The Jethro Principle

Exodus 18:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%2018&version=NIV1984

            In the late-Eighties/early-Nineties, church growth consultant Carl F. George used Exodus 18 to promote what he called “The Jethro Principle.”  It was a principle that said, spiritual care of a large group of people is too much for one pastor; the pastor must devolve that care to smaller groups of people.  That was Jethro’s advice to Moses: subdivide, delegate, push responsibility further down the chain.

            Let’s be honest:  lots of Lutheran pastors (my friends!) didn’t much care for George’s advice and they may have had good reasons.  I haven’t read George in years, but as I recall George doesn’t much understand the means of grace and he moves pretty easily from ancient Israel’s system of justice to a modern, pastoral ministry—a move fraught with interpretive challenges.

            Be that as it may, I think George was on to something for several reasons.  First, there is a limit to the personal care that a pastor can give.  I figured one time that weddings and funerals took about 12 hours of my time.  If an average pastor in an average sized church did 5 funerals and 2 weddings in an average year, that adds up to two full weeks of his time—without accounting for follow-up care to the grieving family, which can be substantial.  Add in shut-in calls, hospital calls, and other crisis care, a pastor can quickly find himself heading in the same direction that Jethro saw Moses going, “You will only wear yourself out.”

            But I think there’s a better reason for pushing that kind of spiritual care down to smaller groups.  We Lutherans have talked about the priesthood of believers from the time of the Reformation.  Originally, it was Luther’s way of saying that laity—not just clergy—had a responsibility for the church, and he used this doctrine to advocate for laity to advance the cause of reformation—advocating for true doctrine, calling faithful pastors (even if the church hierarchy resisted).  C. F. W. Walther, the first president of the LCMS, also made this case, arguing in Church and Ministry that ‘laymen also have the right to judge doctrine.’

            Unfortunately, it seems to me that one of the things we have done is to reduce the priesthood to administrative and ‘temporal’ functions.  (I notice that in our synodical book of rites, the installation of officers in a congregation uses precisely this language: the temporal affairs of the congregation.)  That is to say, we want  the one who is an accountant in daily life to take care of the accounts of the church; the one who is in IT Monday through Friday to do IT run the church’s website; and we want the HR person to take responsibility for reviewing benefits packages.  Now, I get that.  People have skills; it’s good when they use them for the benefit of the Lord’s ministry.

            BUT, the Christian accountant, IT guy, and HR gal—they’re all Christians!  They’re not just defined by one vocation.  They also have a vocation, a calling, to be a light for the world, salt for the earth.  They have a vocation to love one another as God in Christ has loved them.  That means that they have a vocation to provide spiritual care to one another within the congregation.  Sometimes when we act as if spiritual care is just the pastor’s job, we are robbing everybody else of a precious vocation.

            So Jethro’s advice is worth thinking about, and frankly George’s “Jethro Principle” is worth thinking about—both because the pastor can’t do it all and because the Lord has called each of us to a precious and holy priesthood, a priesthood of service to one another and of constant prayer and care for one another.