Recovering a Biblical Vision of Leadership for the Japanese Church
A Familiar Pattern
There is a cultural phenomenon in Japan that many people recognize but rarely name directly. A man works for years as a “salaryman”, moving through the ranks with characteristic Japanese humility: bowing lower than his colleagues, speaking carefully, deferring to those above him, apologizing without hesitation. He is, by almost every social measure, pleasant and approachable. Then he gets promoted.
Something shifts. The man who was known for his consideration becomes difficult, controlling, and remote. His team dreads his moods. His subordinates work around him rather than with him. The word 「パワハラ」 (PAWAHARA, power harassment) has entered everyday Japanese vocabulary for a reason: it describes a pattern that is distressingly common across Japanese workplaces.
This pattern has deep cultural roots. In his landmark study ”The Anatomy of Dependence” (1971), psychologist Takeo Doi explored how AMAE 「甘え」, the expectation of benevolent indulgence from those in positions above you, structures Japanese social relationships. When a person rises to authority without having developed genuine inner resources for leading others, the AMAE dynamic simply inverts: the one who depended on others now demands dependence from others. Humility, it turns out, was largely a social performance rather than a formed character trait.
This is not unique to Japan. But the specific contours of Japanese hierarchical culture, shaped by Confucian social ordering, corporate seniority systems, and a deep cultural aversion to the kind of open disagreement that might check a superior’s behavior, create particularly fertile conditions for the salaryman-turned-tyrant.
The Problem Does Not Stop at the Church Door
If this pattern were confined to the corporate world, it would be troubling enough. But it is not. The same dynamics appear, sometimes in sharper relief, inside Japanese churches.
Japanese Christian leaders often arrive at ministry shaped by exactly the same cultural soil as their salaryman counterparts. The added theological layer, however, can make things worse rather than better. Many pastors in Japan carry a deep suspicion of leadership as a category. Leadership feels worldly, associated with ambition, hierarchy, and the kind of positional authority that the New Testament seems to relativize. The pastor who avoids claiming authority can feel more spiritually humble than the one who exercises it confidently.
The result, documented repeatedly by those who study Christianity in Japan, is a pattern of pastoral overextension. It is broadly observed that Japanese churches tend to be heavily pastor-dependent, with authority and function concentrated in a single leader rather than distributed across a team. When a pastor is the sole point of preaching, pastoral care, administration, and vision, the church cannot grow beyond what one person can personally manage. More fundamentally, it reflects a deep theological confusion about what leadership is for.
The result, in too many cases, is a church that cannot grow because it cannot delegate, and cannot delegate because it has never developed the theological or practical framework for doing so.
Some pastors, operating from this confusion, drift toward control without recognizing it. If I do not lead through others, I must lead over them. The congregation is managed rather than developed. Potential leaders are held close rather than released. The unintended message is that the church exists to serve the ministry, rather than the ministry existing to serve the church, and through it, the city.
Two Errors, One Root
What connects the controlling salaryman-manager and the controlling Japanese pastor? Both have absorbed a fundamentally broken picture of what authority is and where it comes from.
The corporate leader tends to see authority as something earned and therefore owned. Position is a prize. Once you have it, it belongs to you to use as you see fit. The theological word for this is ownership: you possess your position and may do with it what you will.
The well-meaning pastor who avoids leadership tends toward the opposite error: treating authority as something inherently corrupting, to be minimized or disclaimed. The theological reflex is toward pure servanthood, but disconnected from the active, directive dimension of genuine care. The result is a kind of passive management that is no less controlling for being less assertive, because it lacks the transparency that genuine shared leadership would require.
Both errors, the owner and the abdicator, miss the third category that Scripture provides: the steward.
The Biblical Metaphor: Leader as Steward
Scripture offers a rich and generative metaphor for leadership: the steward (oikonomos), the manager of another’s household. This image is not peripheral. It runs from Genesis through the parables of Jesus into the letters of Paul, and it reframes both the nature of authority and the character required to exercise it faithfully.
In Genesis 1, God commissions human beings to have dominion over creation (Gen. 1:28). The Psalmist captures the scope of this calling: “You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet” (Ps. 8:6). This is real authority, genuine rule, the exercise of creative and organizational capacity over the world. It is not passive. It is not reluctantly conceded. It is a calling from the Creator himself.
But, and this is the crucial qualification, it is authority that flows entirely from entrusted responsibility, not from ownership. The steward manages the master’s household. The resources are not the steward’s. The project is not the steward’s own. The steward is fully answerable to another for how the household is run.
Jesus makes this concrete in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30). The master distributes resources to his servants “each according to his ability” and then departs. When he returns, he does not commend passivity. He commends productivity: growth, investment, return. The servant who buried his talent out of fear was not praised for his caution. He was rebuked for his failure to act. The verdict, “wicked and lazy,” falls precisely on the one who did nothing with what had been entrusted to him.
Faithful stewardship is not self-effacement. It is active, courageous, and generative.
Paul uses the same framework when writing to the Corinthians: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Cor. 4:1-2). The steward’s identity is defined not by position claimed but by faithfulness rendered. In his letter to Titus, Paul describes the elder as someone who is “God’s steward” (theou oikonomos), which frames the pastoral office not as ownership of a congregation but as the management of something that belongs entirely to another (Titus 1:7).
Stewardship Holds Both Together
What makes the steward metaphor so generative for Japanese Christian leaders is that it holds together the two things that tend to pull apart in Japanese culture and in the Japanese church.
On one side: genuine authority, real responsibility, the expectation of active leadership and wise delegation. Tim Keller, drawing on the creation mandate, argues in Center Church (2012) that ministry leadership involves the same cultivating, building, and organizational capacity that God embedded in human nature from the beginning. To refuse to lead is not humility; it is a failure of calling. A pastor who keeps every decision to himself and never develops others is not being selfless. He is, whether he recognizes it or not, being unfaithful with what was entrusted to him.
On the other side: total accountability to the One who owns everything. The steward’s authority is derivative. His power is not his own. He will answer for how he used it. This is not a constraint reluctantly accepted. It is the very thing that shapes the steward’s character, because the steward knows that the household does not exist for his comfort or advancement. It exists to flourish, and he is its servant-manager.
This means that the biblical leader is genuinely humble, but not because he has no authority. He is humble because he is not the owner. He knows who the master is. His humility is not social performance that crumbles under pressure. It is theological conviction that holds precisely because it is not rooted in position but in identity: I am a steward, not an owner.
And this means that the biblical leader genuinely leads. He does not manage by passive presence or by doing everything himself. He invests in others, develops potential, delegates with clarity, and calls the people entrusted to him to grow and multiply. He exercises rule and dominion over the work, not for his own flourishing but for the flourishing of others and of the city.
A Word to Japanese Pastors and Church Planters
If you are a pastor or church planter in Japan, this framework will likely cut in both directions.
If you have tended toward avoidance of leadership, perhaps from a genuine desire to be different from the heavy-handed managers Japan knows so well, the steward metaphor invites you to reconsider. Your congregation is not yours to protect from structure or vision. It is entrusted to you, to be cultivated, developed, and released for the flourishing of the city. The Lord of the household will ask what you did with what he gave you.
If you have tended toward control, perhaps because delegation feels risky or because the church feels as though it could not function without you at the center of everything, the steward metaphor calls you to a different kind of courage: the courage to invest in others, to share the work, to build something that does not depend on your personal presence at every point.
Both tendencies, abdication and control, ultimately reflect the same underlying confusion: a leader who has not yet settled the question of ownership. The Japanese church has no need for leaders who perform humility while quietly grasping or who disclaim authority while quietly controlling. It needs stewards: men and women who hold real authority with open hands, because they know it was never theirs to begin with, and who exercise that authority boldly, because they know the master expects a return.
References
Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Dependence (Kodansha, 1971); Tim Keller, Center Church (Zondervan, 2012).
For further reflection
The root of Pastor Tanaka's struggles lay in the Japanese social values he had internalized over many years. Even after becoming a Christian, he developed within the framework of a traditional denomination’s "salaryman" mindset, believing that one is valued for being "humble and diligent." He was convinced that status and approval from others were earned through his own achievements (performance) and the respect he commanded (a reversal of the *amae* dynamic).
Even after becoming a pastor, he avoided asserting authority, striving to appear "spiritually humble." But this was merely a superficial behavior, secretly masking a deep lack of self-confidence. Deep in his heart, he harbored a strong desire to prove he was a "good pastor" through the "success of his ministry"—through excellent sermons, increased offerings, and the enthusiastic service of his members. Recently, he entrusted a vital ministry to the Sato couple, a central presence in the church. While he was happy that they were succeeding more than expected, Pastor Tanaka felt his own sense of worth begin to tremble.
One day, he shared his "plausible reasons" for why he thought he should halt the Sato couple's plan with a fellow pastor. His friend simply asked, "Before we discuss the merits of the project, what is it that is *actually* threatening your sense of worth?"
This single question exposed the long-held fixed belief hidden beneath the 'perfect guidance plan' he had prepared to persuade the Satos: the belief that "only my own achievements and success can prove my value." In that moment, he realized with piercing pain that the truth of the gospel—"unconditional love and acceptance through God's grace"—which he believed and preached, had never truly reached his own heart. He was trapped in the *religious pride* of trying to gain worth through his own efforts and success, rather than by God's grace.
However, understanding in the head was different from acceptance in the heart. He still couldn't genuinely rejoice in the Sato couple’s work. The temptation of the "owner"—the mindset that shifts from "salaryman to tyrant"—fiercely dominated his mind: "I have to do it myself," or "It would be faster if I did it." At the same time, his new awareness of his error sometimes pushed him to swing toward the opposite extreme, tempted to abandon not just control, but the entire responsibility of stewardship.
A few days later, he met his pastor friend again at a cafe and confessed his inner conflict. "Your words haven't left my mind. But how do I apply this to real ministry? Meanwhile, I have piles of decisions to make and things to move forward... and the members keep pressing me for answers."
His friend smiled and agreed, "It's hard to change your mindset quickly isn’t it? So, in those moments, I just keep telling myself, 'I am not the owner; I am the steward.' Lately, I've been focused entirely on figuring out how to be a faithful steward."
Pastor Tanaka is still wrestling with this fight. He wakes up in the middle of the night, struggling with the impulse to control everything in the church, and the temptation to abandon everything if he can't. But in those moments, he quietly repeats the words that define his identity, not his status or performance, just as his friend taught him: "I am not the owner; I am the steward." And increasingly, he finds himself thinking about how a faithful steward of the sovereign God would delegate, make decisions, and take responsibility.
Author: CTCJ Collaborative Writing Team
In 2025, CTCJ set out a new vision to become a thought leader in the field of urban church planting in Japan. The Collaborative Writing Team (Co-writing Team) is one of the ways we are working towards this goal. The team is made up of a core group of staff members, as well as a number of writers and editors from diverse backgrounds, who work together to produce articles on topics that are useful for church planters, with the gospel as the foundation and focus.