So I want to continue to put up some posts on some thoughts I have on church leadership. In my last post, I proposed my idea of a caretaker model of our church leadership. I see our hierarchy as an inspired bureaucracy, a very good thing, but different that all or most policies being dictated by God as we tend to talk in the church.
So in my next few posts, I want to talk about some observations I’ve had on what I see as some sort of tension between prophets and great administrators. In my observation, those tend to be different spiritual gifts and skills sets. It seems to me that in our church leadership system, we propose merging the two very important roles, but again, I’ll propose in some of these posts that sometimes that merger is a little forced.
To begin, let me quote a passage from Hugh Nibley’s recorded lectures on the Book of Mormon given at BYU 1989-90. It’s the 7th lecture and starts around minute 4 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWOUjyeiTH8
Nibley was talking about prophets in Jerusalem around Lehi’s time and a student asked, “When you say prophet, I kind of conjure up the hierarchy of the church as we have today.”
Nibley: “No, no, no,” (not a scolding tone, but corrective)
Student: “It wasn’t at all like that back then?”
Nibley: “As Brigham Young said, ‘Prophecy is not an office; it’s a gift. Some people have it and some don’t.’ We are told that anyone who has a testimony of Jesus Christ has the gift of prophecy. But you have no right prophesying for the Church. There are various people who have the gift very strongly. No president of the Church ever had it more strongly than Eliza R. Snow. She made some marvelous prophecies, but she didn’t speak to the world and to the Church. This is given as a special gift, like healing, etc. There are some interesting stories on that.”
Of course, Moses would be held up as the ideal prophet-administrator. Mike Wallace asked Pres Hinckley, “The Mormons, Mr. President, call you a ‘living Moses,’ a prophet who literally communicates with Jesus. How do you do that?” (President Hinckley’s answer in a comment).
Yet as I noted in a number of posts, OT scholars generally note problems with Moses’s historicity, and it would seem to me that the OT prophets tended not do much administration. Generally the prophets make declarations and the kings lead, if the kings are good and wise they will listen to the prophets. In the OT, there isn’t a church the prophets lead separate from the larger people that the king leads. As the picture of Moses seems not to be historical, his story seems to represent an ideal that people long for, the prophet leader. [1]
In the NT, it does seem like Jesus and the apostles do attempt something of prophet leader roles, but the book of Acts suggests this wasn’t a clear-cut and smooth process. I’ll give some observations about our own history noting what I see as some challenges to trying to achieve the ideal of prophet administrators in our own tradition as well.
One tendency I want to focus on is a frequent tendency for the church leader to appoint principle administrators into the first presidency. This makes sense and seems to have been something Joseph Smith did himself, calling people with more administrative experience into the first First Presidency: Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams. This and other attempts to form the ideal of prophet leaderships has had some bumps along the way.
I mentioned in one of my first posts, my love for the book Watership Down. I won’t go into too much detail, but a major theme of the book is Hazel as the great leader, not because of size of strength (he’s a little on the small side), but because he’s the best at coordinating and amplifying the talents of the rabbits who follow Hazel. One such rabbit is Hazel’s brother Fiver, one of the smallest rabbits but also the clairvoyant. Fiver is the prophet, and things go best when the other rabbits, especially Hazel, listen to Fiver. But Fiver and Hazel have different “gifts” and neither Fiver, nor any of the other rabbits, have Hazel’s leadership talent. I think that dynamic accords with Nibley’s observation.
[1] Yes, there is the ideal of the prophet administrator in the Book of Mormon with lots of leaders. I’ve noted questions about Book of Mormon historicity as well, but would like to make this post about the OP. If commenters would like to express concerns over scholarship on Moses or the Book of Mormon, I’ll open up another post for that topic.
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