God has shown himself to be a God of revelation. This does not mean that he has revealed all knowledge, but merely that he has chosen to initiate the revelation of his nature and his will himself, by initiating revelatory speech. God initiates and his people respond. God speaks; his people listen. As Alister McGrath points out, “Revelation” does not mean merely the transmission of a body of knowledge, but the personal self-disclosure of God within history. God has taken the initiative through a process of self-disclosure, which reaches its climax and fulfillment in the history of Jesus of Nazareth.
God’s self-revelation is his Word. His Word created everything. His Word came to his chosen people, through his chosen leaders. His Word to and through his chosen prophets was recorded and regarded as Scripture. Later, his Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. This Word was witnessed and proclaimed by the apostles. The people of God are the people who come together to listen to the Word of God. God’s Word defines them. It draws God’s people into relationship with him. As Eugene Peterson writes, "The very essence of “word” is personal. It is the means by which what is within one person is shared with another person. Words link spirits...when a word is spoken and heard, it joins speaker and hearer into a whole relationship...The intent of revelation is not to inform us about God but to involve us in God."
The primary role of the Christian leader, then, ought to be to lead people to pay attention to God’s initiating revelatory speech. The leader must position God’s people to a place and posture of receiving God’s Word. Paul Barnett points out that the role of God’s leader is often described as that of a “shepherd” who leads God’s flock (Num. 27:15-18, 2 Sam. 5:1-4, Jer. 3:15, 23:4, Jer. 50:6-7, Eze. 34:23, Zec. 10:2-3, Jn. 21:17, Act. 20:28, 1Pet. 5:2 NIV).
God is not in some faraway country, to which leaders must take the flock of the people of God. Rather, he is the radiating center of all existence. God is ever present and ever revealing. The Christian leader’s task is to help people pay attention to God’s self-revelation. This is not a matter of humans initiating searches or opinions about God, but an active leading of God’s people to listen to God’s personally initiated revelation to his people and his Word. A leader does not gather God’s people to listen to his ideas about God, but to listen to God revealing himself.
It is essential that leaders begin by being formed themselves by listening to God’s Word through careful exegesis and study, and that they publicly direct their congregations in such a way that the Word is heard regularly and clearly. The act of preaching cannot merely be a lecture of human opinion. It must be more than a talk from a topical series on people’s perceived needs. It surely moves beyond the repetition of introductory evangelism or apologetics. It ought never to be the simplistic reciting of legalistic platitudes that uses God’s Word as merely an encyclopedia of morality. Nor ought it ever be an Ouija board-like use of Scripture for the spiritualistic practice of personal, esoteric experience. The first and most important principle must be the fundamental posture of any leader of God’s people, to see himself, above anything else, as leading God’s people to pay attention to God’s radiating revelation. God’s revelation must be set as the center of attention, rather than all of the competing human centers, which call for attention, both inside and outside the Church.
