Leadership #1 – Leadership as mutual and not removed

I’ve almost finished a thesis on leadership development so thought I might share some of the insights that have been inspiring me. First up from Henri Nouwen.

..ministry is a mutual experience.. He wants us to minister not as ‘professionals’ who know their clients problems and take care of them, but as vulnerable brothers and sisters who know and are known, who care and are cared for, who forgive and are being forgiven, who love and are being loved. Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead. Medicine, psychiatry etc all offer us models in which ’service’ takes place in a one-way direction. But how can we lay down our lives for those we do not allow to enter into deep personal relationship with us?

When members of a community of faith cannot truly know and love their shepherd, shepherding quickly becomes a subtle way of exercising power over others, and begins to show authoritarian and dictatorial traits…  … the leadership about which Jesus speaks is of a radically different kind than that offered by the world. It is servant leadership in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as the people need their leader.

From In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership

The Moderators and the Presbyterian Mutual

I’m sure we’re all a little bored by the story of the collapse of the Presbyterian Mutual and the Presbyterian church’s quest to get the government to rescue it. Yes to get the government to bail out the church. I’m not as well versed with the goings on as Will and crookedshore. I’m also aware that it is very easy to take cheap shots at churches – or the institutional parts of them at least. So this post isn’t a cheap shot, it comes off the back of several conversations about a variety of things. One was to do with a view that the biggest challenge to leadership development in the church is sectarianism. Another invovled asking if the commonly perceived view that often the church turns people away from following Jesus because of its hypocrisy is not actually true, and that maybe the problem is that the church is living out what it believes. If that is the case then the gospel it believes bears little resemblence to the gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus spoke of. Another had to do with the old adage that you can tell what we value by what we do or speak up about. You may or may not be aware that 23 previous moderators of the Presbyterian Church wrote to the British and Irish governments asking them for help. Am I being too harsh in asking why when money is involved all these former moderators are happy to sign a letter? Where was such unity in speaking out against sectarianism, denials of civil rights to certain sections of the community, global injustices, in fighting for the rights of the poor and marginalised in our communities? Is this speaking out a damning indictment of previous silences? It begs the question what would I have done? What have I done? What are the things I am prepared to speak out on and get upset about? Despite what I say what does that reveal about the values deep in me and the true state of my heart?

It’s o so quiet – have Irish church leaders lost their voice?

On Boxing/St. Stephen’s day, the BBC website carries stories about church leaders speaking prophetically into our culture in Wales, England and Scotland. There was a general story on the front page, alongside the Pope’s Christmas message. But then I began to look for what Irish church leaders were saying at Christmas. Maybe because it’s Christmas church leaders get more airtime, and it was interesting to read most of them speaking intelligently and some might say prophetically into our society and culture. A simple trawl of stories on front page and search deeper into Europe and NI sections reveal nothing. Is it just they are not getting reported or have church leaders in Ireland lost their voice?

One

we’re one but we’re not the same, we’ve got to carry each other

Is how Bono puts it.

Unity.

Something the church is suposed to be famous for. Something that is supposed to characterise those who follow Jesus, and indeed demonstrate to others that we are followers of Jesus because we love each other. Unity is also as Vinoth Ramachandra puts it:

a blind spot of evangelicalism due to our individualistic understandings of the gospel

It is sadly true, often Christians, not just evangelicals or protestants seem to spend more time witnessing against each other than to those who don’t know Jesus, and to whom we want to enjoy the life to the full that Jesus offers. I hold my hands up as one who is guilty, and only too aware that often my reaction to being labelled is to do the same, to define myself over and against another.

Why do we struggle with unity? Partly perhaps because we are human, tainted by the fall and we have a tendency to make a balls of things. Could it also be because we focus our unity on the wrong thing, or use the wrong means perhaps more accurately to seek to achieve unity?

Frequently protestants tend to use doctrinal consensus via theological debate as the means. I know myself I have uttered the words ‘uniting around the core truths of the gospel’ many times. ‘What is core?’ however then opens the debate, and either we see lots of groups emerging, or a watered down consensus that is virtually meaningless. Perhaps we need to listen to the Newbigin’s, Bosch’s and Ramachandra’s of the world who suggest that our unity must come from our mission, or more correctly our shared participation in God’s mission. This becomes messy and more awkward – it is more difficult to draw neat lines. It is noticeable that when churches work together, when they unite in mission, God shows up and people come to know him. When we choose mission as the means of our unity there is less control, and maybe more room for God than when we tightly define our unity. When we focus on loving others together paradoxically we learn to love each other, and it is this that Jesus calls us to – not to judge each other on our doctrinal purity (I think it was Rene Padilla who said that). Obviously its not just as simplistic as I’m making out but i wonder if our problems of unity would look different if we had a greater focus on mission? Once again Vinoth says it better than I ever will:

It is only when we have learned to die to our own plans and projects, including our plans for world evangelisation, that we can truly love another and move forward into every dimension of life under the leading of the triune god of mission.

Am I a liberal or is your God too small?

Hard to believe its almost a month since I last posted, although I have been keeping up the 365. Part of the lack of posting has been busyness and not actually making time to think, which I have missed, and too much time stuck at a computer. A few days back on the bus, starting back to class with a missiology module, the mind your head event, and reading the brilliant ‘Kite Runner’ has helped considerably though.

One of the things we have been looking at in missiology is the scope of the salvation story – remembering that although personal salvation and eternal destiny are important parts of it, they are not all of. I get really annoyed by people who try to make something complex all about one thing – the whole penal substitution debate is possibly in some ways an example of making orthodoxy about one aspect instead of recognising there are a few things all to be held in tension. People are also pretty quick to try to label people these days. Perhaps one of the problems of the reformation is the continual fracturing so we have no concept of the ‘one holy catholic apostolic’ church anymore. Evangelicals especially seem often to have completely lost some of the ‘one’ concept and seem to spend all the time defining themselves over and against everyone else. If you don’t hold tightly to the exact formulation of whatever doctrine it is is being discussed you get labelled a liberal. Which brings to mind the ‘don’t throw the word liberal at me as a dirty word speech’ from series 7 of the West Wing.

[UPDATE - on labels check this out from the wonderful Real Live Preacher]

When it comes to integral mission, it still frustrates me that some people seem to read the bible with blinkers, and can’t see that mission in its truest sense is a holistic thing. Insisting that social justice, environmental concern etc is part of God’s reconciling the whole of creation just seems to get me labelled as a liberal. Which I probably wear as a badge of honour because I’m stubborn. But the fundamental problem I am becoming convinced off, (and I don’t mean this in a superior way, and realise this post has been a bit facetious so far, so I apologise) is that too often we simply have too small a view of God. To read Colossians 1 and realise God isn’t just interested in reconciling humans but reconciling and restoring the entirety of creation is to have your view of God enlarged. So maybe in these debates as we wrestle we need to be asking ourselves not how we can write someone else off to make ourselves feel superior, but how big is our view of God in it all? and I sign off with a large dose of humility realising that I too am guilty of what I am railing against others for too often…

Women of the world unite! Free rice, and the poppy question continues…

Time for a quick round up of blogging action.

Crooked Shore has taken one (more) small step in the musings about poppies, and some of the attitutes towards wearing or not not wearing.

It’s all been kicking off in the blogosphere – at least in our little corner of it. Women. Women in the church most specifically. So much so espero has been roused from her curtailment of activity by children to start blogging. Zoomtard has also begun to throw his weight around the ring with not one but three posts and another promised tomorrow. Jaybercrow is whispering wisely, while Vox is making comics about the kerfuffle, while all the pots are being stirred by a cheeky monkey. Mysmallcorner and Lilytodd - didn’t realise what they were starting – but thanks for making me start thinking about something I hadn’t given much thought to before.

Whynot smile directed me to improve my vocabulary whilst donating rice to the UN World food programme at Free Rice. Sound too good to be true? check out some thoughts here.

I leave with with some of Hugo (recently told in public to ’shut up’ by the King of Spain) Chavez’s best lines

poppies, flags and should churches celebrate Remembrance Sunday?

Now from the outset I want to say I have the utmost respect for those who have sacrificed and put their lives on the line for their country. I get a lump in my throat watching the veterans of the First and Second World Wars and hearing their stories. It outrages me that those who do their country – or government’s bidding at great cost aren’t properly looked after. What i’m about to say is in no way about not valuing the sacrifices of those who have bravely laid down lives

I must confess i’m not a poppy wearer. I have a poppy application request sitting waiting on facebook that I haven’t done anything with yet and am not sure if I will. It does seem to be a bit of a political statement for many to ear a poppy or not, and it seems that on TV everyone is wearing one. Is that because its what they are supposed to do or because they choose to as individuals support the poppy appeal? To seen Juande Ramos – the new Spurs manager wearing one as a Spaniard seemed slightly bizarre. I’m not sure if Spain have poppies there. To be honest if I was to wear one it would probably be white poppy. It does seem as if in some circles its the done thing and not to do so is frowned upon. Obviously some people make it too much of a political issue.

My problem with Remembrance Sunday is that often to me it seems to forget about the millions of innocent lives also lost in conflict, and the lives of those on the other side. In remembering our fallen heroes do we also remember the thousands of Germans killed by the RAF’s firebombing of Dresden (labelled a war crime by some), or the thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who have died? Even those combatants from the ‘other side’ are people who have/had mothers, fathers, children, friends, siblings. I was struck when in Berlin that our tour guide emphasised the point that the Nazi were not superhuman monsters – but people like us who did commit evil acts. As we remember wars, there are heroic acts, but war in itself is brutal. Remembering or commemorating military battles in church also seems strange to me, and is something I am extremely uncomfortable with. In many protestant churches we don’t take any time to remember some of the great heroes and martyrs of the faith yet we remember those who gave their life in battles? It seems incongruous at the least. And how does it all square with being peacemakers, with loving enemies and some of the crazy things Jesus called us to? Is this something we really give thought to or is it just something that’s expected, that we always do, and aren’t willing to ask hard questions of?

Which brings me on to flags in church. Now it may be to do with the political sensibilities of living in Northern Ireland, but I don’t think there is any place for national flags to be flown or hung in churches. Think about it – what is the church? The church as a whole is the bride of Christ – God’s people – citizens primarily of heaven but seeking the good of the cities they live in here on earth. Surely for churches to fly national flags symbolises a national allegiance that goes against our allegiance as brothers and sisters of the worldwide church. For many flags are political symbols, and associating churches with political viewpoints is dangerous. For many a certain flag is a symbol of oppression. So to go to the church, where according to Paul, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection all who are in Christ are equal, that national identities are no longer important, and find that in fact those national identities are still there seems strange. Especially in a place like Northern Ireland. The church is supposed to transcend national, political, racial and cultural allegiances. When will we learn that our primary allegiance is to God and his kingdom, that we are part of his reconciling the world to himself, and simple things like political symbols in church are huge barriers to that reconciliation?

the soapbox – biting off more than he can chew with these thoughts in progress

So any women on the go?

I had to restrain a strong desire to punch an elderly relative for this comment at my gran’s funeral several years ago. Whether I had or not was irrelevant. In my moment of grief all she was interested in was my relationship status, not the fact I may have been upset. This is one of the things that really bugs me about the Christian community in the North at least. It’s obsessed with relationships – which are a good thing but not everything, and in fact they have a very poor theology of relationships. There seems a massive pressure for people to get married. And so many christians get married so young, and some of those marriages run into problems. Northern Irish Christians all need to read some Hybels wisdom in Making Life Work (which is a fantastic book) or Fit to be Tied. It could only have good results.

Its one of the things that frustrates me about church. Sometimes I feel it would be easier to fit in if I was in a couple. Maybe I’m just more sensitive to it, having grown up with parents who split up when I was young, and mum sharing some really hurtful comments made by other Christian couples like – “if you were still together we could go out like we used to”. Can couples not spend time with single people? Are they so insecure about the stability of their relationship that they can’t be reminded of some of the harsh realities of life?

I was really pleased to hear a friend’s minister say from the front – “we will not be a church that only invites you for dinner if you’re a couple”, recognising that disturbing reality that exists in some churches. In churches that clearly are missing something major about all that stuff Jesus kept talking about when he called his followers to love one another, to show hospitality. I don’t remember there being any qualifiers, in fact that was the whole point of the good samaritan parable. Yet for single people churches can be lonely places.

It’s another reason why I have serious issues with John Eldridge. I read Wild at Heart a couple of years ago. While lots of people seem to think he says some good things, I had to restrain myself from throwing the book across the room on several occasions. His theology is woefully inadequate, especially when it comes to singleness. As in he doesn’t have a theology of singleness. I wondered why he didn’t really use Jesus as a role model for men – it would seem an obvious choice, but then Jesus was single and that kind of blows his theory out of the water. Passages like Matthew 19.12 and 1 Corinthians 7 are conveniently ignored by Eldridge where Jesus and Paul commend singleness.

Now I’m not just taking a pop at Eldridge but something that is endemic in the Christian community and has and is damaging lots of people. Churches sometimes assume marriage is the norm and everyone else needs married to sort them out.

In Genesis when God says its not good for man to be alone, I wonder if we read too much into that in taking it to be purely about marriage. If God lives in the community of the trinity surely what He was doing there was creating community for humanity – which is something larger than marriage, which is one expression of that. Maybe what our churches need more of is loving inclusive community with the recognition that marriage is not the be all and end all and recognition that singleness is exalted in the bible. Maybe then we might really see God’s kingdom touching earth and many of us who are broken and hurting actually finding a home…

Check out Tim Chester’s blog where he has been posting some great stuff on marriage and singleness – especially this morning’s post which precipitated this soapbox rant and has some fantastic stuff in it.

Soapbox – aware of the ironic timing of this post….

Thoughts from a lonely prophet part two

A belated return to Walter Rauschenbusch.

“Christian morality finds its highest dignity and its constant corrective in making the aims of the kingdom of God the supreme aim to which all minor aims must contribute and from which they gain their moral quality. The church substituted itself for the kingdom of god and thereby put the advancement of a tangible and very human organisation in the place of the moral uplifting of humanity.”

“churchly correctness took precedence over Christlike goodness.”

His comments on church and kingdom and the subsequent discussions we had in class provoked some musing on my part, coupled with some stuff I was listening to from Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll. Those words resonate today as often the church/churches seem more interested in building their little empires and running their programmes than building the kingdom. Thinking in terms of kingdom is challenging as it broadens our horizons. For me in a Christian student organisation it raises lots of questions. How does the extension of the kingdom sit/clash/merge with our values and partnering with others seeking to build the kingdom but who have different approaches?

God’s plan in history is to build his kingdom, and the church is the means to do that – not the end in itself it seems if you read Revelation 22 which sees the leaves of the tree of life being for the healing of the nations. It makes you wonder if CS Lewis in the Last Battle is getting this when it comes to some ‘outside Christianity’ – without getting all universalist of course.

Something else in this smogashboard of things floating around my head is a frustration with people who equate the life of following Jesus being about going to heaven. Reading the biblical texts doesn’t necessarily suggest this – God is establishing his kingdom, creating/recreating a new heavens and new earth and the bible ends with the ‘new Jerusalem’ descending, reiterating that the physical earth is a crucial part of God reconciling to himself all things. Its also interesting as we look at the big picture flow of the bible that it starts in a garden and ends in a city of people from every nationality and people group. For God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and for his kingdom to come surely means that we need to work hard at building inclusive church communities of all nationalities, young, old, rich and poor – youth congregations or monocultural congregations may be easier in the short term but are they really expressions of God’s kingdom if there isn’t longer term integration?

Some muddled musings grasping at the wonder of the most incredible reconstruction project in history, especially given the fragility of the raw materials…

the lonely prophet speaks again

“Every generation tries to put its doctrine on a high shelf where the children cannot reach“

the lonely prophet speaks again… listen well