Musings on Leadership (1)

 A friend asked me for some thoughts on leadership. Below is my response.

Dear Friend,

 

I suppose these are akin to Pascal’s Pensées, not in the sense of quality but rather in the sense of a thought here and a thought there.

Circling back to yesterday evening and Ephesians, the initial trajectory culminates, I think, at 4:16…this is coming full circle back to 1:3ff. Our calling is to behold our Lord in His glorious Body, growing up into Him and Him radiating in and through His precious Bride.

As to leadership, this (Ephesians) means that life is about “us” and not about “me”. There is only one Head, and if our vision of leadership suggests anything other than this then we have a problem.

“I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” Princess Elizabeth, on her 21^st birthday, to the British Commonwealth. Has anything been better said or lived in the natural – (acknowledging that Her Majesty is imperfect)? Most so-called “leaders” never get this – whether within or without the church.

We have divorced virtue and character from leadership, just as we have divorced virtue and character from exegesis, preaching, teaching, and reading and understanding the Bible. The Apostles and Prophets would think this strange, the Church Fathers would probably be viscerally sick, and those Roman, Greek, and other philosophers who pursued and extolled virtue might seek a peaceful island to live out their days.

When we speak of leadership, we tend to speak in functional, pragmatic, and utilitarian terms. When we think we are training leaders, what we are often doing is training people to accomplish goals, to achieve success; to employ strategies, tactics, and the like. If we must be intoxicated, let us be intoxicated by virtue that will remain virtuous no matter the cost – for he (or she) who is not prepared to lose everything for what is good and right and true and honorable and virtuous is no leader; at least not in the Biblical sense (if there is such a sense) or in the classic Greco – Roman sense.

I have long been troubled with our approach to leadership within the contemporary church, with its emphasis on results and not on character. Then, when a leader’s selfishness and immorality is exposed, we are shocked (well we used to be). The fact that we seldom hold a successful leader accountable, the fact that we avert our eyes and close our ears when complaints or questions are raised – and only afterwards, if ever, convene a committee or retain a legal team to investigate sin – which is not just the leader’s sin but a collective sin – should tell us something. Perhaps our motto should be, “Success covers a multitude of sins”?

Among other things, the foregoing mentality has produced moral cowards in the church – people will simply not tell the truth and they will not speak the truth to the popular and powerful; and those who attempt it will usually be ostracized.

But here is another thing, success and power are intoxicating – whether in church, in government, in business, in education, in the local PTA – the closer a person moves toward the inner circle the greater the danger. Therefore, when our thinking on “leadership” is amiss we create a gravitational field that will destroy pretty much everything within its pull.

In the Church there is one Throne and when we approach that Throne we fall on our faces – we do not exalt man, we exalt God.

to be continued....