Tag Archives: Power

Where Is Our Leadership Leading?

Do you ever think about where your leadership is leading? Winston Churchill once commented that, “we shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Having been the pastor of a congregation which met in a barn of an Art Nouveau Gothic church building, I really understand what he meant. Yet something else also shapes how we function as the church: our understanding and resulting practice of leadership.

I entered ministry in the early 90s, so I lived through the rise of the “leadership movement” within the evangelical church. My bookshelves are now packed with books on leadership. Over the years, I attended numerous conferences on leadership and took undergraduate and postgraduate courses on leadership. Like most pastors, my email inbox is daily bombarded by invitations to read blogs about leadership and listen to podcasts about leadership. With providential predictability and irony, as I type these words, I have an email notification beginning, “Seven Signs Your Leadership…”.

I confess that I have not been just a passive witness of this rise of leadership thought in the church but also an active consumer and even promoter of it. The books, conferences, blogs – and in the early 90s, even cassette tapes – churned out by leadership writers and consumed by me have shaped my self-understanding as one called to ministry in the church.  If I am honest, as a result, I came to understand my primary calling as being a leader. And my understanding of what it means to be a leader has in turn been shaped largely by models of leadership drawn from business and even the military.

Have you played the wooden block balancing game Jenga? If so, you know what happens: one by one, the wooden blocks are removed until the whole tower becomes shaky and eventually collapses. That’s what has happened to my confidence in the leadership movement  over the past few years: scandal after scandal has made my confidence in it wobble; now it feels to me like it’s collapsing around my ears.

For those of us who are called to serve the church, being a leader (as spelled out in the flood of resources aimed at us) was never meant to be our primary way of approaching that calling. For his PhD work, David W. Bennett looked at the metaphors for ministry in the New Testament. One of his main conclusions was, “Jesus focused more of his attention on teaching the disciples to follow rather than giving them instructions on how to lead. The single most important lesson for leaders to learn is that they are first sheep, not shepherds, first children, not fathers, first imitators, not models.” (Leadership Images from the New Testament) This is consistent with a quick approximation that in the New Testament the words “lead” or “leader” are found about seven times but the word “disciple” appears 260 times and the phrase “follow me” appears 23 times.

Despite what we’ve heard from the leadership gurus in the Kingdom of God, everything does not rise and fall on leadership but on discipleship. We can only lead in the Body of Christ through following Christ. In fact, what makes Christian leadership Christian is that it is expressed in and through Christian discipleship. In the church, following is leading, which is why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” The problem is that a whole industry predominantly focused attention on “follow me” while virtually ignoring, “as I follow Christ.” After all, have you ever been invited to a global followership summit?

To be clear, I am not questioning the need for leadership in the church. What I am questioning is from where we draw our models and our mentors for leadership in the church, and the impact that has on church culture.

In The Strength Of Weakness, Roy Clements asked three questions that go to the very heart of the issue. “Let me ask you, what is your image of a great leader? Let me ask you another question, what is your image of a great Christian leader? Now, let me ask you a third question. Did the insertion of the word ‘Christian’ into the second question materially change your answer?”

Clements forces us to think about the sources we draw on for our definition of greatness in leadership in the church. Surely, only Christ gets to define that for his Body. In his clearest statement on leadership, Jesus said to his disciples,

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20: 25-28)

Those words are a clear call for us as Jesus’ disciples to reject the leadership values and practices of the dominant culture rather than be inspired by them. Instead, we are to follow his example of sacrificial servanthood in how we exert influence within the Kingdom of God. Pecking orders and power plays are ruled out among his disciples. Author Lance Ford writes of these verses in Unleader, “His [Jesus] requirement is that we lay down the crown and spectre of leadership and pick up the towel and basin of servantship.” Yet I can’t shake the feeling that the leadership movement effectively encouraged me to do the opposite.

Rather than focusing our primary attention on Jesus when it comes to leadership, our focus has been elsewhere. For about two decades, Christian leaders have been encouraged to draw inspiration for their leadership from the leaders in the worlds of business and the military. As a result, many have come to approach leadership in the church as a position of power rather than a spiritual gift and an opportunity to serve. Recently, the evangelical movement has thrown its hands up in horror as a whole crop of its leaders has been revealed to have abused their power. There has been a litany of stories: leaders who have created toxic, unaccountable macho cultures, who have exploited and abused people and acted in narcissistic ways that served themselves rather than Jesus or others. In retrospect, where else should we have expected the version of leadership we popularized to lead? 

It is time to admit that the power-abusing, narcissistic church leaders of recent scandals are not aberrations but the all-too-predictable Frankenstein creation of the evangelical industry’s own leadership movement. As for me, I’m turning my back on importing the leadership modes of Fortune 500 CEOs, victorious generals, and leadership gurus. Here are the voices I am choosing to listen to; here are some of their leadership maxims, when it comes to my calling:

“Follow me.” – Jesus Christ

“He must become greater; I must become less.” – John the Baptist

“Follow me as I follow Christ.” – Apostle Paul

“If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him.” – Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

“The bible is a book about followers, written by followers, for followers. I am always a follower first.” – Rusty Ricketson

When it comes to leadership, which voices are you currently listening to? Where do you think they will lead you and your church?

Words Destroy or Hallow

“Let’s put him on blast!” I hadn’t heard the phrase before, but I instantly knew what it meant: whatever the business’s misstep had been, the call was sent out to grab it by its social media handles and tear it down. A bit of photographic evidence, a globally-audible, locally-tangible siren, and the business was tagged: the company was now “it”—a toxic bit of business that infected whatever and whoever it touched. So, tear it down and stay away.  This doesn’t just happen with businesses. People get blasted, too. People scrub their Instagram and Twitter pasts to wipe away any bit of (perceived) filth before their Facebook posts are pressure washed with the words of others.

Anthropologist Mary Douglas noted the power and danger of dirt. We fear the filthy; dirt threatens disintegration. The best way to handle such dirty danger, whether located in the business misstep or social media slip up or political pariah, is to “blast” it: to use words to show the other’s filth, to distance oneself from the defiled, and to wash up the mess—all with one sweet Tweet.

But public humiliation is not new. In the fifth century, Augustine warned of the risks of wicked words (Confessions I:29):

  • Watch out for hatred! We do more harm to ourselves by hating another than the other can do to us.
  • Watch out for hostility! Harbored hostility toward another harms the self, even if it isn’t acted upon.
  • Watch out for hubris! To pursue fame is to place oneself under a human judge and to perceive others as competitors.

Hatred, hostility, hubris: A deadly combination in a fifth century social spat where one was careful to pronounce every word correctly without care for the actual human being who happened to be the victim of their verbal evisceration. Canceling another with words isn’t just a 21st century phenomenon: the form of the public put-down has changed, but the feat remains en vogue. Neither have the effects changed. Words aimed to take down a livelihood or life do not simply impact their target. They also impact the speaker-typer-texter-poster. Like shrapnel flung back upon the grenade lobber, words of hostility, hatred, and hubris score the soul who would blast another from the silent side of a screen.

C.S. Lewis also warned of the effect of destructive words, the most powerful of which in his series The Chronicles of Narnia was called “the Deplorable Word.” The Word, uttered by the Empress Jadis to arrest the forces and very face of her sister as Jadis’ defeat loomed large, stopped all living things, including her own forces and subjects. Jadis had spoken the deplorable word to destroy everything but herself, preserving her own life until the time was right and she could be awakened. And while Jadis, the White Witch, isn’t quite human, her verbal blast poses a warning for every Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve. Jadis’ own world (and its flagship city of Charn) is over, but she has been let loose in the new world of Narnia, and Polly and Digory’s own world is not immune to the temptation that took her down:

“When you were last here,” said Aslan, “that hollow was a pool, and when you jumped into it you came to the world where a dying sun shone over the ruins of Charn. There is no pool now. That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning.”

“Yes, Aslan,” said both the children. But Polly added, “But we’re not quite as bad as that world, are we, Aslan?”

“Not yet, Daughter of Eve,” he said. “Not yet. But you are growing more like it. It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware. That is the warning.” (Lewis, 1955/1980c, p. 164)

The Queen presents a warning for using our own deplorable words. Contrasted with the singing of Aslan that brings Narnia into being, Jadis’ deplorable word only arrests death; it does not bring new life. This is not a passing theme. Jadis’ words reduce things to dust. In Charn, Jadis reduces “high and heavy doors” to “a heap of dust” (p. 57). In London, she attempts to turn Digory’s Aunt Letty to “dust” just as she had the gates in Charn (p. 76), but when she realizes this power of “turning people into dust” has left her (p. 77), she settles for hurling Letty across the room. Finally, in London, Digory believes that Jadis has reduced several policemen to “little heaps of dust” (p. 79). Her words and actions are powerful, no doubt, but they are not creative. Her words result in death and destruction. Her words, at best, only arrest her own death.

Likewise, the White Witch’s leadership in Narnia was only possible to arrest spring. She does not bring joviality; she can only keep it out. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Father Christmas says, “She has kept me out for a long time, but I’ve got in at last” (Lewis, 1950/1980a, p. 99). The Witch’s leadership is not fruitful because nothing grows in winter. While Charn had grown to become a great city under her ancestors, one assumes that the Witch’s leadership in Charn was likely similar to Narnia: it stunted growth and stifled life. In The Silver Chair, the owls say she “bound our land” (Lewis, 1953/1970, p. 52). In word and deed, the Witch cannot lead to anything of life; she cannot bring newness or construction. She can only preserve from death or bring to dust. Such is the life and soul of the one who would wield the deplorable word.

What might we glean from Augustine in the fifth century and from Lewis’ fiction? The justice-by-Tweet temptation is real, but yielding to that temptation is not for the one who would follow the Word made Flesh. For in the world of this Word – the only true world – we must foster, not hatred, hostility, and hubris, but instead, holiness. Within a sacramental worldview, every word is a kind of prayer. There is no word that is not overheard. God, the giver of words and the Word, is present. But the Word who allowed himself to be blasted, to be torn open as he was raised up, was deplored so that deplorable word users could become his preachers and prophets; so that words could be bound up in lives that do not simply arrest death in futility and bring pseudo-justice through rhetorical rage, but lead and love not with words of hubris, hostility, hatred, but of humility, peace, and mercy.

References:

Augustine (1997). The Confessions (The Works of Saint Augustine I/1). Trans. Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press.

Lewis, C. S. (1970). The Silver Chair. New York: Macmillan. (Original work published 1953).

Lewis, C. S. (1980a). The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. London: Lions. (Original work published 1950).

Lewis, C. S. (1980b). The Horse and his Boy. London: Lions. (Original work published 1954).

Lewis, C. S. (1980c). The Magician’s Nephew. London: Lions. (Original work published 1955).

Lewis, C. S. (1980d). The Last Battle. London: Lions. (Original work published 1956).

Featured image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

In Peace: An Advent Benediction

Go in peace,
Remembering that the Christ who was King and is King and will forever be King
Was born not to a family of nobles and princes,
But to a family who couldn’t even place their child in a proper crib;
a manger would have to do.

Go in peace,
Remembering that the Christ who would be both the high priest and the perfect sacrifice for sins
Was born to parents who couldn’t even afford to give the full sacrifice, but only the offering of the poor:
a pair of doves.

Go in peace,
Remembering that the Christ who will reign over all the kingdoms of the world
As a baby was hunted by the despotic ruler of an oppressive government.

Go in peace,
Remembering that the Christ who perfectly embodied the fullness of God in human form
Experienced the human temptations of hunger, power, celebrity, and self-determination.

Go in peace,
Remembering that the Christ who healed the blind and made the lame to walk and raised the dead
Bore our scars, experienced our woundedness, and tasted death.

Go in peace,
Remembering that the Christ who triumphed over the spiritual powers of darkness
Knows the darkness of a cold tomb.

Go in peace,
Knowing that the child born into poverty, uncertainty, oppression, temptation, woundedness and mortality
Is Jesus, the Son of God, the Light of the World, the Bread of Life, the True Vine, the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God, Our Redeemer, Christ the Resurrected One, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Great I AM, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel—
God with us.

Go in peace.
Amen.