Pastors and Public Servants: Lead Your Neighbor As Yourself
Lessons from the prophet Ezekiel during exile on guiding our people through times of crisis.
This essay is a new contribution to a weekly series by Christianity Today.
As a pastor, I’ve found one of the main difficulties in leading faithfully and living as good neighbors is that we can’t always choose our neighbors or the context and circumstances in which we lead and live.
And in a time of tense divisiveness, global conflicts, natural disasters, and other complex crises, this sense of helplessness is nearly universal.
We have all experienced the reality of a world beyond our control—not least during the COVID-19 pandemic, when life changed for all of us. Many of us were shuttering in place and scrambling to find masks, sanitizers, and so forth, grappling with a staggering amount of uncertainty about what we could and could not do. For me personally, the pandemic was a crucible for my leadership, and one I find instructive for ministry to this day.
As a multigenerational, multisite African American congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina—one of the earliest cities to issue stay-in-place mandates—we faced multiple challenges and points of tension during the initial years of the pandemic. Our staff wrestled with the same questions many Christians did as we sought to balance our individual and congregational freedom with community responsibility.
How do we honor the value of embodied, collective public worship while simultaneously protecting our congregation, especially those most vulnerable with comorbidities? How do I negotiate concerns about the budget and potential loss of income considering my responsibility to protect the livelihood of my staff and their families? How does a congregation of our size and influence set a good example in how we operate during a public health emergency, including in our rhetoric?
Above all, I believe the pandemic—as any major crisis facing our community can—created a unique opportunity for us to demonstrate our confidence in God when every aspect of life as we know it seems threatened and compromised. And as I’ve reflected on this truth since then, I’ve gleaned insights from the life and ministry of Ezekiel about what it means to lead faithfully and live as good neighbors in a world beyond our control.
About Claude Alexander
Bishop Claude Alexander is Senior Pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, a global ministry serving thousands of congregants. He is a Past President of the Hampton University Ministers Conference and currently serves on the boards of Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, BioLogos, Movement.Org, and the Trinity Forum. He is the author of Necessary Christianity along with his new release, Required: God’s Call to Justice, Mercy and Humility to Overcome Racial Division co-authored with Dr. Mac Pier.