A Call to Christlike Leadership When the World Shakes

On the brink of the second quarter of the twenty-first century, world politics and global challenges mirror an alarming leadership deficit which does not only mount up to more and deeper societal complexities, but also to the shared awareness that humanity may have come to the very brink of its own existence after all. The times we live in are almost desperately begging for true and sincere leaders, who are genuine, wise, and can evidently be ‘followed’, not so much on a global scale (this is undoable), but on a ‘glocal’ scale. There’s much confusion, perplexity and anxiety, due to infantile behavior of renowned leaders, prominent influencers and church leaders, who proudly expose their extravagant demeanor, their infecting moral weaknesses and corruption, thereby setting an example for others to be copied, and, to the detriment of many would be leaders, thereby sending out the perverse incentive, that it pays of positive to play the successful crooked leader. So, much is at stake here for ecclesial leaders and upcoming leaders on whatever scale, whose desire it is to be formed as responsible spiritual trainees, accountable to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Harvesting from the early church, its texts, history and theology, and from the early reformation period, I will set out explaining that according to the Free Church tradition ecclesial leadership is to be characterized as an interpretive form of leadership. This type of leadership focuses primarily on meaning-making, as it habitually evolves under threatening and disturbing circumstances. Christian leaders stand up explaining hard times in the light of Scripture and their shared identity narratives. In Free Church tradition leadership is primarily Bible oriented, albeit usually in a naïve and simple way, and is sustained by retrieval of a selection of its own identity narratives.

In a recent volume on religious leadership Joke van Saane typifies religious leadership as ‘the social skill of sense-making’, helping groups throughout the ages to survive, even under dire circumstances (in Rein Brouwer [ed.], The Future of Lived Religious Leadership, 2018). In this regard Free Churches have much to offer to the critical discussion, I maintain. Let me just briefly address some of the basics here and unpack these on April 24-25^th.

In the first place (1) interpretive leadership emerges from the shared conviction and intention that communal discernment is a prerequisite to proper understanding of Scripture and the present tides (cf. Zürich 1525, the start of the anabaptist movement). So, interpretive leadership is not merely a matter of soloistic decisions and resolutions made by a few charismatic leaders or designated officials, but of listening carefully, and for that matter hermeneutically, to the multi-voiced church here and now in the light of Scripture and sacred history (cf. Stuart & Sian Murray, Multi-Voiced Church, 2012).

After all, and this is secondly (2), (ana)Baptist leadership does not encourage any ecclesial power-distance, hierarchically or charismatically, and does not applaud any sort of lordy and bossy leadership.

Yet thirdly (3), it seeks and pursues a pregiven, and hence transcending form of leadership, which emerges with the person and profile of Jesus Christ, who became a servant-shepherd, although He is King and Lord. Churches just cannot make their own wish-list with indicators for a new pastor (evade Donatist supremacy).

As such, Christian leadership is something throughout Christological, and requires, besides interpretive leadership, also moral leadership (cf. Paul Goodiff, Shaped for Service: Ministerial Formation and Virtue Ethics, 2017)) and representative leadership (mystagogical leadership). On the one hand, the Church and its leaders should not be otherworldly; on the other hand, they should not be degraded to just an extension of the world. Anyway, the copy-cat industry of Christian socio-pragmatism on Christian leadership makes the church repeatedly fall into non-Christological, sometimes even anti-Christological premisses (cf. Nicholas Healy, Church, World and the Christian Life: Practical-Prophetic Ecclesiology, 2000).

Hopefully we meet on April 24^th.