Christian leadership: From leading to being led

Last night I attended the meeting for "home group" leaders at our church. My wife was feeling tired, so I represented her. Last week, Ralph (one of the 4 coordinators of "homegroups") invited me to come as well, as we had an interesting discussion about groups whose primary focus was outward.

I was glad to have gone, as I got a better idea of the heart of the 4 coordinators, as well as Pastor Serge. I'm learning that it is much easier to relate to those in authority if one gets a chance to listen and understand their heart. Even if I might disagree with some of the ideas that someone has, it is easier to accept the differences if one can sit down with that person and speak heart to heart.

One idea mulling around my head is that the name "home group" is itself limiting, for it implies that a group needs to meet in a home. I like the name "community group" better, as it leaves more possibilities, such as meeting in a restaurant, work project, athletic team, etc. For me, the Tuesday morning work team at church is my "community group," as we discuss Scripture together, pray, work, and have lunch together.

Another chapter of Henri Nouwen's In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership is titled "From Leading to Being Led" (pp. 55-70). I certainly don't understand all the repercussions of what he has written here, but it is very stimulating and challenging, especially in light of our trying to work under the authority of French churches and parachurch organizations.

Nouwen states that "the temptation" is "to be powerful."

You all know what the third temptation of Jesus was. It was the temptation of power. "I will give you all the kingdoms of this world in their splendor," the demon said to Jesus. When I ask myself the main reason for so many people having left the Church during the past decades in France, Germany, Holland, and also in Canada and America, the word "power" easily comes to mind. One of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its leaders constantly gave in to the temptation of power--political power, military power, economic power, or moral and spiritual power--even though they continued to speak in the name of Jesus, who did not cling to his divine power but emptied himself and became as we are. The temptation for the proclamation of the gospel is the greatest of all. We keep hearing from others, that having power--provided it is used in the service of God and your fellow human beings--is a good thing. With this rationalization, crusades took place; inquisitions were organized; Indians were enslaved positions of great influence were desired; episcopal palaces, splendid cathedrals, and opulent seminaries were built; and much moral manipulation of conscience was engaged in. Every time we see a major crisis in the history of the Church, such as the Great Schism of the eleventh century, the Reformation of the sixteenth century, or the immense secularization of the twentieth century, we always see that a major cause of rupture is the power exercised by those who claim to be followers of the poor and powerless Jesus. (pp. 57-59)

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life. Jesus asks, "Do you love me?" We ask, "Can we sit at your right hand and your left hand in your Kingdom?" (Matthew 20:21). Ever since the snake said, "The day you eat of this tree, your eyes will be open and you will be like gods, knowing good from evil" (Genesis 3:5), we have been tempted to replace love with power. Jesus lived that temptation in the most agonizing way from the desert to the cross. The long painful history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led. Those who resisted this temptation to the end and thereby give us hope are the true saints. (pp. 59-60).

One thing is clear to me: the temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and recieve love. (p. 60).

Nouwen states "the challenge" as being "Somebody else will take you." (John 21:18)

These words...touch the core of Christian leadership and are spoken to offer us ever and ever again new ways to let go of power and follow the humble way of Jesus. The world says, "When you were young you were dependent and could not go where yu wanted, but when you grow old you will be able to make your own decisions, go your own way, and control your own destiny." But Jesus has a different vision of maturity: It is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go. Immediately after Peter has been commissioned to be a leader of his sheep, Jesus confronts him with the hard truth that the servant-leader who is being led to unknown, undesirable, and painful places. The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross. This might sound morbid and masochistic, but for those who have heard the voice of the first love and said "yes" to it, the downward-moving way of Jesus is the way to the joy and the peace of God, a joy and peace that is not of this world. (pp 61-63)

Here we touch the most important quality of Christian leadership in the future. It is not a leadership of power and control, but a leadership of powerlessness and humility in which the suffering servant of God, Jesus Christ, is made manifest. I, obviously, am not speaking about a psychologically weak leadership in which the Christian leader is simply the passive victim of the manipulations of his milieu. No, I am speaking of a leadership in which power is constantly abandoned in favor of love. It is a true spiritual leadership. Powerlessness and humility in the spiritual life do not refer to people who have no spine and who let everyone else make decisions for them. They refer to people who are so deeply in love with Jesus that they are ready to follow him wherever he guides them, always trusting that, with him, they will find life and find it abundantly. (pp. 63-64)

The Christian leader of the future needs to be radically poor, journeying with nothing except a staff--"no bread, no haversack, no money, no spare tunic" (Mark 6:8). What is good about being poor? Nothing, except that it offers us the possibility of giving leadership by allowing ourselves to be led. We will become dependent on the positive or negative responses of those to whom we go and thus be truly led to where the Spirit of Jesus wants to lead us. Wealth and riches prevent us from truly discerning the way of Jesus. Paul writes to Timothy: "People who long to be rich are a prey to trial; they get trapped into all sorts of foolish and harmful ambitions which plunge people into ruin and destruction" (1 Timothy 6:9). If there is any hope for the Church in the future, it will be a hope for a poor Church in which its leaders are willing to be led. (p. 64)

Nouwen states "the discipline" as being "theological reflection."

Strenuous theological reflection will allow us to discern critically where we are being led...Few ministers and priests think theologically. Most of them have been educated in a climate in which the behavioral sciences, such as psychology and sociology, so dominated the educational milieu that little true theology was being learned. Most Christian leaders today raise psychological or sociological questions even though they frame them in scriptural terms. Real theological thinking, which is linked to the mind of Christ, is hard to find in the practice of the ministry. Without solid theological reflection, future leaders will be little more than pseudo-psychologists, pseudo-sociologists, pseudo-social workers. They will think of themselves as enablers, facilitators, role models, father or mother figures, big brothers or big sisters, and so on, and thus join the countless men and women who make a living by trying to help their fellow human beings to cope with the stresses and strains of everyday living. (pp. 65-66)

But that has little to do with Christian leadership because the Christian leader thinks, speaks, and acts in the name of Jesus, who came to free humanity from the power of death and open the way to eternal life. To be such a leader it is essential to be able to discern from moment to moment how God acts in human history and how the personal, communal, national, and international events that occur during our lives can make us more and more sensitive to the ways in which we are led to the cross and through the cross to the resurrection. (pp. 66-67)

Thinking about the future of Christian leadership, I am convinced that it needs to be a theological leadership. For this to come about, much--very much--has to happen in seminaries and divinity schools. They have to become centers where people are trained in true discernment of the signs of the times. This cannot just be an intellectual training. It requires a deep spiritual formation involving the whole person--body, mind, and heart. I think we are only half aware of how secular even theological schools have become. Formation in the mind of Christ, who did not cling to power but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, is not what most seminaries are about. Everything in our competitive and ambitious world militates against it. But to the degree that such formation is being sought for and realized, there is hope for the Church of the next century. (pp. 69-70)