The Descent of Leadership

For nearly 30 years now, I have been in one spiritual leadership role or another. It has been a journey full of joy, fruit, failure and sadly even the bitter gall of betrayal. Betrayal comes in two basic forms by the way. The kind others do to you and the kind you do to yourself. The good news is not that it has all worked out per se, but that I have at least been paying attention. I have learned. And I tend to agree with that idea often attributed to Yeats, “Education is not the filling of a pale but the lighting of a fire.” Each season of leadership development, maturation and good old fashioned experience has set ablaze some new realization about the nature and even the climax of spiritual leadership. Here is what I have discovered.

Visionary

At first, I was convinced that leadership was about bold vision. The leader, after all, is the one that everyone follows. We used words like courageous, visionary and decisive leadership. I wanted to know where we should go, and then be the first up the hill we were taking. I could see it, and so I got busy learning how to preach and persuade, define reality and set the standard.

Champion

That way of leading came to feel inadequate somehow, maybe even a bit hollow. I don’t believe it was essentially an exercise in ego at first, but more so as time wore on. It became harder and harder to see the face of Jesus in this style of leadership. It was not one moment, but at some point I woke up to the idea that leadership was about empowerment. Real leaders take the power entrusted to them and share it. They build a bigger table, with more seats for more kinds of people, with different kinds of voices. The focus of leadership changed, radically for me, to being a champion of others, seeing them shine. Maybe the point after all is not to lead people to a place, but to a person. Ideas like agency and autonomy became more and more important to me. People should be led by God after all, my work is just to give them permission and to empower them to be what he has called them to be. In that sense, I wanted to invite people into the same kind of leadership agency I was enjoying.

Servant

Still, there I was at the top of some imaginary spiritual hierarchy, and that location seemed more and more inappropriate for leadership done in Jesus’ name. The paradox of servant leadership began to capture my heart and mind. The right place for the spiritual leader is not necessarily in front, or at the top but behind and beneath. An extension of empowerment, the servant leader could actually drop below the people they lead. To finally understand what Jesus likely meant when he said “not so with you”. That the way the Gentiles lead through strength and hierarchy, did not require moderation, but a radical reversal. The way of Jesus is to serve under and never to “Lord over”. And so I began to see the development and success of the people I was called to lead as the most important work of leadership. A subjugation of myself, my ideas, my vision for their growth, health, development and flourishing.

Emeritus

It is not that one idea replaces the other, but more like the one refines the other. Perhaps one built upon the foundation of the other. You have to learn them in order, I think. Each commitment that precedes becomes the raw material for the new revelation. And so it is that I am nearly 48 years old and I find myself face to face with one final leadership revelation. The highest form of leadership, the most mature expression of the leader is letting go. To finally and with a whole heart release the last of your leadership capital to others. The pinnacle of leadership is not to lead at all. The term emeritus, comes from latin and is the past tense of the verb, emereri. A combination of the prefix e-, meaning “out,” and merēre, meaning “to earn, deserve, or serve.” It means to serve out. It has a note of both closure and ongoing connection. It is the refinement of servant leadership, to serve your way out of leadership altogether.

This one might be the hardest, and it certainly cannot be rushed. Letting go too soon is not leadership, it is abdication, even negligence. But in the same way, hanging on too long is not leadership either, it is idolatry. All the same, this final work of the leader promises one final return on the real currency of leadership, which was never actually power, but joy.

All along the reason to lead was to know the joy of seeing people come into a life saving and life defining relationship with Jesus. And to know the joy of intimacy with the one who suffered for us, and then let us go. To know the joy of experiencing what CS Lewis called “the specific pleasure of the inferior.” The relationship between kingdom leadership and power, if it is anything, is about letting go of it. We can call this the descent of leadership. To take some power into ourselves, to share it, to use it for the betterment of others and finally to let it go completely.

And as citizens who have sworn fealty to a crucified God and an upside down kingdom, this should not surprise us. It turns out that leadership in the kingdom is not an ascent up some ladder, but a descent into Christlikeness.

But figuring out exactly how to embrace this final leadership challenge is neither simple nor obvious. Doing this right means you are just as engaged as at any other phase of leadership. Letting go is not a passive business. It takes serious work. Abandonment is easy. Letting go is an act of generosity and requires the whole heart.

My Own Leadership Journey

I have sensed the call of God to begin letting go of my own beloved UNDERGROUND leadership role, for 3 years. And only now do I feel I can finally and fully let go. As I survey this beautiful mess we have created, and the remarkable young leadership team that God has assembled I get more than a little emotional. I know they are not perfect, but to me, they are close. And I do not hand them a flawless enterprise. On the contrary, they know that part of their mandate is prophetic renewal. To find the blindspots. See what we could not see. To be better.

As the day of that transition grows ever closer, I can testify that this is the best moment of my leadership life. Something like that word from Colossians, that looks like death but feels like home, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” For me, it is not so much about closure, as I am not sure there is such a thing. Ours is an eternal business after all. But it is about fulfillment. Or that wonderful greek word, teleios, which, in the bible gets rendered, complete, mature and even perfect.

This, then, is leadership perfection, to finish something. And to finish is not to end, but to have done your part, to have run your race and to let go of the baton to the next runner in the relay. I am not sure what is next for me, except to catch my breath; to watch and cheer for these young leaders who now hold the UNDERGROUND baton. To join the cloud of witnesses that were watching my own descent into cruciform leadership and who now watch theirs.

“But I thought I could detect a moment — a very, very short moment — before this happened, during which the satisfaction of having pleased those whom I rightly loved and rightly feared was pure. And that is enough to raise our thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride deeper than Prospero’s book. Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself; “it is not for her to bandy compliments with her Sovereign.” CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory