Grace in leadership

Jesus and Leadership

(Poatina Morning Tea devotion given yesterday)

I came to Hobart with Fusion when I was 20 and subsequently have made lots and lots of mistakes!  In that time,  the wrestle with leadership has been an issue for me. Over the years I have read a few books and articles by Warren Bennis. He was one of the youngest infantrymen in WWII and his experience helped him frame his thinking about leadership. He was one of the pioneers in the whole field of leadership training. He and a man named Shepherd actually invented Group Life Laboratories.

(We played an excerpt of a Podcast where the an interviewer said to Warren Bennis “As you get to the end of your life, what have you discovered is the key to leadership?”

He said “My understanding of being a leader  is that it will more and more depend on things we don’t usually talk about.   Things like sacrifice. That sounds easy, but it is not easy and it takes you away from your family; from taking care of yourself sometimes.   People are going to have to think about leaders who really understand sacrifice, and redemption, to build a company back up that has lost its way”.

“I am not a religious man, but my next book may be called, GRACE  focussing on things like generosity, respect, redemption and sacrifice. You won’t find these things in many books on leadership, including mine, however increasingly I am seeing that they are the key to effective leadership”.

So Bennis says, ultimately leadership is about Grace.

I love the fact that really, if you’re in Fusion or Poatina, you’re called to leadership because what we are about is about imagining a future and working toward it. The statement as you come into Poatina, is a statement of aspiration, “The way life is meant to be”.

I had the privilege of sharing at the Australian Religious Press Annual meeting a week ago.  They represented heaps of publications.  I was asked to talk about what it means to communicate with youth in the 21^st Century.  I trotted out a bunch of current statistics which say that  1 in 3 young people suffers from some form of mental illness; that 160,000 young people suffer from depression.   Strangely, there is 20% more mental illness among young people compared to older people. Which is stunning. It raises a whole lot of questions.

A recent paper, by a team led by a man called Richard Eckersley, who spoke at a couple of Fusion Conferences,  says the way we’ve approached psychotherapy is wrong.

The way we’ve headed is to l tell people if they are feeling bad that  there’s a problem and they need to deal with the bad feelings.  The paper quotes people like Aristotle, Nietshche, Frankl and Erikson along with more modern scholars and says that one of the keys to mental health is having something in your life that is bigger than yourself; being able to live from values rather than from your feeling world.

What Erikson shows is that we start life in a feeling world,  but as we grow up maturity means that feelings don’t  run the show anymore but our values run the show.

He’s saying, we’re selling our young people short, because we’re not giving them a big enough story; a reason to be mature.

This morning, I came across Galatians – either I am for myself or I work for a collective.  (The great challenge with Communism is a loss of  individuality; the challenge with capitalism is a loss of community.)  Within the Trinity there is absolute individuality and absolute community.

This, from Gal 6…  “ Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience

Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.

So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith. “

Warren Bennis says, “If you’re going to be involved in leadership, to be able to be an agent of Grace is going to require sacrifice.

Toward the end of the chapter, Gal 6,

“For my part, I am going to boast about nothing but the Cross of our Master, Jesus Christ. Because of that Cross, I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate. Can’t you see the central issue in all this? It is not what you and I do… It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new, a free life!

I can’t fully trust others and build community,  but the more I’m willing to let Jesus take me over, the more truly free I become.

I love our village but if Jesus isn’t at its heart it isn’t possible to create life as its meant to be; to create space for young people.  I know for me, that the job, every morning is to remind myself that point is not me, and it’s not you – It’s Jesus.  And that enables us to find my story and our story.