways to the job market. This chapter further explores congregants’ unconscious gender biases, which often assumed men and women to be different but equal. However, congregants failed to understand how these assumed differences ultimately advantaged men in the pursuit of pastoral leadership.

Dissecting Megachurch Scandals

This chapter examines the dark side of megachurches by quantifying and theorizing megachurch scandals. We collected data on megachurch scandals and identified fifty-six such scandals discussed in forty-eight online newspaper articles for the years 2006 to 2017. Most of the scandals that we studied came from the malfeasance of megachurch senior pastors, and the vast majority were sexual in nature. The charismatic bond that megachurch pastors form with their attendees and the power that stems from it can be used for their own personal gain. We theorize a form of soft patriarchalism as a way to name this power differential. We contend that the model of soft patriarchalism gives power to men and creates opportunities for them to manipulate and ruin the lives of women under their care. These scandals often lead to the implosion of megachurches, where the charismatic bond between the pastor and congregation is irrevocably broken.

Becoming a pastor

Ghana, like a number of other African countries, witnesses an increasing number of smaller independent Pentecostal churches founded by young pastors. These young pastors engage in pastoral careers as a way to achieve social mobility. It is an attractive career path for many young people as it offers opportunities of ascending religious and social hierarchies in a situation where the more conventional modes of achieving success, through education and employment as civil servant, are decreasing.By exploring the careers of young pastors, the article discusses how this particular group of youth are innovative and entrepreneurial in the sense that they create spaces, where they can build up status and where this status is socially recognized. At the same time the young pastors are dependent on more senior pastors in order to make a career. This points to the importance of approaching youth from the perspective of generational dynamics. The argument is that in order to become successful pastors, young people have to engage in complex relations of dependency and at the same time be innovative. A religious setting, like the small independent Pentecostal churches, enables young people to be involved in and transcend these generational relations by drawing on powerful religious repertoires of invoking and claiming access to divine powers.

Learning Agility in Clergy: Understanding the Personal Strategies and Situational Factors that Enable Pastors to Learn from Experience

Relatively little is known about the ongoing development of pastors as leaders. This study focused on learning agility, the combination of personal strategies and situational factors that pastors rely on to capture the lessons their experiences teach them. Interviews with 100 senior pastors indicated that the situational factors associated with learning for pastors were those that pushed them to step to the edge of their comfort zones, requiring them to draw on God and others, manage significant change, manage the ministry in all its complexity, and to extract lessons from positive and especially negative results. The personal strategies that pastors leveraged to navigate through and learn from key experiences included adopting a learning focus, relying on personal character and values, establishing and managing relationships, relying on their faith and calling, and using their expertise and knowledge. Implications for lifelong pastoral leadership development are explored.