I don’t always do what is right as a father. I often miss opportunities to do what is right and best for my family. I tend, like most dads, to want what is best for me. That’s why I was so interested in what I read recently about the nature of leadership. It comes from an unlikely place, the memoir of a theologian.

This particular insight aboutleadership concerns those who hold offices of power and authority in the academy. In this context, theologian Stanley Hauerwas observed: “People who occupy such offices cannot let their likes and dislikes of this or that person shape the decisions they must make for the good of the whole. The ascetic character of the rightful exercise of power is seldom appreciated” (1). When I read that last sentence, I paused. “I like where he is going with this but I want to tweak it a bit by swapping ‘power’ for ‘leadership’ or some other less potent word.” Then I realized that, as with many Hauerwasian statements, this is well written. To remove “power” from the statement neuters the statement. His thought concerns the rightful exercise of power, not the rightful exercise of something less.

Since I consider the vocation of fatherhood an office of power, I began to think about leadership and fatherhood in that context. Here “power” refers to the good, God-given authority and ability to influence the most basic of all societal institutions, the family. I want to steward well the power God has entrusted to me to lead my home. Yet I am also quite sure that I don’t know how to do this well. My tendencies are toward the wrongful exercise of power. Power is so easily misused.

God has entrusted to fathers the power to procreate, to make provision, and to lead. They are to do so in ways that display the gospel, in sacrificial and self-denying ways (Eph 5:25–6:4)—in ascetic ways. Some evangelicals have used the language of “servant-leader” to try to convey the sacrificial nature of Christian leadership but I am not sure that has always been the best term. The term servant-leader seems worn out and misunderstood. When evangelicals today use the language of servant-leader, it often does not convey an ascetic sense of leadership. Moreover, the phrase is sometimes used in a way that does not convey leadership at all. It sounds more like “servant” than “leader,” so much so that it seems to be a nice way of asking for permission to lead. If the use of “servant-leader” is a nice way to get permission to lead, then I prefer avoiding that language.

Scripture casts a vision for a particular kind of leadership, yes, but it is indeed leadership. Perhaps what we are looking for is something more like what Hauerwas has called “the ascetic character” of a leader. If our Lord Jesus was anything, he was an ascetic leader.

To avoid further capitulating to a wrongful idea of servant, consider the paradox of power in the kingdom of God. A true servant in the kingdom is not powerless, but powerful. Think of Joseph as servant in Egypt, of the Hebrew prophets as servants to Israel, and the One who came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. If our Lord Jesus was anything, he was a powerful servant.

Hauerwas’s idea of the ascetic character of a leader fits fatherhood well.  Since the term ascetic points to the practice of strict self-denial for the purpose of spiritual formation, I am suggesting that fathers actively engage in the strict denial of their own desires and tendencies in order to form the Christian home. An ascetic leader is one who practices self-denial on a routine basis, intentionally and relentlessly. That type of character is crucial to the rightful exercise of power in the Christian home.

What routines of self denial, if any, characterize your expression of Christian fatherhood? And, do you see the gospel as operative in those routines?

Instead of getting frustrated with our wives and children when they slow down pursuit of our agendas, we learn to practice self-denial. That is, we don’t just pray for patience when we are interrupted. We actively work to mortify our flesh in the context of our duties as fathers (2). We work to serve our families as an expres- sion of the gospel. We learn to look for and to anticipate moments of denial. Mediating yet another sibling dis- pute, taking inconvenient phone calls during the work day, and changing our Saturday plans for the sake of another—all of these are moments of denial that we ought to anticipate. It is our responsibility as fathers to pursue the ascetic character of leadership in the home.

Many of us have not seen the ascetic character of fatherhood up close. And even those of us who had godly, selfless dads may not have had the eyes to see it at the time. In any case, no matter what our experience has been with our earthly fathers, the gospel allows no excuses from our past.

Through the gospel we can follow the compelling examples of the patriarchs in Scripture. Inasmuch as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were men of faith, we may assume they were also men of self-denial. We have one particularly significant example in Abraham, who, when he was tested by God, willingly offered up his son of promise as an act of faith (Heb 11:17). I consider this an act of self-denial because in a very real sense he was giving himself away—this was his “only son,” the one whom he loved dearly (Gen 22:2). This was at once an act of self-denial and an act of faith by the father of many nations.

Our most compelling example of the ascetic character of fatherhood is, of course, God our Father. He chose to give himself to us and for us through Jesus Christ, only-begotten Son. The selflessness of his gift is seen in the fact that he made his Son who knew no sin to become sin for us so that God’s righteousness would be available to us. Again, he poured out his perfect and holy wrath on his own Son as an act of triune selflessness in order to accomplish the gospel. He is the perfectly ascetic Father, the One who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all.

It should be the lifelong pursuit of all earthly fathers to imitate God the Father. I hope to do that more faith- fully in my home. I want to mediate fatherhood in a way that attracts my wife and children to the gospel—and to the great architect of the gospel, God the Father, the one from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named (Eph 3:14–15).

ENDNOTES
(1) Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 231; emphasis mine.

(2) The context of fatherhood, it seems to me, is one of the most important places to seek to work out the doctrine of mortification. For a valuable resource in our fight against sin, see the classic by John Owen, The Mortification of Sin (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2004).

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About the Author: Peter R. Schemm, Jr. (Ph.D., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Senior Pastor of Cave Spring Baptist Church in Roanoke, Virginia.  He previously served as Associate Professor of Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.  He is associate editor of A Theology for the Church (B&H).  Pete and Vicki, his wife of seventeen years, have eight children: Charis, Colby, Jacob, Zachary, Parker, Anderson, Mary, Kathryn, and Chase. He likes good Denzel Washington or Russell Crowe movies, sees chocolate and coffee as evidence of common grace, and enjoys the outdoors, a pocket knife, and a round of golf.

[Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry (1.2).