Dear Friends
‘American politics’ may not be the area you’d choose for your specialist subject on Mastermind (it wouldn’t be mine, for sure – and, of course, you may well wisely choose to avoid the challenge in the first place).
But in the past few weeks those self-same American politics have thrown up, and brought into sharp relief, a question which has a certain timeless relevance.
What do we look for in leaders?
It’s a timely question.
Timely, first of all, because in these next few weeks we mark again the coming of the King. “Today a Saviour has been born to you,” the shepherds out in the fields were told: but the Saviour thus born, well, be sure of this, “He is Christ the Lord,” they were quickly further informed. Our true salvation, and our only true security, is found within and under His lordship over our lives.
We’re safe where He’s sovereign. We get to live, as He gets to lead.
So what does that leadership look like?
Well, you’ll look in vain for any presidential palace or some fancy royal residence. Not with Jesus. Anything but. He runs a mile from that.
You think that’s an exaggeration? Hardly! Remember the time when He’d fed the five thousand (and that was just the number of men), and the people were all for voting Jesus in as president-elect? “Knowing they intended to come and make Him king by force …” – an electoral ‘shoe-in’ if ever there was one, and if ever it came to a vote: but what did Jesus do? He ran a mile, He “..withdrew again to a mountain by Himself” (Jn.6.15).
He knew what they were on about. He was never going to be some sort of puppet-king like that. You vote Him in when you see what He can do for you: but then, of course, you can later vote Him out of office if He doesn’t actually do things as you’d like them done.
That’s just another way of saying that, bottom-line, the customer is king: and their so-called president-elect will be no more than just their puppet on a string. Jesus isn’t taken in.
He doesn’t do that sort of leadership at all. Instead, as often as not, His leadership looks far more like a tough-skinned, weather-beaten shepherd, out on the hills in the ancient world’s equivalent of his denim dungarees.
None of the impressive pomp and pageantry of palace life: that’s all very well for superficial, ceremonial spectacles, to let the sycophantic minions know who’s boss. But it’s hardly all that practical: and Jesus as our Leader is intent upon salvation – so He’s nothing if not practical. He has to be: salvation is a painful, messy business, and demands from the One effecting it a sleeves-rolled-up, and wholly hands-on exercise of stamina and strength.
His leadership, in other words, is never just a nominal thing, never merely titular at all. He’s come to be our Leader: to lead us out of hopeless, abject slavery, and to lead us on to pastures new and good.
No wonder the picture the Scriptures most commonly use is that of the Shepherd.
For it’s ‘sheep’ with whom this Leader takes to do: foolish, feckless creatures, clueless as to where to go, and drifting off to ditches, dead-ends, dangers and to difficulties galore. Such ‘sheep’ as that which we are, we need a sharp-eyed, sure-footed Shepherd, out on the mud of the hillsides, not some sequin-studded sovereign in the comfort of his castle.
That’s the Leader we needed. And that’s why the birth of the Saviour is heralded first to some shepherds, out at their work on the Bethlehem hills: they, better perhaps than any, will ‘get it’. The Saviour is a Shepherd, and that lordship whereby safety and salvation is secured for us is a bold and gracious, always out-front, leading of the flock both day and night.
For this is what shepherds do. They keep watch over each of their flock. They rescue their sheep from disaster, shield their sheep from all danger, feed their sheep with good pasture, lead their sheep by still waters – and prepare their sheep always for the temple of God, which is where their true destiny lies.
More striking still in the old, familiar narrative of Jesus’ birth is the time of day: or night, to be precise. These shepherds are out in their fields, keeping watch over all of the flock, by night: when the kings of this world have been long since tucked up tight in their comfortable beds, and the sovereigns in their silk PJs are fast asleep.
It was a dark, dark world in every sense into which our Saviour was born. But He entered the darkness, He lived with the dangers, He bore all the costly demands which that fullness of life He would give to His sheep would require.
That’s what leadership looks like! How good to be reminded at this time of year that such indeed is the nature of the Saviour who has come. The King who reigns through servitude: the Shepherd who will be at last the sacrificial lamb. The Lord in whom, through whom, with whom, we know life.
And that’s what we look for in leaders – to get back to the question with which I began. A timely question, as I said. And that not only because it’s Christmas and our thoughts are all directed to the coming of the King; but as much because it’s very much the area of our congregation’s life on which our thinking as the Transitional Leadership Team has been very largely focussed.
The Transitional Leadership Team is, by definition, essentially transitional. Its existence as such has given us all a helpful and necessary ‘breathing space’ in which to think through just how best we put in place the healthy local leadership required to take us forward in these coming days.
Reflecting back on the past twelve months, one of the things of which we’ve been aware has been the benefit of working with a numerically small local leadership team, to whom has been entrusted the decision-making role. In adopting this pattern, certainly, we have sought, as best we may, to balance what could well be termed a basic ‘oligarchy’ by ensuring that (1) we involved the body of elders in (as well as updating them about) our on-going discussions; (2) wherever feasible, we provided regular and good communication with the fellowship as a whole; and (3) we created at least a measure of congregational ‘enfranchisement’ through the various Community Groups, whereby discussion, informed by the Word of God, about different and important facets of our life as a fellowship here could be shared on as wide a congregational front as possible.
This sort of pattern is something we’re keen now to build on, as we move towards a form of local leadership into which the present Transitional Leadership Team can readily and happily evolve, without any fear of ‘cold turkey’ – to use an appropriate seasonal phrase!
It has, however, been geese (the older Christmas dinner-table centrepiece), instead of turkeys, which have informed and helped our thinking as we’ve pondered just what form our local leadership should take!
It’s become, I suppose, something of a commonplace, when thoughts have turned to leadership, to refer to the ‘formation flying’ of geese as they settle in to their ‘long-haul’ flight: their well-known ‘V’ formation significantly increases their combined efficiency (an estimated 70% increase, and more, in their flying range); and it highlights also the benefits there can be in their rotating the ‘point’ position with its ‘front-end’ demands of leadership.
Well, we’re certainly in ‘for the long haul’ here! And the flying geese analogy may well provide as helpful a model as any for the sort of local leadership to which we are aspiring.
For such a model serves to highlight well two helpful, core components of a ‘long-haul’ style of leadership.
First, it highlights the benefit of a small ‘executive’ leadership body, entrusted with the ‘point’ responsibility of an overall decision-making role. Such a Leadership Team would be both drawn from, and supported by, the larger body of elders – the former keeping the latter ‘in the loop’, and drawing on the pool of wisdom and counsel which the body of elders afford; the latter supporting and encouraging the former through their on-going prayer and insights.
Secondly, however, such a model well highlights the value and importance of ‘rotation’. As the geese themselves have figured out, there are very good practical and pastoral reasons for countenancing such a pattern of ‘rotation’; a pattern which would not involve at any point a great and wholesale change, but equally would guarantee a frequent introduction of a fresh and energising ‘set of wings’.
Leadership’s all about ‘long haul’: which is what we’re intent on securing.
And with that we’re back once more to Jesus. Our Saviour is here for the long haul. There won’t be any running away on the part of this Shepherd who’s come – no matter the cost He will bear, no matter the wounds He’ll receive, no matter the price He must pay. There won’t be any running away on His part, and He won’t for a moment ever think of just packing it in – no matter how wayward, and stubborn, and foolish and fractious His people, like sheep, may well be.
He’s the ultimate ‘long haul’ Leader: the Saviour and Shepherd, whose goodness and mercy will be there for me ‘all my days’, and who’ll lead me right on ‘til I’m dwelling forever in the house and the home of my God.
So, in closing, as the season of Christmas catches each of us up in its wonder and hope once again (at least I pray it may do so, whether sorrow or joy fills your heart), I’m eager to say that the warmth of the welcome you’ve given us here, and the sense that we’ve had of that gracious ‘long haul’ love of the Lord through the care and support you have shown – these have humbled us greatly, and served only to stir yet more in our hearts just such a ‘long haul’ commitment in love to you all in the on-going work of our Lord Jesus Christ in this place.
Thank you so much! And may the grace of the Lord, who though He was rich yet for our sakes become poor that we through His poverty might be enriched beyond all measure – may that grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with each one of you, in the face of all your circumstances, at this time.
Yours in Jesus Christ our Lord
Jeremy Middleton