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The Vocation of Leadership
Some say that leaders are born, not made. That is partially true. Some people are born with natural gifts that make for good leadership.
Because leadership is so crucial in all of life, great attention has been given to this essential dynamic, especially in the past twenty-five years. However, in too many cases not enough attention is paid to spirituality and spiritual formation when writers and conference leaders offer help to pastors and ministry leaders.
Christian spiritual leaders are privileged not to be served but to serve, concerned primarily not with their own welfare but the welfare of others.
Vocation comes from the Latin, vocātiō. Here are two simple definitions:
- “A strong desire to spend your life doing a certain kind of work (such as religious work)”
- “The work that a person does or should be doing.”
The Latin term vocātiō has in it the word vox, meaning “voice,” and the related word vocāre, meaning “to call.” So when we think of vocation, it is easy to think of calling, invitation, summons; and of gaining one’s voice.
Vocation is calling. It is knowing the truth, obeying God, and being guided by God in the particular expression of our life’s work. Remember Paul’s words in Ephesians 4:1, “Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God.”
Off and on, for over forty years, Dunnam’s ritual in devotional prayer time has included this sentence prayer, “Maxie, the secret is simply this, Christ in you, yes Christ in you, bringing with Him the hope of all the glorious things to come.”
Paul’s great definition of a Christian was “a person in Christ.” He used that phrase “in Christ” or its equivalent at least 172 times in the Pauline Letters.
Leadership as vocation, Christian leadership, begins with self-leadership, clarifying our own heart, soul, and mind in order to find and show that our most basic identity, and our deepest and most concrete security lie in God—not in success, or in pleasing someone else, not in being seen as a good person, or being loved by a congregation or the faith community we lead, but in God.
The Shape of Our Vocation
The primary function of a prophet or priest is twofold: speaking to the people for God and speaking to God for the people.
E. M. Bounds (1835–1913) expressed his conviction, “We believe that one of the most popular errors of the modern pulpit is the putting of more thought than prayer, of more head than of heart in its sermons.”
We moderns separate “heart” and “will.” We associate the heart with emotion and feelings; the will with our mind, thinking, and deciding. In scripture this is not the case. The word heart appears 572 times in scripture. The heart represents the life-giving core of human life. It is the motivating, controlling center of our human personality, the deep inner source of passion, energy, and direction for our lives. The heart is the place of decision, the seat of the will.
What we set our hearts on determines the direction of our lives. This is the reason Dallas Willard insists that we meet God in our “practices.”
We act our way into Christlikeness. Of course, the means of grace (prayer, scripture, Holy Communion, Christian conferencing) along with confession, generosity, and solitude, which are absolutely essential.
Have you ever seen a person who prayed her way into Christlikeness? Dunnam notes that he has not, nor has he seen a person who studied his way into Christlikeness. He’s never seen a person who worshipped her way into Christlikeness. But he knows countless people who have acted their way into Christlikeness.
What we set our hearts on, especially in the small moments on the way to somewhere else, determines the direction of our lives. We act our way into Christlikeness.
Lessons from the Saints
When we take principles of leadership from the secular worlds of competition and conflict, even where the principle of “servant” leadership is emphasized, look for evidence of the cross, and whether the business or political principles are in harmony with Jesus’s call to deny ourselves, and His admonition that the “first should be last.”
Keeping the cross at the center of our awareness always forces us to assess the depth of our discipleship and the degree of our yielding of self to Christ. As Martin Luther put it in The Joy of the Saints, “Seek yourself only in Christ and not in yourself; then you will find yourself in him eternally.”
We have a right to ask, to seek, and to know the will of God, but once we know it, only one thing is in order: obedience. As noted earlier, it is not our ability to do what God calls us to do but our willingness to respond, to yield, and to attempt that releases God’s power.
In the divine school of obedience, we know there is a textbook: scripture. We know there is a model to imitate: Jesus. We also know and have experienced the way the Holy Spirit will plant a deep, deep conviction within our lives, calling us to go in a particular direction.
The saints saturated themselves in scripture. The more fully we become one with God’s Word, the more authentic our leadership will be Christian. In addition to prayer, searching the scripture is a means of grace and a distinctive leadership principle for Christians.
John Wesley was an extremely well-read scholar. Yet, on more than one occasion, he referred to himself as “a man of one book.”
Leaders Are to Be Saints
Consider these four specific characteristics of the saints:
- They practiced spiritual discipline, with prayer at its center.
- Jesus was alive in their experience.
- They believed obedience was essential.
- They did not seek ecstasy but surrender to God.
What Is Good Ministry?
We can be prophetic. We can take strong stands on social issues, if people know we love them, that we will not only listen to them but will listen with integrity and pastoral concern. We can stand firmly on our beliefs, yet listen to and honor the rights of those who see things differently.
Good ministry belongs to the whole people of God, and those who are ordained as leaders must not only acknowledge this but must lead in ordering the life of the congregation to this end.
The People We Are & the Institutions We Serve
There is no question about it: leaders shape in significant ways the institutions they serve. We need to be both “in the Book” and “in the community”—that is, steeped in Christian theology and ethics, and deeply engaged with the people we serve.
While seeking the balance between the ancient and the future, Christian communities must present compelling and imaginative new versions of a distinctively Christian faith. Here are three areas, which increasingly demand the leader’s attention and imagination:
1. Worship
- Is our worship style and language understandable and attractive only to those who have a Christian history?
- Have we, perhaps not intentionally but by default, become elitist in our worship, bound by habits long refined and too long unquestioned; habits that make little sense and have little attraction to secular persons who are not schooled in our ways?
2. Evangelism
Along with worship, evangelism demands our attention as we seek to keep alive a community of memory and imagination. Not only are we not a Christian nation, we are a nation that no longer considers the Christian faith as a primary maker of our national life. Evangelism in such a context demands serious attention to apologetics.
3. Community
- Do we want to know the people within our reach?
- Are we willing to go where they are and engage them on their turf?
- Are we willing to spend time with them—identify with them and show genuine compassion?
The Preacher and Preaching
A pastor is trusted with the awesome responsibility of preaching the gospel. That trust can affect a pastor’s ego. Bishop Gerald Kennedy often told about a bishop in the Church of England, who observed that a sermon is “something a clergy person will cross a continent to deliver, but will not walk across the street to hear.”
Consider Phillip Brook’s classic definition of preaching as “truth through personality”: “Preaching is not simply the transference of theological ideas from one mind to another. The gospel message is being revealed through a person, whose own response to it will be a tremendous factor in its transmission” (Ronald E. Sleeth, Proclaiming the Word, 1964).
We need to pray continually that when we preach we can speak God’s words to the people with integrity and humility: “We don’t preach about ourselves. Instead, we preach about Jesus Christ as Lord, and we describe ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5).
In The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ (1981), Henri Nouwen describes ministers as a healing reminder, a sustaining reminder, and a guiding reminder. That cultivation of memory is exactly what preaching performs for the church: healing, sustaining, guiding. When Nouwen finished writing the book, he realized that he had discussed the minister as pastor, priest, and prophet. Pastors heal the wounds of the past. Priests sustain life in the present. Prophets guide others to the future.
Out and About
During the Reformation, coram Deo, “in the presence of God” or “before the eyes of God,” became the motivating spirit of the reformers. Nothing marked them more than an awe of the holy, majestic God who called men and women into relationship. As for them, so with us.
Pastors need to live, awed by the fact that all of private and public life is coram Deo, “in the presence of God,” which means that the called must claim and stay aware of identity as pastor-preacher-leader—and not just leaders, but spiritual leaders.
E. Stanley Jones, the renowned missionary evangelist who worked primarily in India, was acutely aware of a practice that continues to challenge us today: our public witness is intimately connected to our ability to witness publicly. He insisted that our words must ring true to our life, and our life must reinforce our words. Our witness in the public arena, our way of being in the world, must align with the content of the public expression of our faith.
Mother Teresa, the saint who gave her life for the poorest of the poor, observed in her book, A Gift for God: We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it in our power to be in heaven with Him right now—to be happy with Him at this very moment. But being happy with Him now means: loving as He loves, helping as He helps, giving as He gives, serving as He serves, rescuing as He rescues, being with Him for all the twenty-four hours, and touching Him in His distressing disguise.
Taking Care of Ourselves in the Everyday
The dropout rate among clergy is shocking. Recent statistics indicate that 35-40 percent of women exit the ministry in their first appointment.
More generally, 40 percent of all clergy leave the ministry during their first five years out of seminary or after ordination. The primary causes for this are moral failure and burnout; the two are connected. In Dunnam’s own conversations with bishops, district superintendents, and judicatory leaders, having to relieve a pastor of his or her ministry because of moral failure is often sadly noted, while divorce among clergy is no longer a surprising issue.
Pastors don’t pay enough attention to inner life, to family wholeness, and to their own spirituality. In the process, pastors can easily become generic leaders of an organization rather than really becoming faith-energized leaders whose style, values, relationships, and priorities identify them as distinctively Christian leaders.
Fear of failure drives some to the point that they fail to pay attention to what is lacking in their own personal lives. Closely akin to the fear of failure is a second issue, which is also an expression of pride: hunger for position, privilege, and power.
A drive for achievement, for promotion and prestige, lead some to think they need to move to a bigger assignment, a larger congregation, and a higher salary. This preoccupation prevents some pastors from paying attention to the present assignment and personal renewal.
There is good reason for some religious orders requiring the vow of poverty. Jesus knew that financial anxiety is an important matter, and he talked a lot about it. Personal security is one driver of selfishness, addiction, and weakness, so we need to pay attention.
We should be regularly asking ourselves, “Where do l place my security? Have I included God in my planning?”
The classic spiritual disciplines are essential for spiritual growth: prayer, scripture reading, fasting, Holy Communion, confession, solitude, submission, service, and generosity. In the Methodist/Wesleyan tradition, which considers these disciplines “the means of grace,” we include Christian conferencing.
Hindu holy men had their “ashrams,” places where they lived and taught. Persons spend weeks, some of them months, in these ashrams “at the feet” of these holy men. One leader—impressed by that dynamic—established “the Christian Ashram,” basically a one-week experience, in a place where persons lived together to study, pray, work, and share.
Two principles were operative in the Ashram experience: everybody is a teacher, everybody is being taught.
The fruit of Christian conferencing is rich. We experience three primary results:
- We receive encouragement and challenge.
- If we are faithful together in covenant, we keep one another honest and hold one another accountable.
- The relationships become a source of guidance, particularly the testing of guidance.
In Christian conferencing, we show that we really care through constructive criticism, and we become better persons and certainly better leaders.
We need persons we trust to check our passion, to slow us down or speed us up (these are known as out “watch-out friends”). God doesn’t hold us responsible for results, but God does hold us responsible for what we do and how we do it. As leaders, we need trusted friends to help us determine how we do what we believe God is calling us to do. We also need trusted friends to test what we perceive as God’s guidance.
Little Foxes That Spoil the Vines
In Song of Solomon 2:15 comes a strange interruption and puzzling word: “Catch foxes for us—those little foxes that spoil vineyards, now that our vineyards are in bloom!” In this beautiful poem, the foxes are symbolic. If the blossoming vineyard is taken to mean the romance between the couple, then the foxes represent potential problems that could damage their relationship. The woman is paying attention to the relationship and is beseeching her lover to protect their love from anything that could harm it.
Relevant but Grounded
Do we know the questions that people are asking? We need to at least be “on speaking terms” with culture, and there is more than one culture in your neighborhood. We need to be relevant.
Dealing with change within our congregation, or in the faith community we lead, whether imposed or chosen, is where the “little foxes” do their destructive work.
Leaders have power, and power can be seductive. Some observers compare leadership with seduction, even suggesting that individuals with an interest in leadership are seduced by the power relationship.
There are three failures or characteristics that may call our leadership into question.
- Failure to pay our debts.
- Stinginess: It is interesting that people want us to be conservative in handling the financial resources of the congregation or our ministry organization, but to appear to be stingy as a person has negative impacts on followers. No one wants to follow a “Scrooge.”
- Always having your hand out. That’s the idiom lay-people use when they talk about their leader expecting special favors, “he always has his hand out.”
Don’t be intimidated by money, and don’t show special favor to those who have money. Don’t allow them to use their money to leverage their agenda.
An old saying was right, “Criticism is something you can avoid easily—by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” For the leader, criticism is inevitable. How we handle it determines whether it becomes a “little fox that spoils the vines.”
Social media in ministry can be a dangerous tool for fostering a competitive celebrity spirit. It is a ready resource for our temptation to compare. Comparison fosters jealousy that other ministries are growing faster than mine, other churches are getting more press, other political groups are getting more followers, other pastors are more eloquent speakers and get more attention. This concealed jealousy fuels competition that is often not recognized and certainly not acknowledged. Nothing is inherently wrong with ambition, but when it is coupled with competitiveness, it becomes a trap rather than an asset.
Time: It Is Ours to Receive, Use, and Manage
There is a sense in which we are obsessed with time, yet we don’t give it the kind of attention it deserves. The truth is, managing our time is really managing our life.
We aren’t two chapters into the Bible and we already have a calendar set around God’s vision of time. God creates in six days and rests on the seventh. The first thing God declares holy is time itself.
How we need to heed this instruction.
Peter Drucker, the late management guru and author of The Effective Executive, said, “Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.”
Overwork is seductive because it is too often lauded. Boston University’s Erin Reid found that some people, men in particular, lie about how many hours they work, presumably thinking excessive hours impress those around them, especially their superiors. Many overworked leaders mistakenly believe that working more will alleviate stress. “Healthy” leaders need planned, playful diversion from the daily grind of stressful vocations.
Though calendaring and scheduling is important, it can be misused. We move from one thing to another, scheduling ourselves to the minute, without giving any thought to the quality of involvement, or the value of time. We must be careful and not allow what we consider urgent to rob us from doing the important, or enjoying the meaningful.
Staying Alive All Our Ministry Life: Will You Finish Well?
Growth and learning are essential for life, critical for the survival of the individual and the community. Psychologist Eric Erickson says that in midlife we face a choice between stagnation and generativity. Stagnation happens when we are threatened and we barricade ourselves behind our status, our title, our notion that we are good enough where we are and have no reason to push any further. Generativity, conversely, is about creativity and the endless emergence of the new.
Hebrews also provides an explicit call to living daily in a way that guarantees that we finish well: run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Other nouns meaning “perseverance” are endurance, resolution, determination, and stubbornness. In more colloquial idioms, die-hard and bulldogged would express the meaning.
The very nature of our work makes us vulnerable to drastic moods, and one of our disciplined responses to life must be the mastery of our moods. Consider one of the most common moods: discouragement. It manifests itself in the greatest of leaders.
We need to recognize that the mood of discouragement is often the psychological reaction to extreme mental and physical fatigue. When you’re seeking to deal with discouragement, be sure that you are adequately rested. Discouragement often results from an impractical idealism, an illogical attempt at perfectionistic activity.
Dunnam points out, “I surrendered. I realized again how limited I am and how dependent I am upon the Lord; how yielded I must be to God if his power is going to be perfected in my weakness. The line that I had marked in my devotional reading had been made powerfully alive by my dream: ‘Let not your will roar when your power can but whisper.’”
We must cultivate attention to the Holy Spirit’s guidance to lift us out of discouragement, but also to guide us in making on-course adjustments in our pattern of life and ministry. It takes perspective to make those course corrections. Spiritual, emotional, and relational growth takes time and energy. It requires discipline.
Later in ministry, we realize how we have strayed. It’s not that we have ignored spiritual growth and character development completely, but we’ve not had the time or inclination to concern ourselves with it. Somewhere along the way, most of us awaken to the fact that we have not kept perspective.
While staying aware that our ministry has dimensions that thwart character development and growth in holiness, we can deal with the temptations that come with our vocation by continually asking ourselves questions like these:
- Am I resisting image-building by living as transparently as possible?
- Am I dealing with the self-deceit that comes from the applause of others?
- Am I keeping my calling clear, resisting both the temptation for security and a competitive spirit?
- Am I defensive when asked questions about the use of my time and the consistency of my spiritual disciplines?
- Am I blaming others for things that are my own fault and the result of my own choices?
When asked about his opportunity to be a part of the elite Friars’ Club, Groucho Marx responded:
Dunnam notes that’s the way he sometimes feels about ministry. “How is it that I’m here? What did God have in mind?”
Paul begins 2 Corinthians 4 with a powerful reminder: “This is why we don’t get discouraged, given that we received this ministry in the same way that we received God’s mercy.” In verse 5, he goes on to say, “We don’t preach about ourselves. Instead, we preach about Jesus Christ as Lord, and we describe ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.”
In verse 7, Paul says, “But we have this treasure in clay pots so that the awesome power belongs to God and doesn’t come from us.” The primary way we think and talk about this is sense of calling.
The life of Mother Teresa is another example of sustaining a sense of calling. A brother in a religious order came to Mother Teresa complaining about a superior whose rules, he felt, were interfering with his ministry. “My vocation is to work for lepers,” he told her. In a voice of desperation, he said, “I want to spend myself for the lepers.” She looked penetratingly at him for a moment, then smiled gently, saying, “Your vocation is not to work for lepers, your vocation is to love Jesus.”
Staying aware of that foundational claim, that our vocation is to work for Jesus, knowing that we are stewards of God’s grace, keeps our appetite for ministry vividly alive, and we will finish well.