What if the most dangerous thing a pastor could do is simply want to be the pastor?
That question sits at the heart of this conversation with JR Woodward, National Director of the V3 Movement and author of The Scandal of Leadership. Drawing on the work of philosopher René Girard, lay theologian William Stringfellow, and the letter to the Philippians, Woodward offers a searching diagnosis of why church leadership structures so often go wrong, and points toward a path out.
A Holistic Gospel: Kingdom and Shalom
Woodward’s work begins with a foundational conviction: the gospel is bigger than we usually make it. When Jesus announced that “the kingdom of God is at hand,” he was inaugurating a vision of new creation, a repair of every broken relationship between God and humanity, humanity and itself, humanity and creation, and humanity within itself.
Woodward calls this shalom: “a holistic picture of human flourishing.” It is not merely personal transformation. It encompasses social transformation, economic justice, care of creation, and the fabric of community life. For JR Woodward, a church that shrinks the good news down to “me and my relationship with God” has reduced something cosmic to something merely private.
This holistic vision reshapes the central question of a pastor’s ministry. Woodward’s preferred question: “If God’s reign were to be more fully realized in our neighborhood, what would be different?” That opens a very different horizon than “How do I grow my church?” The second question, JR argues, can actually corrupt a church. When the institution becomes the end goal rather than the kingdom, Woodward warns, it turns demonic.
Exegeting a Neighborhood
Before a church can bring shalom to a neighborhood, it has to understand that neighborhood. Woodward offers the NEAR framework as a tool for that work.
N stands for Narrative: What story is this neighborhood calling us to embody? E is for Ethics: How do people in this context define success? A stands for Associations: What are the primary organizations and institutions shaping people’s sense of identity and destiny? R is for Rituals: What are the core practices that form people’s sense of mission in life?
These are not abstract categories. Woodward developed this framework during his years planting churches in East Hollywood, Los Angeles. The practice of understanding a neighborhood deeply, he says, is just as essential for established churches as for new plants. We do not exist for ourselves, but for the flourishing of the place where God has sent us.
The Four Spaces of Belonging
One of the most actionable parts of this conversation involves the four spaces of belonging that sociologists identified in the 1960s: intimate space (3-4 people), personal space (5-12), social space (20-50), and public space (70 or more). Woodward argues that Jesus intuitively inhabited all four.
“He confided with the three, trained the twelve, mobilized the seventy, and spoke in parables to the crowds.” The twelve, Woodward notes, were a closed, invite-only group: high challenge, high support. They were not a small group with a chair left out for a visitor. They were a discipleship cohort with a clear social contract, closed specifically to preserve the depth that made real formation possible.
The social space (20-50) functions differently. Here, Woodward argues for an open, centered approach: welcoming to all, but centered on a core of people already being formed in discipleship and oriented toward mission. Ideally, perhaps half the people in that space do not yet identify as Christian. They belong before they believe. Their behavior and beliefs, JR Woodward has found, tend to follow that belonging.
This reverses the typical church logic: believe and behave first, then you can belong. Woodward argues that when we invert this, we discover something closer to how Jesus actually worked. People become curious. Conversion happens through relationship.
How Desire Shapes Leadership
The conversation shifts into what Woodward calls “the deeper diagnosis” of leadership dysfunction, drawing on the thought of René Girard.
Girard’s key insight is that our desires are not self-generated. We copy the desires of those around us, especially those we look up to. Desire does not flow in a straight line from a person to an object; it moves in a triangle, shaped by whoever we have chosen as a model. This, Woodward notes, is the foundation of advertising, of markets, and of the rivalry that tears churches apart.
Here is where the pastoral implications become uncomfortable. If a senior pastor deeply desires the role, title, and honor of being the senior pastor, that desire gets passed on, unconsciously, to everyone who looks up to them. Those people begin to want what their model wants: the position. And the pastor, sensing that desire in others, wants it more intensely. The rivalry escalates.
When this rivalry reaches a tipping point, it transforms from conflict everywhere to conflict focused on one person. The congregation turns on a single individual. Someone gets pushed out. Peace is temporarily restored. But nothing has been healed.
The antidote Woodward offers is found in Philippians 2. Jesus “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped”; he gave up inherited and achieved honor, became a servant, died a shameful death, and was then exalted. Paul writes this, JR notes, precisely to address the rivalry between Euodia and Syntyche, two leaders in Philippi whose conflict was dividing the congregation. His remedy: look at better models. Look at Christ. Look at Timothy. Look at Epaphroditus.
The Forces That Corrupt Leadership
Woodward also draws on William Stringfellow’s analysis of what the New Testament calls the principalities and powers: image, institution, and ideology.
Image refers to the persona a leader projects. The gap between who we are before God and who we perform ourselves to be can become the very thing driving a leader’s decisions. Stringfellow put it this way: every person has two entities that go by the same name. The cultivated image seeks to possess us rather than the other way around.
An institution becomes destructive, Stringfellow argues, when it exists primarily for its own survival. When a church makes its own perpetuation the end goal, everyone within it becomes less human in service of that goal. The remedy, Woodward says, is a purpose beyond the institution: the kingdom of God.
Ideology is perhaps the most pervasive of the three: the worldviews and systems that pull us into a story other than God’s. Each well-developed ideology offers its own creation, fall, and redemption narrative, and we can be converted to one without ever realizing it.
These three forces, Woodward argues, correspond to the three temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness, each aimed at his identity. Jesus’s response in every case was to return to the voice at his baptism: “This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That settled identity is the foundation leaders most need. Oscar Romero, who gave up the status of an archbishopric to follow Jesus in El Salvador and was killed for it, stands as Woodward’s clearest modern example of what this looks like in practice.
Discussion Questions
- JR Woodward suggests the orienting question for a church should be: “If God’s reign were more fully realized in our neighborhood, what would be different?” How would your answer shape what your church does in the next year?
- The NEAR framework asks us to understand a neighborhood’s Narrative, Ethics, Associations, and Rituals. What do you already know about your neighborhood, and what would you need to learn?
- Woodward distinguishes between closed discipleship communities and open missional spaces. Does your church have both? Which is missing?
- The belong-before-believe dynamic suggests behavior and beliefs often shift after people find belonging in a community. How does this challenge or affirm how your church currently engages people exploring faith?
- Woodward argues that leaders unconsciously pass on their desires to those who look up to them. What desires are you currently passing on?
- How have you seen rivalry play out in a church context? What happened, and what resolved it?
- Philippians 2 calls leaders to give up inherited and achieved honor to serve others. What honors or sources of status do you find hardest to hold loosely?
- Woodward argues that institutions become destructive when they exist primarily for their own survival. Where do you see that dynamic at work in your context?
- Of Stringfellow’s three forces (image, institution, ideology), which do you feel is most active in your ministry context right now?
- Oscar Romero gave up the honor of his archbishopric to follow Jesus in El Salvador, and it cost him his life. What would it mean for you to take the downward path in your current role?
