A couple of weeks ago, a friend in our congregation
and a leader in our community shared with me the
link to a piece from Harvard Business Review. Though
the essay was written nearly fifteen years ago, in
his message, my friend suggested that it might be
a timely read at the beginning of 2024. The title of
the piece: Leadership in a [Permanent] Crisis. I’ll
confess that I didn’t have the energy or the fortitude
to read it. Instead, I printed the fifteen pages, and I
set them aside. Then last Sunday evening, stuck on
an airplane idling on the runway, I concluded the
message was: now was the time to read the piece.
The authors are three professors who study adaptive
leadership. They suggested that the current crisis—the
Great Recession of 2008—was only the beginning
of a sustained or permanent string of serious and
unfamiliar challenges. I think this insight qualifies
them as fortune tellers or prophets.
To lead well in permanent crisis, the authors argue,
requires leaders to balance the urgency of much
needed change with the amount of stress the system
can handle. One author in another piece writes, “The
art of leadership is disappointing people at a rate
they can tolerate.” This seems right to me, but the
specific tasks they outline are much easier to preach
than they are to practice. For example? “Embrace
Disequilibrium.” Now, that’s a stretch.
Next Sunday morning, as part of our church’s annual
meeting, you will elect new classes of elders and
deacons to lead our church in the years ahead. As
they prepare for these important new roles, we will
honor the gifts of experience and hard-won expertise
that they possess. As we train them for those roles,
we will study the theology of our ancestors and the
structure of our polity shaped by generations of past
leaders. And then, we will ask them to embrace the
disequilibrium that comes with permanent crisis. We
will seek change that is both faithful and adaptive. We
will pray for vision and ask God for the gift of courage
as we lead in the years to come.
Now, the insights of civic, business, and academic
sectors can help us here, but there are also some
peculiarities to leadership in the Church. For starters,
the benchmarks and goals are different. At its most
faithful, the Church does not seek to accumulate
power but to distribute compassion. At its best,
the Church does not fixate on the bottom line but
on the ones left behind or forgotten. Perhaps most
importantly, at its core, our message is not one of
self-promotion but of selfless service. We point
not to ourselves but to Christ. As the Apostle Paul
eloquently wrote, we do not proclaim ourselves; we
preach Christ and him crucified. Our standard for
leadership and discipleship is Jesus Christ. Jesus,
who resisted leadership by tyranny, built on coercive
power. Jesus, neither tyrant nor emperor. Neither
general nor dictator. Neither CEO nor president. But
Good Shepherd.
By the time we reach the tenth chapter of John’s
Gospel, Jesus is a leader. He has attracted a large
following. He’s been all over the region of Galilee. He’s
teaching growing crowds. He’s feeding the hungry
multitudes. He’s welcoming the outcast. He is healing.
He is blessing. He is proclaiming in word and in action
the Kingdom of God and its arrival in our midst. By
this time, Jesus has also experienced the sting of
cynicism and the rise of opposition. He has his critics.
In fact, just before this morning’s chapter, a group
of well-respected religious leaders criticize Jesus for
healing a man without first condemning him for the
sins they assume caused his condition. “Jesus, how
can you freely offer grace and healing to one who
stands condemned? What kind of leader are you?”
Jesus seizes the moment to compare leadership
models. In her book on leadership, the former
President of Duke University, Nan Keohane, writes
about the life of Nelson Mandela. She describes how,
“as a young boy, (Mandela) observed the regent chief
of his people presiding at meetings of members of
his tribe. Mandela writes, ‘I always remember the
regent’s axiom. A leader, he said, is like a shepherd.
He stays behind the flock. He lets the most nimble go
out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing
that all along they are being directed from behind.’”i
Sounds a lot like adaptive leadership to me.
From beginning to end, scripture’s image of faithful
leadership is the shepherd. In the Psalms, in the
Prophets, in the Gospels, God—Jesus—is our
shepherd, gently guiding an unruly collection of
directionally challenged beasts toward a destination
they cannot see. And from beginning to end, it is a
picture not of force but of tenderness.
By what means does the shepherd lead us? Jesus says
the shepherd leads by the sound of a trusted voice.
It is this calming, reassuring, nurturing, protecting
voice to which the sheep respond. Jesus will repeat
the observation several times later in the chapter. My
sheep know my voice.
And so, the takeaway seems straightforward. As
disciples of Jesus, who is our Good Shepherd, we
simply must listen to his voice and follow him in the
way we live our lives. Listen. Respond. Couldn’t be
easier, right?
Well…kind of like wearing a What Would Jesus Do
bracelet, the challenge comes not in abstract phrase
but in concrete decision. Jesus is clear. The voice of
the shepherd is not the only one, not the only voice
the sheep hear. There are thieves. There are bandits.
There are strange voices who aim to divide and
destroy. So, the better question for disciples is, “How
do we distinguish? How can we know the voice we
follow belongs to Jesus when a constant cacophony
confronts us?”
You know the cacophony. Some of those voices are
whispering in your head. Some are shouting through
screens. Some justify our worst impulses (“It’s ok”).
Others make promises they never intend to keep.
Some stir up antipathy toward others. Still others
drown out the quiet nudge of conscience. If there is
any truism of our time, it is that we are surrounded by
voices. The task of source discernment (that is, where
is the voice coming from?) is always before us. It is
true when we are faced with life-defining decisions.
It is true when we are collectively confronted with
choices that will shape the future of our congregation,
our city, our state, our nation. And the challenge is just
as pressing in our daily lives as we face one decision
after another, while those voices swirl in our heads,
pushing us in every direction. Disequilibrium. We can
feel it. And so, we too are like sheep with no shepherd.
We must confess that the church has been complicit
in the chaos. I hear church leaders lament the
decreased participation in our congregations
and the declining faithfulness of members. I hear
disappointment that many have lost their way and
abandoned the Church. And I share their desire that
more folks would discover that purpose can be found
in following the way of Jesus.
But I also believe that we must repent of the ways we
in the Church have abandoned faithful souls. When
we have resisted needed adaptation and dug in our
heels. When we have adopted the tactics of coercion
or self-righteousness, the ones that Jesus explicitly
rejects. We must confess. We must ask ourselves hard
questions. Have we silenced the voice of Jesus? Have
we drowned out the whispers of the Spirit? Have we
replaced His voice with our own agendas, anxieties,
or attacks?
To lead in the church is to help each other listen and
recognize the voice of Jesus. How can we do that? The
answer comes from the Good Shepherd himself. “The
thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come that
they may have life and have it abundantly.”
Friends, the best evidence that the voice we are
following belongs to Jesus Christ is the abundant life
to which it leads us. Despite all the guarantees of
the voices that clamor for our devotion—guarantees
of more power, more money, more influence,
more security, more success, more of just about
everything—these voices will never be able to offer
what you most deeply need. Life that is abundant, life
that is worth living, life filled with purpose, life full of
passion. Abundance of life is the promise the Good
Shepherd offers. It’s what we have to give to each
other and to the world in his name.
And so, my friends, we must resist the siren song of
those who seek power for a few at the expense of the
many. We must resist divisive voices who propose only
to partition us, whose words demean and demonize
the very children of God who belong to the Good
Shepherd just like you do.
Afterall, where has following these voices gotten us?
We’ve been warned. The thief comes to destroy. So, if
the movement that claims to follow Christ takes this
bleak path, we will betray our mission. We will sacrifice
our future on the altar of fear or false hope. Friends,
this much I know. We will become reflections of the
voices we follow. That is true whether we intend to or
not. When we follow the voice of division, distrust, and
deceit, those same forces will emerge and eventually
reign in our lives, in our communities, in our country.
In a time of permanent crisis, the witness of the church
must be clear. God intends abundant life for all. Jesus
laid down his life so that we could be freed from fear,
freed to live in faith. And so, this is no time to lose our
way, no time to abandon our call, no time to divide the
flock, chasing tempting illusions.
Rather, let us embrace disequilibrium. Or at least
accept it. It’s inevitable. And then let us fix our eyes,
and our ears, on Jesus. What he offers is what every
human creature yearns to find, the pastures in which
we long to graze. Life abundant.
The Lord is my shepherd. We know his voice. For
God’s sake, let us follow it without fear.