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Friends United Meeting |
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January/February 2006
Leadership Development in our Global Community
By Colin South
Leadership relies upon ordinary people doing extraordinary things. I have always been inspired by Peter as the disciple of Jesus who was chosen to be the rock on which the church would be built. Here was no polished man, but a fisherman called by Jesus. (Matthew 4:19) He was not perfect, but a man who denied his master three times at the most critical moments. (Matthew 26:75) Here was an impetuous man reprimanded by Jesus for challenging the inevitability of Jesus’ death. (Matthew 16:22) He was a vulnerable man who, as he walked on water towards Jesus, was afraid of the storm and sank. (Matthew 14:29) The fact that God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things is one of the greatest messages of our Bible in the Old and New Testaments.
It is clear there is no easy path to leadership. It is the brokenness of life that inspires the greatest of leaders. When leaders begin to imagine they are not chosen for their experience of recovering from frailty but for their unique wisdom and strength, then the seed of failure in leadership is set. Pride, it seems, comes before the fall whilst modesty and humility may be the keys, paradoxically, to greatness.
Christian leadership is the leadership of Christ in our midst. Christian leadership is about being chosen by God. It is not about personal gain whether it be prestige, finance or power. It may be touched by these things but is essentially beyond them. Leadership seems to be thrust upon you sometimes seemingly by chance. If you are a person of faith, however, it is never chance, but the gentle all-knowing hand of God. Rarely is this visible at the time, but is frequently better seen in hindsight.
Once again, we find ourselves as Christians at odds with the world. There are many fine leadership development programs and many fine theories about leadership and how to recognize it, grow it and use it. But for a Christian, while all of these may be informative, it is the hand of God that brings the greatest surprise and the greatest challenge to any theory.
Ultimately, Christian leadership is just that…the leadership of Christ in our midst. The question becomes who is the vessel through which this leadership will be exercised. The answer is neither prescriptive nor descriptive of any particular kind of person other than someone whom God has chosen. Paul said human characteristics such as ethnicity, the nature of our work or our gender are not the distinctives that are important “because we are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) We are blind to our distinctives if we live in close relationship with our God because all that matters is Emmanuel, “God with us.”
Leadership development as the creation of opportunity. So why is leadership development and leadership training a priority of Friends United Meeting? FUM must do its best to create the right environment so leadership will emerge without obstacle within our Christian family. Leadership is a divine spark which has a history in any individual.
Three questions at least demand answers:
How do we nurture self awareness of God’s divine intervention in our personal
histories?
How do we support each other to grow in our relationship with God so that
we are listening and hearing what God has to say to us?
How can we nurture the recognition of our limitations so when we are called,
we know it is an acknowledgement of our frailty and our necessary dependence
on God that is the source of any leadership that we may be asked to uphold?
Leadership gifts and the abundance of God’s grace. The wonderful thing about our global community of Friends in partnership within FUM is that all of us have the capacity for some form of leadership. Paul says that to each one the outworking of the Holy Spirit in us is given for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12:7) The diversity of our gifts shows the abundance of God’s grace given in leadership of the church. Leadership may be given to any one of us at any time and in any place.
Christian leadership is not the prerogative of the successful student. Christian leadership is not essentially about gender, ableness, race nor nationality, although from time to time in our experience, these may be significant factors in God’s choice. It is, however, about stewardship of God’s gifts, how you care for the gifts, opportunities and grace God has given you. It is about discipleship and how closely you seek to lead a life that Jesus would have you lead. It is about your relationship with God.
Common Goals: FUM seeks to release strategies to support change,
to support growth and development, to build a community of faith among
the nations and among God’s people, to demonstrate the love of Christ
and lay bare our means of salvation. FUM needs embodied, in individuals
and at the very heart of our organization, four gifts from God:
1. The creation of a clear vision of the future;
2. The creation of meaning through communication;
3. The creation of trust through constancy in word and deed;
4. The creative deployment of personality and skills inspiring each other
with confidence and high expectation.
(Adapted from Leadership Strategies for Taking Charge, by Bennis and Nanus Harper Row, 1985.)
Let us pray that our FUM community creates those opportunities within it that plants the seeds God wants in the lives of our members so that openings arise where Christ’s leadership can be effectively found among us.
Colin South is FUM’s director of Global Ministries. He and his wife Kathy live in Richmond, Indiana, and are members of First Friends Meeting, Richmond.