No one who has been in a leadership position would say that it’s supposed to be easy. Even if you are “naturally” gifted as a leader (ie looked to as a leader without a title or any prompting), you know that the kinds of pressures and expectations you are under can feel overwhelming at times.
But more often than not, we’ve seen leaders who are ill prepared or who are just emotionally ill become arrogant and can often plateau in their skills and natural abilities, neglecting their own path to deepening and building capacity as a leader. They will ride on the waves of their gifts and whatever comes easiest to them without pushing in to the places that are most challenging for them, and, not incidentally, usually the most humbling.
Humility too often gets mistaken for weakness. It gets conflated with quietness and being a doormat for others. I’ve always preferred the term Gospel confidence as a way to imbibe humility with a measure of strength and fortitude in the face of challenges, that a humble leader will not cower away from difficult and complex issues especially when they involve people’s lives – which is almost always.
Gospel confidence is the place we set our feet firmly in the finished work of Christ. It’s where we can rest from all our strivings and yearnings to say no matter what I do, God loves me, He has given me all I need for today, and His church cannot fail. It’s saying “if things are not ok, it is not the end.” It’s holding fast to the promises that God will do what we cannot and that the path may be long and treacherous and filled with darkness, but our God has overcome the world and He is even now restoring it for His glory and for our good. There’s nothing we can do to mess that up when all is said and done.
Do you believe all that?
Some days, I really do not. I’ll be honest. Some days I struggle so hard to believe that God even cares any more. I look around at the atrocities in the world and not in some far off place I know nothing about but right here in my own city. I see the effects of sin and death around me, in my own life, in the lives of people I dearly love. It makes me spin some times. I grieve and at times sob into my hands at the pain of it all. It feels like too much. Because it is.
I don’t think any one is looking to me to answer why there is such suffering in the world. But I do know that the times I have pushed back on some of the religious leaders of today who continue to talk about such things – leaders who others do look to for answers- I get into trouble. I don’t agree with some of their takes. I think they’re barking up wrong trees. I think the broader evangey church’s answers have been terrible at times. I have a hard time just pretending that it’s ok for some of what gets said. I see the answers crushing people under a weight of false peace and a shallow hope. I’ve lived too much life and seen too much of the dark to offer platitudes and quick pithy sayings like band aids on a wound that needs surgery.
But I think band aids sell books. And I think that we need to be more honest about that. I think more and more of us are. We’re grasping for meat instead of the milk we’ve been fed and sometimes I can’t help but wonder if we even know how to get the meat.
- Humility makes us honest, and first with ourselves.
- Humility looks in the mirror, sees what is wrong, confesses it, and does not walk away and forget it.
- Humility gets angry at arrogance and cannot help but point it out, especially when it’s one’s own.
- Humility does the long, hard work of growing up.
- Humility says when it’s wrong. It says it has the capacity to be wrong. And it has the capacity to even be wrong when it is “right.”
These seem like platitudes and pithy sayings. They are not. They are some of the hardest soul work I’ve ever done. And I think that some leaders will spend more of their time telling others to do these things to get the church back on track. But what if the most important job right now is for the LEADERS to do this work in themselves first? What if some of our most public and celebrated leaders take a big step back and said, “I was wrong. I have not been honest. I repent. I will address my failures and arrogance and hiding in plain sight.” Could you even imagine?
Our next generation will grow up with a sense of these things so much more than older generations. If it’s possible, in some ways, they will almost err on the side of too much humility. They will give in so much to the possibility that they are messing up that they will at times fail to even try to do things.
But while this inertia may consume them, those of us still around in leadership or standing on the sidelines in support, have to rise up and coach them. We have to remind them of God’s all sufficient grace. And we encourage them to dig deeper and to find the meat. (Editor’s Note: that metaphor doesn’t work well. I think you know what I mean.)
Does the church have the capacity for this? Do we have the kind of healthy church cultures that can take truly humble leaders who are growing alongside us instead of thinking that they are ahead of us? Maybe some are. I hope some are. It begs the question. But I think that more often than not the most humble and godly person is in your pews not behind the pulpit and that’s ok. Any preacher who thinks otherwise is the old apologetic. And we’re done with all that. Right?
###
the wife & times of Reverend Wootton 